Latest news with #JoeKent
CBS News
22-05-2025
- Politics
- CBS News
Counterterrorism nominee Joe Kent under scrutiny as emails show he pushed for edits to intelligence assessment
President Trump's nominee to head the National Counterterrorism Center is under fresh scrutiny as emails show he pressed senior intelligence analysts to amend an assessment of links between the Venezuelan government and the criminal gang, Tren de Aragua, known as TDA, to align the assessment more closely with Trump administration policies and to include references critical of Biden-era immigration programs. Emails obtained by CBS News show Joe Kent, who currently serves as chief of staff to Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, asked for a "re writing" of a memorandum on the topic authored by the National Intelligence Council, a team of experts within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence that produces high-level analytic assessments for use by policymakers. File: Joe Kent, a former congressional candidate from Washington state, listens to testimony by Tulsi Gabbard, President Donald Trump's nominee to be Director of National Intelligence, during her Senate Select Intelligence Committee confirmation hearing in Dirksen building on Thursday, January 30, 2025. Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images After CBS contacted the Office of the Director of National Intelligence for comment, a spokesperson offered to share a selection of Kent's declassified, partially redacted email exchanges if they were published in their entirety. The ODNI file was labeled, "Approved for public release by ODNI on 16 May 2025." It is not clear how exhaustive or reflective of the entirety of deliberations about the assessment the email selection released by ODNI is. Read the email exchanges released by the ODNI here: ODNI file 1 and ODNI file 2. On Thursday Kent also personally posted a statement on X defending his actions, writing, "I'm honored to do my part." The final memorandum, dated April 7, asserts that the Maduro regime in Venezuela "probably does not have a policy of cooperating with TDA and is not directing TDA movement to and operations in the United States." The assessment was later declassified and publicly released on May 5, following a Freedom of Information Act request by the Freedom of the Press Foundation. The question of whether Venezuela's government controls TDA has been at the center of judicial disputes surrounding the Trump administration's ability to deport suspected gang members under the seldom used Alien Enemies Act of 1798. President Trump invoked the act in a March proclamation, effectively designating suspected gang members as wartime enemies of the U.S. government. Soon after the proclamation was signed, the administration used the act to remove 137 Venezuelans to a prison in El Salvador. "I have been meaning to come chat with you about the attached TDA document, before we publish this in the PDB or as a wire product we need to do some re writing a little more analysis so this document is not used against the DNI or POTUS," Kent wrote on April 3, using abbreviations to refer to the director of national intelligence, President's Daily Brief and President Trump. "Wire product" likely refers to a secure communications and information-exchange platform used across the U.S. intelligence community. In the April 3 email, Kent criticized the draft memorandum from the IC — the intelligence community — for leading with "weak IC speak that basically says we can't prove via smoking gun intel that the Ven gov is directing TDA, making it sound like the Ven gov has nothing to do with TDA," according to its text. He later added, "Another major issue I have with the analysis in this piece is its lack of context about the status of our border and immigration policy over the last 4 years." "I understand some may view this as political but it is not, it's a simple verifiable reality that we cannot overlook," he wrote. "Going forward, we need to implement the changes above and incorporate the FBI's assessment of TDA's relationship with the Ven gov upfront, then go into the rest of the document," Kent wrote. The FBI's view, which appears on page 2 of the final memorandum, notes the bureau's analysts "agree" with the intelligence community's broader assessment that the Maduro government is not directing TDA movement but assess "some Venezuelan government officials facilitate TDA members' migration from Venezuela" with the goal of destabilizing the U.S. and other governments. The intelligence community assessment notes "most of the IC judges that intelligence indicating that regime leaders are directing or enabling TDA migration to the United States is not credible." Another more heavily redacted section describes intelligence community reporting that suggests a link between TDA and some Venezuelan officials as "limited." Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who previously served as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" Sunday he believed the intelligence community was "wrong" in its assessment that the Venezuelan government does not control TDA and that he agreed "100% with the FBI's finding." While it is not uncommon for analysts' views to be challenged and tested by officials within the chain of command, edits are usually sought to make assessments more reflective of existing data and evidence, and to do so irrespective of government policy, current and former intelligence officials said. Policymakers are also not bound by what intelligence assessments may find, the officials said, but collection and analysis happen in order to provide officials with an optimal operating picture. It is not entirely clear from the email exchanges obtained by CBS News and final version of the memorandum how many changes to the text were made at Kent's request. In a subsequent set of email exchanges on April 4, Kent offered suggestions to replace language in the memorandum about TDA migration trends, arguing that policies under the Biden