Prior to the 2018 mid-term elections, Patrick Martin of the World Socialist Web Site published an important pamphlet called “The CIA Democrats” detailing the large number of Democratic Party congressional candidates who had military and intelligence backgrounds.
Eleven of the candidates with a military-intelligence background won seats, including Virginia’s current Governor Abigail Spanberger and Michigan Senator Elissa Slotkin, who both worked for the CIA.
In the 2026 mid-term elections, Martin reports that a staggering 67 Democratic congressional candidates with a national security background are on the November ballot—more than double the number who ran in any of the last four elections.[1]
If, as appears likely based on pre-election polling, the Democratic Party makes significant gains in November, the military-intelligence “caucus” inside the Democratic delegation could double or triple in size.[2] While any blow to Donald Trump and the increasingly fascist oriented GOP is welcome, the kinds of Democratic Party candidates being put in front of voters is alarming.
According to Martin, the 67 candidates range from military officers who oversaw tens of thousands of troops, to commanders of combat units in the war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq, to military intelligence agents, involved in the most sensitive secret operations, to former State Department and White House aides.
Perhaps the most publicized of the military-intelligence candidates is Cait Conley, a “moderate” Democrat who is challenging for a seat in the 17th Congressional District of New York in the Hudson Valley against Republican Congressman Mike Lawler.
Martin writes that “Conley is a West Point graduate who deployed six times to Afghanistan and Iraq with the Army special forces. She spent 16 years in the military before going to work at the National Security Council in the Biden White House and then the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). A video on her campaign website sums up her experience as ‘West Point Graduate. Special Operations. Terrorist Hunter.’ Her website declares: ‘Cait lives by the Special Ops saying run to the sound of the guns.’”
Martin further notes that, “on the National Security Council under Biden, Conley was director for counterterrorism, which would have included drawing up and gaining presidential approval of targets for drone missile assassination. Her website boasts that this White House position ‘led to her being banned from Russia.’ It proudly displays a Russian Foreign Ministry document showing that she was among 500 Americans denied entry to that country.”[3]
Amazingly, a Republican attack ad calls Conley “the socialists’ choice,” which shows how screwed up American politics is.
Conley is one of the so-called “Hell Cats,” a coalition of four female Democratic candidates with military-intelligence backgrounds running in swing districts. The term “Hell Cats” is a reference to the first women Marines who served in World War I.
The other “Hell Cats” are: a) Rebecca Bennett, a former U.S. Navy helicopter pilot who is running in the 7th district in New Jersey, on a platform prioritizing health care and national security (ie. high military budgets and imperialism); b) JoAnna Mendoza, a retired Marine running in Arizona’s 6th district; and c) Maura Sullivan, a Marine officer in Iraq (who served in Fallujah) and former Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs in the Obama administration and Assistant to the Secretary of the Navy, who is running for Congress in New Hampshire’s 1st District.
A common thread of the “Hell Cats” is their support for NATO, for robust funding for military bases in their districts, for an aggressive approach to countering China, which Bennett calls “the number one strategic threat to global democracy and the U.S.’ standing over the next 50 years,” and for “new military technologies to ensure our fighting force has the superior capabilities needed for 21st-century asymmetric warfare, the next conflict,” as Sullivan, who is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (AKA “Wall Street’s think tank”), puts it on her website.
Two other examples that Martin gives of “CIA Democrats” are: a) Frederick Wellman, a combat veteran in the first and second Iraq Wars challenging for a seat in Missouri who is featured on his campaign website in a photo with former CIA Director David Petraeus; and b) Bale Dalton from Florida, a helicopter pilot who flew in special operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Horn of Africa and the Asia Pacific and served as chief of staff of NASA, where his role “included work on space-security issues.”
Like Conley, Wellman is an anti-Russia hawk who, in a debate with his Republican opponent, said that Donald Trump was “wrong to try to strong-arm Ukraine into a peace deal with Russia, especially since Russia started the conflict in 2022.”[4]
These comments reflect Wellman’s ignorance, as serious academic scholarship points to the war having started in 2014 after the U.S. supported a right-wing coup in Ukraine and CIA Director John Brennan traveled to Ukraine to pressure Ukraine’s post-war leadership to attack eastern Ukraine, which gradually drew in the Russians.[5]
The list of military intelligence operatives running for Congress on the Democratic Party ticket includes:
1. Rear Admiral Eileen Laubacher, a 34-year Navy veteran who worked as an intelligence officer and for the National Security Council who is running against Lauren Boebert in Colorado’s Fourth Congressional District. Supporting the U.S. Pacific and Space command, Laubacher helped coordinate the Afghan security forces, which were known for their brutality and commission of war crimes. Meanwhile, Laubacher’s husband worked for Lockheed Martin and holds stock in it.
