Julia Curlee, a veteran intelligence officer with a long career spanning from the Defense Intelligence Agency to the Central Intelligence Agency, faced an abrupt end to her tenure on the National Security Council in March 2025. Upon receiving notice of her termination, she was issued an unusual directive by her supervisor: continue working through the following Monday, but maintain a low profile and remain discreet. Curlee, who joined the CIA in 2007, had navigated a complex career path that included multiple deployments across the Middle East and South Asia, as well as the public acknowledgment of her gender transition in 2013. By 2017, she had become a vocal advocate for inclusivity within the intelligence community, even writing anonymously to encourage other transgender individuals to pursue careers in national security.
The circumstances surrounding her departure were compounded by intense political scrutiny. Far-right influencer Laura Loomer, who maintains close ties to the administration, posted a derogatory message online targeting Curlee as a “transgender, Biden holdover” who harbored animosity toward President Trump. Loomer’s post explicitly called for her identity to be exposed, a development that Curlee suggests rendered her position untenable within a White House that had already stripped away her access to essential services. She described a environment where the administration’s rhetoric regarding the “enemy within” and its aggressive push against diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives created a hostile workplace, leading to the systemic exclusion of LGBTQ+ individuals, people of color, and women.
Curlee’s experience at the White House during the transition period was marked by chaos. While tasked with onboarding new personnel and safeguarding highly classified programs, she observed the sudden dismissal of 160 career public servants from the National Security Council. She recounted a moment during the transition when an assistant informed her that nearly everyone else had been terminated. This mass purge of non-partisan policy experts left the government struggling to manage basic administrative and security functions. Curlee noted that in her efforts to maintain continuity, she even had to persuade some of the previously humiliated, ousted officers to return to their posts, telling them that the administration was effectively drowning without their expertise.
The administrative hostility reached personal levels for Curlee, who was barred from utilizing women’s restrooms in the White House due to a presidential order and had her passport reissued with a male marker, severely complicating international travel requirements for her role. Despite the professional and personal toll, Curlee maintained that she continued her work out of a sense of duty to ensure the incoming administration had the necessary guidance to manage national security programs. She frequently led Situation Room briefings, where she consistently reminded new appointees of the security protocols regarding sensitive digital communications and the prohibition of mobile devices in secure facilities.
The White House has contested the nature of her departure, with spokesperson Anna Kelly stating that Curlee was a “Biden-era appointee” whose scheduled end date occurred in mid-2025, adding that the President maintains the authority to remove any executive branch official. For her part, Curlee characterizes the situation as a catastrophic failure of governance driven by ideological obsession rather than objective security needs. She argues that the administration’s focus on purging staff based on their identities or political history has significantly degraded the government’s capacity to oversee critical national interests. She felt compelled to speak out to demonstrate that intelligence professionals are not the caricatures described by the administration, and to provide a different perspective for those who might otherwise feel alienated by such political climates.
Reflecting on the internal dynamics, Curlee admitted that while the decision to remain through the transition was a daily struggle, she believed it was necessary to mitigate potential disasters. She witnessed firsthand the administrative breakdown, where senior officials continued to rely on her expertise, labeling her “indispensable” even while simultaneously targeting her identity and stripping away her benefits, including her insurance coverage for estrogen. She noted that the chilling effect of these policies led even cisgender staff to express deep discomfort with the toxic environment. By coming forward, she hopes to draw attention to the broader national security implications of the administration’s staffing decisions and the risks inherent in replacing seasoned experts with political loyalists. The report also notes that briefing Vice-President Mike Pence; worked for Joe Biden as a national security director; and stayed on for Trump’s return, the longtime CIA analyst had served in Donald Trump ’s first term. The report also notes that which made her particularly vulnerable as the new administration made anti-trans policies a top priority, curlee is also transgender. The report also notes that but she didn’t understand her boss’s message until she opened her phone and saw the X post. The report also notes that the White House decided to remove her, though not before she returned to work and – quietly – finished vital tasks, but now that she had been targeted online. The report also notes that curlee came forward in an Atlantic essay last month and is now sounding the alarm about the national security consequences of Trump’s extraordinary purging of intelligence experts. The report also notes that in a wide-ranging conversation with, Curlee recounted the turmoil inside Trump’s White House, arguing the administration’s obsession with diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI ) and “the enemy within” had made the US government staggeringly incompetent – contributing to the debacle in Iran and causing damage that may take decades to repair. The report also notes that “Sometimes you have to scream, ‘this is not normal.