Latest news with #C.I.A.
The Intercept
6 days ago
- Politics
- The Intercept
The Rising Death Toll of the U.S.-Israel Aid Distribution Plan in Gaza
When the Trump administration unveiled its plan to put a fledgling nonprofit with no humanitarian track record in charge of distributing aid to Palestinians in Gaza earlier this month, the outcry among aid groups was widespread. Under the plan, which has the backing of the U.S. and Israeli governments, civilians would be concentrated into southern Gaza in so-called 'sterile zones' controlled by the Israeli military. The new nonprofit, led by a former U.S. Marine, would be the sole distributor of aid from a handful of locations. American contractors would provide security, including one group run by a former senior C.I.A. officer. The humanitarian community worried the Israeli government would use the new aid plan as a weapon against Palestinians, who are currently facing mass starvation under Israel's 11-week blockade. Some aid experts likened the zones to a 'concentration camp' or an 'internment camp,' saying the plan would further displace Palestinians. Some Israeli officials said they hoped the plan would permanently expel Palestinians from Gaza. Such fears proved prescient Tuesday, when the aid plan, led by the Gaza Humanitarian Aid Foundation, went forward in the Tel Al-Sultan neighborhood of Al-Mawasi, Rafah. Thousands of Palestinians were forced to walk miles to the site, where the large crowds packed into fenced-off corridors as private American security contractors, armed with assault rifles, guarded boxes of aid. During the distribution, guards initially subjected recipients to intense searches, but later loosened security, two sources monitoring the distribution told The Intercept. At that point, the crowd began to storm the distribution site, attempting to receive the aid. Gunfire rang out at the site, prompting crowds to flee. At least three people were killed and 47 others were injured amid the gunfire and overcrowding conditions, according to reports citing Gaza officials. An additional six people were killed and 15 others were wounded by gunfire on Wednesday while attempting to receive aid at a site north of Rafah, according to officials. Elsewhere in the strip, in the Qizan Rashwan area, airstrikes killed six who were headed further south to receive aid, officials also said on Wednesday. 'Aid in Gaza should not be political, it should not be conditional.' Geneva-based Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor confirmed on Tuesday the death of one individual and said the 47 injured were wounded by bullets fired by both Israeli military and the U.S.-based private security firms. The group said Israeli military soldiers had entered the site to fire on the crowd. The monitor relied on its field researchers who confirmed the wounded had been seen at Al-Najjar Hospital and a Red Cross hospital. The group also received reports from three families who said their loved ones had left to get aid at the distribution hub but never returned. Videos posted to social media showed thousands of people rushing toward the distribution site. The crowds scrambled away for safety along dirt trenches and downed fences as gunfire rang out, footage shows. In one video, a man dragging a box of aid behind him said he had walked more than six miles to the distribution site, where he watched a young man killed in front of him. 'This is what happens when you try to replace the humanitarian system with a political agenda,' said Abdalwahab Hamad, Gaza office manager for the Palestinian humanitarian group Juhoud. 'Those thousands of Palestinians, starving and desperate, stormed the distribution center, not because they're violent, not because that people are hungry, but because aid is being used as a weapon, not a lifeline.' In a statement to The Intercept the Israeli military disputed field reports and downplayed any mention of violence, saying its soldiers had 'fired warning shots in the area outside the compound' before gaining control of the site. The Gaza Humanitarian Aid Foundation did not immediately respond to The Intercept's requests for comment. The foundation told other outlets its armed security did not fire on the crowd but 'fell back' when the crowd ran toward the aid before returning to the site. Oren Marmorstein, spokesperson for Israel's foreign ministry, minimized Tuesday's chaos, claiming the foundation had delivered 8,000 packages of aid to Palestinians, posting images of cardboard boxes filled with flour, pasta grain and oil. 