Reid on Unclassified Email to W.H. Listing CIA Employees: ‘Our Heads Nearly Exploded’

Reid: “Amid Donald Trump’s efforts to eviscerate the federal government, the people Trump and Elon Musk have implanted at the Central Intelligence Agency are doing their part by selling out the names of new hires. The New York Times first reported that the CIA sent the White House an unclassified email listing of all employees hired over the last two years to comply with an executive order to shrink the federal workforce. The list included first names and the first initial of the last name of the new hires, who are still on probation. It included a large crop of young analysts and operatives who were hired specifically to focus on China, whose identities are usually guarded because Chinese hackers are constantly trying to identify them. One former agency officer called the reporting of names in an unclassified email ‘a counterintelligence disaster.’ Joining me now is former CIA Director John Brennan, MSNBC senior national security and intelligence analyst. Director Brennan, I can tell you that when we saw this headline, our heads nearly exploded over here in ‘ReidOut’ world. I can only imagine how shocked and outraged you are. But can you just break down for us what the danger of what they did is?”
BRENNAN: “Well, there is quite a bit of danger to what appears to have been a careless and reckless use of this information, and passing it on an unclassified system. Many individuals who join the CIA enter the agency undercover, and so therefore their employment is not known to others, including family and friends, because they’re going to be engaged frequently in various activities around the globe that you want to not have any association with the CIA. Now, according to the press reports, all the hires of the last two years, I mean, this could include individuals, as you pointed out, the sort of China experts, that have very specific and uncommon ethnic names or an unusual spelling of their names, and they have relocated to the Washington, D.C. area. And so the Chinese counterintelligence experts will go together and put all the pieces that they can pick out from either this unclassified email, as well as from other things that are available in the digital dust, as a way to identify individuals who now may be working for the CIA. So, again, it can compromise the identities and compromise the future professional capabilities of these individuals who have joined the CIA. And now it looks like, since it’s focused on the last two years, this is part of, again, the Trump Administration’s revenge activities against individuals that have been hired during the Biden Administration.”