The counter-terrorism tsar without a counter-terrorism plan

The month of March played out as a stress test for U.S. counterterrorism authorities.

The month opened with a shooter wearing a shirt with the Iranian flag killing three people in a bar in Texas. Then, an attack with homemade explosives in front of the New York mayor’s mansion. Then came a deadly shooting on March 12 on a Virginia college campus and, that same afternoon, a car-ramming at a Michigan synagogue. Days later, officers arrested a man accused of threatening to carry out a shooting at an Ohio mosque.

For current and former national security officials, they were omens, signs of the dangers they predicted last year when President Donald Trump began shifting resources from counterterrorism to his mass deportation campaign.

They had warned of a reduced ability to respond if major global events exacerbated threats at home and abroad. Today, they say, the war in Iran has locked the Trump administration in a confrontation with a sophisticated state sponsor of terrorism, at a time when U.S. security agencies have lost expertise and leadership is in flux.

The urgency of the moment has focused the spotlight on Sebastian Gorka, the White House counterterrorism adviser charged with developing a plan to combat domestic and international threats. Nearly a year ago, Gorka declared that a national counterterrorism strategy was “imminent.” By July, he was “close to” revealing the plan – a phrase he repeated three months later, in October. And again in January.

To date, no strategy has emerged, nor any explanation for this delay. When it is finally released, current and former counterterrorism personnel say they expect a document rooted in policy rather than intelligence, with few details on how to combat threats after a year of deep cuts to national security agencies.

“Strategies are only as good as the amount of resources you put into them,” said a former senior official who served in the first Trump administration. “We are entering very dangerous territory.”

These shifting promises are unsurprising to colleagues familiar with the brash and angry Gorka, a doorbreaker within Washington’s defense establishment. His threats and boasts are full of grandiose language and delivered in a booming voice with a British accent.

ProPublica interviewed more than two dozen national security experts from across party lines to trace Gorka’s path to one of the government’s most sensitive posts. Almost all spoke on condition of anonymity due to The Trump administration’s record of retaliation.

His rise, they say, tells the story of a surprising transformation of America’s counterterrorism program during Trump’s second term. Concern over Gorka’s bombast has given way to concern about the administration’s willingness to identify and stop major plots.

In the first Trump administration, Gorka lasted only seven months before being forced out by the “adults in the room,” as some staffers referred to the more moderate guards who then surrounded the president. During this brief period he would have had difficulty obtaining security clearance and has faced an outcry over his links – which he denies – to a far-right group in Hungary.

After his release, he hosted a right-wing podcast and appeared in advertisements sell fish oil pills for pain relief. Then his fortunes changed again with the 2024 election that returned Trump to power, this time with a more conspiratorial wing of the Make America Great Again movement. Gorka’s loyalty paid off with a phoenix-like return to the White House in a role sometimes called “counterterrorism czar.”

“I’ve been waiting for this position for 25 years,” he confided on his podcast before taking office.

The first year of Trump’s second term was so frenetic that even the colorful Gorka took a back seat as the administration dismantled federal agencies and created a secret, sometimes deadly immigration force. But today, the role of the counterterrorism director is coming back into the open as hostilities rage in the Middle East and increase the risk of attacks in the United States or against American interests or allies abroad.

Days before the start of US military operations in Iran, FBI Director Kash Patel fired a dozen members of a counterintelligence unit that had been monitoring threats from Iran. CNN reported — is part of a broader purge of some 300 agents specializing in the fight against terrorism.

Former officials said the sudden loss of so many colleagues was devastating to the sensitive, granular work of preventing attacks.

“I don’t think about it in raw numbers. I think about it in terms of the wealth of expertise and knowledge that has been distributed across the board,” said a former senior Justice Department official. “What you lose is this nuance: with a smaller team, you can only go so far.”

An FBI spokesperson said the bureau does not comment on staffing levels, but that agents “work around the clock” and have foiled four suspected U.S.-based terrorist plots in December alone. “The FBI continually evaluates and realigns our resources to keep the American people safe,” the statement said.

ProPublica requested an interview with Gorka directly and through the White House. He did not respond to a detailed list of questions but attacked the demands in two posts on X, where he has 1.8 million followers. The first was a “no”, accompanied by insults, addressed to several journalists who had asked him to comment on the strategy. In the second article, addressed to ProPublica, Gorka accused the journalist of writing a “putrid hack.”