administration were a key influencing factor. "Lets go with something like this," Kent wrote, adding as a proposed edit, "The IC also recognizes that between January 2021 and January 2025 the United States immigration policies and border security posture made migration from Venezuela to the United States so easy that the Government of Venezuela did not need to push migrants to the United States, United States immigrations [sic] policy served as its own pulling factor." Kent later approved another suggested revision that read, "Increased flow of irregular migration from Venezuelan nationals-including some TDA members—could be attributed to a wide perception of lax U.S. immigration policies and a lack of screening at the border between 2021 and 2025." "This looks great," Kent responded. The language that appears in the final assessment, however, is different, suggesting there was additional deliberation before it was finalized: "The IC also recognizes the regime appreciates migration as a safety valve, allowing discontented Venezuelans to leave. US border encounters of Venezuelan national [sic] have decreased since January because of migrant perceptions of new US enforcement policies." The New York Times and Reuters first reported the existence and some of the content of Kent's emails. Gabbard has since fired the NIC acting chair, Michael Collins, and his deputy, Maria Langan-Riekof, both of whom were among email recipients discussing the memorandum. "These Biden holdovers were dismissed because they politicized intelligence," Kent's deputy, Alexa Henning, later said on X. A former Green Beret, CIA officer, and Republican congressional hopeful, Kent has been a close ally of Gabbard, who personally endorsed his previous political runs. President Trump nominated Kent to head the National Counterterrorism Center, a prominent office within ODNI and a role that requires Senate confirmation, in February. On Wednesday, the Democratic leaders of the House and Senate intelligence committees raised alarm about Kent's apparent attempt to align an intelligence assessment with existing government policy and said consideration of his nomination for NCTC director should pause. "This was a blatant attempt to politicize national security to appease a president who has repeatedly shown contempt for facts and for the intelligence professionals sworn to defend this country," committee Vice Chairman Mark Warner of Virginia said in a statement on Wednesday, adding the Senate should "immediately halt consideration" of Mr. Kent's nomination to lead NCTC. House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Jim Himes of Connecticut said, "Seeking to strongarm analysts to suit the agenda of the President, and punishing them when they refuse to bend, is a road to national security disaster—and yet that is precisely the road that this Administration has chosen." "The Senate must not confirm Mr. Kent as Director of the National Counterterrorism Center without a full understanding of his actions," Himes said.
Int'l Business Times
21-05-2025
- Politics
- Int'l Business Times
Trump Official Instructed Intelligence Staff to 'Rethink' Their Reports After Conflicting With Trump's Statements: Report
A top Trump administration official pressured intelligence analysts to revise a key report that contradicted the president's public claims about Venezuelan gang activity, raising new concerns about the politicization of U.S. intelligence , according to internal emails. In February, the National Intelligence Council completed an internal assessment that found no credible evidence linking Venezuela's government to the criminal gang Tren de Aragua, despite Trump publicly declaring such a connection to justify mass deportations under the Alien Enemies Act. Trump's proclamation asserted that Venezuela was using the gang to conduct "irregular warfare" against the U.S., a claim not supported by intelligence findings, the New York Times reported. Emails reveal that Joe Kent, chief of staff to Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, urged analysts to revise the original report to avoid political fallout. On March 24, just days after a New York Times article exposed the contradiction between Trump's statement and the intelligence report, Kent emailed analysts to "rethink" their assessment and produce a version more aligned with "basic common sense" and the administration's policy narrative. He also suggested the Biden administration had effectively aided the gang's migration efforts through lax border enforcement. Despite revisions, the second version of the intelligence memo, completed April 7 and declassified in May, still refuted Trump's core assertion. While it acknowledged the presence of some gang members who may have received unofficial support, the report concluded that most intelligence linking Venezuela to gang-directed migration was "not credible." Gabbard later dismissed key intelligence officials involved, calling them "deep-state bureaucrats." Since then, the revelations have intensified scrutiny of political interference in intelligence work under the Trump administration. Originally published on Latin Times
CBC
21-05-2025
- Politics
- CBC
U.S. adviser reportedly pushed officials to rewrite intelligence so it would not be used against Trump
