Abigail Spanberger, a former U.S. Representative from Virginia’s Seventh District, is a centrist Democrat who appears to be gliding towards an easy victory against Republican Lieutenant Governor Winsome. Restoration News’ reports on Spanberger have shown that Spanberger’s ” centralism ” is actually a close partnership with corporate monopolists money. This, as other recent Restoration News articles revealed is a feature, not a bug, of the party’s “re-set” for post-2024 politics.

But Spanberger has more than just corporations in common with entities that are tied to government generosity. Spanberger and her newly elected colleague, Senator Elissa slotkin (MI), are linked to the national security system, but the mainstream media has never noticed this.

Slotkin and Spanberger have no secret or indirect links. Both are former CIA agents who have entered politics, which is unprecedented. Members of the intelligence community have endorsed them based on their services; they promote their service as proof that they are capable of being a good leader; and media has covered their service. This media coverage, however, is both ubiquitous and superficial. Reporters simply repeat the same triangles of facts without digging deeper.

This digging actually reveals a disturbing fact that was hidden from plain view. Spanberger & Slotkin bring discredited methods, practitioners & policies directly from intelligence into the political arena for the first-time. They do this with direct and indirect intelligence operators’ support and to maintain the national security state in opposition to the pressures of public opinion and popular politics.

The Political Debuts of Intelligence Operators…

Spanberger and Slotkin have had their images adorned with their intelligence services since the beginning of their political career. They entered politics in 2018 – the first election following President Trump’s surprising victory – as part of NBC described a new mission among intelligence officers in order to combat Trump’s refusal to accept the conclusion that Russia was involved in the 2016 presidential election and “restore respect” for the agencies to which they had given so much.

In January 2019, the Washington Post published a story on Spanberger and Slotkin in its “Local Section with the headline When ex-spies become lawmakers.” The article was then adapted for the “Gender and Identity section” of the Post, using and the headline She used to be a secret agent. She’s a legislator now. In May 2019, The New York Times reported Spanberger and Slotkin joined two newly-elected Democratic representatives who were women veterans of both the Navy and Army to form the “Service First Women’s Victory Fund.” The Fund, Times stated, “will raise funds for new female Democratic Candidates with national security backgrounds.”

Spanberger and Slotkin have continued to be identified with national security and intelligence issues over the years. When Spanberger won her last election in 2022 (and received from the endorsement by “more than 200 former military leaders and officials of national security”), she was . When Slotkin won his election for Senate, a prominent analyst named Larry Pfeiffer, posted on X.

It’s amazing to think that I once knew her when she was a bright young woman who helped [Director] John Negroponte during those early days of the [Office of the Director of National Intelligence] Win well deserved after a hard fought battle. Make us intelligence types in the US Senate proud.

In an interview published in The New Yorker this spring, Slotkin stated being a “intel-type,” first with the CIA, and then at the Pentagon, is part of her centrist image:

I ran a large office at the Pentagon. If you told me “Hey we have to make a 8% cut”, I would know exactly what to do. The idea that there is no fat in the bone, or on any other part of the body, is incorrect. What I can’t accept is their reckless approach.

Spanberger received a $500,000 donation from the left-leaning veteran’s group VoteVets for her gubernatorial campaign, the largest amount in the history of the group, based on the fact that she served as CIA officer. This led to an article about Spanberger in The New York Times. It noted that, per an interview with VoteVets, “600,000 Veterans and 120,000 Active-duty Service Members live in Virginia.”

And What the Coverage Obscures

This coverage is more informative than the content it contains.

It confuses veterans who have served in Iraq and Libya with intelligence operators, the people from whom these commands are derived. They are people such as Abigail Spanberger or Elissa slotkin, who sit in rooms sifting intelligence and making recommendations to White House. Slotkin and Spanberger have said as much themselves, when they were interviewed together by the establishment-friendly podcast “Lawfare” (in a segment titled “Abigail Spanberger and Elissa Slotkin from CIA to Congress”). Slotkin’s CIA focused on Iraq. According to Slotkin “a lot CIA analysis” helped President Bush to decide his strategy.

This record could open a candidate to suspicion for many Americans, even those who supported President Trump’s noninterventionist policies. Slotkin and Spanberger, however, believe that it gives them special skills to govern. Slotkin says to interviewers she still “thinks the same about solving problems” as when she worked at the CIA, National Security Council and Defense Department: “My role is to identify and go after real threats” and “I’m going to not spend a lot of time on things I believe are exaggerated risks.”

Spanberger’s TV spots start with references of her service. “At CIA, we had one mission: to serve and protect America. . . Taking on personal risks to keep our country secure. In Congress, I share the same mission.” On her site, she discusses how moved from “understanding[] the threats that face the United States” into addressing “the division in our communities” at home.