“If the criticism is that we are killing too many jihadists (759) since January 20, 2024, or that we are rescuing more American hostages in 12 months (106) than Biden did in 4 years, I stand by our historic victories for America First,” Gorka wrote, with an apparent typo. Trump took office in January 2025.

White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said in an email that the agency restructuring “has made the entire foreign policy apparatus even more responsive to potential threats” and praised Gorka for “an incredible job” in leading interagency negotiations.

“Anyone who attempts to smear him and the president’s national security team only reveals that they haven’t been paying attention over the past year,” Kelly wrote, “because anyone with eyes can see that our country is safer than ever.”

Inattention “can be fatal”

Gorka became one of the last men standing after a tumultuous period at the helm of America’s counterterrorism fight.

His first boss, national security adviser Mike Waltz, was expelled from the United Nations after the Signalgate scandalleaving the role to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who was already juggling portfolios and is now busier with Iran.

Another blow came when Joe Kent, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, resigned last month in protest against the war in Iran, which he said is pushing the United States “further toward decline and chaos.”

Gorka was furious. He said to an audience at the Council on Foreign Relations, he called Kent the day he resigned and left him a message calling him a “total disgrace” for criticizing the wartime president.

“At the end of my voicemail,” Gorka said, “I said, ‘Good riddance to you, Joe.'”

Days later, Gorka sought Kent’s former job at the Counterterrorism Center, the government’s hub for analyzing terrorist threats, The Washington Post reported. His colleagues said they were not surprised — the role brings more power — but added that Gorka would likely face a difficult Senate confirmation process if nominated.

Leaders’ disarray heightens the risks of hollowed-out counterterrorism operations, national security analysts say.

At a time when hundreds of people would normally have been tasked with thwarting attacks in an international conflict, the administration “emptied that capacity through layoffs, forced resignations and budget cuts,” a national security committee said. analysts wrote in Lawfare magazine.

The Department of Justice acknowledged in budget proposal documents that its National Security Division is facing “unprecedented staffing constraints,” struggling to cope with surging caseloads and a 40 percent drop in the number of prosecutors.

At the State Department, former officials said, Iran specialists in the counterterrorism office have been dispersed to regional offices where counterterrorism is one of many priorities. The entire threat prevention team has been eliminated. As one recently departed senior official said: “They keep saying we can do anything, even though they only have half an arm and no legs.”

Since the start of the war in Iran, officials say, some counterterrorism specialists who had been reassigned to immigration have returned to their former roles, creating a whiplash that could disrupt investigations and analysis.

“If you’ve abandoned all business and kept people away from the intended goal for an extended period of time, you can’t just come back and pick up where you left off,” said Ben Connable, a former Marine Corps intelligence officer who runs the nonprofit Battle Research Group. “The men and women who return to this portfolio will have to rat catch up, and that carries risks.”

The Department of Homeland Security has not issued any national advisory bulletins on terrorismperiodic updates to alert the public of the current threat level, since September. It has not released the annual domestic threat assessment since Trump returned to office, according to Colin Clarke, executive director of the security-focused Soufan Center, and fellow terrorism expert Jacob Ware. A DHS spokesperson said updates on the documents “will be provided after the Democratic DHS shutdown ends.”

Gorka’s long-awaited strategy, Clarke and Ware said in and opinion articlecould help clarify the White House’s thinking on how to manage threats when “defenses are divided, disorganized and under-resourced.”

“This is the moment for the Trump administration to demonstrate that it recognizes the issues,” the researchers write. “In the fight against terrorism, inattention can be deadly.”

Winding path to the White House

Gorka’s path to the White House began in the cottage industry of so-called terrorism experts that emerged after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

He became a regular on a training circuit where speakers received lucrative contracts from international governments and law enforcement agencies to teach about the threat of militant Islamist movements. Many coaches of this era Islam slandered and supported policies that violated the rights of ordinary American Muslims in the name of fighting terrorism, according to civil liberties watchdogs.

“For him, counterterrorism is kinetic and targets only one type of enemy: the jihadist enemy,” explains an associate who has known Gorka for two decades.

Born in the United Kingdom to Hungarian parents, he attended university in London and served as a reserve intelligence soldier in the British Army. He then spent time in Hungary, dabbled in nationalist politics, and earned a doctorate. Yes.

In 2008, Gorka moved to the United States with his American wife, also a counterterrorism specialist, and eventually became a naturalized citizen — “a legal immigrant,” as he is billed at events.