'Humanitarian aid to people in Gaza, not to Hamas,' he captioned the photo posted on social media. The pretext for this new aid distribution regime is the theory, espoused by Israel and the American government, that Hamas has been stealing aid to enrich itself and control the people of Gaza. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeated the unsubstantiated claim on Tuesday during the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance Conference, saying that he needed to move Gaza's population to the south 'for its own protection' from Hamas. Neither Israel or the U.S. has provided evidence to support such claims. Israel, however, has weaponized access to aid throughout the current war on Gaza, and the practice stretches back to at least the 1990s, but intensified in 2007 once Hamas was elected to control the strip. The practice continued throughout Israel's latest invasion into the strip after Hamas' October 7 attacks. Since Israel imposed its latest total blockade on Gaza on March 2, famine risk has spread across the region, with one in five Palestinians in Gaza facing starvation. More than 9,000 children have already been treated for acute malnutrition this year. Over the past week, 29 children and elderly people have suffered starvation-related deaths, Gaza health officials said. During the first week of Israel's latest offensive, Operation Gideon's Chariots, more than 180,000 Palestinians have been displaced, the United Nations said. More than 600 Palestinians have also been killed in ongoing Israeli airstrikes. Just as the new assault launched, Netanyahu announced the government would allow 'minimal' or a 'basic amount' of aid into Gaza to avoid further international backlash. After UN-led groups were able to deliver small amounts of aid to Palestinians, some World Food Program bakeries in southern Gaza reopened last week, only to close again after three days due to a shortage of flour. Ramy Abdu, chairman of Euro-Med, a human rights watchdog that has tracked and opposed Israel's targeting of civilians in Gaza, said the recent restrictions on aid evoked a 2008 Israeli military study which calculated the precise minimum number of calories a Palestinian needed to avoid malnutrition, which critics said was proof the government had been illegally limiting aid into the territory. 'We are talking about starvation or hunger management and or hunger engineering,' Abdu said, 'which in the end serves the Israeli agenda and purposes.' The aid plan sidesteps the United Nations, which has a staff of more than 13,000 workers in Gaza and has been largely responsible for delivering supplies to Palestinians throughout Israel's war in Gaza. Aid groups criticized the plan, saying they did not want to be complicit in the displacement of thousands of Palestinians. The Gaza Humanitarian Aid Foundation, or GHF, had been headed by a former U.S. Marine sniper Jake Wood, who led aid missions to Haiti and other disaster sites around the world with his other organization, Team Rubicon. Wood resigned earlier this week before the new plan went into effect, saying the foundation would not be able to adhere 'to the humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and independence, which I will not abandon.' GHF, which is operating on $100 million in funding, pressed forward on Monday without Wood, loading up its aid hubs for distribution on Tuesday. Armed contractors with private security firms, Safe Reach Solutions, based in Wyoming, and UG Solutions, based in North Carolina, manned the aid sites. Safe Reach Solutions is led by Philip F. Reilly, a former C.I.A. officer who trained right-wing Contras in Nicaragua in the 1980s and deployed early to Afghanistan in 2001, eventually becoming station chief in Kabul before moving to the private sector, according to a New York Times investigation. Hamad called Tuesday's incident 'a punishment dressed as a charity' and called on the Israeli government to allow the UN re-take control of the aid distribution process. 'Aid in Gaza should not be political, it should not be conditional, it only works when it is protected, when it is neutral, and is being led by organizations such as the United Nations,' Hamad said, adding that Palestinians in Gaza have built trust with UN-backed groups and that the UN already has the infrastructure to clearly identify and address needs. 'You cannot replace a humanitarian system with a checkpoint and expect peace,' he said, 'because this is a military controlled charity and people have been there just out of desperation.'
