Lawfare Daily: Trans and Indispensable in the Trump White House

Boo! You know what, Cozenesh, you know? I have a mobile room. Your whole room belongs to me! [LAUGHTER]

I'm sorry! Not my husband! [SIGHS] No, an Alftraum. With mobile rooms in real life,

“Frank, just a mobile room for 10 Euro a month.”

Inclusive EU roaming. I'll finish my-- [LAUGHTER] Frank. Nine. Frank.

[MUSIC PLAYING] When the new administration was coming in, we had all been worn very directly by the leadership at the National Security Council, when I bossed, by the leadership CIA of great concern

that we would all be targeted. But I was told in particular because of who I am. They worried that I would be targeted as well. It's the law fair podcast. I'm Benjamin Wittis, editor-in-chief of Law Fair

with Law Fair Public Service Fellow Julia Curley. You will not grow a 20-year CIA analyst overnight. You will not grow a multi-tours COS chief of station. Overnight, these are experiences that you earn through years and years of hard work training.

And it will take a generation to repair the damage that's been done and for what reason. We're talking about the National Security Council Purge, the subject of an article in the Atlantic this morning by Julia Curley and a Law Fair article several weeks ago.

Curley was the vice president's briefer for more than a year. She was so indispensable that when the entire national security

council staff was fired on the third day of the administration,

she was asked to stay. And then, 66 days later, the secret came out. So Julia, you have written two stories, one in the Atlantic, which ran this morning, and one in law fair, which ran a couple months ago now.

“And I think two tellings of sort of the same story.”

And it's the story of the NSC Purge. One is the story of the institutional side, which is the law fair article. And the other is the personal side, which is the story that ran today.

We're going to spend a bit of time on both of them. But I want to start with the larger story that both cover, which is the story of how the NSC

was ripped apart in the first three months in some substantial part,

first few days of the second Trump administration. So let's start at 40,000 feet. And then we will zoom in on both the institutional story and the personal story. What happened here?

Right. So there I am. It's inauguration day plus two.

“And I am in the Deputy National Security Adviser's office,”

the third day of the administration, and briefing him in on to some of America's most sensitive intelligence programs. And I exit from the meeting and my assistant intercepts me, mid-West exec Avenue, saying, everyone's fired except for you.

And that's when it all fell apart. So going into the administration, there had been these rumors floating along online that there would be this purge of the detailies who had been assigned to the White House from departments

and agencies who really make up the core of the National Security Council who had served for one or two years. These are people, usually at least 10 years in the business, usually 20, in some cases at the GS15 level or above. I mean, these are our senior season people.

And when this happened and the wiring was ripped out of the National Security Council, it then fell to me and a few other people to basically hold it all together with bailing wire and duct tape and trying to ensure that this new administration, which was at that point,

just barely arriving, had what it needed to govern the country in terms of access

to America's most important secrets

and be able to contact the intelligence community. God help us if there was a crisis, which thank God, there was not other than the crisis being induced by the new administration. And so the next few weeks were just a scramble

to try to put things back together again.

it's really a witness to that, but it's also, I'm documenting the damage that was done to the National Security as a result of those opening days and these decisions that were made. - Yeah, so let's go back to the line everyone's fired

except for you. How literal was that?

“The Anasy had what about 200 people working for it?”

- Yeah, I think it was less than that. So most of the Anasy are made up of these detailees from departments and agencies. So these are career civil servants. So when they're used fired because they were,

it was some of the terminology, but they were sent back to their home agencies. So they all had jobs waiting for them. Unfortunately, many of them have faced severe career setbacks as a result of this, this sense that they somehow

been tainted by being fired by the White House or Leco. And career consequences have followed. I mean, it certainly did in my case.

But what was left was basically just a rump

anasy of a few people trying to put things together and read in the new team as they slowly trickled in over the period of weeks. Most of the Anasy are these career detailees. There is a political layer at the top.

And these are the people chosen by the administration. And those were the first ones to arrive in the new Trump administration. And those in the Biden administration had departed the week before the new administration came in.

“And so that's why we civil service directors, generally,”

in the Anasy, it stayed behind to help with the continuity of government, which is the same process that's happened through every change of administrations from the Obama administration to the first Trump administration to the Biden administration.