As an instructor at think tanks and military institutes, he promoted an image of Muslims as inherently violent, according to current and former colleagues. They say his fixation on Islamist activism is morphing into more widespread bigotry, a claim Gorka called “absurd.” He insists his focus is on “the war within Islam” between radicals and Western-aligned Muslim leaders. “We want to see our friends win this war,” he said.

A former senior Justice Department official recalled that an FBI agent lobbied for Gorka to be hired as a counterterrorism trainer several years ago. The official “did not feel comfortable providing my credentials” for an office visit and therefore drove more than an hour to attend a conference.

Gorka’s speech was “reductionist” in its depiction of Islam as locked in a civilizational war with the West, the former official recalled. Immediately after the event, the manager advised against hiring Gorka because his teachings potentially violated the department’s principles against bias in training.

“I came back and told the U.S. attorneys, ‘Let’s be careful here,'” the former official said. “They put up a flag.”

Concerns about Gorka’s approach flared again when he joined the first Trump administration through MAGA strategist Steve Bannon. Gorka, who had worked for Bannon’s right-wing Breitbart newspaper, was appointed to the Strategic Initiatives Group, an internal White House think tank.

This nomination prompted 55 Democratic deputies to demand his dismissal in a letter calling his association with far-right groups “deeply troubling.” They focused on the Hungarian nationalist group Order of Valorwhose medal Gorka wore on a military tunic during Trump’s inaugural events. Gorka denied belonging to the organization, which had ties to the Nazis during World War II, and said the medal honored his father’s escape from communism.

Gorka qualifications for the position has also come under scrutiny. Critics discovered and published his thesis, which was pilloried by other scholars for a long time. simplistic chart which placed terrorism on a spectrum somewhere between “peacekeeping” and “thermonuclear war.”

He was ultimately ousted in August 2017, days after Bannon, following an internal power struggle. In his resignation letterGorka blamed his departure on the idea that “forces that do not support the MAGA promise are – for now – ascendant within the White House.”

Journalists I spotted it outside, loading his belongings into the back of a Mustang convertible with “ART WAR” vanity plates.

Dream job

Gorka’s return symbolizes the far-right shift of Trump’s second term.

Even some prominent conservatives were shocked by Gorka’s return. Michael Anton, who also served in the last Trump administration, would have withdrawn consideration for a senior national security role rather than working alongside him.

The knocks don’t seem to faze Gorka, who says he stood outside the White House in January 2025, ready to swipe his badge as soon as it was activated after Trump was sworn in. He called his role his dream job.

“I pinch myself every day”, Gorka said the “Triggernometry” podcast.

The Director of Counterterrorism’s responsibilities include coordinating policy relating to external threats as well as leading efforts to free unjustly detained Americans around the world. Gorka can be remarkably outspoken and mercurial for a senior official with such a sensitive mission, according to times of his public remarks reviewed by ProPublica.

He exploded at journalists (“Go to hell!”) and cut off interviews when he didn’t like the interrogations (“It’s over!”). He repeats anti-immigrant clichés and boasts that “Judeo-Christian civilization is the ultimate form of human existence.” He urged Christians and Jews to buy weapons to defend oneself “on the front line of the war between civilization and barbarism”.

Gorka’s public remarks also offer a behind-the-scenes look at his work for a boss he calls “the most consequential American president” in modern times. At one event, he took out his phone to let the audience hear its ringtone: Trump uttering his classic phrase “tired of winning.”

Gorka said his work day begins with a drive to the White House while listening to his favorite podcast, hosted by pro-Trump military historian Victor Davis Hanson. Upon arrival, he must surrender his cell phone before spending up to 12 hours a day in “my SCIF,” an acronym for the secure rooms where senior officials discuss classified matters.

On Thursday, he hosts an interagency discussion on the latest threats. He names “Marco,” “Kash” and other friends in leadership positions: “When I pass them in the West Wing, they ask me: ‘Did you kill more jihadists today?’ »

In his office, Gorka keeps a globe on his desk and a large poster of the Twin Towers on the wall, an ever-present reminder of 9/11. His team’s custom lanyards are printed with “WWFY & WWKY” in honor of a Trump phrase: “We will find you and we will kill you.”

“Red Mist” Cloud

Under Gorka’s watch, targeted militants don’t just die.

These are “human trash” that are being “wiped out,” he told the audience, describing the bodies piled “like cordwood” after receiving “eternal justice” from the Trump administration’s “hammers of hell.”