Spanberger and Slotkin’s co-workers share their own self-assessment. When Spanberger visited Quantico last year for a sit-down public with the Director of the Defense Counterintelligence and Surveillance Agency (DCSA), the Agency’s site reported:

Director David Cattler…emphasiz[ed] the significance of having a member of congress with firsthand experience in the intelligence community. Cattler stated that it was great to talk to someone who is on the Hill and especially one with personal experience in our industry. It helps the conversation, and our message gets across a little better .”

The founders did not intend for politicians to “get the message out” in behalf of intelligence and defense operators. In fact, it is the exact opposite. This representation is even more disturbing, as it empowers the system which empowers these operators: national security agencies, weapons and intelligence contractors.

Dependents the Intelligence State

The two most shocking cases are Spanberger and Slotkin’s husbands, (in Slotkin’s case, her ex-husband), as well Slotkin’s largest donor.

Adam Spanberger, when he’s not working on his wife’s campaign, is a lead software engineer for L3 Harris Technologies. L3 Harris is a 130-year old defense contracting company operating out of Northern Virginia and a heavy political donor to a bipartisan roster of incumbent, establishment-friendly politicians, including top contributions in 2022 and 2024 to Elissa Slotkin.

Slotkin’s recently divorced Dave Moore is the employee of Emissary LLC. Through this company, Slotkin works as a management consultant for the Department of Defense. This information was not disclosed in his tax returns until reporters discovered it. He then amended them.

Jerry Hollister is one of Slotkin’s top donors, and her landlord in the days following her divorce. Hollister, who is chief operating officer at Niowave, Inc., Lansing’s pharmaceutical company, has contracts with the federal governments. These included contracts with weapon providers, including Boeing, to deliver products to Pentagon.

But they aren’t the only ones who have invested heavily in Spanberger and Slotkin.

David C. Frederick is one of the corporate donors revealed by Restoration News as funding Spanberger’s gubernatorial race. Frederick is a partner at Keller, Hansen, Todd, Fiegel, Frederick, a boutique law firm. As Restoration News reported Keller Hansen was the former employer of James Boasberg, the presiding Judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court whose decisions have discouraged transparency of government in deference to CIA. Keller Hansen, who represents Meta, a company with Pentagon and CIA contract, is currently arguing beforeBoasberg. Keller Hansen is the chief legal adviser for the CIA.

New Politics is also closely connected to national security. The fund that the New York Times reports supports Spanberger, Slotkin and other members of the National Security apparatus. One of the fund’s top donors, is Baupost Group. The CEO and founder of Baupost Group funds nonprofits that encourage foreign intervention. Amos B. Hostetter is another, the founder and CEO of Continental Cablevision. He has donated extensively to the Lincoln Project. This “moderate Republican”, anti-Trump group supports interventions abroad. Hostetter also donated to VoteVets – the organization that the Times reported was backing Spanberger. David desJardins is the founder of DJ Ventures – an influential consulting and design firm. He made his career as one the first twenty engineers at Google – which has contracts with both the CIA and Pentagon.

Then, finally, there are the national security links of two top Slotkin donors. One is the elite law firm WilmerHale, which, as Restoration News has reported in the past, is a top haven for Democratic national security officials. The other, the University of Michigan, is from Slotkin’s state of Michigan but also has heavy ties to the defense industry: indeed, since the 1960s, it has been a hub of national security, a “Pentagon Midwest,” thanks to heavy funding for defense and intelligence research.

The Wider Defense-Intelligence Play…

These mutually beneficial relationships exist in a wider context of defense-and-intelligence players, most of whom are connected to each other. Instructive in this regard is Slotkin’s election night intelligence cheerleader Larry Pfeiffer, one of the 51 signatories of the now-famous “Spies Who Lie” letter in 2020 casting unwarranted doubt on the veracity of linking the Biden Family to suspect private deals with Ukraine and China. Pfeiffer is a national security lifer, and his career is a literal roadmap of how the military-industrial-intelligence complex works.

Before serving as Chief of Staff at the CIA, Pfeiffer worked at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence under longtime intelligence operative (and Elissa Slotkin’s former superior) John Negroponte. He then went to work for the ex-Department of Homeland Security Director , Michael Chertoff, at the private security contracting firm the Chertoff Group, whose clients include the Supreme Court and the Defense Department. Based on this resume, Pfeiffer joined the boards of two weapons and security contractors, ZP and Valiant. He also became the director of the Michael V. Hayden Center for Intelligence, Policy, and National Security at George Mason University–a center named for and founded by former head of the NSA and CIA and another signatory on the “Spies who Lie” letter, Michael Hayden.

Additionally, Pfeiffer contributes to Lawfare, the national security-focused media nonprofit where Spanberger and Slotkin were interviewed in an event cosponsored with the Michael V. Hayden Center for Intelligence, Policy, and National Security. Lawfare, in turn, was founded by Benjamin Wittes, who has been called “the bard of the deep state” thanks to his Washington connections, and has come to Spanberger’s political defense in the past–investigating what it called government involvement in a Republican information campaign run against her in 2018.