Back to the Eisenhower administration. Really? So the idea that you would just come in and with no regard to the management of the interagency of the most complex entity on Earth, the U.S. government, was just astonishing.

And it was never explained why, unless you just read

what was out there on Twitter. And unfortunately, it would happen again, as I'm sure we'll get to. Right, so of something less than 200 people, how many were not fired that third day?

Of the detailies, I think it was less than 10, but I don't know for sure. About 160 career civil servants were sent packing and asked to get off the compound with about 15 minutes warning.

And why the accept you?

“What was, I mean, I think you're remarkable.”

And we've done karaoke together. And that's once you've done that. But what was it about Julia Curley that caused the accept you part of the everyone's fired accept you? I don't know.

To be honest with you, what I know is that I had been there when the senior team arrived. I literally was in the West Wing ready to brief in the new national security advisor just hours after Donald

Trump had taken the oath. And so I was probably the first person

that met them, I immediately tried to make myself useful and ensure that they got everything they needed before anyone had any ideas of firing me or had the chance to. And so I just approached the job with the same approach that I had at every turn.

Let me accuse you here of false modesty and propose an answer to my own question and see if you resist it. So you were the senior director for intelligence. You're an expert on all kinds of spooky things

that you probably couldn't talk about, if I mentioned them. But let's start with you know where all the covert actions are going on, right? And you were actually indispensable. Is that unduly immodest of me on your behalf to say?

Well, in a normal administration, that would be the case. But there were many people for whom that was also the case. And the effect of that gutting of the NSE left many programs and important policy initiatives left effectively ungoverned or unmonitored for days to weeks

until they were able to be replaced. I was known to many of the people coming back in because I had in the first term served in the Trump White House for almost two years and I had been the PDB briefer to Mike Pence and had gotten to know many of the people there

and they knew that I was a nonpartisan civil servant

as I would any administration coming in. And so immediately getting to work, showing being as helpful as I could, hopefully that earned some trust, but obviously it didn't last. Yeah, it didn't last.

“Spoiler alert, it lasted for 70 days or something, right?”

All right, we've dropped a few hints here. Let's lay the matter there. This is a story of how you were indispensable enough to be one of the very small number of people who weren't fired until it became public who you are.

And certain things you had been Mike Pence's briefer, you had been a senior director for intelligence and the previous administration and you were a 20-year CIA veteran. Just getting them? - Yeah. - Yeah. - Who is I can say it even if you want, you know,

quite legendary among, you know, intel policy people. And you are also trans. Spoiler alert. (laughs) Spoiler alert and so this is a story at some level about how somebody is indispensable.

Even when everybody knows she's trans as long as it's not public.

- Right, I'll just, I'll just back up a second.

So I had come out as transgender in 2013. I became the first CIA officer to transition genders and stay and keep working. There had been previous officer who had tried, but it basically had been driven out in a hostile workplace

and management had not supported them this many years before. But when I successfully bridged that divide and kept working at CIA and kept rising and went on to be Mike Pence's PDB briefer and lived out this idea that a person could rise as far

as their talents could take them.

“It was never a secret, but it also wasn't my day job.”

So people generally didn't talk about it. We are CIA officers after all. We can keep a few secrets every once in a while, I guess. But it wasn't really a secret. And when the new administration was coming in,

we had all been warned very directly by the leadership at the National Security Council by my boss, by the leadership CIA of great concern that we would all be targeted. But I was told in particular because of who I am.

They worried that I would be targeted as well. And I was insistent that we are nonpartisan civil servants. I had been Mike Pence's PDB briefer. So, you know, dammit, I'm gonna stay and I'm gonna do my part for the peaceful transfer of power.

And I had briefed Donald Trump in the first term.

And so I really had believed that we'd gotten there as difficult as it had been. I really believed that it was possible for me to continue to serve. And it was, despite the fact that I'm trans,

despite the fact that I had after the executive orders, go across the street to use the bathroom, I just kept going until unfortunately, it became public. And one day, a 69 days in, I got a call from my boss saying,

I'm sorry, I don't know why, I don't have a good answer for you, but your White House tour is over. And then my phone blows up with all of my friends forwarding the tweet at once,

saying that a trans Biden hold over is hidden in the intelligence directorate and hates president Trump. And, you know, that was the end. The weirdest thing though, is at the end of the phone call of telling me

that my tour was over, they asked me to come back in on Monday. Because you're fired, but not quite yet, because we still need you for some things. We still need you, yeah.