New York Times
14-05-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
Trump Administration Live Updates: Republicans Advance Tax and Medicaid Cuts Despite Bipartisan Criticism
The moves by Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, are part of her effort to shore up the role of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, is moving the assembly of the president's daily intelligence brief from the C.I.A. headquarters to her own complex, according to officials briefed on the move. The brief, a summary of intelligence and analysis about global hot spots and national security threats, is overseen and presented to the president by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. But C.I.A. officers write much of the analysis in the document and produce it, pulling together articles and graphics on the agency's classified computer systems. Ms. Gabbard's decision comes as President Trump has openly mused to aides over time about whether the office she leads — which was created after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to improve interagency coordination — should continue to exist, according to two people with knowledge of his remarks. Ms. Gabbard has discussed Mr. Trump's concerns with him directly and has considered how to overhaul the office, according to one official. Ms. Gabbard's office announced the decision internally on Tuesday. C.I.A. staff were told in a memo from the agency's directorate of analysis that such a move had been considered several times over the years. The memo, which was described to The New York Times, said there was 'much to be worked out about transition timelines and our own processes.' The infrastructure to create the briefing is sizable and owned by the C.I.A. and could be difficult to move or replicate at Ms. Gabbard's office. Moving the production of the daily brief was one of two decisions Ms. Gabbard made on Tuesday. She also ordered the National Intelligence Council to relocate to her headquarters. The moves are part of an effort by Ms. Gabbard to shore up the role of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and ensure that she has oversight and control over two of the most important functions of her post. Critics of her agency argue that its work should be folded back into the C.I.A., whose current director is John Ratcliffe. An official from Ms. Gabbard's office said that physically moving the daily brief was intended to speed response times to certain queries. The official said the move was meant to offer the president more 'timely and actionable' intelligence. A C.I.A. spokeswoman declined to comment. In a statement, the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, did not address Ms. Gabbard's move of the daily brief to her headquarters, instead saying that she is 'clearly doing an excellent job keeping the president constantly informed of national security developments around the world' and adding that Mr. Trump has 'full confidence in her.' Former intelligence officials raised questions about the move. Beth Sanner, who oversaw the president's intelligence brief in the first Trump administration, said it would be 'a huge mistake.' 'Ultimately and ironically, it would probably reduce the O.D.N.I. role because it would separate their oversight from the C.I.A. teams doing most of the work,' Ms. Sanner said. She added, 'It would create inefficiencies and risk miscommunication and mistakes. Ironically, over time, this probably will lessen O.D.N.I.'s oversight role and give C.I.A. more control — out of sight, out of mind.' The C.I.A. memo said that while the directorate of analysis role in supporting the daily brief would evolve, 'we will remain laser-focused on the president's and Director Ratcliffe's priorities and our core mission — generating and delivering insight with impact, free from political or personal bias.' It is not clear how many C.I.A. personnel assigned to the P.D.B., as the brief is called, and to the National Intelligence Council will move. People familiar with the matter, who were not authorized to discuss internal concerns publicly, said a number of employees at the agency were looking for new assignments to avoid moving to Ms. Gabbard's office. The relocation of the National Intelligence Council was reported earlier by Fox News, which also reported that Ms. Gabbard had removed the acting chair of the council, Michael Collins, and his deputy. Mr. Collins is a senior C.I.A. officer who had been detailed to the council, and current and former officials confirmed that he has been sent back to the C.I.A. Mr. Collins is known for his expertise on China. During the Biden administration, he helped with the strategic planning that led to the C.I.A.'s China Mission Center. Mr. Ratcliffe has praised the focus on China and promised to expand those efforts. Mr. Collins and the council had been caught up in a dispute over the truth of Mr. Trump's claim in March that a criminal gang, Tren de Aragua, is controlled by Venezuela's government. That claim is a central premise of Mr. Trump's invocation of a wartime law to deport people accused of being members of the gang to a Salvadoran prison without due process. In February, the intelligence community circulated an assessment that reached the opposite conclusion. The administration asked the National Intelligence Council to take a second look at the available evidence, but in an April memo, the council reaffirmed the findings contradicting Mr. Trump. Laura Loomer, the far-right activist who has successfully lobbied the administration to fire other security officials, then attacked the National Intelligence Council on social media as 'career anti-Trump bureaucrats' who 'need to be replaced if they want to promote open borders,' posting images