WASHINGTON, D.C. – This week, America First Legal (AFL) secured a major victory over the left’s weaponization of our nation’s intelligence apparatus against the American people. Following AFL’s formal request earlier this month, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has declassified the Biden Administration’s secret surveillance and censorship strategy.
Last year, through litigation against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, AFL discovered the existence of a classified implementation plan accompanying the Biden Administration’s National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism.
On April 2, 2025, AFL urged DNI Gabbard to declassify the secret surveillance and censorship strategy. On April 16, 2025, DNI Gabbard released the Biden Administration’s declassified implementation plan, exposing a chilling plot to weaponize the intelligence apparatus against the American people.
In 2021, without any evidence, the Biden Administration declared that the greatest threat to Americans was “right-wing domestic terrorism” from supporters of President Trump.
The Biden Administration’s classified surveillance strategy directed the U.S. Department of State, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), U.S. Department of Justice, and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to “obtain from foreign partners foreign intelligence and information related to U.S.-based violent extremism.”
In other words, the Biden Administration planned to outsource surveillance of Americans to foreign governments.
As a subset of that strategic goal, the Biden Administration asked the FBI, CIA, DHS, and the State Department to study how disinformation relates to the “domestic terrorism threat,” connecting the whole-of-society censorship program to the national security and intelligence apparatus.
The Biden Administration’s classified censorship and surveillance strategy pushed for “information sharing across all levels,” including with “state, local, tribal, and territorial law enforcement partners.”
The secret implementation plan also calls for funding for “digital literacy programming.”
Despite the domestic scope of this plan, the Biden Administration tapped the State Department and USAID to produce “digital literacy programming” to “combat misinformation” online.
This classified strategy contains numerous parallels to documents from AFL’s Deep State Diaries, including the revelation that the “intelligence experts” group, led by John Brennan and James Clapper, suggested that DHS use people’s military and religious affiliations as indicators that they could be domestic terrorists.
The Biden Administration’s classified surveillance plan also appears to be the beginning of its push to label all domestic terrorists as “right wing” and threats to “public health.”
Two years later, in a DHS “intelligence experts” group meeting, an unidentified member said this public health reclassification was important so that mothers and teachers would feel more comfortable turning in their kids to authorities.
The Biden Administration’s classified censorship and surveillance strategy makes clear that the administration meant it when it said this was a “whole-of-government approach.”
The secret implementation plan outlines an action plan to “share transnational approaches, good practices, and lessons learned” with “multilateral” meetings and “foreign government[s].”
AFL previously exposed that the Biden Administration hosted the UK Government’s “Counter Disinformation Unit” in 2021 to share its recommendations to censor speech with the White House during a meeting with the National Security Council.
The Biden Administration’s classified censorship and surveillance strategy also emphasizes the importance of “increasing faith in democracy and the government,” another recurring theme in documents released in AFL’s Deep State Diaries.
Two years later, Brennan and Clapper’s “intelligence experts” group discussed how DHS could “quietly make democracy work” and use covert messaging campaigns to get the American public to feel certain ways about issues.
The Biden Administration’s classified censorship and surveillance plan also calls for maximum law enforcement action against domestic terrorism crimes.
This secret plan was created by the same administration that labeled concerned parents at school board meetings as “domestic terrorists” in the infamous October 4 DOJ memo. It is also the same administration that labeled Trump supporters as domestic terrorists, yet turned a blind eye to pro-Hamas vandals and rioters on college campuses and in cities across the United States, spewing hatred, engaging in violence, and supporting actual terrorists.
The Biden Administration weaponized the entire intelligence apparatus — the NSC, ODNI, CIA, FBI, DOJ, and the State Department — to target, censor, and silence the very people it was responsible for protecting.
AFL will continue fighting to expose and dismantle the left’s weaponization of our intelligence community against the American people.
Statement from Andrew Block, America First Legal Senior Counsel:
“Since its founding, America First Legal has been at the leading edge of exposing government weaponization. This declassified plan is further proof of what we have known all along, which is that the Biden Administration used the full weight of the government to target American citizens. AFL applauds Director Gabbard for her leadership in declassifying this document. It is actions like this that will bring accountability to those responsible and help restore integrity and faith in the system,” said Andrew Block.
Read the Biden Administration’s declassified strategic implementation plan here.
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Photo credit: Adobe Stock / utaem2022