Social Sharing A top adviser to Tulsi Gabbard, the U.S. director of national intelligence, acknowledged in a March 24 email that the Venezuelan government may not have specifically directed the activities of a gang that the Trump administration has used to justify fast-tracking deportations of immigrants, but argued that a link between Caracas and the gang was "common sense." U.S. President Donald Trump has used a claim that Tren de Aragua is co-ordinating its U.S. activities with the Venezuelan government of President Nicolas Maduro to invoke the Alien Enemies Act to justify deportations of alleged gang members to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador. Some legal scholars have argued invoking the act requires a connection to a foreign government. WATCH | How Trump is interpreting a 1798 law to avoid the standard immigration court system: How can Trump use a wartime law to deport people when there's no war? | About That 2 months ago Duration 11:56 The Trump administration deported more than 200 immigrants by invoking the Alien Enemies Act — a wartime measure — alleging they were members of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang. Andrew Chang explains how Trump is interpreting the language of the 1798 law in order to avoid the standard immigration court system, and why experts say it's a slippery slope. In the email, according to a person familiar with the matter and confirmed by a second source, Gabbard's acting chief of staff Joe Kent asked for a "rethink" of an intelligence assessment contradicting the administration's argument that Venezuela is responsible for the U.S. activities of Tren de Aragua gang members. "I would like to understand how any IC [intelligence community] element arrived at the conclusion that the Venezuelan government doesn't support and did not orchestrate TDA operating in the U.S.," Kent said in the email, referring to Tren de Aragua. "Flooding our nation with migrants and especially migrants who are part of a violent criminal gang is the action of a hostile nation even if the government of Venezuela isn't specifically tasking or enabling TDA operations." He added that analysts needed to produce a new assessment on the gang that "reflects basic common sense." The New York Times was the first to report on Kent's communications with the National Intelligence Council, the intelligence community's highest analytical body. Reuters is the first to publish the contents of that email in detail. The exchange underscores the extent to which Kent, a former CIA officer, pushed Michael Collins, the head of the National Intelligence Council, and other DNI officials to redo their assessment, taking into account points that had previously been articulated publicly by Trump. A spokesperson for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence called the timeline presented in this story "false and fabricated," and called Kent "an American patriot who continues to honourably serve our country." "President Trump rightfully designated Tren de Aragua as a foreign terrorist organization based on intelligence assessments and, frankly, common sense," said White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt. In his email, Kent argued that it would be logical for Venezuela, a U.S. adversary, to send gang members across the border, saying that any country seeking to harm the United States "would naturally take their bad actors and send them to our nation." "When Biden announced that the border was open I think we let a quest for ... direct links between the Venezuelan government and TDA obstruct basic common sense," he wrote, adding that the National Intelligence Council needed to start "looking at getting a new assessment written on TDA and their relationship with the government of Venezuela that reflects basic common sense." While Trump's predecessor Joe Biden faced high levels of illegal immigration during his presidency, his administration also took steps to discourage illegal border crossings and encourage migrants to enter the U.S. legally. In subsequent emails with ODNI officials, Kent also said that Gabbard needs to be "protected" in the rewriting process, according to two people familiar with the matter. The New York Times late Tuesday reported that in one email, Kent ordered analysts to "do some rewriting" of the assessment and more analytical work so that "this document is not used against" Gabbard or Trump. Kent's emails were in response to a February National Intelligence Council assessment on the subject — one of at least two in recent months — that took into consideration analysis by agencies like the Central Intelligence Agency, the FBI and the National Security Agency. The first was published internally Feb. 26 and made public via reporting by the New York Times in March. It said that the intelligence community did not find that the gang was controlled by the Venezuelan government. The second, published April 7 and made public earlier this month via the Freedom of Information Act, added more context and nuance but confirmed the intelligence community's original assessment, two people familiar with the situation said. Unclear why Trump statements contradicted his own agencies' findings Collins, the NIC chief, was removed from his post as acting chair of the National Intelligence Council last week along with his vice-chair, Maria Langan-Riekhof. It's not clear who ordered the original intelligence assessment or why Trump later made statements that contradicted his own intelligence agencies' findings. It's common for the White House — under any administration — to ask its intelligence community to draw up reports on various national security matters. Traditionally, intelligence agencies are tasked with producing assessments without political interference or bias so the president and his top national security officials can make more informed decisions. The removals have sparked consternation in the upper echelons of the intelligence community, according to three people familiar with the matter. Both Collins and Langan-Riekhof have been accused publicly by ODNI for politicizing intelligence. But two people familiar with the situation said Kent pressured Collins to redo the initial intelligence assessment to more closely align with the administration's public rhetoric. Collins, despite that request, held firm and instead supported the spy agencies' original findings. "It's clear that Collins got axed for just doing his job," one former senior U.S. intelligence official said. "Collins is respected throughout the entire community and has a long history of working on tough problems with the highest of integrity." The people were granted anonymity so they could speak more freely about the internal deliberations surrounding the Tren de Aragua assessment.
