Tulsi Takes on the Deep State, Part 1

by G. Murphy Donovan (September 2025)

Nor do we describe our enemy as ‘jihadists’ or ‘Islamists’ because jihad is a holy struggle, a legitimate tenet of Islam… —John Brennan

In early 2017, Charles Schumer, Democrat senator from New York, cautioned colleagues against criticizing the Intelligence Community (IC), suggesting it could retaliate claiming “they have six ways from Sunday to get back at you.” Beyond the political cowardice peculiar to urban fixtures like Schumer; his pronouncement spoke volumes about political and apparatchik culture inside Washington, DC, the deep state federal megaplex, if you will.

To put contemporary Intelligence culture in context, we should note also that 9 0f 10 voters in the greater DMV (District, Maryland, and Virginia), a federal critical mass, are likely to vote Democrat in any election, at any level, in any year. This is the constituency, for the most part, from which American Intelligence has drawn partisan civil “servants” since the FDR era.

A visible Republican voter inside the DC Beltway has the half-life of bug in a chicken coop.

Today, the DMV demographic has devolved into a far Left, if not socialist, political monoculture. Although to be fair, DC socialists and Islamists prefer to be called Anglicans, Baptists, or progressives.

Withal, Schumer implies that neither “we the people,” nor elected officials, nor the vast, faceless partisan bureaucracy in Washington are actually in charge. Elections and serial administrations not withstanding; real power in DC lies with the euphemistic “deep state,” within which none have more juice than the 18 agencies of a left-leaning Intelligence Community.

Amen! Control the narrative, and you control the game.

The real players in Washington, Schumer suggests, are the unelected, permanent civil servants under the Office of the Director for National Intelligence (ODNI); whom, we may assume, know where all the misdeeds and bodies are buried. Schumer’s clear message was; if you raise too many questions about any Intelligence agency, including the FBI, you will quickly become the problem.

Indeed, the Snowden and Trump trajectories are testimonials to the hazards of running afoul of American Intelligence. Donald J. Trump’s seesaw political saga illuminates the seditious shenanigans that plague both domestic and foreign policy circles and their media allies in the nation’s capitol today.

Yet the most ominous of Schumer’s insinuations is that the Intelligence mandarins don’t just think they are above the law. Intelligence mandarins may be, in praxis, above the law; untouchable as they say.

Indeed, a decade or more of evidence on the partisan subversive antics of James Clapper, John Brennan, and James Comey are finally seeing daylight, thanks to the new DNI, Tulsi Gabbard.

What happens now is still a mystery.

Nevertheless, the world’s most visible wahine doesn’t like what she sees in the creep state or at the TOP SECRET boys club inside the Beltway. Recognizing the problem is a start.

Alas, CIA is the big dog in the Intelligence pound and former director John Brennan was arguably the worst American Intelligence mandarin since Benedict Arnold.

Brennan made a career of rationalizing Islamofascism whilst resuscitating the Cold War Soviet, now Russian, boogeyman. Brennan transitioned the Soviet threat into a Russian Federation threat, whilst ignoring, or pandering to, the pervasive and growing global menace of political and Jihad Islamism.

So, on the threat issue alone, Gabbard has a lot of scat to shovel out of those ODNI pukas.

Clapper underwrote Brennan’s racist spin by characterizing Russians as “genetically” predisposed to be “nefarious.”

Alas, Intelligence professional like Jim Clapper like to claim that “Intelligence” merely speaks truth to power, to which we might now say bravo sierra. Under the Clapper/Brennan/Comey stewardship, the IC was weaponized to create and control power for a passive aggressive, if not seditious Left in Washington – at the expense of law and the truth.

“Lawfare,” indeed.

Most folks don’t realize that the IC includes both FBI domestic counterintelligence, and their partisan prosecutorial partners at the Justice Department. The Intelligence Community has enormous influence and control over domestic, foreign, and judicial policy agendas in America today, for good or ill.