of Mr. Collins's résumé and an article about the council's assessment. An official briefed on the matter denied that Mr. Collins's removal was connected to the Venezuela assessment or to Ms. Loomer. Before the creation of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in 2004, the C.I.A. was responsible for assembling the President's Daily Brief and overseeing the National Intelligence Council, which brings together disparate intelligence agencies to examine various issues and writes intelligence estimates and other assessments. After the director of national intelligence took responsibility for both, the operations remained at the C.I.A.'s headquarters in Langley, Va., just outside Washington. The view was that analysts and officers working on the products would be closer to the C.I.A. analysts who drafted most of the articles. The headquarters of the director of national intelligence, known as Liberty Crossing, is a few miles away. But an official briefed on the decision to move the P.D.B. and the National Intelligence Council to the headquarters of the director of national intelligence said it would allow Ms. Gabbard and her staff members to reshape the brief in response to questions from Mr. Trump and other policymakers. It was not clear how that would be different from the existing system. Mr. Trump picked Ms. Gabbard for the role relatively early in the presidential transition. He has questioned whether the office needs to continue to operate and has discussed with Ms. Gabbard how to overhaul it, according to one person with knowledge of the discussions. Some observers of the intelligence community have also suggested that it may have outlived its utility, though that discussion is parallel to one about whether it has grown well past the size it was originally intended to be. Controlling the production of the daily brief may give Ms. Gabbard a more direct line to Mr. Trump and his core circle in the West Wing. An array of senior officials are given a version of the brief and many have a personal briefer. Those officials often send questions or requests back to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Congress gave the office oversight of the National Intelligence Council and President's Daily Brief to ensure that it evaluated information from all the spy agencies, not just the C.I.A. Ms. Gabbard's decision would put the people working on the brief closer to those responsible for overseeing the ultimate product. Since taking the role, Ms. Gabbard has frequently sought to communicate her attentiveness to Mr. Trump's stated interests on her social media feed, including by saying that all files related to President John F. Kennedy's assassination would be immediately declassified without redactions, as the president wanted. Tens of thousands of pages were ultimately released, including some with various people's Social Security numbers visible, prompting the White House to move to contain the fallout. The files have yet to show anything that reveals new information about who was behind the assassination. Charlie Savage and Mark Mazzetti contributed reporting.
New York Times
14-05-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
Gabbard Seeks to Consolidate Her Control of President's Daily Brief
Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, is moving the assembly of the president's daily intelligence brief from the C.I.A. headquarters to her own complex, according to officials briefed on the move. The brief, a summary of intelligence and analysis about global hot spots and national security threats, is overseen and presented to the president by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. But C.I.A. officers write much of the analysis in the document and produce it, pulling together articles and graphics on the agency's classified computer systems. Ms. Gabbard's decision comes as President Trump has openly mused to aides over time about whether the office she leads — which was created after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to improve interagency coordination — should continue to exist, according to two people with knowledge of his remarks. Ms. Gabbard has discussed Mr. Trump's concerns with him directly and has considered how to overhaul the office, according to one official. The decision was announced internally on Tuesday. C.I.A. staff were told in a memo from the agency's directorate of analysis that such a move had been considered several times over the years. The memo, which was described to The New York Times, said there was 'much to be worked out about transition timelines and our own processes.' The infrastructure to create the briefing is sizable and owned by the C.I.A. and could be difficult to move or replicate at Ms. Gabbard's office. Moving the production of the daily brief was one of two decisions Ms. Gabbard made on Tuesday. She also ordered the National Intelligence Council to relocate to her headquarters. The moves are part of an effort by Ms. Gabbard to shore up the role of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and ensure that she has oversight and control over two of the most important functions of her post. Critics of her agency argue that its work should be folded back into the C.I.A., whose current director is John Ratcliffe. An official from Ms. Gabbard's office said that physically moving the daily brief was intended to speed response times to certain queries. The official said the move was meant to offer the president more 'timely and actionable' intelligence. A White House spokesman did not respond to an email seeking comment, including about whether Mr. Trump had raised questions about whether the O.D.N.I. needed to continue as an agency. The C.I.A. declined to comment. Former intelligence officials raised questions about the move. Beth Sanner, who oversaw the president's intelligence brief in the first Trump administration, said it would be 'a huge mistake.' 