Before the Iranian conflict, Gorka was focused on reviving the “war on terror” in parts of Africa and the Middle East. He claims the U.S. strikes killed more than 750 militants whom he described as “jihadi leaders” with “American blood on their hands or who were planning attacks against Americans.”

“If we know where you are, anywhere in the world, we can kill you within 72 hours if the president says so,” he boasted last spring.

In the example Gorka shares most often, he informed the president about a militant recruiter in Somalia who had been under surveillance for more than a year during President Joe Biden’s administration. There, he said, Trump ordered the fighter’s death. About 30 hours later, on Feb. 1, 2025, Gorka said he watched live from the White House Situation Room as a U.S. strike vaporized the fighter into “a cloud of red mist,” a description he repeated at least half a dozen times.

It sometimes shows declassified video of the activist being blown to pieces, as several State Department members discovered while watching him speak last year. Unsettled, they attempted to rush after the event, but were gathered to flank Gorka during a photo shoot. “I look like a hostage,” one person said in the photo.

Staffers – since driven out of government by budget cuts – said they expected Gorka’s bravado but were horrified by his glee at what they described as a “snuff film”. Many other staff members expressed similar concerns that matters requiring level-headed professionalism were being assigned to someone they viewed as a volatile ideologue openly preaching bloodlust.

“He’s trying to show off” to the president, a longtime counterterrorism official said. “I bombed 100 other jihadists – watch out for me. »

Gorka’s claims of battlefield victories are often exaggerated or misleading about who was targeted and why, according to security officials and counterterrorism analysts. They claim that there are fewer than ten “high-profile” Islamist militants in the world and that the idea of ​​killing hundreds of them is absurd. The White House did not respond to a question about whether the numbers were inflated.

“It’s the word ‘lead’ that attracts me,” said Clarke, of the Soufan Center. “I have no doubt that they are killing people, but they are probably infantrymen.”

Reports of civilian casualties American operations are also confusing the death toll, particularly in Somalia and Yemen. But the Trump administration has shown little interest in an investigation; he emptied a Pentagon office responsible for remedying harm caused to civilians.

Take for example the “red mist” strike. It targeted Ahmed Maeleninin, an Islamic State group recruiter who was hiding in a cave complex in Somalia. Gorka said the Biden administration had monitored Maeleninin for more than a year without striking. That’s true, said a former counterterrorism official with direct knowledge of the intelligence services involved, but the story doesn’t end there.

“He left out the part about women and children,” said the official who recently left the government. “I knew the reason we hadn’t gone after him before was because he had his wife and kids around him 24/7. Now maybe they got lucky and found a moment where they got a clear hit.”

U.S. Africa Command, which oversees military operations in Somalia, said when announcing the February 2025 strike that “approximately 14 ISIS operatives in Somalia were killed and no civilians were injured.”

New emergency

Gorka’s official title is deputy assistant to the president and senior director for counterterrorism at the National Security Council.

The role has been upgraded to “special assistant” in recent years, although officials say the office’s powers have weakened since the days of early counterterrorism czars, such as Richard Clarke, who served under three presidents and revealed that top leaders ignored repeated warnings about al-Qaida before the Sept. 11 attacks.

Christopher Costa, a retired military intelligence officer who spent a year in the same position during the first Trump administration, described the role as “the coordinating authority for all things counterterrorism for the president of the United States.”

“It was rolling up your sleeves,” Costa recalls. “It was more than just political work: it was about mitigating current threats.”

Iranian threats against U.S. targets have drawn renewed attention to Trump’s lack of a counterterrorism doctrine.

Gorka remained discreet about the content of his strategy. Officials who would typically have participated in interagency discussions say they were not consulted. One person briefed on a proposed work summarized it this way: “Sunnis, Shiites, cartels.” Others said they expected the arrival of far-left anti-fascist activists, a tiny subset of the extremist threat to disproportionate attention of the Trump administration.

Gorka told another colleague that he was writing the document himself, without traditional input from partner federal agencies. “There was no ‘US government strategy’ involved,” the colleague said. “It might as well have been a new book he was writing.”

During his recent appearance at the Council on Foreign Relations, Gorka was asked – again – when the strategy would be released. He glanced at his staff and shifted in his seat.

He confided that he had “dedicated my life’s work to this massive document”, but that he had received feedback recently to “Cut it, Gorka!” He said he would make adjustments and send the draft back to his senior aides in hopes of winning presidential approval.

“Fingers crossed,” Gorka told the audience.