By Jeff Stein and Howard Altman
The House and Senate intelligence oversight committees are looking into hate speech that has flourished in spy agency chat rooms over the past five years, spokespersons there tell SpyTalk. The House Armed Services Committee is also “aware of these allegations and we are working with the relevant agencies to assess the claim,” said Caleb H. Randall-Bodman, the panel’s spokesman.
Dan Gilmore, who worked in an administrative group overseeing internal chat rooms for the classified Intelink system for over a decade starting in 2011, says that by late in the third year of the Trump administration the system was afire with incendiary hate-filled commentary, especially on “eChirp,” the intelligence community’s clone of Twitter.
“I was the admin of this application and after a couple years, it became a dumpster fire” of hate speech directed at minorities, women, gays, transexuals and Muslims, Gilmore, a 30-year veteran of Navy and NSA cryptologic systems, wrote March 10 in an extraordinary public post on his own web site. Gilmore was an NSA contractor from 1999 until he was forced out last July “because I made someone look bad,” he wrote.
“Professionalism was thrown out the window, and flame wars became routine,” he said. In a SpyTalk interview last week, he said he “can’t quantify” the degree to which the hate speech in the chat rooms was representative of the IC workforce at large, but he wrote on his blog that “there were many employees at CIA, DIA, NSA, and other IC agencies that openly stated that the January 6th terrorist attack on our Capitol was justified.”
The Senate Intelligence Committee “is aware of and looking into the allegations,” which were reported exclusively by SpyTalk on March 11, committee spokeswoman Rachel Cohen said. “We have reached out to DoD and IC agencies.” The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence also “is aware and concerned by these reports, and has asked for additional information,” said committee spokeswoman Lauren French. Both declined to elaborate.
(IC is the acronym for the Intelligence Community, composed of 18 organizations, including two independent agencies, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, or ODNI, and the CIA. The FBI is also part of the IC.)
The FBI declined to comment. The CIA did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Senate Armed Services Committee did not respond to a request for comment. The National Security Agency, the ODNI, and Pentagon all declined to comment on the allegations.
Austin’s Limits
The Pentagon’s silence runs counter to its very public stance on battling extremism in the ranks. No less than Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin has expressed concern about right wing extremist sentiment in the military services. In the aftermath of the Jan. 6, 2020 Capitol insurrection, he ordered a so-called one-day stand down across the military for leadership to address the issue of extremism with troops. Since then, the department has issued new guidelines. While membership in an extremist organization, for instance, is not prohibited, taking part in activities on its part are. That extends to social media postings, where “liking” or sharing a post considering extremist or anti-government could result in some type of disciplinary action.
DoD also prohibits the use of a government communications system to support extremist activities or knowingly accessing Internet web sites or other materials that promote or advocate extremist activities, according to its Dec. 20, 2021 “Report on Countering Extremist Activity Within The Department of Defense.”
“Hate speech was running rampant on our applications.”
It’s not clear whether the prohibition would extend to military personnel at the NSA who can participate in Intelink’s classified chat rooms.
“Hate speech was running rampant on our applications,” wrote Gilmore, whose identity and credentials have been…
Read More: Congress Eyeing ‘Dumpster Fire’ of Hate Talk in Spy Agency Chat Rooms