So I did. And I came in and we finished off a very important budget item and then we turned over two years of a portfolio that I'd managed from the White House.

And it was that third night, that night that, you know,

a list of names lands on the president's desk, a right-wing influencer gets an appointment with the president and there's a purge of mostly rock rib conservative Republicans that night. And that was my last day before I went back to CIA.

All right, so there's a lot here and we've now sketched out sort of both the institutional story and the personal story. Let's talk about the personal story first because it's less known, actually.

“I think a lot of people who were listening to this”

are gonna be shocked by the Mike Pence part of it that Mike Pence had a transberifer over a long period of time.

How did that go? It went really well, happy to say. So I had been serving as a PDB briefer. And the PDB for those who don't know is the presidential daily brief. So the most senior officials are entitled to daily briefings

that are, that this group of CIA officers who are part of the briefer core do. And it's a very rarefied set of positions that tend to get attached to individual over sometimes long periods of time.

- Yeah, I mean, it's the kind of assignment that every young analyst is sort of, you know, you think about some day I'm gonna be on Air Force One with the president and I ended up doing exactly that and getting to brief President Trump in the first term.

And so one day I had been previously assigned to being the PDB briefer for the Deputy National Security Advisor in the Trump administration. And my boss walks in and says Julia,

“what would you think about briefing the vice president?”

And my reaction was this vice president. And his reputation is politics. None of that was unknown to me. And I thought about it and I just decided then and there that this was just part of the package was,

you know, when in the CIA I grew up with, we leave our politics at the door. And there I was on the, you know, at his house, the Naval Observatory on the driveway and up walks Mike Pence.

And we went from there and when my initial tour was up, he asked me to extend. I found him to be an excellent PDB customer. - What makes a good PDB customer? - Yeah, so they're well informed.

They ask good questions. They really pay close attention to the briefing but more than that they use it and they use the intelligence community

“in the way it's designed as this iterative process.”

So I would brief him on items in the book as we would call it every day in additional items that I customized based on his interests and travel in policy that was coming up and he would task me with getting additional information

for him and then I would scurry back up to Langley to do that and then Rinse and a repeat of five or six days a week when he was in Washington and then on the road. And it was, you know, he, in my estimation was serving as a serious policymaker

in an administration that was not always filled with them.

And so it was a privilege to get to do that and to be that close in the White House to a senior policymaker, helping them advise the president to make better decisions, which is the thing that all of us who aspire to be CIA

analysts really would live up to.

“So I was living now, this very clear dream I'd had”

because I was a kid and I ended up doing it for over a year and I kept coming back when after my tenure was over because they have you fill in for the other briefers and it was a real privilege and many people have asked about the politics of it and I understand where they're coming from

but I would do it again and it's just as part of who I am and who our organization had been at least until now in the administration. And let's talk about this from Pence's point of view here, which I'm going to ask you to imagine for a minute.

I assume he always treated you reasonably

and the gender politics never got in the way. - Well, he didn't come up in the course of our PDB for anything so it wasn't really a topic. No, but he never displayed any discomfort with the fact that you were trans or known.

- And it's not like it's not a matter that he doesn't have publicly stated views of. - I had realized that and he knew I was married to a woman and I was not hiding this from anyone. I had for many years at that point

been one of the most visible openly trans people in the intelligence community. I knew that his staff knew, I knew that his chief of staff was certainly aware and it just didn't matter.

So he never made it an issue.

There were sometimes when he propped open the door to make sure that he wasn't seen along with a woman. - But that's a-- - Pence rule. - All I can do is actually rule that. - I'm not going to do what's in the house.

- Well, as I say in the piece there's been no person

(laughing)

“- You know, it really filled me with confidence”

in the term and my service to him that this creed this promise that it followed me from when I was a kid and this idea that I needed to grow up and go into public service was really deep in my family.

And the idea of service before politics, politics before self, if you work hard, you don't complain the country will take care of you. Is really what I believed.

