Briefings

Background Briefing: February 8, 2026

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The DNI Gabbard Covered up an NSA Intercept of Someone Close to Trump Colluding With Foreign Intelligence 

We begin with more indications of major dysfunction and possible treason emerging from Trump’s use and abuse of the Intelligence Community by the unqualified toadies he put in charge with reports emerging that the whistleblower complaint Tulsi Gabbard sat on for 8 months came from the NSA which intercepted a call between a foreign intelligence service and someone close to Trump. Normally such explosive information would be disseminated and go straight to the National Security Advisor but Gabbard took it to Suzie Wiles so that it would go only to Trump and be buried. We discuss this and concerns from Senators Wyden and Warner on the Senate Intel Committee that something has happened at the CIA that needs investigating but again is being sat on. Joining us is Gregory Treverton, a senior adviser with the Transnational Threats Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a professor of the practice of international relations at the University of Southern California. He has served in government for the first Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, handling Europe for the National Security Council, and was chairman of the National Intelligence Council from 2014 to 2017. His books include Dividing Divided States, Beyond the Great Divide: Relevance and Uncertainty in National Intelligence and Science for Policy.

How Trump’s Break With the “Rules-Based” International Order Was Shaped by Decades of US Policy in the Middle East

Then we look into Trump’s rupture of the rules-based world order in which alliances are valued only insofar as they deliver immediate, tangible benefits. The Gaza Board of Peace plan mirrors Trump’s approach to NATO, trade policy, and negotiations with Ukraine and Iran—high-stakes bargaining conducted through threats or extortion. What matters is not the infrastructure of peace and stability, let alone institutional legitimacy, but the optics of a “deal” struck by the world’s strongest power complete with the promise of lucrative contracts. Joining us is Aziz Rana, University Professor of Law and Government at Boston College where his research and teaching center on American constitutional law and political development as well as how shifting notions of race, citizenship, and empire have shaped legal and political identity since the founding. He is the author of The Two Faces of American Freedom and The Constitutional Bind: How Americans Came to Idolize a Document that Fails Them, and he has an essay with Asli Bali at the Boston Review we discuss, “The Path to the Trump Doctrine: From Syria to Lebanon to Gaza, the coercion central to the new regime has been incubated in the Middle East.”