'Ultimately and ironically, it would probably reduce the O.D.N.I. role because it would separate their oversight from the C.I.A. teams doing most of the work,' Ms. Sanner said. She added, 'It would create inefficiencies and risk miscommunication and mistakes. Ironically, over time, this probably will lessen O.D.N.I.'s oversight role and give C.I.A. more control — out of sight, out of mind.' The C.I.A. memo said that while the directorate of analysis role in supporting the daily brief would evolve, 'we will remain laser-focused on the president's and Director Ratcliffe's priorities and our core mission — generating and delivering insight with impact, free from political or personal bias.' It is not clear how many C.I.A. personnel assigned to the P.D.B., as the brief is called, and to the National Intelligence Council will move. People familiar with the matter, who were not authorized to discuss internal concerns publicly, said a number of employees at the agency were looking for new assignments to avoid moving to Ms. Gabbard's office. The relocation of the National Intelligence Council was reported earlier by Fox News, which also reported that Ms. Gabbard had removed the acting chair of the council, Michael Collins, and his deputy. Mr. Collins is a senior C.I.A. officer who had been detailed to the council, and current and former officials confirmed that he has been sent back to the C.I.A. Mr. Collins is known for his expertise on China. During the Biden administration, he helped with the strategic planning that led to the C.I.A.'s China Mission Center. Mr. Ratcliffe has praised the focus on China and promised to expand those efforts. Mr. Collins and the council had been caught up in a dispute over the truth of Mr. Trump's claim in March that a criminal gang, Tren de Aragua, is controlled by Venezuela's government. That claim is a central premise of Mr. Trump's invocation of a wartime law to deport people accused of being members of the gang to a Salvadoran prison without due process. In February, the intelligence community circulated an assessment that reached the opposite conclusion. The administration asked the National Intelligence Council to take a second look at the available evidence, but in an April memo, intelligence agencies reaffirmed the findings contradicting Mr. Trump. Laura Loomer, the far-right activist who has successfully lobbied the administration to fire other security officials, then attacked the National Intelligence Council on social media as 'career anti-Trump bureaucrats' who 'need to be replaced if they want to promote open borders,' posting images of Mr. Collins's résumé and an article about the council's assessment. An official briefed on the matter denied that Mr. Collins's removal was connected to the Venezuela assessment or to Ms. Loomer. Before the creation of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in 2004, the C.I.A. was responsible for assembling the President's Daily Brief and overseeing the National Intelligence Council, which brings together disparate intelligence agencies to examine various issues and writes intelligence estimates and other assessments. After the director of national intelligence took responsibility for both, the operations remained at the C.I.A.'s headquarters in Langley, Va. just outside Washington. The view was that analysts and officers working on the products would be closer to the C.I.A. analysts who drafted most of the articles. The headquarters of the director of national intelligence, known as Liberty Crossing, is a few miles away. But an official briefed on the decision to move the P.D.B. and the National Intelligence Council to the headquarters of the director of national intelligence said it would allow Ms. Gabbard and her staff members to reshape the brief in response to questions from Mr. Trump and other policymakers. Mr. Trump picked Ms. Gabbard for the role relatively early in the presidential transition. He has questioned whether the office needs to continue to operate and has discussed with Ms. Gabbard how to overhaul it, according to one person with knowledge of the discussions. Some observers of the intelligence community have also suggested that it may have outlived its utility, though that discussion is parallel to one about whether it has grown well past the size it was originally intended to be. Controlling the production of the daily brief may give Ms. Gabbard a more direct line to Mr. Trump and his core circle in the West Wing. An array of senior officials are given a version of the brief and many have a personal briefer. Those officials often send questions or requests back to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Congress gave the office oversight of the National Intelligence Council and President's Daily Brief to ensure that it evaluated information from all the spy agencies, not just the C.I.A. Ms. Gabbard's decision would put the people working on the brief closer to those responsible for overseeing the ultimate product. Since taking the role, Ms. Gabbard has frequently sought to communicate her attentiveness to Mr. Trump's stated interests on her social media feed, including by saying that all files related to President John F. Kennedy's assassination would be immediately declassified without redactions, as the president wanted. Tens of thousands of pages were ultimately released, including some with various people's Social Security numbers visible, prompting the White House to move to contain the fallout. The files have yet to show anything that reveals new information about who was behind the assassination.
