WASHINGTON — One of the 37 intelligence professionals whose security clearance was revoked last week by Director of Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard may have had her undercover status blown, sources told The Post — but had been writing articles in major US magazines like The Atlantic and spoke at a public forum as recently as four months ago.
The inconspicuous spy “had been working undercover” at the time her clearance was yanked, one source familiar with Gabbard’s move said, but others disputed the characterization and added that as an ex-National Intelligence Council (NIC) analyst, she was “not a covert operative.”
“She’s been an analyst at a desk for her career,” noted a person familiar with the former national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia at the NIC, which is part of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI).
As of April, the intelligence professional was listed as a senior executive manager for Europe and Eurasia Mission Center at the CIA and served as a panelist at AEFCA’s 2025 Spring Intelligence Symposium on the Russia-Ukraine war and other topics.
AEFCA is a professional association of national security experts, government employees, military members and others.
Somewhere between then and Aug. 18, when Gabbard distributed an internal memo to the US Intelligence Community naming 37 people whose security clearance needed to be rescinded, she appears to have been placed in a covert role.
One well-placed source familiar with the sensitive discussions suggested that the timing wasn’t a coincidence.
Senior officials at CIA and ODNI also didn’t reference the covert or overt status of any of the 37 professionals, according to Aug. 18 and 19 emails read by a source to The Post, which first reported on Gabbard’s memo.
“There was staff-level coordination between ODNI and CIA — and all other agencies involved — ahead of the revocations letter being sent,” a senior intelligence official said.
Another source familiar with the DNI-CIA kerfuffle claimed “there was no meaningful coordination” before the clearances were stripped.
“Director Ratcliffe and the President’s entire elite national security team are committed to eradicating the politicization of intelligence and are focused on executing President Trump’s national security priorities, and keeping the American people safe,” CIA spokeswoman Liz Lyons said in a statement.
The Gabbard memo does not list any agency affiliations for the more than three dozen spooks, but all were accused of having “abused public trust by politicizing and manipulating” information in their roles.
Many were involved in a controversial assessment of Russian influence in the 2016 election completed under former President Barack Obama. Others co-signed a September 2019 statement in support of House Democrats’ first impeachment inquiry into Trump.
The purportedly low-profile CIA manager previously served as a national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia at the NIC from 2014 to 2017, according to a biography accompanying an article she authored in Foreign Affairs in 2018.
A 2020 Senate report also disclosed her involvement — along with Vinh Nguyen, another intel employee who had his clearance revoked last week — in the controversial Obama-ordered Intelligence Community Assessment on the presidential contest between Trump and Hillary Clinton.
Both were members of the NIC who worked with former DNI James Clapper on the intel product that has since been discredited by declassified information that both Ratcliffe and Gabbard have released.
After the Obama administration, the now-G-woman held a position as a nonresident scholar with the Russia and Eurasia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
The Post was unable to contact the CIA employee.
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