CIA

Former Senior CIA Officers Describe Their Mental Health Struggles

They discuss how they got help amid high stress jobs. The CIA’s Director of Medical Services says she sees anxiety, depression, and family problems.

Imagine you’re a Black intelligence officer in a foreign country, tasked with recruiting a person who’s profiting from slave labor; or spending your nights at the office, watching drone footage of explosions after your mother dies of cancer.

Janaki Kates, a former senior intelligence officer at the CIA, and other former senior intelligence officers spoke with Newsy for this story. They have never shared their mental health challenges with a news organization.

NEWSY’S SASHA INGBER: Do you think that people on the outside understand what intelligence officers go through?

JANAKI KATES: No, I don’t. I don’t believe that people on the outside can fully comprehend what intelligence officers go through. I was one of the few minority females, and female leaders at the agency. I, because of the stigma around mental health, really felt like I didn’t want to admit that I needed help.

Kates had worked in a war zone, but says another battle began after her second son was born.

KATES: Suddenly I woke up after his first birthday and realized, why do I still cry every day coming into work? And why do I still have these thoughts of like, he’s going to get really sick, or something really terrible is going to happen?

She was later diagnosed with anxiety and delayed postpartum depression.

For Douglas Wise, also a former senior intelligence officer for the CIA, the particular problem was alcohol.

DOUGLAS WISE: They could smell it on me when I came to work in the morning. So the first time I knew was when, literally, it was an intervention by my colleagues and by my supervisor and literally called me into the office and said, ‘you have a serious problem and you need to do something about it.'”

INGBER: Are there a lot of intelligence officers who seek out your advice and want to learn about your experience?

WISE: I would say I probably get a call about every month, every other month.

Intelligence officers aren’t allowed to share classified information with a therapist outside of their agencies, and some worry that speaking candidly with a therapist on the inside may hurt their careers.

“In a place to keep secrets, there are no secrets when it comes to your personnel file,” said Brian Scott, another former senior intelligence officer for the CIA.

Scott calls it a “hallway file.”

“If a manager needs to understand what kind of a person he or she is getting in their field office, or if a promotion board wants to make sure before they elevate someone to a senior rank, issues that should be handled with confidentiality and only between that officer and his or her mental health support system will be made available to those assignment and/or promotion boards,” said Scott. “And once one person knows, it’s not a secret anymore.”

We sat down with the CIA’s director of medical services, who asked that Newsy conceal her appearance and just use her first name, Victoria.

VICTORIA: We are not immune to life. Life happens to our folks just like everybody else. And so we do see anxiety and depression in our workforce. We also see marital issues and family problems and family stressors. And again, sometimes this is related to what we’re asking our officers to do, to move around, to serve in different parts of the world, to be away from their families for long periods of time.

INGBER: Some intelligence officers say that they fear seeking any kind of mental health support because they’re scared that it’s going to jeopardize their career. Is there any truth to that?

VICTORIA: We definitely heard that. And we very much are trying to address it. I would say what’s most likely to jeopardize someone’s career is if they have an issue and they don’t seek out support and it gets worse and worse and worse and then starts to impact their reliability, their judgment and their stability.

She says the stigma around mental health issues has been slowly lifting.

VICTORIA: Senior leaders share their own experiences, both with mental health struggles and with seeking help from our employee assistance program or other resources. And that is really setting the culture and setting the tone that, yes, you can have a problem, address the problem, and still very much succeed in your career.

Kates first saw an agency therapist, then got a recommendation for a professional outside.

INGBER: And what kind of help worked for you?

KATES: I had been trained for so long to keep this facade of “nothing is wrong.” My therapist was able to help me latch onto my logical brain and think through, ‘why am I feeling this? Where is this coming from?'”

Wise says he went through a 30-day treatment program, followed by two years of counseling and another year of monitoring. He says what really helped him was never feeling judged.

