President Donald Trump's administration appears to have excluded top intelligence officials from sensitive negotiations with a major adversary — even CIA Director John Ratcliffe.
That's according to journalist Michael Weiss, who reported Monday that Ratcliffe was "not privy" to the Russian peace deal that Trump administration special envoy Steve Witkoff has been negotiating with Vladimir Putin's government. Weiss cited an unnamed "U.S. intelligence source" who confided: "It was not an accident CIA was kept out of the loop on an American deal with a Russian operative."
Ratcliffe wasn't the only top American official kept in the dark about the deal. Foreign policy analyst Jimmy Rushton — who is based in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv — pointed to a recent Washington Post report while observing: "The State Department didn't know about Witkoff's 'peace plan,' congressional GOP didn't know, the US IC didn't know, and apparently even Trump didn't know the detail."
The peace plan between Russia and Ukraine was reportedly assembled without any input from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The Post reported that U.S. lawmakers from both parties were concerned that the plan could be interpreted as "rewarding" Putin for his 2022 invasion of Ukraine's Donbass region.
"Some people better get fired on Monday for the gross buffoonery we just witnessed over the last four days," Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), a retired brigadier general in the U.S. Air Force, wrote on his official X account. "This hurt our country and undermined our alliances and encouraged our adversaries."
Sen. Angus King (I-Maine), who sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said that Secretary of State and National Security Advisor Marco Rubio quipped that the peace plan was "not the administration’s position" and is "essentially the wish list of the Russians." Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) made similar remarks, said during the recent Halifax International Security Forum that the agreement Witkoff and Putin's government brokered "is not our recommendation" and "not our peace plan." Rubio later refuted wrote on X that the peace plan was "authored by the U.S." and is "offered as a strong framework for ongoing negotiations."