The leading US spy agencies are feuding over territory and mission. According to sources familiar with the situation, the CIA has stopped participating in a number of intelligence operations, including those related to the war in Iran and conducted under the auspices of the agency of the country’s chief spy.
The reason was the heightened disagreements over the exchange of intelligence and the allocation of areas of responsibility. The conflict between the CIA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) has been going on for more than a year and, according to an American official and three people with direct knowledge of the situation, hinders cooperation in analyzing national security issues, an area that presidents traditionally rely on to solve complex foreign policy tasks.
According to two sources, the CIA, led by Director John Ratcliffe, says that Director Gabard’s initiative group acted recklessly, bypassing established protocols for intelligence sharing and declassification. Representatives of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in turn, insist that the CIA systematically blocked the group’s access to intelligence information. The breakdown of cooperation between the intelligence agencies comes at a critical moment for the Trump administration, amid the United States’ involvement in the conflict with Iran and growing challenges to national security.