“They’re not judgmental,” said Wise. “They’re not assessing whether you’re a good person or a bad person. You are just a person with the disease of alcoholism. The combination of the agency’s rehabilitative program and the loving support of my wife, you know, allows me to do this interview today. You’d be talking to me, you know, in front of a gravestone in Arlington is what you’d be doing.”

Eventually, he was able to return to every part of his job.

“I ended up as the number two in a national intelligence agency of the most powerful nation in the history of the human race. That says a lot about the intelligence community. And yes, it says a little bit about me, too,” said Wise.

Newsy’s mental health initiative “America’s Breakdown: Confronting Our Mental Health Crisis” brings you deeply personal and thoughtfully told stories on the state of mental health care in the U.S. Click here to learn more.

: newsy.com

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Obstruction Now A Major Focus In Trump Documents Probe

Trump’s lawyers said Wednesday night that a special master was needed for the sake of fairness.

The FBI investigation into top-secret government information discovered at Mar-a-Lago is zeroing in on the question of whether former President Donald Trump’s team criminally obstructed the probe. A new document alleges that government records had been concealed and removed and that law enforcement officials were misled about what was still there.

The allegation does not necessarily mean that Trump or anyone else will ultimately face charges. But it could pose the most direct legal threat to Trump or those in his orbit, in part because the Justice Department has historically viewed obstruction as an aggravating factor that tilts in favor of bringing charges in investigations involving the mishandling of classified information.

“It goes to the heart of trying to suborn the very integrity of our criminal justice system,” said David Laufman, who once oversaw the same Justice Department counterintelligence section now responsible for the Mar-a-Lago investigation.

The latest Justice Department motion in the case is focused less on the removal last year of classified information from the White House to Mar-a-Lago and more on the events of this past spring. That’s when law enforcement officials tried — unsuccessfully — to get all documents back and were assured, falsely, that everything had been accounted for after a “diligent search.”

The Justice Department issued a grand jury subpoena in May for the records, and officials visited Mar-a-Lago on June 3 to collect them. When they got there, Tuesday’s department document says, they were handed by a Trump lawyer a “single Redweld envelope, double-wrapped in tape” containing documents.

A custodian for the records presented a sworn certification to the officials saying that “any and all responsive documents” to the subpoena had been located and produced. A Trump lawyer said that all records that had come from the White House had been held in one location — a storage room — and that there were none in any private space or other spot at the house.

But the FBI came to doubt the truth of those statements and obtained a search warrant to return on Aug. 8.

Officials had “developed evidence that government records were likely concealed and removed from the Storage Room and that efforts were likely taken to obstruct the government’s investigation,” the new Justice Department filing says.

In their August search, agents found classified documents not only in the storage room but also in the former president’s office, including three classified documents in an office desk, according to the Justice Department. In some instances, the agents and attorneys conducting the review of seized documents required additional clearances since the material was so highly classified.

“That the FBI, in a matter of hours, recovered twice as many documents with classification markings as the ‘diligent search’ that the former president’s counsel and other representatives had weeks to perform calls into serious question the representations made in the June 3 certification and casts doubt on the extent of cooperation in this matter,” the document states.

In its own filing Wednesday night, Trump’s lawyers decried the search as having taken place in “the midst of the standard give-and-take” between a former president and the National Archives and Records Administration over presidential records. It said the department had “gratuitously” made public certain information, including a photograph of classified documents taken from the home.

The Justice Department has stated in court filings that, besides investigating crimes related to the mishandling of national defense information and other documents, it is also looking into whether anyone committed obstruction.

It is not clear from Tuesday’s filing how much of that inquiry might center on Trump, who has repeatedly insisted that his team was cooperative with the FBI, as opposed to any of his lawyers or representatives who were directly involved in making the representations to the department. It’s also unclear what role Trump himself had in those representations.

Obstruction matters because it’s one of the factors investigators look for in weighing whether to bring charges. For instance, in his July 2016 announcement that the FBI would not be recommending criminal charges against Hillary Clinton in an investigation involving handling of her emails, FBI Director James Comey cited the absence of obstruction as one of the reasons.