- And you got through the first Trump administration

believing that. - I did, I did, in fact it reinforced that idea. So at the end, I recounted in the piece, one of the things that happened was in the last week after January 6th, the vice president called

all of his former briefers to his office in the West Wing. And we all stood around talking about what the experience had meant to us,

“the chance to serve our country in the White House”

as a half to January 6th. - Yeah, it was about a week afterwards. And when it came to me, I was breaking up, I cried easily and this was another one of those occasions. And I said, you know, sir, what you did last week,

I was never more proud to have worked for you.

And to me, watching him certify the election of his opponent and follow the law, follow the, what was expected of us in spite of all political incentive to do otherwise, that was the deal. And it reflected back to me this idea of nonpartisan service

when it counts the most. And I appreciated that. And I felt at the end of that, that we'd made it, you know, if a trans woman can brief Mike Pence and the world doesn't explode, we were there.

So, for a year, not yet more or less, do it again, right, and follow him around the world and various, to various interesting places. I really thought that, you know, that whole thing about the long arc and of history and I really thought

that we had made it. And so, when we get to the new term and I had been in the Biden White House at that point for 20 months or so and it was my turn to be there for a transition of power,

not to the party or a politics that I agree with, but that doesn't matter, we leave that at the turn style. And so, I felt like it was my duty to stay in the same way. And my fear is that that was broken. - Okay, so we're gonna come to that.

But for you, there are some tangible signs along the 70s, 69 days that you're there, that the deal with the Mike Pence's of the world wasn't holding anymore.

“The first is that you have to go across the street”

to a Starbucks to use the bathroom. Talk a little bit about the environment that's going on in the second term, Trump White House, you know, quite apart from the substance of, yeah, the zaster that's happening

around you, talk a little bit about the environment for you personally as you are so indispensable that you're one of the nine people that they don't let, they don't get rid of on day three.

- You know, it was the most amazing juxtaposition

of events, you know, on one hand, I'm in the office with Mike Waltz, the National Security Advisor, with his deputy several times a week. And I'm at the center of several things that we were doing to try to launch the new administration

and do policy reviews, ensure that the right information is coming in from the intelligence communities, getting PDB customers up and running, so they could get their information. And it was just a full sense of being in the center

of a White House in a way that I hadn't experienced before when we were fully staffed out. And everyone was very appreciative of that. I did not get a sense from any of my colleagues that the new people coming in, that they harbored any animus

to me as a Biden administration holdover or as a trans person that there were many former Penn staffers that came in who all knew I was trans. And I felt like the work was exactly what I was there to do at the same time, I couldn't go to the bathroom on the compound.

I was timing policy meetings around to have enough time to get across the street to the Starbucks or the pot-bellied sandwich place. I mapped them all out, like it was some sort of an operation like every day, multiple times a day.

And so it was this crazy combination of those things

“and then there was a series of decisions”

by the administration to systematically, eventually, make it really impossible for me to continue as a CIA officer. Eventually, there was the stripping of my health care coverage of things like estrogen that keeps me healthy. There was the flipping of my passport from,

I had a diplomatic passport that reflects my gender identity and how I appear in the world. And we got the executive order that said that that would be taken away. And I would have to, in the future, travel as a CIA officer

with mail on my passport. And there was the stripping of anti-discrimination protections. There was the new attempt by the administration

to ban trans people from the military.

It was just one thing after another that was happening at the same time where I'm somehow indispensable in a White House, but not welcome in the restroom. So hard to describe that.

“And all of this is, as you are also, the one who is now”

begging people who have just been fired to come back because they are actually indispensable as well. So talk about, now we're back in this, the institutional story. All of this is happening to you

against the background of the destruction of this institution, even as they're trying to set up an administration that can do national security policy. So what is your day like between the covert missions to the Pat Belli sandwiches and the Starbucks?

What are these meetings that you're running? - Well, we were trying to stand up a policy process as you would for any administration.

I'd been very familiar with how it had worked in the first term

and it was different from the Biden administration, but it was not of a type different. It was just different size and scale and focus.

“The same coordination process, which is undergirded”

the US Foreign Policy in 1947, you have departments and agencies that have different equities and different focus and they need to be coordinated so that the US government acts as one body. And that's what the NSE is, therefore.

So with the destruction of the NSE and just a handful of us left, we were desperately trying to stand up a new coordinating body that to make sure that it reflected the new policies of the United States.

So it was chaos and then there were these other things thrown into the mix where we're trying to figure out what to do about the president's tweeted desires for invading Greenland and other things and trying to figure out what is real and what is not.