New York Times
13-05-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
C.I.A. Rejects Diversity Efforts Once Deemed as Essential to Its Mission
After the Cold War ended, and again after the Sept. 11 attacks, a string of C.I.A. directors and congressional overseers pushed the agency to diversify its ranks. The drive had little to do with any sense of racial justice, civil rights or equity. It was, rather, a hard-nosed national security decision. The agency's leaders had come to believe that having analysts from an array of backgrounds would lead to better conclusions. Officers with cultural knowledge would see things others might miss. Case officers who reflected America's diversity would move about foreign cities more easily without being detected. 'If there is one place that there is a clear business case for diversity it is at the C.I.A. and intelligence agencies,' said Senator Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat who is a longtime senior member of the Senate Intelligence Committee. 'You have to have spies around the world in all countries. They can't all be white men, or our intelligence collection will suffer.' But what was once a bipartisan emphasis on the importance of diversity at the agency is facing new pressure. Under the Trump administration, the C.I.A. has moved to dismantle its recruitment programs, especially those that have sought to bring racial and ethnic minorities into the organization, which is mostly white. John Ratcliffe, the C.I.A. director, says those steps are about making a colorblind organization solely focused on hiring and promoting people based on merit. Defenders of diversity recruitment say the battle to integrate the agency is being abandoned when it is only partially complete. In the 1980s, white men filled 90 percent of top leadership positions. Those numbers began to fall a decade later as the agency recruited, and promoted, more women and minorities. The recruitment helped, though it did not result in a spy agency that looked precisely like America. Ten years ago, the last time the agency released detailed numbers, more women had ascended to top jobs. But people with racial or ethnic minority backgrounds made up only a quarter of the agency and representation in leadership roles lagged much further back. Critics of the Trump administration's moves fear that without aggressive recruiting of minorities, the C.I.A. will be less able to carry out its mission of working covertly in any country in the world and stealing secrets for the United States. Mr. Ratcliffe not only shut down the diversity recruiting efforts but also started firing the officers assigned to them. Other high-ranking C.I.A. officials argued that the officers be allowed to transferred to other jobs at the agency, but they were overruled by Mr. Ratcliffe, who cited President Trump's orders to roll back diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. Suddenly, C.I.A. officers who had been assigned to help find the next generation of spy handlers — even those who had worked at recruiting at primarily white universities — were on the chopping block. Liz Lyons, a C.I.A. spokeswoman, defended that decision. 'C.I.A. will be the ultimate meritocracy that employs, develops, empowers and retains officers who are steadfastly focused on our mission to recruit spies and collect foreign intelligence better than any other intelligence organization in the world,' she said. A federal judge has halted the firings, putting in place a temporary injunction and then ordering the agency to hear appeals and consider the officers for other positions. Last week, the government appealed the judge's order. Defenders of the fired officers argue that there was no reason to let them go. They were not experts in human resources or diversity hiring. They were spies chosen for an initiative that was important to previous administrations. 'There are no D.E.I. officers, there are only intelligence officers at C.I.A.,' said Darrell Blocker, a former senior C.I.A. officer who led the agency's training efforts and is Black. The first Trump administration was not as hostile to efforts to diversify the agency. Under Gina Haspel, who, as the first woman to lead the agency, served as director for much of Mr. Trump's first term, the C.I.A. continued recruiting diverse candidates. In 2020, the agency created its first television streaming advertisement, to demonstrate to women and minorities that the agency valued inclusivity, according to one official at the time. The one-minute ad shows a group of officers — people of color, women and white men — being brought into the agency. A veteran employee who lectures to the recruits is Black. A