The agency says it is correcting the record after determining multiple intelligence products fell short of impartial standards, amid broader scrutiny of past federal actions involving parents, Catholics, and the Trump-Russia probe.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom
The Central Intelligence Agency announced Friday that it is retracting or revising 19 intelligence reports produced between 2015 and 2023, a move agency leadership described as a corrective action to reinforce analytic objectivity.
The decision follows a review of past intelligence products and was detailed in a Just the News report. According to the agency, the reports spanned the Obama administration, President Donald Trump’s first term, and the Biden administration.
CIA Director John Ratcliffe said the products did not meet the agency’s standards. “The intelligence products we released to the American people today — produced before my tenure as DCIA — fall short of the high standards of impartiality that CIA must uphold and do not reflect the expertise for which our analysts are renowned,” Ratcliffe said Friday in a statement available here. “There is absolutely no room for bias in our work and when we identify instances where analytic rigor has been compromised, we have a responsibility to correct the record.”
A senior CIA official told Just the News, in a separate report, “There is absolutely no room for bias in any kind of the CIA’s work. So when we find instances where our tradecraft did not reach that high bar of impartiality, we must correct the record. And that’s why we’re taking steps to reinforce analytic integrity by ordering the public release, substantive revision or retraction of these products that do not meet CIA’s tradecraft standards.”
Of the 19 reports, 17 were permanently deleted and two were revised and reissued, the official said.
One retracted product from October 2021, titled “Women Advancing White Racially and Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremist Radicalization and Recruitment,” was produced under the CIA’s Counterterrorism Mission Center and is available here. That assessment cited a 2021 article from “An Injustice!” hosted on Medium, available here.
Another rescinded product from July 2020, part of the CIA’s World Intelligence Review (WIRe), was titled “Worldwide: Pandemic-Related Contraceptive Shortfalls Threaten Economic Development” and is available here. The report cited material from the International Planned Parenthood Federation here and the Guttmacher Institute here.
A January 2015 intelligence assessment titled “Middle East-North Africa: LGBT Activists Under Pressure” was also retracted. The report is available here and cited a Daily Beast article here.
The senior CIA official said Friday that the flawed analyses were “not representative of CIA analysis today.”
The agency’s action comes amid renewed attention to other federal actions during the Obama and Biden years.
In October 2021, then-Attorney General Merrick Garland issued a school boards memorandum, available here, citing a “disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence” against school officials. The memo directed the DOJ to “discourage these threats, identify them when they occur, and prosecute them when appropriate.”
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan later released whistleblower evidence indicating FBI counterterrorism assets were used in connection with complaints involving parents at school board meetings.
Attorney General Pam Bondi rescinded Garland’s directive in February last year, writing in a memo available here that “for the avoidance of doubt, former Attorney General Garland’s October 4, 2021, Memorandum is hereby rescinded.” Her confirmation by the Senate is detailed here.
The original DOJ memo followed a National School Boards Association letter to President Joe Biden, available here, which argued that certain actions “could be the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism.” Internal NSBA emails released by Parents Defending Education are available here. The association later disavowed the letter in a statement available here.
Similarly, a January 2023 FBI intelligence product from the Richmond field office addressing “radical-traditionalist Catholic” ideology was later withdrawn. The document is archived here. It cited material from the Southern Poverty Law Center here, The Atlantic here, and Salon articles here and here.
DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz wrote in 2024, in a letter available here, that the FBI’s Inspection Division found no malicious intent but identified failures in analytic tradecraft standards.
Sen. Chuck Grassley later released records detailed here, asserting broader distribution of the memo than initially disclosed. Grassley also sent a letter to FBI Director Kash Patel in June 2025, available here.
The CIA’s retraction follows a separate “lessons learned” review published last July, available here, examining the 2016 Intelligence Community Assessment on Russian election interference. The declassified eight-page review is available here.
The review concluded that including British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s dossier in the 2017 assessment “ran counter to fundamental tradecraft principles and ultimately undermined the credibility of a key judgment.” The CIA document states here that senior CIA managers opposed including the dossier.
Ratcliffe said at the time in a post on X, available here, that President Donald Trump “has trusted me with helping to end weaponization of U.S. intelligence” and that the 2016 assessment was conducted through “an atypical & corrupt process.”
Just the News further reported here that federal prosecutors investigating the alleged weaponization of intelligence have sought evidence from the Senate regarding former CIA Director John Brennan.
The CIA said its recent retractions are intended to ensure that intelligence products meet established standards of impartiality and analytic rigor.
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