DEEP STATE COVER-UP: NSA Buried Election-Threat Intel to Protect Its Own Reputation, Feared “Deep State” Label

A bombshell declassified memo reveals NSA brass suppressed critical foreign-election intelligence for 16 months—not because it was false, but to protect the agency from being exposed as part of the “deep state.”

Big government is the problem. An immense, unwieldy government leviathan—armed with limitless taxpayer dollars, secretive bureaucracies and virtually no accountability—will inevitably stop serving the people and begin ruling over them. It conceals the truth, crushes dissent and protects its own power at the expense of the citizens it was created to serve. That is precisely why our Founding Fathers risked their lives, their fortunes and everything they held dear to create a new nation founded on individual rights not state supremacy.

Intel Politics: NSA sat on election threat reporting over Trump ‘deep state’ label, memo shows

The memo from 2020, declassified on Tuesday, reveals the intelligence analyst’s concerns about appearing as part of the “deep state.”

By Amanda Head, Just The News, August 18, 2026:

In a tense March 2020 meeting just months before the presidential election, the National Security Agency’s (NSA) deputy director blocked the release of a long-delayed report on foreign targeting of U.S. elections—not because the intelligence was flawed, but because he feared it would brand the agency as part of the “deep state.”​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

The memo states: “DDIR explained that he was concerned that releasing the [report] at this time – in the current political climate, with an acting ODNI who had been tasked (according to DDIR) to ‘clean house’ in the intelligence community, and with an administration that is suspicious of the IC and aggressive in removing anyone who stands in their way – would damage NSA’s credibility. He believed that questions would be asked as to why the NSA was choosing to release this information, most obviously pertinent to the 2016 election, now, more than a year after the election, and that NSA would be accused of releasing it for political purposes.

“The documents show that DDIR perceived that ODNI, CIA, and to an extent the FBI had been tarred as hosting or being part of the ‘deep state’, but that NSA thus far had not been associated with the deep state and was trusted; he felt that publishing this report would destroy that trust. He felt that the questioning of NSA that would ensue would have ramifications on the credibility of NSA reporting overall and would result in morale problems among the broader NSA workforce. He repeatedly said that he wanted to protect our ability to be who we are at NSA: ‘nonpartisan, objective, speaking truth to power.’”

The recently declassified document is a contemporaneous, written account by an NSA analyst of a meeting that day about whether, and how, to release a long-delayed intelligence report, at a time when President Donald Trump had levied sharp criticism about the intelligence community (IC) and had questioned the security of elections.

It was released Tuesday by the White House Government Transparency Task Force.

You can read it here:

File
NSAElectionThreatReportingMarch2020.pdf

The memo was part of the evidence reviewed by Barry Zulauf, the Intelligence Community Ombudsman, before he wrote a scathing report published in 2021 alleging spy agencies engaged in the politicization of intelligence on foreign election interference during the 2020 election, an administration official told reporters.

The memo, dated March 13, 2020, and declassified on Aug. 12, 2026, by White House Counsel David Warrington, was written by one of the analysts who had produced the report. The author repeatedly refers to “we, the analysts” and notes personal frustration that higher-ups had delayed the product for 16 months while the analytic work itself had been completed in a timely manner.

The report in question had been proposed for release in December 2018 and concerned foreign targeting of the United States that began in 2014. The report also included activity related to the 2016 election.

Continued….