Transgender CIA veteran who briefed presidents says Trump has ushered in ‘amateur hour’

There is a wall inside Central Intelligence Agency headquarters in Langley, Virginia, carved with words meant to outlast the administrations whose officials pass beneath them. “And ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free,” it reads. Nearby, the agency’s Memorial Wall holds nameless stars for fallen officers. Julia Curlee knew some of them.“I had this amazing experience which at some times felt like I was living in a parallel universe where Mike Pence had a gay, trans PDB briefer and no one cared,” Curlee says.“It hurts to see something you really believed in taken away from you,” Curlee tells The Advocate in a new hourlong interview.For nearly two decades, she worked in the shadow of both walls. She survived rocket attacks, traveled through 35 countries, briefed former President George W. Bush and President Donald Trump, and became Vice President Mike Pence’s regular intelligence briefer. Almost all of it was work she could not discuss.Now, after resigning from the CIA, Curlee is doing something once unimaginable for a career officer. She is introducing herself to America and warning that the Trump administration is casting out the people who quietly keep the country safe.Career intelligence officers are trained to leave politics at the gate, suppress their egos, and do work for which they can rarely claim credit. LGBTQ+ officers have done the same while often keeping their personal lives and identities outside the frame — a second cover layered over the secrets they already carry.In Curlee’s telling, Trump inverted that order. She sees Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other administration figures as “playacting to an audience of one,” confusing the image of power with the substance of governing while career professionals do the work that keeps institutions running.“You cannot grow a 20-year CIA analyst or a multi-tour operations officer overnight,” she says. “They’re going to move on with their lives, and the coun