So it was a very difficult period, but we did our best and it was, I think, limping a long until that faithful day in April when the next purge came. And that is really when the sort of death blow

to the NSE as a serious policy coordination body was delivered. And I don't think it's ever recovered since then. - Boo! - No, I'm not a fan of your mobile coverage.

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KickBass and the Fischwas. [speaking in foreign language] So, let's come back to day 69

tweeted about you, didn't seem to know your name, which did not become public at the time, but talk us through the sequence of events. So, I'm at a rib joint in Roanoke, Virginia, where all such things happen with my family,

and I get a phone call, and it's my boss of, on a weekend, saying, "I'm sorry your tours over, "I don't know why, and then the tweets start rolling in." But they asked me to come in on Monday, and I did, and worked through those days.

“And the key thing, and I've reflected on a lot,”

is they didn't care that I was trans. It didn't matter at all. It mattered so little they asked me to stay, when they had every opportunity for me to just fade away, and not being a problem.

But when it became public, it obviously became a political problem for someone, despite my service, the previous Republican vice president, none of it mattered once it became public. Do you think that would have been different

if it had happened in a, imagine that the same person had issued the same tweet, only I've learned that a trans person is briefing the vice president.

Do you think that Mike Pence's and first term Trump's

attitude would have been different?

“Was this a function of the change in administration?”

Over time, or was it a function of the fact that the hypocrisy really is pervasive, and they can handle a trans woman in a senior policy making or briefing role, they just can't handle having to answer for it in public?

I think that's probably right. I don't know how they would have responded in the first term. I mean, what one thing that's a little bit funny is that once I started briefing the vice president, my wife and I decided that we're going to put

my new bosses identity in the closet. You know, so we had to stick Mike Pence in the closet because we're afraid that someone might call her a reporter. And I did, you know, when none of us wanted that, and I just wanted to serve and for it not to become a political issue

and thank God, it did not. I don't know, and I don't know why such hatred

enveloped the administration into the second term.

What I know, and this was from, when I was serving at the Biden White House toward the end of the campaign, it became very clear to me.

“And I vividly remember standing in the sit room,”

watching the TV's, one of the many, and watching the administration just ripping into the very idea of a trans person existing. And just the animus dripping toward this tiny minority. There's just, we're really a tiny group of people.

And watching hundreds of millions of dollars be poured into the political campaign to demonize us as a people. And what struck me in that moment was how familiar it was from a career watching foreign governments do precisely this thing. I'd written PDB's about it on Russia, on Iran,

how they take a tiny minority, make them the enemy within. And then it becomes the cover for a broader extremist agenda that would otherwise not find support. And so something happened, someone decided that this would be a good way to stir up votes.

And unfortunately, it's caught some really, some of my best friends who in the military who were just thrown out for the crime of being themselves. So this is not the first piece you have written for the Atlantic. There are two others, is that right?

Yep. And there's a reason why you wanted to write this piece there. And I want you to tell us about the other two pieces and why this story really had to go there. So I had transitioned in 2013. And I had lived this amazing life.

I'd always dreamed of being a CIA officer.

And I'd always been convinced that if I came out-- if I accepted the fact that I was trans-- and I came out that it would destroy that dream. When I was a kid, trans people were jokes.

That's all they'd let us be. And so I knew that I couldn't possibly be one of those people. And so when the first Trump administration was elected,

“I felt like it was important to make sure that people knew”

that people like me are able to serve and have full and fulfilling life. And at that point in my career, I hadn't been a briefer or worked in the White House. But I've gotten to do amazing things before and after I had transitioned. And I wanted to make sure that young Americans

thinking about a career in the intelligence community would give CIA a chance. And I closed that essay in a pseudonym. So I could continue serving as a CIA officer. With the phrase, young American should know that-- Just to be clear, you did that under a pseudonym

to protect your CIA identity, not because you were afraid of writing something because you were trans. No. I mean, I had transitioned in plain sight of hundreds of people in 2013. At least in my world, it was hardly a secret at that point.

And the people that had helped me get through those really awfully years where I didn't think I would make it, who had been sort of elders who had been come before or trans people. They made me promise that once I transitioned, I would not just disappear.

It used to be the case that trans people were told

“that the best thing for you and for everybody is for you to leave town.”