This is a small world, the smallness of which is illustrated by a single, not-unusual evening in 2019 when its denizens came together, creating a microcosm of their connections and dependencies. Michael Hayden, Pfeiffer’s current employer and a principal at the Chertoff Group, where Pfeiffer worked, received 2019’s William H. Webster Award, named after the former FBI and CIA director, at the Spy Museum of Washington, D.C, which often partners on events with Benjamin Wittes’ Lawfare. This awards ceremony was attended by, among others, Abigail Spanberger, who served in the CIA when Hayden directed it; Michael Chertoff; Elissa Slotkin’s former DHS superior John Negroponte; and the evening’s emcee, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. The evening’s sponsors included Beacon Global Strategies, an influential Washington intelligence consultancy; and In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s technological investment arm which has made a fortune in Ukraine on drones during the conflict there.

In one light, this is a stodgy commemorative affair. On the other, it’s a roadmap of how Washington works: from Hayden and Negroponte, who seeded the careers of Pfeiffer and Slotkin and Spanberger; to their media supporter CNN’s Blitzer, who publicized the “Spies who Lie” letter; to their ultimate backers, Beacon and In-Q-Tel and the other weapons and intelligence contractors which make Washington run off endless intervention and war.

…and the Policies it Promotes

These are some of the people and institutions that made Spanberger’s and Slotkin’s careers, and to whom they’re loyal. Since they’ve been in office, Spanberger and Slotkin have made their legislative names as members of what Politico calls “a gang of national security Democrats” and what the Atlantic–the premier magazine of bipartisan establishment Washington–calls Democrats’ “patriotic vanguard.” Aside from emphasizing the divisive cultural issues that are manna to identity politicker Democrats, they mostly focus on a series of bipartisan political priorities related to national security. These include election security, humane processing of illegal immigrants, information sharing between government agencies, and combating China’s influence on college campuses.

All of these certainly garner some Republican support, but all of them also increase the power of Washington’s security and corporate apparatus. Indeed, a closer read of the bills introduced by Slotkin and Spanberger suggests that they strategically ally with Republicans not to increase security and transparency, but to increase defense and intelligence authority in ways that benefit their backers.

One example is Slotkin’s Synthetic Biology and Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients Act; which jumps on the practical necessity, first raised by Trump, of manufacturing more pharmaceuticals in America. This is the kind of bill that directly benefits firms like Novia, Slotkin’s backer–and, given that she introduced the legislation, she has enormous discretion to write it in ways that will help contracts flow to these entrenched interests.

Another is one Slotkin co-sponsored with Spanberger: “Integrating New Technologies to Empower Law Enforcement at Our Borders Act” which “requires the Department of Homeland Security to . . . identify and deploy emerging and advanced technologies (e.g., artificial intelligence, automation, and optical radar) to achieve greater situational awareness along the northern and southern U.S. borders between ports of entry.” This is a bill, again, that jumps on a problem President Trump identified–illegal border crossings. But it does this solely to focus on technological fixes that involve contracts with major weapons and technology providers working in fields that a wide array of observers have expressed concerns about empowering sans oversight.

The Real Aim of the Spanberger-Slotkin Op

Tellingly, when it comes to those people who openly challenge intelligence priorities, both Spanberger and Slotkin are vocally opposed. Just two months ago, both used their intelligence service as rhetorical cudgels against Tulsi Gabbard before the Senate vote to confirm her.

“As a former CIA case officer, I saw the men and women of the U.S. intelligence community put their lives on the line every day for this country — and I am appalled at the nomination of Tulsi Gabbard to lead DNI,” Spanberger wrote, going on to label Gabbard an “ill-prepared and unqualified” nominee who “traffics in conspiracy theories and cozies up to dictators like Bashar-al Assad and Vladimir Putin.” The fact that Spanberger, who was no longer in Congress at the time of the nomination and was in fact running for Governor of Virginia, felt the imperative and the right to speak up about Gabbard shows just how seriously she takes her intelligence service–and the power of the agency she worked for.

Gabbard, it’s worth noting, is a military veteran who served in the wars the CIA helped create, and has been on record opposing the interventionist and surveillance capacities of the intelligence agencies. As DNI, she has been working to rein in unaccountable intelligence operatives and to push against nuclear proliferation: the ultimate outgrowth of the system of perpetual war that drives military corporate aggrandizement. This oversight is what Spanberger and Slotkin most adamantly reject. (A coming Restoration News report will show that their opposition has a long history.)

This report will show that, since the 1950s, intelligence agencies have preempted political oversight by infiltrating powerful Washington and Washington-adjacent institutions: corporations, consultancies, media, academia. Now, with their authority under threat, the agencies have the benefit of two ex-agents working as powerful politicians; only the second and third ex-agents to take this path in its history: intelligence operatives in Congress and the governorship who want intelligence operatives to run the country.

This article first appeared on The CIA Sisterhood Abigail Spanberger & Elissa Slotten