The CIA said Friday it will retract or revise 19 intelligence assessments from the past decade, including a disputed Biden-era paper on ‘white’ extremism.
Director John Ratcliffe ordered the retraction or substantive revision after reviews found the products did not meet analytic tradecraft standards and showed political influence.
An independent President’s Intelligence Advisory Board review and an internal CIA review led by Deputy Director Michael Ellis evaluated hundreds of finished analyses.
Of the 19 products flagged, 17 were fully removed from agency databases or use, and two were substantially revised and rereleased.
The agency also released redacted versions of three exemplar reports to illustrate the identified problems.
“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.
“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.
Notable examples
One of the retracted reports, dated October 6, 2021, was titled “Women Advancing White Racially and Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremist Radicalization and Recruitment.”
It examined what it called an emerging role for women in transnational groups linked to ‘white racially and ethnically motivated violent extremism.’
The document described these groups as acting on a belief that an idealized white European identity is threatened by multiculturalism and globalization.
It assessed that female members were becoming key players by amplifying narratives, radicalizing and recruiting others, and providing logistical support.
Critics said the assessment blurred domestic cultural debates by connecting traditional gender roles to radicalization even though the report focused on overseas networks and relied on limited open-source information.
Another retracted product, dated July 8, 2020, warned that the COVID-19 pandemic was limiting contraceptive access in the developing world and could undermine efforts to address population pressures that hinder economic development.
That analysis linked supply chain disruptions and restricted medical services to reduced birth control availability and framed those trends as threats to long-term stability in vulnerable regions.
A third example, produced in January 2015, examined pressures on LGBT activists in the Middle East and North Africa and suggested those government stances were driven by conservative public opinion and Islamist political competition.
That report was cited as potentially reflecting policy advocacy rather than a strictly neutral foreign intelligence assessment.
These actions come as Director Ratcliffe, appointed late in 2024, has pushed to restore analytic rigor and separate the agency from prior controversies.
The CIA says correcting the record is intended to reinforce public trust in its mission to provide unbiased intelligence to policymakers.