And for you to pretend like your dad and never talk to your family or friends again.

It'll be easier for everybody. And that was horrible. And so what they wanted to make sure was that there would be people around for the next person that needed somebody after me. So this was part of my paying it back and paying it forward was sending out this signal

that you could serve your country and you could be trans. And those were not incompatible. And I was very proud of CIA for that. That we showed, we were one of the most progressive in terms of diversity and inclusion because it was a vital intelligence requirement

that we have Americans of all kinds and stripes because we had a global mission

“and needed to tap the full potential of the American population.”

And some of them happened to be trans. And so I wanted to use my story and I worked together with CIA. This was all cleared. I wrote under pseudonym and that was it. And then promptly put Jenny Hall.

My gnome diploma into a drawer and assumed I would never talk publicly ever again

because I was going to serve as a CIA officer for the rest of my career. And that was the whole plan. And unfortunately, so to reach to the present and to close this chapter in the Atlantic was very meaningful to me because there was a bargain. There was a deal that reflected the American creed that we can all rise as far as our talents take us.

And I was an embodiment of that. I was used as a recruiting tool for CIA willingly because I was proud of my service. There were officers that joined CIA because of that article. They told me some of them didn't even know I was the author. I know that some of those officers who joined because of that article were fired.

Last year, while I was working in the White House that fired them. And so I had to close this chapter. And I appreciated that the Atlantic gave me a chance to write an intername and to tell the rest of my story. Which happened to include working for Mike Pence in the middle and the second Trump White House. And to show that the bargain has been broken.

And then I could not in good conscious advice LGBT Americans to come work at the CIA. Which for a person that went to college campuses to tell them that they could serve their country as heartbreaking. But it is intolerable to me that those articles written not I mean, Susan and but still by me, he were floating around out there on the internet. And I had to correct the record.

So let's talk about what happened to you after April of 2025.

Everybody's fired except you, you're too essential to leave.

And then, oh my god, we're shocked. Shocked to discover there's a trans one here.

There's gambling going on here. Yeah, but not on Monday because we need. No, because we need you until Wednesday. Yeah. Until Wednesday. Yeah. So on Thursday, we're shocked. Shocked. Go back to CIA.

“You go back to CIA. And what happens? Is it still a place that you can have a career?”

No. No, my my ability to keep serving was was done. I mean, for one thing, I was radioactive. Having just been fired by the White House. And I knew that just watching what was happening at other agencies and and the way I was treated that if it got out that that I was trans or that I've been targeted individually, that mean it any next briefing for any official in the administration could be my last. I couldn't use the bathroom to walk across the building to the one single stall.

And it was humiliating to be honest, after the first Trump administration,

they had sent out a call for pictures to be provided to the museum. CIA as a museum.

“It's one of the best museums that you people out there, unfortunately, were never good to see.”

And they they asked all the PDB briefers to submit our pictures from our time at the White House. And so I did thinking it would be a little tiny one in the corner. No, they blew it up into a giant larger than life photo of me with the vice president's PDB book on Air Force One. And, you know, me doing the work. And every day, I would go from my office, down the elevator, get out on the museum. I would look up. I would see my own picture in the museum

that at one point the CIA had been proud of. And below it is a bathroom I'm no longer allowed to use. And I would do that for five, five or six times a day over and over again.

“And I just couldn't keep doing that. And I couldn't, I couldn't use my passport anymore.”

I couldn't be the officer that I wanted to be. And then the final straw was for pride every here. I would send out an email to my colleagues coming out again, which was my annual filmant of my promise to not disappear. And it would simply say, you know, you are not alone. Happy pride. And after having been fired by the White House, by someone within the building, someone decided to get rid of me by sending my name to someone on Twitter. I knew that if I

sent that email, someone somebody would do that. And so I canceled it and I didn't send it for the first

time in 12 years. And I knew that basically to survive, I would have to, to lie. I'd have to pretend that I wasn't trans and hide again. And I just couldn't do that. So I had to figure out a way of quitting. And thank God, there's this crazy organization called Laugh Fair. What happened to that? What happened to that later? Okay. Yeah, we're going to come to that at the end. All right, but I'm going to spoil the ending. Yeah, no, we're going to end on a happy note.