New York Times
21-05-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
Official Pushed to Rewrite Intelligence So It Could Not Be ‘Used Against' Trump
New emails document how a top aide to Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, ordered analysts to edit an assessment with the hope of insulating President Trump and Ms. Gabbard from being attacked for the administration's claim that Venezuela's government controls a criminal gang. 'We need to do some rewriting' and more analytic work 'so this document is not used against the DNI or POTUS,' Joe Kent, the chief of staff to Ms. Gabbard, wrote in an email to a group of intelligence officials on April 3, using shorthand for Ms. Gabbard's position and for the president of the United States. The New York Times reported last week that Mr. Kent had pushed analysts to redo their assessment, dated Feb. 26, of the relationship between Venezuela's government and the gang, Tren de Aragua, after it came to light that the assessment contradicted a subsequent claim by Mr. Trump. The disclosure of the precise language of Mr. Kent's emails has added to the emerging picture of a politicized intervention. The final memo, which is dated April 7 and has since become public, still contradicts a key claim that Mr. Trump made to justify sending people accused of being members of the gang to a notorious Salvadoran prison without due process. Emails on the topic from Mr. Kent, who is also Mr. Trump's pending nominee to lead the National Counterterrorism Center, have circulated within the intelligence community and were described by people briefed on them. Mr. Kent's interventions have raised internal alarms about politicizing intelligence analysis. Defenders of Mr. Kent have disputed that his attempted intervention was part of a pressure campaign, arguing he was trying to show more of what the intelligence community knew about the gang. But the disclosure of his emails supports the accounts of critics who said he was applying political pressure to generate a torqued narrative that would support, rather than undermine, the administration's policy agenda. The issue centers on Mr. Trump's invocation in March of a rarely used wartime law, the Alien Enemies Act, to summarily deport people accused of being members of the gang. After several planeloads of such transfers, courts have blocked any further use of the law for now. The act, enacted in 1798, allows the government to remove citizens of a country that is in a declared war with the United States or otherwise invading U.S. territory. On its face, it appears to require a linkage to the actions of a foreign state, and Mr. Trump summoned such a link into existence in a proclamation on March 15. 'TDA is undertaking hostile actions and conducting irregular warfare against the territory of the United States both directly and at the direction, clandestine or otherwise, of the Maduro regime in Venezuela,' Mr. Trump declared, referring to the gang. 'I make these findings using the full extent of my authority to conduct the Nation's foreign affairs under the Constitution.' But the U.S. intelligence community believes that the opposite is true: The gang is not controlled by the administration of Venezuela's president, Nicolás Maduro, nor committing crimes in the United States at its direction, according to the two assessments by the National Intelligence Council. The council is an elite internal think-tank that reports to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. It undertakes analytical projects at the request of policymakers, relying on information collected by agencies like the C.I.A., the F.B.I. and the National Security Agency. The White House requested the original assessment in February as it was preparing Mr. Trump's Alien Enemies Act proclamation. Even after the council produced its first assessment, Mr. Trump proceeded to sign the proclamation that put forward the opposite claim in order to activate wartime deportation powers. The disconnect first came to light in a March 20 Times article that reported on the existence of the Feb. 26 memo and detailed why the intelligence community had reached its conclusion. The Times also reported that the F.B.I. partly dissented and thought there were some links between the gang and Venezuela's government based on information that the rest of the country's spy agencies thought was not credible. The Trump administration reacted with alarm to the disclosure of the intelligence assessment. On March 21, a Friday, Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general — who is also a former criminal defense lawyer for Mr. Trump — issued a statement saying the Justice Department was opening a criminal leak investigation while also portraying the Times article as inaccurate. The following Monday, March 24, Mr. Kent sent an email to several people, including Michael Collins, then the acting head of the National Intelligence Council. Attaching a copy of the Times article to his message and telling the team to look at it, Mr. Kent said it was necessary to 'rethink' the assessment, according to multiple people who described it. 