WASHINGTON — Amaryllis Fox Kennedy, who served as a deputy director of national intelligence and an associate director of the Office of Management and Budget with oversight of the CIA and 17 other intelligence agencies, said she resigned last month in part because she could no longer tolerate what she described as a lack of oversight of how taxpayer funds were used.
“I couldn’t keep signing the checks,” Kennedy said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal published Thursday. “I would have become complicit.”
Kennedy, the daughter-in-law of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., also sat on the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board. She publicly announced her resignation in May, citing family reasons. In the Journal interview, she elaborated on her frustrations with intelligence agencies, saying some activities were “brilliant, courageous, and everything an American would be proud to fund,” but that others “are broken and corrupt and result in domestic political activities that no American would condone.”
She said she decided to resign once it became clear that certain intelligence agencies were stonewalling elected leaders. She declined to identify specific activities she found objectionable, citing ongoing national security concerns.
Some of those concerns extended to the handling of physical assets. Kennedy referenced the case of David Rush, a senior CIA official arrested by the FBI last month after investigators discovered more than 300 gold bars worth over $40 million in his home in Ashburn, Virginia. According to an FBI affidavit, Rush obtained a “significant quantity of foreign currency and tens of millions of dollars in gold bars for work-related expenses.”
Kennedy said the case is emblematic of a larger problem of unelected bureaucrats flouting norms and overriding lawmakers’ allocation of taxpayer money. A person familiar with the dynamic between Kennedy and the CIA told the Journal they could not recall her ever directly raising the issue of gold bullion with senior agency staff.
The CIA rejected Kennedy’s allegations, calling them “totally false.” In a statement, a CIA spokeswoman said the agency “keeps its oversight committees fully and currently informed regarding agency resources and expenditures.” The statement noted that an investigation under CIA Director John Ratcliffe “uncovered decadeslong fraud and misconduct spanning across U.S. government agencies and departments, leading to an arrest by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”
Kennedy, in a subsequent statement, praised Ratcliffe, former Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and acting Director of National Intelligence Bill Pulte, saying they “are doing the Lord’s work.” She said the alleged weaponization predated their time in office.
Kennedy also dismissed as inaccurate a recent report that her resignation came in part because of disagreements with President Trump over the war in Iran. She said Trump was “future-proofing” against a more protracted conflict, and that his approach eliminated “the seed of a future full-blown war while it can still be done with minimal casualties and no boots on the ground.”
Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Ratcliffe has been “incredibly transparent and forthcoming” with the Senate on intelligence matters. “I would encourage anyone who has specific and credible information to the contrary to bring their concerns to the committee, not the media,” Cotton said.
Kennedy is the latest in a series of senior intelligence officials to leave their posts. Gabbard announced her resignation last month after her husband was diagnosed with a rare bone cancer. Joe Kent, a Gabbard ally who served as director of the National Counterterrorism Center, resigned in March in protest of the Iran war.
Kennedy said she will maintain her seat on the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board but held out the possibility of returning. “I’ll be first in line to come back and serve full time,” she said, if there were “a genuine appetite to eliminate domestic political abuses in the IC.”