Posted originally on CTH on September 26, 2025 | Sundance

It is difficult not to notice the strategy of how certain Trump administration officials are targeted.

Any cabinet member that looks inward to reveal the status of corrupt activity within the information silo itself becomes a target. Cabinet officials who focus externally, meaning the majority of their effort looks outside government, are seemingly left alone.

HHS Secretary RFK Jr and Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, are examples of those receiving the worst ideological targeting from operations within HHS and the Intelligence Community respectively.

Conversely, CIA Director John Ratcliffe faces almost no scrutiny or targeting by the Intelligence Community as the silo operators frame narratives almost exclusively against DNI Gabbard.

The latest effort surfaces as embeds within Main Justice and the CIA frame a storyline that Tulsi Gabbard’s action in removing the security clearances of 37 current and former officials, has now resulted in those same officials being incapable of testifying against former CIA Director John Brennan (and others).

The premise of the narrative is ridiculous.  If we are to accept some current or former IC officials are willing to testify against Brennan (or others), regardless of whether Tulsi Gabbard has revoked their security clearances, their retroactive knowledge is still pertinent.  They are completely free to give statements and testimony based on their prior conduct.

What the leakers to Axios and the New York Times are trying to establish, is groundwork for the removal of Tulsi Gabbard. This stops her objective of investigating internal corruption.  I suspect most of the people trying desperately to undermine Gabbard are from within the CIA Directorate of Analysis, or at least in alignment with the directorate’s agenda.

The narrative’s author, Marc Caputo, claims AG Pam Bondi is hampered in her effort to criminally indict John Brennan because the witnesses Main Justice would use have lost their security clearances.  Again, the game of leveraging internecine friendships in/around the office of Trump becomes an overlay.

It is certainly true that AG Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel have refused to look internally; and it is also true that DNI Tulsi Gabbard has spent much of her focus time looking internally.  Bondi and Patel continue the preferred game of institutional blame-casting in Main Justice. Meanwhile, Gabbard is busy focused on cleaning up her IC house.

The Fourth Branch embeds do not fear the approach of Bondi/Patel, but the Fourth Branch embeds are petrified by the approach of Tulsi Gabbard.  That reality underpins the baseline of opposition against the Director of National Intelligence.

As the dynamic unfolds, CIA Director John Ratcliffe is certainly not corrupt; however, nor is he brave.  Director Ratcliffe is willing to let Director Gabbard clean up his house, and then he takes credit for the reform.  As the weeks unfold into months, this is becoming increasingly obvious.

Mark Zaid is the current anti-Trump Lawfare operative likely seeding the narrative to Axios/New York Times.

Mark Zaid, a Trump administration critic who represents six of the intelligence professionals whose clearances were revoked, said administration officials fretting about the Brennan case have “valid concerns.”

“This seems to be, as usual, an unforced error by Trump administration officials who don’t think things through in the long game in favor of a quick-pass completion,” he said. “If I were the defense counsel [for Brennan], I would raise the revocation in an attempt to undermine the credibility of the witnesses.” (more)

Mark Zaid knows the game-changing process that DNI Tulsi Gabbard is using.

Gabbard is directly going into each IC agency to review and retrieve information.  When she finds something that connects to the overall plots being used by the Fourth Branch, the DNI takes that information directly to President Trump who subsequently declassifies it and then she releases it.

Zaid and the Deep State operatives he represents, want to stop Tulsi Gabbard with urgency.   They are throwing every available IC narrative into the media flow in the hope that something stops Tulsi’s effectiveness.