National Defense

Textbook Bias: Deep State’s Election Interference Spin Is Now A Case Study In Spy Schools

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As evidence piles up of American spies spinning intel about foreign election interference because of their feelings about President Donald Trump, spy schools around the world now use the scandal as a textbook case of politicized intelligence.

Tradecraft classes in Italy, Canada, Israel and other nations study the way that senior officials manipulated intelligence about Russian and Chinese election meddling according to their stance on Trump, Barry Zulauf, formerly an internal watchdog for the intelligence community (IC), told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

As the IC’s independent ombudsman, Zulauf authored a 2021 report concluding that the IC massaged intelligence about Russian and Chinese election interference. Zulauf’s inquiry has become standard reference material for young spies in training, he told the DCNF.

In the U.S., the U.S. intelligence community added new instruction on politicization to Analysis 101, the orientation for the Office of Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), and a seminar on objectivity for the whole IC, per Zulauf.

Trump revealed in a primetime speech in July that American spy agencies suppressed evidence that China hacked into massive reams of voter data from his Presidential Daily Brief. The revelation may deepen the suspicions of many Americans that spy agencies constitute a Deep State unaccountable to outsiders, even the president — referred to in the intelligence community as “Customer #1.”

The media has largely dismissed these concerns as conspiratorial. Yet spy schools throughout the globe have adapted their curriculums to respond to this very issue.

Zulauf’s report notes that “analysts appeared reluctant to have their analysis on China brought forward because they tended to disagree with the Administration’s policies, saying in effect, I don’t want our intelligence used to support those policies.”

Two intelligence officials in October 2020 raised concerns about Chinese election influence activities that other career analysts dismissed, the Zulauf report states. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) management pressured the intelligence officials to suppress these concerns, the Zulauf report also states.

Then-Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, now the CIA director, agreed that China had sought to interfere in the election. Ratcliffe said that “similar actions by Russia and China are assessed and communicated to policymakers differently, potentially leading to the false impression that Russia sought to influence the election but China did not” in a memo dated the day after Zulauf’s report.

It’s apparent from Zulauf’s report that career analysts bristled at Ratcliffe’s emphasis on China. For instance, they opposed public remarks by the National Counterintelligence and Security Center warning the public about the threat of election interference not just from Russia, but also China and Iran. As Zulauf’s report lays out, these analysts lobbed their own accusations of politicization.

A 2004 law requires spies to produce reporting “independent of political considerations.” But new declassified documents expose senior officials operating in the shadows in a way that violates that professional ethos.

A senior CIA official responsible for Trump’s Presidential Daily Brief for two years is directly implicated in the 2021 watchdog report; she is now a CNN contributor on matters of national security.

The ‘Deep State’

Wrangling inside spy world prompted Zulauf‘s 2021 report, according to new documents declassified Tuesday by a Government Transparency Task Force led by journalist John Solomon.

The emails revolve around a National Security Agency report that addressed China and the 2016 election. It was supposed to be distributed in December 2018 but fourteen months later it was still held up. It was too “sensational,” senior officials said.

The delayed dissemination of the election interference intelligence would fuel concerns about a years-long coverup by the “Deep State,” senior intelligence officials said, the emails show.

A senior intelligence official holding up the report distinguished between “proper” readers of the intelligence and “abusers” of the intelligence, presumably Trump and his appointees.

“I said that we did not know why we were here, trying to defend the election and identify threats to it, if we were unable to actually report what those threats were because of issues like this,” the author of the memo, a clearly frustrated NSA official, replied.

Though senior officials wanted to keep a lid on criticism of the Deep State, the suppression of intelligence caused the issue to spiral.

“What began as mischaracterization of IC analytic assessments by ODNI officials escalated into an ongoing widespread perception in the workforce about politicization and loss of analytic objectivity throughout the community on the topics of Russian and Chinese election influence and interference,” Zulauf wrote in an academic article accompanying his 2021 report.

Zulauf’s investigation implicated senior intelligence officials. He wrote in the 2021 academic article that his inquiry had implicated “powerful agency leaders and IC leaders … including officials for whom I worked.”

These IC leaders included Deputy Director of National Intelligence Beth Sanner, Zulauf confirmed to the DCNF.

Most of the documents Zulauf used to prepare the report still remain classified, so it’s not precisely clear how Sanner politicized intelligence.

But Sanner’s ties to Russiagate have already been publicly reported.

Sanner told reporter Tim Weiner that she helped to declassify the discredited January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment that touched off the years-long saga over allegations that President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign colluded with Russia, according to the 2025 book “The Mission: The CIA in the 21st Century.” She declassified it in a way that protected former CIA Director John Brennan’s key source for the document, who is allegedly expatriated Russian national Oleg Smolenkov.

In August 2025, then-Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard revoked Sanner’s security clearance.

Sanner did not respond to a request for comment.