Clip: The politicization of national intelligence under Trump

Jeffrey Goldberg: And, Shane, I wanted to ask you, you've just written with Isaac Stanley-Becker an interesting story about Tulsi Gabbard's trajectory, another person like Pete Hegseth, who has this big question mark on her. Where -- are we going to see a lot of shakeups in the national security complex soon?

Shane Harris: I think it's possible, and it may be starting with Tulsi Gabbard. I mean, remember she comes in to the administration kind of in this MAGA wing of no war, no foreign intervention, there's a number of missteps she has with the president. He does not rely on her as a key intelligence adviser. I think it's also safe to say it doesn't rely on many people as intelligence advisers. But in this one in particular, that relationship is not very solid.

And she gave this testimony back in March in which she just plainly said what the intelligence assessments have been for years, which is Iran is not trying to build a nuclear weapon. When the president made the decision that we're going to attack Iran, she had to scramble to quickly say, oh, well, oh, but what I meant was, and there are these caveats in the intelligence, she's trying very quickly to get the intelligence in her statements about it to line up with the president's political preferences.

That is dangerous in the conduct of intelligence. That is what intelligence professionals try to avoid.

Jeffrey Goldberg: That's the antithesis of the craft.

Shane Harris: It's politicization of intelligence, which is precisely what she said she was going to root out in the intelligence community because she claimed it was endemic in the Biden administration.

Jeffrey Goldberg: David, what is the danger, or maybe Andrea too, what is the danger of this politicization of intelligence?

David Ignatius: So, presidents always want intelligence that will support their policies, and intelligence analysts are always under pressure to tailor their reporting to support political goals. We saw this through the Vietnam War. LBJ was furious that the CIA didn't say this was going great, that the body count was not a useful metric. We saw it in Iraq where CIA analysts kept saying, you know, this isn't going to work. We saw it in Afghanistan. And so this is a recurring problem.

In the case of this administration, they have already gotten an intelligence assessment saying your claim that the Tren de Aragua gang is being directed by Venezuela has no evidence to support it and demanded another estimate. You know, we didn't like your first estimate. Give us another one. And Gabbard led that effort.

So, you know, this is a time when good intelligence about what's happening is crucial, and they are trying to spin it.

Jeffrey Goldberg: By the way, Andrea, there's an interesting lesson here. You look at Iran's response, it's been a great victory over the United States, the ayatollah says from the rubble. This is what happens when governments lie to themselves.

Andrea Mitchell: Exactly. And we saw this in Helsinki, most notably, when the president in his first term agreed with Vladimir Putin on the subject of interference in the election over his own intelligence agencies. And at the time, one of Tulsi Hubbard's predecessors, Dan Coates, put out an immediate statement defending the intelligence community and was eventually fired.

When you politicize intelligence, as David was just suggesting, it is so self-defeating, it brings me back to Curveball, who was the primary source for the Iraq war, for there being, you know, weapons of mass destruction, biological weapons in 2003. And that is what trapped the CIA at the time. And, unfortunately, the secretary of state and his testimony to the United Nations in front of the world, we were all there in February of 2003, and Secretary Powell regretted that to the day he died because he was misled.

When you have intelligence that is politicized and pressured, as it was by, you know, Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney, and trying to satisfy the White House, that's what you get. You get into mistaken wars.

Jeffrey Goldberg: So, in short, it would be smart for any administration to look at recent history and say, I'm going to tell the truth to myself about what we've achieved.

Anddrea Mitchell: Exactly.

Jeffrey Goldberg: It's a great conversation. We're going to have to leave it there for now. I want to thank our guests for joining me and thank you at home for watching us.