Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, stripped security clearances from 37 individuals last month without giving the White House a heads-up.
Last month’s clearance revocations, affecting high-ranking CIA deputies and Democratic congressional staffers, have sparked frustration among President Trump’s advisers and deepened tensions between Gabbard, the CIA, and other administration officials.
The Guardian reported that Gabbard’s decision came without prior notification to the White House, leaving Trump’s team blindsided as the list went public without their chance to review it.
No paper trail of presidential direction surfaced for this sweeping action, raising eyebrows about the process behind the revocations.
Among those hit were top advisers to CIA Director John Ratcliffe, including one tied to sensitive military operations, alongside congressional staffers like Maher Bitar, national security adviser to Senator Adam Schiff, and Thomas West from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
The inclusion of congressional aides has sparked whispers of a separation-of-powers clash, adding another layer of complexity to this already thorny issue.
Weeks after the revocations, Trump’s inner circle remains irritated with Gabbard, seeing this as a misstep, especially given the president’s well-known distrust of the intelligence community and his musings about dismantling the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
Advisers, both within and outside the administration, have grumbled that Gabbard’s deputy chief of staff, Alexa Henning, failed to clarify how the list was assembled or provide solid reasoning for the clearances being pulled.
A senior intelligence official claimed Gabbard briefed Trump in the Oval Office about targeting officers linked to questionable assessments on Russia’s influence operations during the 2016 election, suggesting the president directed her to remove those still in government roles.
This official also noted that the list was supposedly emailed to key White House figures, including Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and communications chiefs, though the lack of prior vetting still stings.
The episode has only fueled the ongoing feud between Gabbard and the CIA, with her role in delivering Trump’s daily briefing clashing against the agency’s production of that very intel. As one senior intelligence official put it, “The CIA just wants to blame ODNI all the time.”
That quip might hold a grain of truth, but it dodges the bigger question: shouldn’t there be better coordination when careers and national security are on the line?
Gabbard’s memo last month framed the revocations as Trump’s directive, targeting those she accused of politicizing or leaking classified information, aligning with an executive order and past actions against political adversaries like Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
This move fits into a larger push by Trump’s team to correct what they see as flawed intelligence assessments and to hold accountable those perceived as enemies for distorting facts about Russian operations in 2016.
While Gabbard seems unlikely to face serious fallout—having weathered past storms like Trump’s public contradiction of her Iran nuclear assessment in June—her absence from a key Camp David meeting and a criticized video on nuclear risks show she’s not immune to scrutiny.