‘Little lily pads’: US intelligence sharing has fractured under Trump, officials say

WASHINGTON - US intelligence sharing on Iran and other global threats with Congress and across the federal government has slowed and, in some cases, temporarily stopped during President Donald Trump’s second term, according to eight current and former officials and people briefed on the matter.

Former officials and outside experts said the disruptions risk leaving policymakers with an incomplete picture of threats facing the country, echoing intelligence failures exposed after the Sept 11, 2001, Al-Qaeda attacks.

The slowdown comes as the administration weighs whether to resume strikes on Iran after the Nov 3 midterm elections.

The problems emerged during Tulsi Gabbard’s tenure as director of national intelligence, amid deep tensions between her office and the CIA. While those tensions have subsided since her resignation in June, problems stemming from the clash persist, according to two US officials familiar with the matter.

The CIA has stopped co-authoring assessments with the National Intelligence Council (NIC), an analytical group within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), the officials said, reducing the number of reports that pull together the intelligence community’s views for decision-makers on subjects including Iran.

Lawmakers and their staff also briefly stopped receiving intelligence reports from Gabbard’s office in the days after the US military intervention in Iran in June 2025 and again after the capture of former Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in January 2026, according to two people familiar with the matter. Gabbard’s team had accused lawmakers of leaking to the press.

The disruption in intelligence sharing has not been previously reported.

CIA spokesperson Liz Lyons said the CIA “participates fully” in the process of providing intelligence assessments through the Presidential Daily Brief, which is led by ODNI, and through the NIC.

Now, some former officials are working on a bipartisan basis at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution to draw up plans to rebuild the intelligence community in the next administration, four former US officials said.

“All of these things are adding up in a really complex world where policymakers need to have a more sophisticated, nuanced, and integrated view of the world, and they are getting less,” said Beth Sanner, a former deputy director of national intelligence during Trump’s first term.

Turf wars and reduced cooperation

The problems inside the intelligence community started in 2025 amid significant cuts to national security agencies, including the ODNI and the CIA, as Trump moved to remove or sideline officials he viewed as disloyal.

Some analysts who remain at the intelligence agencies are now careful to not write assessments at odds with White House’s views for fear of political retaliation, two former officials and a current US official said. The officials did not say which topics the analysts were avoiding.

“Analysts still do the work, but this White House has made them irrelevant because the president treats unwelcome information as disloyalty,” said Julia Curlee, a former CIA analyst who said she was fired from the Trump National Security Council in 2025 for being transgender.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

The situation was worsened by what officials described as one of the biggest turf wars in three decades between two of the most important agencies: the CIA and the ODNI, which was formed in the aftermath of the Sept 11 attacks.

Reuters earlier detailed the dispute between the agencies.

The infighting between the agencies - triggered when Gabbard’s office revoked the security clearances of current and former intelligence officials a year ago - reached the point where White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles had to intervene several times to defuse tensions, three former officials said.

The National Intelligence Council, which for decades has been a key resource for officials and lawmakers making foreign policy decisions, lost its main author when the CIA stopped writing into the assessments in 2025.

The assessments are meant to consolidate the views of the nation’s 18 intelligence agencies, and the council relied heavily on the CIA for analysis on topics like Iran and Russia.

While the CIA continued sharing intelligence with the NIC and working with it on some reports,  its analysts focused on their own assessments.

Since the move, the intelligence council, which was also hit by staff cuts, has slowed production of its assessments, two people familiar with the matter said. None have focused on the war in Iran, five current and former officials said.

In response to a request for comment, an ODNI official said the group has maintained assessment levels close to “historic trendlines.”

“While Tulsi did not utilise the NIC, DNI Clayton has proven to be a good steward of the IC and recognises the value of the NIC,” said a US official, referring to Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton.

New barriers

Some former intelligence officials worry that new barriers are appearing between agencies.

“The problem is that by taking actions which have the effect of hollowing out institutions where there’s actual intelligence community coordination on things, you’re creating little lily pads, and then everybody can pick their own lily pad to listen to,” said Morgan Muir, the former deputy director of national intelligence in the Biden administration who also briefed President George W. Bush.

Gabbard’s office also stopped briefing Congress on election threats in 2025, according to two people familiar with the matter and a former US official.

Clayton, who became director of national intelligence in August, has resumed congressional briefings on election threats, officials said.

“Director Clayton remains committed to ensuring that ODNI and the intelligence community have the resources they need to continue informing key US government decision-makers and keeping Americans safe,” ODNI said in a statement to Reuters.

In another clash between agencies, the FBI late in 2025 stopped sharing some intelligence with the National Counterterrorism Centre for several weeks after the centre’s then-head, Joe Kent, and his staff tried to investigate the shooting of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, two former officials said.

FBI leaders told Kent they believed NCTC was overstepping its authority.

The FBI did not respond to a request for comment. REUTERS