‘The position is now burned’: CIA launches formal review as Trump’s workforce cuts may compromise agents and jobs
The CIA is scrambling to fix Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s mess after their workforce purge may have compromised agents and positions.
Musk and Trump recently laid off thousands of federal workers as part of their so-called Department of Government Efficiency. While they claim the cuts are necessary to reduce government waste and the federal deficit, the pair have enacted them haphazardly. They’re cutting some workers without even knowing what they do, as the government was forced to reverse DOGE’s decision to fire hundreds of National Nuclear Security Administration employees and USDA employees working on the government’s response to bird flu. Trump and Musk also permanently laid off numerous FAA workers weeks after a devastating plane crash, as well as thousands of National Park Service workers. Yosemite employees recently hung an upside-down flag on the El Capitan summit to signify their distress at Trump’s actions, which will make national parks significantly less safe.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration is overriding departments’ HR to instigate layoffs. As a result, it has relied on unsafe email communications to try to obtain lists of employees to fire. Unsurprisingly, this resulted in an unclassified email to the White House that may have compromised countless CIA agents.
Did Donald Trump compromise CIA agents?
According to CNN, the CIA has launched a formal review into how an unclassified email from early February may have compromised some of its agents and positions. On February 5, the CIA sent the White House an unprecedented email. To comply with Trump’s executive order to cut the federal workforce, the department was forced to send the White House an unclassified email listing all employees who had worked with the agency for two years or less. The list included only the employees’ first names and last initials. Still, the list could be comprising for those with unusual first names. However, it was the only option for the CIA to comply with Trump’s demands.
Now, the agency has been left trying to determine who and what was all compromised by Trump’s cuts and careless handling of sensitive information. Inside sources allege CIA officials have begun discussing what to do with the potentially compromised agents in the email sent to the White House. They’re probing whether those who were not fired now need to be reassigned or held back entirely from future undercover missions since there’s now a high risk that their identities are vulnerable to foreign government hackers. There’s even fear that entire positions might be compromised.
A former CIA agent explained to CNN that if foreign countries identify CIA agents in embassy roles, they could even work backward to identify past individuals who held the role. They explained, “Your predecessor was in that position, as were the five officers before them. Now, the host country and adversaries know this person going to this position in the embassy is agency. They now assume the predecessors were the same [and] work backwards and find out their collective footprint. The position is now burned.”
That’s not the only potential compromise the CIA faces. With Trump flippantly firing probationary workers, likely without cause, the risk of disgruntled employees leaking classified information has increased. Musk also instated 25-year DOGE workers at the U.S. Treasury, who may have seen confidential CIA payments comprising further agents. After this blatant mishandling of sensitive information and jobs, Musk and Trump have left the CIA to scramble to clean up their mess.
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