When the Justice Department charged former CIA Director David Petraeus in 2015 with sharing classified information with his biographer, it made a point of including in court documents details about false statements prosecutors said he made during an FBI interview.

It is also not the first time that an obstruction investigation has surfaced in connection with Trump. Special Counsel Robert Mueller investigated whether Trump had obstructed an inquiry into whether his 2016 presidential campaign had colluded with Russia, and though Mueller did not recommend charges against the then-sitting president, he also pointedly declined to exonerate him.

In the current case, federal investigators are likely evaluating why Trump representatives provided statements about the status of classified information at Mar-a-Lago that proved easily contradicted by the evidence, as well as which individuals were involved in removing boxes and why.

Sarah Krissoff, a New York lawyer and former federal prosecutor, said the detailed information in this week’s filing tells its own tale.

“Reading between the lines of what they were saying here, it suggests that they had very direct information from a source regarding the location of classified documents within Mar-a-Lago and essentially the concealment of, or lack of cooperation with, the prior efforts to recover those documents,” she said.

The purpose of the Tuesday night filing was to oppose a request from the Trump legal team for a special master to review the documents seized during this month’s search and to return to him certain seized property. U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon is to hear arguments on the matter Thursday.

Trump’s lawyers responded Wednesday night by saying that a special master was needed for the sake of fairness, asserting that “left unchecked, the DOJ will impugn, leak, and publicize selective aspects of their investigation.”

Cannon on Saturday said it was her “preliminary intent” to appoint such a person but also gave the Justice Department an opportunity to respond.

On Monday, the department said it had already completed its review of potentially privileged documents and identified a “limited set of materials that potentially contain attorney-client privileged information.” It said Tuesday that a special master was therefore unnecessary and that the presidential records that were taken from the home do not belong to Trump.

Additional reporting by The Associated Press.

: newsy.com

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Justice Department Suggests Trump Delayed Efforts To Recover Documents

A federal judge in Florida is set to rule on former President Donald Trump’s request for a special master to review the materials the FBI seized.

In a legal filing submitted late Tuesday, the Justice Department outlined the steps it took to try to retrieve classified material from former President Trump’s Florida estate months before seeking a search warrant.

The filing said there was evidence Donald Trump’s representatives misled the Department of Justice, falsely claiming all the sensitive material had already been returned.

Furthermore, the DOJ alleged Trump’s team moved documents “and that efforts were likely taken to obstruct the government’s investigation.”

“I think the real takeaway here is the Justice Department has put into the public record for the first time a compelling story about how Trump’s lawyers were obstructing the government’s investigation into these documents,” said Tom Dupree, former deputy assistant attorney general.

Back in May, the department obtained a subpoena to retrieve all classified materials.

The filing says in June Trump’s lawyers prevented government personnel from opening or looking inside boxes that remained in a storage room.

It included a photo of documents seized during the August 8 search with classified materials clearly labeled.

“These are at the highest level of American National Security classification. Top secret SCI, which is the classification you see in the photographs, it typically refers to intercepted communications. It’s hard to get higher in terms of classification than that. If these are revealed to the public and to foreign adversaries, those foreign adversaries will determine how that stuff was intercepted and they will close down those circuits,” said Philip Mudd, a former CIA analyst.

The documents were so sensitive, the filing said that, “in some instances, even the FBI counterintelligence personnel and DOJ attorneys conducting the review required additional clearances before they were permitted to review certain documents.”

Trump insisted he declassified all the records.

But the filing said when the documents were produced, no one claimed executive privilege or that the president declassified them.

“The documents are clearly identified, they’re sensitive, and the release of them would compromise national security. So you can’t declassify them,” said Mudd.

While the documents are not expected to be declassified anytime soon, the intelligence community is continuing its review to determine if there could be any “potential risks to national security that may have resulted from the improper storage of the seized materials.”

: newsy.com

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FBI: Trump Mixed Top Secret Docs With Magazines, Other Items

No space at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate was authorized for the storage of classified material, according to an FBI affidavit.

