John Sipher spent nearly three decades at the CIA focused on the Russians, a core part of the agency's mission. That changed dramatically after the al-Qaida attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.
"Frankly, tracking and hunting terrorists, finding people, finding a needle in a haystack was not something that we trained for," said Sipher, who served in Moscow and later ran the agency's Russia operations at CIA headquarters.
The CIA and the larger intelligence community had to adapt quickly.
"We did that by by learning, and actually even developing new technologies, computer power, data collection, drones, communications, means to defeat networks, terrorist networks."
There were real successes, such as locating Osama bin Laden in 2011 and destroying his group, al-Qaida, and later, dismantling the Islamic State.
More broadly, the Department of Homeland Security was created, and now has a quarter-million employees, making it the second-largest government agency, trailing only the Pentagon. Military and intelligence budgets soared.
By most all accounts, the U.S. is safer at home. The country has not been hit on U.S. soil with anything remotely comparable to the 9/11 attack, which killed nearly 3,000 people.
Trump targets the "deep state"
Yet 25 years later, U.S. national security industry is undergoing another dramatic change.
President Trump is waging an ongoing campaign against the so-called "deep state," which he describes largely as national security officials trying to undermine him.
"We will clean out all of the corrupt actors in our national security and intelligence apparatus, and there are plenty of them," Trump said in announcing his plans for his second term.
Critics say Trump is tearing down the national security infrastructure with no clear vision of what comes next, aside from protecting the president's personal interests.
"Since the re-inauguration of Donald Trump, the architecture of American national security is being destroyed, just like the east wing of the White House," said author Tim Weiner, who's covered the U.S. intelligence community for decades. This includes a book last year, The Mission: The CIA in the 21st Century, that examines the CIA since 9/11. "Trump has deliberately swung a wrecking ball through American national security and has in great part worked to dismantle the systems set up after World War II to protect the United States.
Weiner said Trump consistently selects loyalists with limited experience to lead national security agencies.
"The people he has put in charge, [Pete] Hegseth at the Pentagon, Kash Patel at the FBI, John Ratcliffe at CIA, are sycophants," said Weiner. "They will tell the president what he wants to know rather than what he needs to know."
Cutbacks at home, strained relations abroad
While many officials have been dismissed under Trump, some left on their own.
Steven Cash held multiple national security posts — at the CIA, the Senate Intelligence Committee and the Department of Homeland Security.
He resigned when Trump began his second term.
"I could not in good conscience keep working for a president who was going to take what I was working on and what others had spent careers working on, and turning it against Americans, which is exactly what he has done," Cash said.
Cash now leads the Steady State, a private group of more than 400 former national security officials. They were career officials who served in both Republican and Democratic administrations, but are now highly critical of Trump's policies.
Cash believes the intelligence community made important advances over the past quarter-century, particularly in information sharing. But he acknowledges it's been an imperfect process.
The post of director of national intelligence, or DNI, was created to coordinate the work of what are now 18 separate intelligence agencies.
"The original idea was it would be very small," Cash said. "We sort of joked that the new DNI would get a deputy, he'd get a big conference table with 18 chairs, and the biggest, best coffee machine he could find. And other than that, he'd get nothing."
The office quickly swelled and is often criticized for not functioning as intended. There are periodic calls for the office to be abolished.
Trump cut back the office, along with other national security agencies, as part of his larger government reductions.
Cash said these moves have gone way too far.
"We took a dive off the cliff in 2025. All the gains, I think, are gone, and we are in the process of destroying our intelligence community," he said.
Shifting agendas
U.S. successes in fighting terrorism have made it less of a priority these days, leading to cutbacks, according to Marc Polymeropoulos, a former CIA officer who spent much of his career in the Middle East.
"Counterterrorism is getting second fiddle to the threats from China and Russia, and the current administration's focus on the border and narco-trafficking means a shift of resources to the Americas," said Polymeropoulos. "I am afraid that counter-terrorism will not be a priority until a mass casualty event, and then it very much will be once again."
John Sipher says one of the most damaging ideas that's taken root is that career intelligence officials actively take sides in partisan politics.
"We have allowed our partisan anger, and specifically the Trump administration, to create this narrative that there's a deep state and that the intelligence services work for one party or another. I think it's a real danger," he said.
Tim Weiner said the damage has also been inflicted abroad as Trump repeatedly antagonizes U.S. allies.
"The CIA in particular relies or depends on intelligence sharing with friendly and not so friendly foreign intelligence services," Weiner said. "It it is still only 20,000 people, and they cannot cover the entire world. They need the British. They need the Dutch. They need the Saudis. They need help."
That help, he says, is much harder to come by today than in the aftermath of 9/11.
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