'Flooding our nation with 'migrants' and especially 'migrants' who are part of a violent criminal gang is the action of a hostile nation, even if the gov of Venezuela isn't specifically tasking or enabling TDA's operations,' Mr. Kent wrote, according to the people briefed on the email. Mr. Kent's comment that the Maduro administration wasn't 'tasking or enabling' the gang's operations appears to be a concession that Mr. Trump's claim might be doubtful. But Mr. Kent doubles down on the idea that Venezuela had taken advantage of Biden-era immigration policies to allow migrants, including gang members, into the United States. Mr. Kent wrote that the council needed to produce a new assessment on the topic that would reflect 'basic common sense' by the end of the week, saying he wanted to understand how any agency had concluded that Venezuela's government was not orchestrating Tren de Aragua's actions in the United States. The precise language of Mr. Kent's March 24 email was reported earlier by Reuters. Mr. Collins agreed to start work on a new council assessment, according to the people familiar with the exchange. Mr. Collins and Mr. Kent exchanged several emails on April 3 and April 4. But in one long email on April 3, Mr. Kent asked for changes, arguing that it wrongly, in his view, made it sound as if the Venezuelan government had no connections to the gang. 'Let's just come out and say TDA leaders are given sanctuary in Venezuela as their gang members commit horrendous crimes in America, then we can provide the context about our exact knowledge of relationship between TDA and the Venezuelan government,' Mr. Kent wrote. He also argued the assessment did not do enough to describe the situation on the border and Biden administration policies that he believed had made it too easy for migrants to enter the United States. He characterized former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. as having announced that the border was open and having turned Customs and Border Protection into a 'travel service for illegals.' 'TDA didn't need logistical support from the Venezuelan government because Biden provided it for them,' Mr. Kent wrote. 'I understand some may view this as political, but it's not.' Mr. Kent ended the email by writing he wanted a version by the end of the week that could be declassified and provided to the White House team led by Stephen Miller, the architect of the Trump administration's anti-immigration policy. On April 3 and 4, in a series of emails, the two men collaborated on various proposed edits to the document, Mr. Kent pushing for more about the impact of border policy on migration, and Mr. Collins agreeing to some edits. Officials from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment on Tuesday. The intelligence community broadly thinks, according to the publicly released assessment, that Venezuela's government 'probably does not have a policy of cooperating with TDA and is not directing TDA movement to and operations in the United States.' F.B.I. analysts agree with that assessment, the memo said, but also think that 'some Venezuelan government officials facilitate TDA members' migration' and use them as proxies to destabilize the United States and undermine public safety. The basis for the F.B.I.'s partial dissent, however, comes from statements made in custody by migrants who were arrested in the United States — and 'most' of the intelligence community 'judges that intelligence indicating that regime leaders are directing or enabling TDA migration to the United States is not credible,' the memo said. Among other reasons, it cited a lack of corroboration from any communications and funding flows that spy agencies would expect to collect if such coordination were happening, it said. The memo also contradicted Mr. Kent's premise, in the March 24 email, that Venezuela's government was deliberately sending migrants to the United States, bad actors or otherwise. Rather, it said, Venezuelans were migrating 'voluntarily, often at great personal risk, to flee political instability and near-collapse of Venezuela's economy.' Mr. Kent is said to have reacted happily to the final version of the second memo and ordered it declassified so that it could be discussed publicly, setting in motion a chain of events that led to its public release on May 5 in response to a Freedom of Information Act request. Notwithstanding Mr. Kent's happiness with Mr. Collins's final work, the second memo still contradicts what Mr. Trump said and its official disclosure has been a legal and political problem for the Trump administration. Ms. Gabbard has since fired Mr. Collins and his deputy at the National Intelligence Council, bashing them as biased, deep-state bureaucrats.