Fourteen of the 15 boxes recovered from former President Donald Trump’s Florida estate early this year contained classified documents, many of them top secret, mixed in with miscellaneous newspapers, magazines and personal correspondence, according to an FBI affidavit released Friday.

No space at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate was authorized for the storage of classified material, according to the court papers, which laid out the FBI’s rationale for searching the property this month, including “probable cause to believe that evidence of obstruction will be found.”

The 32-page affidavit — heavily redacted to protect the safety of witnesses and law enforcement officials and “the integrity of the ongoing investigation” — offers the most detailed description to date of the government records being stored at Mar-a-Lago long after Trump left the White House. It also reveals the gravity of the government’s concerns that the documents were there illegally.

The document makes clear how the haphazard retention of top secret government records, and the apparent failure to safeguard them despite months of entreaties from U.S. officials, has exposed Trump to fresh legal peril just as he lays the groundwork for another potential presidential run in 2024.

“The government is conducting a criminal investigation concerning the improper removal and storage of classified information in unauthorized spaces, as well as the unlawful concealment or removal of government records,” an FBI agent wrote on the first page of the affidavit.

Documents previously made public show that federal agents are investigating potential violations of multiple federal laws, including one that governs gathering, transmitting or losing defense information under the Espionage Act. The other statutes address the concealment, mutilation or removal of records and the destruction, alteration or falsification of records in federal investigations.

Trump has long insisted, despite clear evidence to the contrary, that he fully cooperated with government officials. And he has rallied Republicans behind him by painting the search as a politically motivated witch hunt intended to damage his reelection prospects. He repeated that refrain on his social media site Friday, saying he and his representatives had had a close working relationship with the FBI and “GAVE THEM MUCH.”

His attorneys late Friday repeated their request for the appointment of an independent special master to review the documents taken from the home, saying the redacted affidavit doesn’t give Trump sufficient information about why the search took place or what materials were removed.

The affidavit does not provide new details about 11 sets of classified records recovered during the Aug. 8 search at Mar-a-Lago but instead concerns a separate batch of 15 boxes that the National Archives and Records Administration retrieved from the home in January. The Archives sent the matter to the Justice Department, indicating in its referral that a review showed “a lot” of classified materials, the affidavit says.

The affidavit made the case to a judge that a search of Mar-a-Lago was necessary due to the highly sensitive material found in those 15 boxes. Of 184 documents with classification markings, 25 were at the top secret level, the affidavit says. Some had special markings suggesting they included information from highly sensitive human sources or the collection of electronic “signals” authorized by a special intelligence court.

And some of those classified records were mixed with other documents, including newspapers, magazines and miscellaneous print-outs, the affidavit says, citing a letter from the Archives.

Douglas London, a former senior CIA officer and author of “The Recruiter,” said this showed Trump’s lack of respect for controls. “One of the rules of classified is you don’t mix classified and unclassified so there’s no mistakes or accidents,” he said.

The affidavit shows how agents were authorized to search a large swath of Mar-a-Lago, including Trump’s official post-presidential “45 Office,” storage rooms and all other areas in which boxes or documents could be stored. They did not propose searching areas of the property used or rented by Mar-a-Lago members, such as private guest suites.

The FBI submitted the affidavit, or sworn statement, to a judge so it could obtain the warrant to search Trump’s property. Affidavits typically contain vital information about an investigation, with agents spelling out the justification for why they want to search a particular location and why they believe they’re likely to find evidence of a potential crime there.

The documents routinely remain sealed during pending investigations. But in an acknowledgment of the extraordinary public interest in the investigation, U.S. Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart on Thursday ordered the department by Friday to make public a redacted version of the affidavit.

In a separate document unsealed Friday, Justice Department officials said it was necessary to redact some information to “protect the safety and privacy of a significant number of civilian witnesses, in addition to law enforcement personnel, as well as to protect the integrity of the ongoing investigation.”