But I want to dwell on the year between when you left the White House and when you left the agent pay. I spent a lot of time looking for work. And I quickly discovered this dynamic in DC right now, which is this conspiracy of silence, where whether they are think tanks or private industry, if you're so fortunate to get a position, because of course the work force has been flooded with thousands of people with a similar background. The, the exchange is silence

because everybody does business with the government and people's clearances can be yanked with a phone call. And the vindictiveness of the administration against past critics is without precedent. And, and so I knew that if I had, if I had eventually gone that direction and eventually got lucky enough to land somewhere, it would have meant silence. And the thing I could not abide, you know, as as hard as it is to have lost my calling, to lose my calling and then have

the story, have my history erased effectively, because I couldn't tell anyone about it. That was intolerable. And I thought about the people who have also been purged

and things like that. And then I thought about the fact that like, I will not allow another

“generation of trans kids to grow up like I did with thinking that there's no future for you.”

And I'll be damned if they do. And, and I want them to know that someone like them briefed multiple presidents and worked in the White House. And it was fine. And to make sure, by entering it on the record as I've done now, that that's out there, it means it means a lot to me that that they and their parents will now. And so it's been a real privilege since I've been out to get to right and to document things for which I was a witness in the White House and the

institutional destruction of some of the most important entities. And I don't get into this.

But just the the purge of individuals who were found to be the wrong kind of American is the same purge as the ones who said, we don't want analysts who will not tell the president what he wants to hear are this is the same purge as the one that targeted officers for having told the truth about, you know, the intervention in our election by the Russians in 2016 in 2020. Like this is the same playbook. And it needs to be documented, understood, and fought

“against. And that's what I think we're doing here. How many people has the purge as you define it”

affected? And let me let me let me be precise in an analyst kind of way about how I'm defining terms here. People who've had their careers ended or severely disrupted because they are either the wrong kind of Americans because they are they told the truth about something that is unpopular, they're simply branded with the previous administration and they may have done nothing, not anything courageous, not anything cowardly. They just, you know, have

a tent associated with them of some sort or another or otherwise because they're wrapped up in some vindictive thing that the administration is pursuing of end data against them. What's the

“universe of people that you're aware of? It ranges from some of the most admired officers”

in in our generation who were deeply admired and respected for the work they were doing and then to have them fired for living up to the values that the organization teaches. It's young officers was a devastating blow to reality to morale within. But there are also people at lower ranks who are perched because they were ccd on the email. It was that dumb and I can't imagine what they feel like having lost their careers for the dumbest of reasons that saw these

these attacks on the institution saw that that no one stood up for them and decided to vote with their feet and the generation of talent has left cia and it is the generation that joined after

9/11. It seems incredible to me that at a time in which we're in a war with Iran we would be

encouraging or purging the very group of people at about that 20 to 25 year mark who fought the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and learned terribly hard lessons along the way and you will not grow a 20 year cia analyst overnight you will not grow a multi-tour COS chief of station overnight these are experiences that you earn through years and years of hard work training and it will take a generation to repair the damage that's been done and for and for what reason the misguided thought

that there's some deep state enemy within. As you say most of these people who get purged they find themselves in a situation in which you know if you're going to be employed it's going to be because you shut up the incentive structure is not to come forward and speak. How many of these people have been are okay and how many of them are you know either unemployed or grossly under-employed and kind of staying quiet because they they are still hopeful that there are

in many cases they can't because of all the dynamics that that we're talking about but I've known

“I've known many who spent many months unemployed despite being having you know everybody”

look at their resumes that these are impeccable people just true gems that have really an amazing experience. I mean when you go to a boardroom these are people that have briefed presidents of the United States and have directed the the production of the president's daily

brief and other you know critical intelligence assessments any company would would be lucky to have

them. So it's not when you say the purged it didn't just destroy the NSA which he did. It also created a career-ending asteroid event for a whole set of species of intelligence officers. Yeah and set a direction for the rest to follow where if they could I mean the dynamic was if they

