Intelligence Advisor On TdA Gang Ties To Venezuela: Ignore The Facts And Use Your Gut

The useful lie that alleged Tren de Aragua (TdA) gang members are engaging in coordinated violence inside the United States at the direction of the Venezuelan government has been debunked so often it’s hardly worth rehashing. Oddly enough, the debunking has come from the federal government, rather than investigative journalists or transparency groups or any of the usual suspects.

Intelligence assessments performed by intelligence agencies have found no definitive link between TdA gang members and the Venezuelan government. This is bullshit the Trump administration relies on to prop up its Alien Enemies Act declarations, which are being made for the sole purpose of denying due process to migrants the US government is deporting to literally any country that will take them.

This bullshit relies on further bullshit: the so-called “gang assessment” scorecards are being tallied up by people whose ongoing income relies on them declaring as many migrants to be TdA gang members as possible. Ex-cops working for privately-run detention centers, federal officers seeking to meet nearly impossible demands for daily expulsions, and hateful bigots in positions of power who prefer quantity to quality when it comes to ridding the nation of people who might not vote for them in upcoming elections.

With the lie now exposed multiple times, the ODNI (Office of the Director of National Intelligence) is seeking to reclaim control of the narrative. That has led to a top advisor to DNI Tulsi Gabbard telling the DNI rank-and-file that facts don’t actually matter here. What matters is how the administration feels about the people it wants to deport.

In the email, according to a person familiar with the matter and confirmed by a second source, Gabbard’s acting chief of staff Joe Kent asked for a “rethink” of an intelligence assessment contradicting the administration’s argument that Venezuela is responsible for the U.S. activities of Tren de Aragua gang members.

“I would like to understand how any IC (intelligence community) element arrived at the conclusion that the Venezuelan government doesn’t support and did not orchestrate TDA operating in the U.S.,” Kent said in the email, referring to Tren de Aragua.

Actually, Kent doesn’t want to “understand” how the IC arrived at the conclusion that TdA is not being directed by the Venezuelan government. What he really wants is for the IC to ignore the facts it has gathered and just work backwards from Trump’s AEA-enabling assumptions.

“When Biden announced that the border was open I think we let a quest for … direct links between the Venezuelan government and TDA obstruct basic common sense,” he wrote, adding that the National Intelligence Council needed to start “looking at getting a new assessment written on TDA and their relationship with the government of Venezuela that reflects basic common sense.”

Common sense would, of course, be what has already happened: a reliance on established facts and inferences drawn from a wide swath of intelligence community reporting. Common sense in Kent’s hands means something else: rewriting reports to align with the administration’s preferred fiction. And, of course, Kent none-too-subtly suggests that those adhering to facts will seem to be aligning themselves with ex-president Biden, which isn’t the sort of thing you want to do if you value your IC job.

There’s more to this than just working backwards from a false assumption to generate semi-plausible “intelligence” that supports the president’s mass ejection desires. Kent also wants to make sure those at the top still have the plausible deniability to avoid being trapped by tough questions like “why are you lying?” or “why does this sound like it was rewritten simply because it didn’t agree with DOJ and DHS allegations and assertions?”

In subsequent emails with ODNI officials, Kent also said that Gabbard needs to be “protected” in the rewriting process, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The New York Times late Tuesday reported that in one email, Kent ordered analysts to “do some rewriting” of the assessment and more analytical work so that “this document is not used against” Gabbard or Trump.

Sure, this form of intelligence isn’t the same sort intelligence that separates the smart people from the stupid. But for intelligence (of this sort) to be useful, it has to be factual, rather than merely reflective of current administration vibes. This is a key member of the ODNI telling everyone to not only be stupider, but to throw themselves under the bus if need be to protect Gabbard and Trump from any blowback.

This is undeniably ugly. Sadly, it’s just more of the same from Trump’s enablers — people who clearly prefer to serve an autocrat rather than the nation they’re selling out to keep themselves in the good graces of a moody, would-be tyrant who’s just going to fire them the moment they cease to be useful and/or when he forgets who they are. I’d call it shameful but that would assume a capacity to feel shame. Even if their consciences are empty husks, that doesn’t mean they can’t be held accountable for their actions. Hopefully, this nation will remain intact long enough to see that happen.