The second half of the affidavit is almost entirely redacted, making it impossible to discern the scope of the investigation or where it might be headed. It does not reveal which individuals might be under investigation and it does not resolve core questions, such as why top secret documents were taken to Mar-a-Lago after the president’s term ended even though classified information requires special storage.

Trump’s Republican allies in Congress were largely silent Friday as the affidavit emerged, another sign of the GOP’s reluctance to publicly part ways with the former president, whose grip on the party remains strong during the midterm election season. Both parties have demanded more information about the search, with lawmakers seeking briefings from the Justice Department and FBI once Congress returns from summer recess.

Though Trump’s spokesman derided the investigation as “all politics,” the affidavit makes clear the FBI search was hardly the first time federal law enforcement had expressed concerns about the records. The Justice Department’s top counterintelligence official, for instance, visited Mar-a-Lago last spring to assess how the documents were being stored.

The affidavit includes excerpts from a June 8 letter in which a Justice Department official reminded a Trump lawyer that Mar-a-Lago did not include a secure location authorized to hold classified records. The official requested that the room at the estate where the documents had been stored be secured, and that the boxes that were moved from the White House to Mar-a-Lago “be preserved in that room in their current condition until further notice.”

The back-and-forth culminated in the Aug. 8 search in which agents retrieved 11 sets of classified records.

The document unsealed Friday also offer insight into arguments the Trump legal team is expected to make. It includes a letter from Trump lawyer M. Evan Corcoran in which he asserts that a president has “absolute authority” to declassify documents and that “presidential actions involving classified documents are not subject to criminal sanction.”

Mark Zaid, a longtime national security lawyer who has criticized Trump for his handling of classified information, said the letter was “blatantly wrong” to assert Trump could declassify “anything and everything.”

“There are some legal, technical defenses as to certain provisions of the espionage act whether it would apply to the president,” Zaid said. “But some of those provisions make no distinction that would raise a defense.”

In addition, the affidavit includes a footnote from the FBI agent who wrote it observing that one of the laws that may have been violated doesn’t even use the term “classified information” but instead criminalizes the unlawful retention of national defense information.

Additional reporting by the Associated Press.

: newsy.com

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Willam Burns confirmed as CIA director after Ted Cruz lifts block

Without opposition, the Senate confirmed the veteran diplomat William Burns as CIA director on Thursday, giving him control of the nation’s premier spy agency as the US government confronts threats from China, Russia, Iran and elsewhere.

The approval, by voice vote, came soon after Senator Ted Cruz lifted a hold he had placed on the nomination.

Burns is a former ambassador to Russia and Jordan who served at the state department for more than 30 years under Democratic and Republican presidents. He pledged at his confirmation hearing last month that he would deliver “unvarnished” intelligence to the White House. At that hearing, he described China as posing the “biggest geopolitical test” to the US and said that Russia, though a declining world power in some ways, remained a disruptive and potent threat.

This week, intelligence agencies released an assessment showing that Russia and Iran had sought to influence the outcome of the 2020 US presidential election, but that China did not interfere.

Burns was warmly received by Republicans at his Senate hearing, but his confirmation was held up this month by Cruz. The senator said he would release it only when the administration “meets its legal obligation to report and sanction the ships and companies” building a new gas pipeline from Russia that is strongly opposed in the US and eastern Europe.

Like the Trump administration before it, the Biden administration is opposed to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline because it believes it will harm European energy security, particularly for countries in eastern and central Europe like Ukraine and Poland. Last month, the administration added a layer of sanctions to a Russian vessel and the shipowner for their work on the pipeline. Senior Republican lawmakers called the move inadequate and have demanded stronger action.

On Thursday, the secretary of state, Antony Blinken, issued a statement condemning the pipeline as a bad deal “intended to divide Europe and weaken European energy security”.

“The [state] department reiterates its warning that any entity involved in the Nord Stream 2 pipeline risks US sanctions and should immediately abandon work on the pipeline,” Blinken said.

Soon after the statement was issued, Cruz lifted his hold.

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