Story thread · 2 reports / 1 sources

White House trusted a transgender CIA briefer with the most sensitive secrets until her identity went public

advocate.com · 4h · first reportShare

Julia Curlee spent nearly two decades carrying the country’s secrets. She worked in war zones, traveled to 35 countries, briefed presidents, and boarded Air Force One with the President’s Daily Brief. She was trusted to decide what some of the world's most powerful people needed to know before beginning their days. But in a remarkable first-person account published Monday by The Atlantic , Curlee describes how the second Trump administration came to view something else as dangerously sensitive: the fact that one of its most experienced intelligence officials was a transgender woman. Her identity was never a secret inside the government. Trump officials had known about it during his first term, when Curlee briefed senior White House officials and became Vice President Mike Pence’s daily intelligence briefer. It became intolerable, she writes, only when the public might learn about it. Related : Meet an Officer Who Transitioned at the CIA “The White House had needed me,” Curlee writes. “