The CIA is supposed to be above politics. Its job is to analyze threats, not manufacture them to fit a preferred narrative. But CIA Director John Ratcliffe is exposing how the CIA under Joe Biden’s leadership did not follow that protocol, and instead dove head first into politicizing the agency and demonizing portions of Americans who did not vote for him and his political party. And, unfortunately, Ratcliffe says, the damage may not be easily undone.
Director Ratcliffe announced last week that he ordered retractions or substantial revisions of 19 intelligence products produced before his tenure. An internal review determined they “exhibit substantial deviations from the President’s expectations that CIA’s workforce remains independent from a particular audience, agenda, or policy viewpoint.”
That is bureaucratic language for something serious: politicized intelligence.
CIA Director John Ratcliffe
“The intelligence products we released to the American people today — produced before my tenure as DCIA — fall short of the high standards of impartiality that CIA must uphold and do not reflect the expertise for which our analysts are renowned,” Ratcliffe said.
One of the most troubling examples was an October 2021 report titled “Women Advancing White Racially and Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremist Radicalization and Recruitment.”
The assessment, written under Joe Biden’s leadership, demonized white women, by saying though they “may not openly advocate violence but amplify white [racially and ethnically motivated violent extremist] narratives regarding their perceptions of racial and ethnic hierarchy, as well as perceived threats from those they see as advocating multiculturalism and globalization.” It criticized women who “have produced blogs, videos, or other online content under the guise of cooking tutorials, which feature discussions about the importance of organic food alongside subtle narratives about racial purity and the defense of white European heritage.” It even flagged individuals who celebrated “motherhood and homemaking as women’s most important responsibility.”
Director Ratcliffe and President Trump at Mar-a-Lago watching military operations unfold in Venezuela.
An intelligence agency tasked with tracking foreign adversaries and terrorist threats was devoting analytical resources to parsing cooking blogs and motherhood messaging — while blurring distinctions between actual violent extremists and people who questioned immigration trends or globalization.
The report “leans heavily on left-wing media reports” and recommends messaging guidance from the Expert Center on Gender and Right-Wing Extremism, part of a German NGO led by controversial activist Anetta Kahane.
Whether one agrees or disagrees with those social views is beside the point. The issue is that intelligence analysis appeared to adopt a distinctly ideological frame — one that treated culturally conservative white women as a potential radicalization vector.
That is not just poor tradecraft. It is socially corrosive.
When government institutions appear to single out a demographic group for suspicion based on cultural or political expression, it breeds fear and resentment. It tells millions of ordinary Americans that their values may be interpreted as warning signs in a federal file. That kind of signal erodes trust in institutions that depend on public confidence.
Another retracted report, “Worldwide: Pandemic-Related Contraceptive Shortfalls Threaten Economic Development,” warned that an increase in births “in African and other developing countries would perpetuate poverty, strain household budgets, and limit disposable income for consumer goods, including U.S. exports.” The document relied heavily on advocacy groups like the International Planned Parenthood Federation and the Guttmacher Institute.
Again, the question is not policy preference. It is analytic rigor.
“There is absolutely no room for bias in our work and when we identify instances where analytic rigor has been compromised, we have a responsibility to correct the record,” Ratcliffe said. “These actions underscore our commitment to transparency, accountability, and objective intelligence analysis.”
CIA Deputy Director Michael Ellis echoed that sentiment, writing that the reports “did not meet the high standards the American people expect from the CIA’s elite analytic workforce,” adding, “When we fall short of our standards, we owe it to the American people to correct the record.”
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) commended Ratcliffe “for correcting the record and ensuring that the CIA’s analysis is free of any political bias,” noting, “I’ve been sending these kind of reports back to the CIA for years and observing that they contain no intelligence.” He added, “Our intelligence agencies have too often missed critical national-security developments to waste time on, for instance, how ‘pandemic-related contraceptive shortfalls threaten economic development.’ Honestly.”
Critics, including Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), argue the retractions are “part of a broader and deeply troubling pattern… allowing political considerations to override professional judgment.”
But that charge cuts both ways.
If intelligence products are shaped to reflect a particular worldview — especially one that casts cultural conservatives as latent threats — the long-term consequence is institutional distrust. Intelligence agencies cannot afford to look like instruments of social engineering. When politics seeps into national security analysis, it does more than skew a report. It fractures public faith.
And once that trust is lost, rebuilding it is far harder than retracting a document.
