WSJ (“The CIA Is About to Get a Trump Makeover“):
The Central Intelligence Agency offered buyouts to its entire workforce Tuesday, in what officials said is a bid to bring the agency in line with President Trump’s priorities, including targeting drug cartels.
The CIA appeared to be the first intelligence agency to tell its employees that they can quit their jobs and receive about eight months of pay and benefits as part of Trump’s push to downsize the federal government. The offer last month made to most civilian federal agencies exempted some categories of federal workers, including those with national security roles.
The agency is also freezing the hiring of job seekers already given a conditional offer, an aide to CIA Director John Ratcliffe said. Some are likely to be rescinded if the applicants don’t have the right background for the agency’s new goals, which also include Trump’s trade war and undermining China, the aide said.
[…]
Trump administration officials have said the offers are also meant to signal to those who oppose Trump’s agenda to find work elsewhere. Ratcliffe told the White House to extend the same buyout package to the CIA, the aide said, believing it would pave the way for a more aggressive spy agency.
A CIA spokeswoman said the move was part of an effort to “infuse the agency with renewed energy.”
In his confirmation hearing, Ratcliffe promised to launch more hard-edge spying operations and covert action, naming drug cartels and China as key adversaries. “To the brave CIA officers listening around the world, if all of that sounds like what you signed up for, then buckle up and get ready to make a difference,” he told lawmakers last month. “If it doesn’t then it’s time to find a new line of work.”
Trump’s CIA will have a greater focus on the Western Hemisphere, targeting countries not traditionally considered adversaries of the U.S., the aide said. For example, the CIA will use espionage to give Trump extra leverage in his trade negotiations, potentially spying on Mexico’s government amid the ongoing trade spat, the aide said. The CIA will also take on a significant role fighting Mexican drug cartels, the aide said, which Trump designated as terror groups on his first day in office.
For the decades after its creation, the CIA was focused on America’s rivalry with the Soviet Union. After 9/11, the agency transformed much of its workforce into a shadowy paramilitary force that could kill terrorists with drones. In recent years, the CIA has shifted back to focus on countries including China, which has been widely viewed by national security officials as the U.S.’s greatest long-term threat.
The Trump administration and the intelligence community clashed at times in his first term, but some CIA officers later said they missed the greater latitude to conduct covert operations against America’s adversaries under Trump.
The Trump-Musk plan to oust federal employees perceived as disloyal to President Trump initially spared those in law enforcement and national security positions. That the purge soon extended to the FBI and CIA is telling. Historically, the intelligence and law enforcement communities have been seen as among the few parts of the federal civilian workforce that leans Republican. That Trump and his team see them as a threat is a huge red flag.
The WSJ report somewhat misrepresents the nature of the CIA during the war on terrorism. It’s certainly true that there was a renewed emphasis on “direct action” missions and drone warfare, both of which made me a bit queasy. Those are military, not intelligence, missions and should be handled by military professionals and done in accordance with the laws of war. Regardless, this was a small part of what officers in the Directorate of Operations (briefly renamed the Clandestine Service) did. And the vast majority of CIA officers are analysts, not action officers.
Shifting the focus of our premier intelligence agency from gathering and analyzing information regarding our key adversaries into one aimed at conducting trade wars with regional partners and doing counter-drug operations makes no sense to me. We already have government agencies that do commerce and drug enforcement.
Several successive administrations—including the Trump 45 administration—saw China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea as our primary nation-state adversaries, with violent extremist organizations and others as tertiary, persistent threats. Certainly, key figures in the administration—including the Secretary of State and Undersecretary of Defense for Policy—continue to hold that view. It strikes me as a mistake to refocus the CIA to tertiary threats.
