US spy chief fires intelligence leaders who disputed Trump’s Venezuela-gang claims

Gabbard terminated NIC acting director Mike Collins and his deputy, Maria Langan-Riekhof, weeks after the intelligence body wrote an assessment that contradicted President Donald Trump’s claims about Venezuelan gang members.

The April 7 report from NIC, which produces intelligence assessments for policymakers, found it unlikely that Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro is overseeing or aiding the criminal activities of Tren de Aragua in the United States. The findings disputed Trump’s rationale for invoking the Alien Enemies Act to deport alleged Venezuelan gang members without normal due process, claiming in March that Tren de Aragua is carrying out a U.S. “invasion” overseen by Maduro.

The report, declassified last week via a Freedom of Information Act request from the Freedom of the Press Foundation, said the Maduro regime “probably does not have a policy of cooperating with [Tren de Aragua] and is not directing [Tren de Aragua] movement to and operations in the United States.”

FBI analysts assessed that some Venezuelan government officials facilitate gang members’ migrations from Venezuela into the U.S. to help advance what’s viewed as the Maduro government’s goal to destabilize and undermine public safety in certain countries, the report said.

The existence of the NIC assessment was first reported by the Washington Post in April. Fox News first reported the firings Tuesday.

The latest purge of intelligence officials comes as Gabbard and her colleagues seek to rid the intelligence community of perceived biases and wasteful spending. Alexa Henning, Gabbard’s deputy chief of staff, said on X that the NIC “Biden holdovers” were dismissed “because they politicized intelligence.”

[Jonathan Panikoff, a former intelligence official who served on the NIC and has worked with the fired staffers, told CNN Collins is “an unbelievable professional who’s served selflessly for 30 years and is a real China expert,” and Langan-Riekhof “is not just a strategic thinker but an unbelievably gifted analyst.”]

In late April, Gabbard urged the Justice Department to probe alleged intelligence leaks; and her office has said those investigations are ongoing. 

“DNI Gabbard is purging intelligence officials over a report that the Trump administration finds politically inconvenient. Whatever the administration is trying to protect … it’s not our national security,” Mark Warner, D-Va., the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a statement to Nextgov/FCW. 

A spokesperson for Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., and the committee’s chairman, did not return a request for comment.

Collins and Langan-Riekhof could not be immediately reached for comment.

“Having spent five years working at the NIC, I can personally attest the org is the heartbeat of apolitical U.S. all-source analysis, traditionally drawing the best of the IC’s analysts together to tackle and produce assessments on the hardest issues,” Panikoff said in an X post.

President Trump has long viewed the intelligence community with suspicion, especially after past assessments that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to boost his campaign—assessments confirmed by the GOP-led Senate intelligence committee. He has frequently accused intelligence officials of being part of a politically biased “deep state” working to undermine his presidency. ]]>