Above photo: US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. Kevin Dietsch / Getty Images.
The US government fired two high-ranking officials of the US National Intelligence Council (NIC) who had contradicted the Trump administration’s claim that the Venezuelan government has ties with the now defunct Tren de Aragua gang.
The director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, expelled the interim president of the NIC, Michael Collins, and his deputy, Maria Langan-Riekhof, who were responsible for the investigation that destroyed the Venezuelan far-right’s propaganda about alleged links between the gang and the government of Nicolás Maduro.
Gabbard’s fired these two NIC officials because their findings did not agree with Trump’s political agenda of continuing a false narrative against Venezuela.
An email from Gabbard’s office explained that the firing of Collins and Langan-Riekhof constitutes an effort to “end the weaponization and politicization of the intelligence community.”
At the beginning of May, The New York Times published a report prepared by US intelligence agencies. This report concluded that Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro “does not direct” the activities of the gang Tren de Aragua, contrary to what had been claimed by Donald Trump, who invoked the Alien Enemies Act to deport Venezuelan migrants precisely for this allegation.
The declassified NIC memo was released on May 5 and revealed that the US spy agencies did not find any evidence of coordination between the government of President Maduro and the Tren de Aragua gang.
The NIC is the most important US entity for the analysis of classified intelligence, as well as the creation of secret reports destined for the president and other high-ranking national security officials. Its work is the result of exhaustive investigations related to US national security.
“Anything that reduces its independence because policymakers don’t like the independent conclusions it reaches, is the definition of politicization they are decrying,” wrote Jonathan Panikoff, former deputy national intelligence officer for the Near East and now member of the US think tank Atlantic Council. “Mike and Maria are… IC [intelligence community] professionals, not political actors.”