Reuters
20-05-2025
- Politics
- Reuters
Gabbard adviser's email on Tren de Aragua assessment raises concern inside intel agencies
NEW YORK, May 20 (Reuters) - A top adviser to Tulsi Gabbard, the U.S. director of national intelligence, acknowledged in a March 24 email that the Venezuelan government may not have specifically directed the activities of a gang that the Trump administration has used to justify fast-tracking deportation of immigrants, but argued that a link between Venezuela and the gang was "common sense." U.S. President Donald Trump has used a claim that Tren de Aragua is coordinating its U.S. activities with the Venezuelan government of President Nicolas Maduro to invoke the Alien Enemies Act to justify deportations of alleged gang members to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador. Some legal scholars have argued invoking the act requires a connection to a foreign government. In the email, read to Reuters by a person familiar with the matter and confirmed by a second source, Gabbard's acting chief of staff Joe Kent asked for a "rethink" of an intelligence assessment contradicting the administration's argument that Venezuela is responsible for the U.S. activities of Tren de Aragua gang members. 'I would like to understand how any IC (intelligence community) element arrived at the conclusion that the Venezuelan government doesn't support and did not orchestrate TDA operating in the U.S.,' Kent said in the email, referring to Tren de Aragua. 'Flooding our nation with migrants and especially migrants who are part of a violent criminal gang is the action of a hostile nation even if the government of Venezuela isn't specifically tasking or enabling TDA operations.' He added that analysts needed to produce a new assessment on the gang that "reflects basic common sense." The New York Times was the first to report on Kent's communications with the National Intelligence Council, the intelligence community's highest analytical body. Reuters is the first to publish the contents of that email in detail. The exchange underscores the extent to which Kent, a former CIA officer, pushed Michael Collins, the head of the National Intelligence Council, and other DNI officials to redo their assessment, taking into account points that had previously been articulated publicly by Trump. A spokesperson for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence called the timeline presented in this story "false and fabricated," and called Kent "an American patriot who continues to honorably serve our country." "It is the deep state's latest effort to attack this Administration from within with an orchestrated op detached from reality," the spokesperson said. "President Trump rightfully designated Tren de Aragua as a foreign terrorist organization based on intelligence assessments and, frankly, common sense," said White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt. In his email, Kent argued that it would be logical for Venezuela, a U.S. adversary, to send gang members across the border, saying that any country seeking to harm the United States "would naturally take their bad actors and send them to our nation.' 'When Biden announced that the border was open I think we let a quest for ... direct links between the Venezuelan government and TDA obstruct basic common sense,' he wrote, adding that the National Intelligence Council needed to start 'looking at getting a new assessment written on TDA and their relationship with the government of Venezuela that reflects basic common sense.' While Trump's predecessor Joe Biden faced high levels of illegal immigration during his presidency, his administration also took steps to discourage illegal border crossings and encourage migrants to enter the U.S. legally. In subsequent emails with ODNI officials, Kent also said that Gabbard needs to be "protected" in the rewriting process, according to two people familiar with the matter. Kent's emails were in response to a February National Intelligence Council assessment on the subject - one of at least two in recent months - that took into consideration analysis by agencies like the Central Intelligence Agency, the FBI and the National Security Agency. The first was published internally Feb. 26 and made public via reporting by the New York Times in March. It said that the intelligence community did not find that the gang was controlled by the Venezuelan government. The second, published April 7 and made public earlier this month via the Freedom of Information Act, added more context and nuance but confirmed the intelligence community's original assessment, two people familiar with the situation said. Collins, the NIC chief, was removed from his post as acting chairman of the National Intelligence Council last week along with his vice chair, Maria Langan-Riekhof. The removals have sparked consternation in the upper echelons of the intelligence community, according to three people familiar with the matter. Both Collins and Langan-Riekhof have been accused publicly by ODNI for politicizing intelligence. But two people familiar with the situation said Kent pressured Collins to redo the initial intelligence assessment to more closely align with the administration's public rhetoric. Collins, despite that request, held firm and instead supported the spy agencies' original findings. "It's clear that Collins got axed for just doing his job," one former senior U.S. intelligence official said. "Collins is respected throughout the entire community and has a long history of working on tough problems with the highest of integrity." The people were granted anonymity so they could speak more freely about the internal deliberations surrounding the Tren de Aragua assessment.
