Foreign Spy Schools Are Now Teaching Cadets How Deep State Analysts Rigged China Intelligence

Barry Zulauf caught America's own spy analysts hiding evidence that China interfered in the 2020 election.

Foreign intelligence schools just turned that cover up into a training manual for their own cadets.

What those schools are now teaching new spies about America's own analysts is not flattering.

Analysts Admitted They Buried China Evidence to Protect Democrat Policies

Barry Zulauf spent his career as an intelligence community ombudsman, the internal watchdog whose job is to keep analysis honest.

In 2021 he delivered a 14-page report to the Senate Intelligence Committee that should have ended careers.

Zulauf found that China analysts used looser standards than Russia analysts on purpose.

Where Russia analysts flagged "clear and credible evidence" of interference, China analysts buried similar findings under vague language and inconsistent terminology.

Zulauf's report quoted the reason in plain English: "analysts appeared reluctant to have their analysis on China brought forward because they tended to disagree with the administration's policies."

One analyst went even further in a declassified exchange, admitting flat out, "I don't want our intelligence used to support those policies."

That is not analysis.

That is an intelligence officer deciding which president deserves the truth.

Then-DNI John Ratcliffe said at the time that the majority IC view did not "fully and accurately reflects the scope of the Chinese government's efforts to influence" the 2020 election, and he was right.

Beth Sanner, one of the officials named in connection with the episode, has since resurfaced as a national security analyst for CNN, the same network that spent years telling its audience Russia was the only threat that mattered.

Foreign Spy Schools Now Use the Scandal As a Case Study

Here is the part that should embarrass Washington, D.C. more than the original scandal did.

Intelligence tradecraft programs in Italy, Canada, and Israel have added the Zulauf episode to their curricula.

Foreign cadets are now studying an American intelligence failure as the textbook example of how politics corrupts analysis.

An NSA report on China's 2016 election activity sat on a shelf for years before it was ever distributed, adding another data point for foreign instructors to use.

America used to be the gold standard other countries sent their spies to study.

Now other countries are studying America as a cautionary tale.

China Got a Pass While Russia Got the Headlines

None of this happened by accident.

Democrat-aligned officials spent four years insisting Russia stole the 2016 election for Donald Trump while treating China's much larger and better-funded interference operation as an afterthought.

Reporters and cable news anchors built entire careers on the Russia collusion story.

China's efforts got a paragraph, if they got mentioned at all.

Declassified emails from that era show officials sorting their own colleagues into categories: "proper readers" and "abusers" of intelligence.

That is not a filing system for keeping analysis accurate.

It is a filing system for deciding who got the real picture and who got spin.

John Ratcliffe Is Cleaning House and the Old Guard Is Not Happy About It

John Ratcliffe is not pretending this is ancient history.

As CIA Director he has pointed directly at the agency's own dismissal of the Hunter Biden laptop story as "Russian disinformation" as proof the politicization problem never went away.

Ratcliffe says his job now is getting the CIA "back to what made the CIA great," which means analysts who call things what they are instead of what their party wants them to be.

He has also redirected the agency toward actually hunting terrorists overseas instead of running interference for domestic politics at home.

That shift matters because the same culture that buried China intelligence to protect Democrat policies never had to answer for it until now.

Foreign spy schools already figured out what that culture cost America.

The only question left is whether Washington, D.C. figures it out before the next election rolls around.

Sources:

• Daily Caller, "Textbook Bias: Deep State's Election Interference Spin Is Now A Case Study In Spy Schools," The Daily Caller, August 21, 2026.
• Washington Examiner, "Intelligence analysts downplayed Chinese election influence to avoid supporting Trump policies, inspector finds," Washington Examiner.
• Washington Examiner, "Ratcliffe prioritizes depoliticizing CIA with vow to stop terrorists overseas," Washington Examiner.
• Just the News, "US intel hid Chinese 2020 election meddling from Trump because they opposed his policies, memo says," Just the News.