Clapper often tells Congress that Intelligence merely provides truth for power. In practice, the DC political savannah is populated by policy lions and Intelligence lambs. The lambs know the drill and the expected narrative. Partisan policy lions, under veils of secrecy, compartmentation, and classification, have both teeth and claws to police Intelligence facts, analysis, and fictions like Russian racial inferiority—or Arab/Moslem political, moral, or religious equivalence.

When all else fails, apostate sheep might be exiled like Snowden, transferred to Friendship Annex at Fort Meade, or simply devoured. Ground truth from the US Intelligence Community is, for the most part, the treachery that voters and taxpayers never get to see.

Cooking the truth in DC is a science practiced at the merge where Intelligence and journalism meet, often in a Georgetown crapper or in an M Street parking garage.

This is the corrupt reality that made Edward Snowden so possible and so dangerous. Snowden wasn’t a traitor or a threat to American national security; he was a threat to a bloated, profligate, mendacious, corrupt Intelligence Community, an IC that no US regulatory body had the integrity or courage to control or restrain.

Indeed, in the Obama/Biden era, the now notorious Intelligence Troika was a big part of domestic fake news and sedition schemes. Concurrently, the usual suspects also played fast and loose abroad with foreign policy fails including; lost opportunities after the Soviet/Warsaw Pact implosion and subsequent war on Yugoslavia, a resuscitation of the Cold War, the creation of two Islamic states in the heart of Europe, a CIA coup in Ukraine, a tragic US defeat in Afghanistan—and, most recently, another rape of Israel by combined Shiite and Sunni forces. Gaza and Lebanon are just two more recent “religion of peace” jihads sponsored by Iran and America’s so-called Moslem Arab “partners.”

Road kill is a predictable fate for leaders or nations who are ambiguous about their travel lanes.

Withal, the three paramount functions of US Intelligence are still collection, early warning, and analysis. Unfortunately, the IC only performs one of those tasks well. And even with collection, we have confused voluminous gathering, storage, and AI with information, analysis, or wisdom that is fungible.

Indeed, the most useful tools for Intelligence today are “delete” buttons or burn bags. If we had the humility of introspection, we would ask a few simple questions like HTF did 18 American Intelligence agencies miss, ignore, or misinterpret the following: the fall of the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact; the defeat in Afghanistan; the success of Chinese totalitarian capitalism; the merge of the EU Left with the Islamofascist Right; and most recently, yet another rape of Israel by our Moslem “partners” followed by a global plague of Anti-Semitism where NATO  and EU “allies” now plan to recognize an Islamofascist state on two of Israel’s borders.

There is no possible response to this kind of warning and analytical incompetence except WTF!

Since WWII, warning and analytical fails are now legendary, going back to the Pearl Harbor, Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Eastern Europe, and now the Levant again.  Unfortunately, Ms. Gabbard may only have three plus years to reinvent the Intelligence wheel. It’s a safe bet the IC and deep state think they can blow smoke at, mislead, or outlast Tulsi Gabbard until the next presidential.

Thus, any honest observer could argue that the new DNI now has the toughest job in Washington. Who would have thought that an XX soldier from Hawaii, a former Democrat congresswoman, a surfing wahine would be called on to reform and refocus the 18 agencies of  US Intelligence megaplex, the deepest federal swamp in America?

If the Tulsi Gabbard story were fiction, her movie would be too improbable to cast. Nevertheless, we wish the new Intelligence Czarina at ODNI well.

If nothing else, out of the gate, Gabbard is all guts, albeit no nuts. Indeed, Tulsi has the potential to be the best thing to happen to American Intelligence since burn bags.

Bulls and deep state bullies beware!

Look for Part 2 of this saga here.

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G. Murphy Donovan is a former USAF Intelligence officer, Vietnam veteran (2X), former RAND Corp USAF research fellow, and former Director of the USAF Intelligence Russian (nee Soviet) Research Directorate at ACS Intelligence, HQ USAF serving under General James Clapper. Colonel Donovan also served at 7^th Air Force (Vietnam), PACOM (Hawaii), UN Command (Korea), DIA, NSA, and CIA (on loan) in Washington, DC. Follow him on X.

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