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In mid-March, CIA Director John Ratcliffe chose Ralph Goff, a six-time CIA station chief, to serve as the deputy director for operations, positioning Goff to oversee clandestine operations. It was, as The Washington Post noted, one of Ratcliffe’s “most significant personnel moves since taking the helm at the spy agency,” and by all accounts, rank-and-file CIA officers and alumni were delighted with the selection.
Two weeks later, Goff was out. A Politico report noted that he’d already been given a start date when his appointment was suddenly and unexpectedly rescinded. The Post’s David Ignatius explained in his latest column:
CIA morale, already shaken, was rocked by the news. One former officer who spoke with several colleagues at Langley explained that the incident was seen as “a reflection that Ratcliffe has absolutely no sway with the White House. This was a Ratcliffe choice that got publicly derailed. People are mortified.”
As for why Goff was rejected after the CIA director chose him, and much of the intelligence community applauded the move, there’s been no official explanation, though Goff’s ardent support for Ukraine likely didn’t do him any favors given Donald Trump’s eagerness to align his administration with Russia.
This story came just days before Trump ousted the top two leaders at the National Security Agency — a move that a right-wing conspiracy theorist named Laura Loomer promptly took credit for.
It also roughly coincided with the White House’s Singal chat scandal, which featured an important intelligence fiasco as part of the larger national security debacle.
That news dovetailed with Elon Musk’s visit last week to the CIA headquarters, as part of a report to discuss additional cuts at the intelligence agency, on top of the dozens of CIA employees who’ve already been fired in recent weeks.
It led the Post to report in early March, “Across the vast network of U.S. spy agencies, from the CIA’s human operatives to the National Security Agency’s codebreakers, job cuts and the frequently conflicting instructions to the workforce have deeply unsettled tens of thousands of intelligence personnel who are usually known for their stoicism, disdain for partisan politics and focus on the critical missions at hand. Some former officials say they haven’t seen such turmoil in decades, if ever.”
The same week, NBC News reported that some U.S. allies are “considering scaling back the intelligence they share” with American officials, in part because of Trump’s eagerness to cozy up to Vladimir Putin, and in part because Tulsi Gabbard, who has been accused of echoing Russian propaganda, was confirmed as the director of national intelligence.
In recent weeks, there’s been considerable discussion of Trump destabilizing the economy, law enforcement, the military, higher education, the legal profession, and U.S. foreign policy, among other pillars of modern public life, but let’s not forget that the president is destabilizing the intelligence community, too.