US spy world worries it may be next for Trump’s DOGE-led purges

National-security agencies are supposed to be exempt form Musk’s cost-cutting efforts

The Trump administration’s campaign to root out perceived disloyalty or waste at the Justice Department, the US Agency for International Development and other federal agencies has lawmakers and former senior spy officials worried that the intelligence community is up next for a purge.

The nation’s intelligence giants including the Central Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency have so far escaped scrutiny from Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” and other critics chasing what they see as so-called Deep State resistance and bureaucratic bloat.

But the former intelligence officials suggested it might only be a matter of time, especially given that President Donald Trump has long railed against what he claims to be the politically motivated misuse of spy powers.

“There’s certainly no reason to expect that this White House is going to be any more tamed dealing with the intelligence agencies” than other departments already targeted, said Paul Pillar, a non-resident senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Center for Security Studies, and a former senior CIA officer.

There is “no question,” Pillar added, that the big chip on Trump’s shoulder is the intelligence community’s assessment that Russia interfered in the 2016 election in Trump’s favor, a finding the president rejects.

A White House official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that the activities of DOGE could appear disruptive to government workers but were fulfilling Trump’s accountability and efficiency goals.

So far, Musk’s DOGE team has focused on other parts of the government, such as the Treasury Department and USAID. At the same time, the Justice Department has moved to fire a swath of senior leaders at the Federal Bureau of Investigation. On Tuesday, the FBI complied with a request to turn over the names of some 5,000 agents who worked on cases linked to the Jan. 6, 2021, siege of the US Capitol.

National-security agencies are supposed to be exempt form Musk’s cost-cutting efforts. Nonetheless, CIA Director John Ratcliffe offered buyouts to his staff in what the agency said was an effort to sharpen its focus on priorities like China and help Trump’s overall efforts to shrink the federal workforce.

And on Wednesday, Democratic lawmakers raised concerns about reports the CIA sent an unclassified email to the White House, listing the redacted names of all employees who had been hired within the last two years.

“I am also deeply concerned by the back-drop of this request, which appears to be an interest in firing provisional employees en masse,” said Representative Jim Himes of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.

In Ratcliffe’s corner will be Michael Ellis, a Trump ally named as deputy CIA director on Monday. Ellis helped author the Project 2025 chapter on intelligence reform, a 34-page document that lamented what it said was the weaponization of intelligence by Democratic- appointed agency leaders and called for the removal of “employees who have abused their positions of trust.”

The relationship between Trump and the intelligence agencies soured in his first term after they concluded that Russia had interfered in the 2016 election to boost Trump’s candidacy over Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.

Trump and his supporters have dismissed that as the “Russia hoax,” and that dispute produced one of the most infamous moments of his first term: When Trump, at a news conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, cast doubt on his own intelligence agencies’ conclusions about Russia’s involvement in the election.

“President Putin says it’s not Russia,” Trump said. “I don’t see any reason why it would be.”

Trump’s suspicions of the intelligence world only grew after a CIA officer filed a formal complaint that the president pressured his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, to investigate his political rival Joe Biden. That kicked off Trump’s first impeachment.

Trump’s campaign against the intelligence world started on Inauguration Day, when he ordered the revocation of security clearances for 50 former intelligence who had signed a letter questioning whether Russian disinformation was behind reports that Biden’s son had abandoned his laptop at a computer repair business.

At her Senate confirmation hearing last week, former Representative Tulsi Gabbard — Trump’s nominee to oversee the 18 US spy agencies — portrayed US intelligence as a potentially nefarious force and cast the Russia conclusion as an attempt to undermine Trump and “falsely portray him as a puppet of Putin.” She nonetheless promised senators she would “encourage a culture where tough questions, scrutiny and challenging of assumptions is welcome.”

Emily Harding, director of the national security program at the Center for Strategic Studies, said she was “very, very concerned” about the prospects of a purge, especially for intelligence officers who deliver conclusions the president may not like.

“I could see some overzealous members of this administration reading the delivery of bad news more as disloyalty,” Harding said. “If there is a sentiment inside the intelligence community that hard-hitting independent analysis is not welcome, then it’s going to have a chilling effect.”