language expert is of South Asian descent. The senior officers who order an overseas operation are women. And a case officer who executes a brush pass with a source in the field is a Black woman. Now, the C.I.A. has created a new recruiting video. It focuses on technology and showcases a whiter group of officers, according to people who have seen it. It is not the first retreat from diversity in the history of American intelligence. The spy organization that preceded the C.I.A. prized diversity in a way that its successor did not in its early years. Maj. Gen. William J. Donovan, the director of the agency's predecessor, the Office of Strategic Services, recruited women and Black Americans to be among his 'glorious amateurs' conducting covert operations during World War II. In a speech after the O.S.S. was shuttered — and before the C.I.A. took its place — General Donovan highlighted the diversity of the group he had assembled. 'We have come to the end of an unusual experiment,' he said. 'This experiment was to determine whether a group of Americans constituting a cross-section of racial origins, of abilities, temperaments and talents, could risk an encounter with the long-established and well-trained enemy organizations.' While the Pentagon has begun purging material that celebrates the diversity of the armed services, the C.I.A. has not started editing its history. The agency's website still has a page highlighting General Donovan's quote and the contributions of Black, Japanese American, Hispanic and female O.S.S. officers. 'Bill Donovan recognized that diversity was our strength,' Mr. Blocker said. But General Donovan's commitment to a diverse force did not carry over when the C.I.A. was established in 1947. 'Despite Donovan's best measures, it was basically: 'OK little ladies, go back to the kitchen,'' Mr. Blocker said. It was only after the fall of the Berlin Wall that change began on a larger scale. John McLaughlin, a former deputy director of the agency, said perceptions about the agency's needs began to shift. 'From that point on, it was commonly understood that diversity was not simply something nice to have, it was a business requirement,' Mr. McLaughlin said. 'You really needed people who could blend in, in different parts of the world, and who didn't look like me. I blend in in Ireland and that's not useful to anyone.' The push for a more diverse work force intensified after the Sept. 11 attacks, as the Middle East and terrorism became top priorities. Members of Congress criticized the agency for not having enough Arabic, Dari and Pashto speakers, and too few officers focused on the Middle East and Central Asia. Mr. McLaughlin said the C.I.A. brought in analysts who had family ties and cultural knowledge of the countries and societies they studied, in addition to deep academic knowledge. Teams of officers that include a range of experiences and backgrounds can be more adept at reading between the lines of pronouncements from authoritarian governments, and more aware of cultural differences in the way others express themselves. 'The point is, if someone has grown up in another culture or at least experienced it, they're going to have a different perspective,' Mr. McLaughlin said. 'And you want a variety of perspectives in the room.' Not everyone buys the argument that Chinese Americans make better case officers in Beijing than anyone else. When he was running the C.I.A.'s Near East Division, Daniel Hoffman, a retired senior clandestine services officer, said he worked hard to eliminate any bias in promotions and potential discrimination, and to ensure that promotions were based on merit. That, he said, made for a stronger and more diverse agency. But recruiting spies and stealing secrets overseas is all about good tradecraft and language ability, Mr. Hoffman said. Mr. Hoffman, who developed fluency in four languages while serving at the C.I.A., said the agency had an impressive record of training non-Chinese American officers to master Mandarin. For Mr. Hoffman, promoting people solely because they were female or from a minority background was counterproductive, but he said ensuring that no one was held back because of their sex, ethnicity or gender reflected the nation's core values and made the C.I.A. stronger. 'We just need the best people at the agency,' Mr. Hoffman said. 'We need to hire and promote the best people without any predisposed bias.' Mr. Blocker said he did not disagree with the idea that any talented officer could be trained in good tradecraft and language skills. But he said the most effective stations he served in had a diverse group of officers. He grew up on Okinawa and served in South Korea during a stint in the Air Force. When he came to the C.I.A. in 1990, he knew he wanted to work on Asian issues. He spent his first months as a Soviet weapons and tactics analyst specializing in North Korea. He intended to make his career as an Asia specialist, until he met William Mosebey Jr. 