The Central Intelligence Agency has withdrawn more than a dozen intelligence reports, including some that cover LGBT+ activism, white nationalism and contraception.
Director John Ratcliffe ordered the “official retraction or substantive revision” of 19 CIA intelligence reports that the agency claims “did not meet” intelligence community standards and “failed to be independent of political consideration,” the agency said Friday.
These documents were identified by the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board, which recently reviewed hundreds of analytic reports published over the last decade, the agency noted.
The CIA completely retracted 17 of those reports — which predate President Donald Trump’s second term — and pulled two for revisions, according to The Washington Post. The agency publicly shared redacted versions of three affected reports.
One of the reports — titled “Women Advancing White Racially and Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremist Radicalization and Recruitment” — was released in October 2021 under former President Joe Biden.
Racially motivated violent extremists were considered a significant security threat under Joe Biden’s administration and Trump’s first administration. Federal law enforcement under his second administration has focused on left-wing movements including antifa, which he labeled a domestic terrorist organization last year.
The White House also claimed in September that “radical left violence” has “permeated the nation in recent years.”
Another report — “Middle East-North Africa: LGBT Activists Under Pressure” — was issued under former President Barack Obama in January 2015.
A third report, “Worldwide: Pandemic-Related Contraceptive Shortfalls Threaten Economic Development,” was published in July 2020, during Trump’s first term.
The CIA said these documents “exhibit substantial deviations from the President’s expectations that CIA’s workforce remains independent from a particular audience, agenda, or policy viewpoint.”
A senior CIA official who spoke to journalists on the condition of anonymity said the reports dealt with inappropriate topics for the agency to cover, and in some instances relied on biased sources, according to The Washington Post.
The official added that training for analysts has been “retooled.”
“The intelligence products we released to the American people today — produced before my tenure as [CIA director] — fall short of the high standards of impartiality that CIA must uphold and do not reflect the expertise for which our analysts are renowned,” Ratcliffe said in a statement.
“There is absolutely no room for bias in our work and when we identify instances where analytic rigor has been compromised, we have a responsibility to correct the record,” he added.
Democratic Senator Mark Warner, vice-chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, criticized the move.
“The President’s Intelligence Advisory Board plays an important advisory role, but it is not a substitute for the independent analytic judgment of the CIA and the broader Intelligence Community,” he said.
“When a politically appointed body appears to be dictating what analysis is acceptable, it risks eroding confidence in the objectivity of our intelligence,” he added.
Republican Senator Tom Cotton, who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, praised Ratcliffe’s announcement and said he’s “been sending these kind of reports back to the CIA for years and observing that they contain no intelligence.”
“Our intelligence agencies have too often missed critical national-security developments to waste time on, for instance, how ‘pandemic-related contraceptive shortfalls threaten economic development.’ Honestly,” Cotton wrote on X.
