Nearly 20 intelligence reports from the CIA dating back to the administration of Barack Obama have been repudiated in a stunning move by CIA chief John Ratcliffe because they were influenced by political bias, or worse.
A report from Just the News said the other problem was simply “poor spy tradecraft.”
That included, stunningly, one analysis saying women who pursue traditional motherhood roles were “at danger of becoming violent extremists.”
The reports all had undergone extensive review.
“There is absolutely no room for bias in any kind of the CIA’s work,” one official told the publication. “So when we find instances where our tradecraft did not reach that high bar of impartiality, we must correct the record. And that’s why we’re taking steps to reinforce analytic integrity by ordering the public release, substantive revision or retraction of these products that do not meet CIA’s tradecraft standards.”
Seventeen of the 19 reports simply were deleted, permanently, and no longer can be reached by spy agencies.
Two others were revised.
The CIA confirmed the actions had nothing to do with politics, but the actions were taken “because they failed to meet rigid analytic standards that have been in place for years under a memo known as Intelligence Community Directive 203.”
“There are still objectivity standards and tradecraft standards that the intelligence community should always observe,” the official said. “Those standards in ICD 203, were not followed in the case of these products.”
The publication cited CIA criticism of several of the reports, dealing with political diversity, because they quoted from “liberal news sites.”
“One of the retracted reports made public by the CIA on Friday from the agency’s Counterterrorism Mission Center, while two of them come from the CIA’s World Intelligence Review (WIRe), which is described as a ‘daily publication’ at the agency and as the ‘flagship product’ of the CIA’s Directorate of Analysis,” Just the News said.
In earlier White Houses, one CIA official confirmed, “there was an inappropriate insertion of DEI issues and other distractions into aspects of CIA’s work, which undercut our mission of providing objective analysis on national security issues.”
The reports also failed by wading “into foreign political debates” and taking sides “in social and gender debates,” officials revealed.
They also were criticized for citing “unobjective” sources like Planned Parenthood and Human Rights Campaign.