'This guy knew more about Africa than anyone I'd have ever met,' Mr. Blocker said. Mr. Mosebey could get any African leader on the phone, hired a diverse bench of officers and taught them how to recruit any kind of source. 'As much as I didn't want to be a Black dude going to Africa, after meeting Bill Mosebey, it changed my life,' Mr. Blocker said. Mr. Mosebey, who was white, believed in the importance of having people of many perspectives in his stations, and persuaded Mr. Blocker to join his team. 'Black officers in the Africa division could blend in more easily than white officers of the past, but we always had, and needed, a good blend of people: Black, white, male, female,' Mr. Blocker said. 'I have served in a number of stations. I have never served where they didn't have another Black officer.' Former officials said that, in essence, was why the C.I.A. tried to pursue diversity: to lean into the competitive advantage that American society offers. 'This is not kumbaya,' Mr. McLaughlin said. 'The whole idea of wokeism is silly in this context. Diversity is not a nice to have, it is a business requirement.'
New York Times
06-05-2025
- Health
- New York Times
Trump Executive Order Restricts ‘Gain of Function' Research on Pathogens
President Trump signed an executive order on Monday evening to further restrict experiments on pathogens and toxins that could make them more harmful. For over a decade, scientists have debated the risks and benefits of so-called 'gain of function' research. They've long tinkered with viruses and bacteria to endow them with new functions like producing insulin for people with diabetes. Some researchers have modified bird flu viruses in order to figure out which mutations might be crucial for producing pandemic strains that could spread among people. Although such experiments may have benefits, critics have maintained that the risk of an accidentally created pandemic was not worth taking. In 2014, all federal funding was halted on experiments that could make certain viruses more dangerous. The first Trump administration lifted that ban in 2017 and instituted a new procedure to review possibly dangerous research. The debate over gain of function research sharpened during the pandemic. Mr. Trump and other elected officials have linked such research to the origin of Covid, claiming that Chinese researchers produced the coronavirus in a lab in Wuhan. At Monday's signing ceremony, the president raised that connection again. 'I think I said that from Day 1, that it leaked out,' he said. 'A scientist walked outside to have lunch with a girlfriend or was together with a lot of people.' A number of published studies point instead to a market in Wuhan as the origin of the pandemic, contending that evidence strongly suggests that wild mammals picked up a bat coronavirus and that when the animals were sold at the market, they passed the virus to people. American intelligence agencies are divided in their assessments. The Department of Energy and the F.B.I. have endorsed the idea that the pandemic originated in the Wuhan lab. This year, the C.I.A. said that it also favored the lab leak theory but, like the Department of Energy, had 'low confidence' in that assessment. However, the National Intelligence Council and four other intelligence bodies favored the idea that the pandemic had natural origins, according to an intelligence assessment conducted in 2021. The scrutiny led an expert panel to develop a sweeping set of changes to how the federal government oversees potentially dangerous experiments. The Biden administration adopted the changes officially last year. Critics at the time complained that the policy was not aggressive enough. For example, it lacked an independent regulatory agency to review research proposals. Mr. Trump's new executive order dismissed the Biden policy as having 'insufficient levels of oversight.' It directs the Office of Science and Technology Policy to revise or replace the policy with new regulations. The new policy would end support for gain of function research that was deemed dangerous and was conducted in countries of concern, including China. It would also impose new constraints on research within the United States. The executive order also calls for the government to develop a strategy to oversee potentially dangerous research carried out without federal funds within the United States.
