House Democrats to investigate Trump's handling of US spy agencies

WASHINGTON: Democrats in the US House of Representatives, who will control key committees next year, are preparing investigations into what they say was President Donald Trump's politicisation and gutting of US spy agencies, including whether analysts have censored themselves to avoid retaliation.

"There's absolutely evidence that analysts are hesitant to write on topics that they think might be controversial.

"There's absolutely evidence of a decline in morale in the analytic community because of the pressures that they are under," US Representative Jim Himes, a Connecticut Democrat who will become chairman of the House intelligence committee in January, told Reuters on Tuesday.

There has been little scrutiny of the state of the US intelligence community by the Republican-run Congress during the first two years of Trump's second term, during which the administration fired or forced out hundreds of officers and disrupted the production of analyses on key issues, including Iran.

Himes said that would change after he takes over the committee in January, when Democrats assume control of the House of Representatives and the Senate following their sweep of the November 3 midterm elections.

He did not disclose how the investigations would proceed, but said that one focus would be what he called retaliatory firings.

"We're going to tell the story of the patriots who were fired because they said something that was inconsistent with what the president wanted to be true," Himes said.

Former Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard last year cut her agency's staff by about 40%. CIA Director John Ratcliffe publicly pledged to reduce his workforce by more than 1,000 positions over several years.

Both offered deferred-resignation programmes that provided pay and benefits for employees who chose to leave.

The cuts included the firings of longtime intelligence analysts and officers from top posts, including at the National Intelligence Council, the analytical group overseen by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

At least two of those fired were analysts involved in an assessment that contradicted the White House's official policy on Venezuela.

The reductions have been viewed inside the intelligence agencies as a continuation of Trump's campaign against what he called the "deep state," a move critics say has drained the community of experience and expertise.

Reuters previously reported that some of Gabbard's projects affiliated with her Director's Initiative Group, a task force that revisited the 2020 election and the origins of Covid-19, created tensions inside the intelligence community.