“can go after this person who is one of the most respected people in the intelligence community”

what would what chance do I have and so that that very much turned my cohort looking toward the exit and for for and for what reason I mean and so there are other there are other groups of people

that we could talk about whether it's the probationary officers who were like oh uh after some

of their names were spilled on the internet and then they're just just bloodletting it places like the DNI and other intelligence agencies that have taken huge hits in terms of their numbers. This is the seed corn. This is the this is the group of officers that would grow into the 20-year person 18 years from now and there will be a demographic gap in our intelligence core for decades at this point and unless we figure out some way of repairing the damage and

bringing people back which were not very good at. So finish the story of what happened to you. You spent a year being the untouchable at the agency and decided you had to quit and I assumed that everything tank was knocking at your door and that all the um everybody that you've briefed over the years was you know lining up corporate board positions for you. I assume that the you know that there was no consulting company and that wasn't tripping over themselves to make

you offers for you know you'd be available for an hour or a week and will throw huge amounts of money at you right? Isn't that what usually happens? Uh no Benjamin what is your jet you just uh are you counting? That was not the case. If you knew who I was you knew I was I was purged if you didn't why would you hire me but but also I also did not want to accept the you know the muzzle that that would come with working for certain types of companies who dominate the

Washington area where I live and wanted to be able to write and and work in my profession which is being a defense analyst or and write publicly about what I had seen and the damage being done to our institutions and that that unfortunately that combination of things would make me unemployable in most places and so there had been this this scrappy publication I think I've told this story before while I was serving as Mike Pence's P.B. Briefer once a week my guilty pleasure was listening

into this show called rational security which which I would joke was the the deep state therapy hour that I the guilty pleasure was it was great I mean I just like oh you know like smart conversation about the things that I work on and and the news of the day and it

“by funny people and it was great and so that's how Laugh Fair originally came on my my radar”

and I in looking around was heard about the public service fellowship which I am very very proud and grateful to have gotten to do which which exists exactly for people like me

amazing how that how that works out that there could be a supply of officers

demand. So it's sadly and it's been a wonderful it's been a wonderful platform I I've been I've been led to believe that that even though I will not be a Laugh Fair public service fellow forever might might like the federal ban shoots a lifetime commitment to what we have our claws into

me who would desperately want something like that in in response to the pieces I published

“that I'm I think I'm now up to 14 people who have said the combination of thank you for speaking”

out I wish I could but mortgages kids college etc etc they'll fire me blah blah blah blah thank you keep doing what you're doing there is this dynamic where everyone knows what's going on in in our community it's not news anything I'm I'm saying here but no one can say anything about it which is this this frankly autocratic dynamic that that I would used to read about Eastern Europe. Yeah so let me let me put some flash on those bones how many intelligence community officers are

there senior to you in the either at CIA or at the White House who since the beginning of the

second Trump administration have spoken publicly. As far as I'm aware of people that served in any

kind of policy or any senior policy capacity in the second Trump administration as far as I know I'm the only one who has spoken publicly in this way. Yeah so just to be clear how are you defining the it's it's basically anybody in the second Trump White House in the White House itself yeah I mean in the national security space or right I mean obviously Laugh Fair has had a succession of really accomplished public service fellows from different departments in agencies I like to joke

I'm the the CIA Mike Fineberg. So this is limited to the White House itself just to the White

“House itself just that's how just stunningly small this this universe is and you know there's a group”

but there's a larger group of people who are former who have been out of the intelligence world for longer who are doing important work in this space and I don't want to under value what they're doing I'm working with with with with many of them but of those recently leaving who know well what is happening and the damage being done to our institutions that we all served there's precious few that I'm aware of who are speaking out I know a handful of them but most people are scared

I'm scared I'm I'm I wrote in the article that that I I assume the White House and it's online mob will come for me I'm not fearless I just cannot be silent about what is happening and I'm just

“glad I found one of the few places that lets you do that and I wish more institutions in the”

DC area which show some courage and provide a life raft and and be willing to to support this kind

of analysis and speech because it's it's critical that the country knows what's happening

because they're paying for it we're gonna leave it there Julia curly thank you for your years and years of service in a million different capacities including the ones we've talked about today and the ones we haven't talked about today and including the current one of being willing to talk about the purge as somebody who participated in the victim side of it and experienced it and including the personal side of it that is stuff that you really never signed up

to be as you put it earlier in this conversation your day job it's an honor to work with you and the public service fellowship has no higher purpose than to facilitate communications of the type that you are engaged with with the public thank you the law fair podcast is produced by the law fair institute you can get ad free versions of this and other law fair podcasts by becoming a material supporter of law fair at our website

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always thanks for listening