2. Shawn Harris, a 40-year Army veteran and combat commander in Afghanistan who served as U.S. Defense attaché to Israel, is running for a seat in Georgia’s 14th Congressional District. In 2024, when Harris ran for the same seat against Marjorie Taylor Greene (R), he called Greene “Moscow Marge” because of her opposition to U.S. military aid to Ukraine. This rhetoric was right out of the playbook of U.S. intelligence agencies and Cold War-era John Birch Society, which accused Dwight Eisenhower of being a Soviet agent.
3. Alan Bradstock, a Desert Storm combat veteran and former FBI special agent running for Congress in Pennsylvania’s 14th Congressional District, who coordinated terrorism financing investigations at CIA headquarters and later worked closely with Canadian intelligence agencies and supported the intelligence community as a contractor;
4. Lee McInnis, Democratic Party candidate in the 3rd Congressional District in Alabama, who spent 28 years in the intelligence community, serving in Iraq, Bahrain and Qatar and as Acting Director of Intelligence for NATO/USA Special Operations in Afghanistan which carried out raids to kill suspected Taliban;
5. Carmela Conroy, a career State Department official running in the 5th Congressional District in Washington State, who served in Afghanistan and Okinawa, the site of a huge number of U.S. military bases. In 2011, Conroy received the Agency Seal Medal from the CIA for helping to secure the release from prison of CIA contractor Raymond Davis, who shot two civilians in Lahore, Pakistan.
Preferred Vehicle for Deep-State Operatives?
Martin notes that 32 of the 67 Democratic Party congressional candidates served tours with the military in Iraq and Afghanistan, with some serving subsequently as military recruiters.
The Democratic Party candidate for U.S. Senate in Oklahoma, N’Kiyla Jasmine Thomas, did not serve in the military but advertises herself as a military spouse who is supportive of the military and its huge budgets.
Glenn Ivey, who has represented Maryland’s 4th Congressional District since 2023, also never served in the military but served the interests of U.S. intelligence and the so-called “deep state” as a special counsel coordinating the Senate investigation into the July 1993 death of White House Counsel Vince Foster, which helped cover up the circumstances of Foster’s murder.[6]
Some 28 Democrats currently serving in Congress have military experience compared with 72 Republicans. One of those Democrats, Jimmy Panetta, a former Navy intelligence officer who won a Bronze Star in Afghanistan when he was part of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC),[7] is the son of former CIA Director and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta.
Predictably, Panetta has compiled a hawkish foreign policy record representing California’s 19th Congressional District, which includes the city of Santa Cruz, since 2017.
Panetta, an advocate of robust funding for military bases on California’s central coast, supported a congressional bill mandating $8 billion to bolster defense capabilities for Taiwan and the Indo-Pacific region, signed a letter advocating for President Joe Biden to provide Ukraine with F-16 fighter jets,[8] inflamed the Chinese by visiting Taiwan and pledging support for separatists there, called Venezuelan socialist leader Nicolas Maduro “cruel, inhumane and undemocratic,” and was one of 15 Democrats to support the “Kill Nonprofit” Bill targeting pro-Palestinian protesters and their free speech.
Panetta’s positions dovetail with those of Jake Auchincloss (D-MA), a relative of former First Lady Jackie Kennedy who fought with the Marines in Afghanistan and Iraq and has used his position on the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party to become a leading voice in the Democratic Party calling on the U.S. to “stand with Taiwan and Indo-Pacific allies against Chinese aggression” and for more aid to Ukraine and Israel.[9]
Further cut out of the same mould is Maggie Goodlander, the wife of former National Security adviser Jake Sullivan and an ex-Navy intelligence officer currently up for reelection in New Hampshire’s 2nd district, who is a leading Congressional advocate for expanded military support to Ukraine and signed a letter with twelve other Democratic Party hawks urging President Trump to confront China over its support to Iran (Goodlander amazingly was a senior foreign policy adviser to super-hawk John McCain).
According to Patrick Martin, the Democratic Party leadership is openly encouraging the recruitment of candidates like Panetta, Auchincloss, Goodlander and others profiled above, as it seeks ever-closer ties to the Pentagon and CIA.
Large sections of the military-intelligence apparatus now view the Democratic Party as their preferred political vehicle, in opposition to the erratic policies of Donald Trump and, in particular, his threatened pullback from direct involvement in the U.S.-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine.
The media coverage devoted to the military-intelligence apparatus’s effective takeover of the Democratic Party has been scant compared with the huge publicity devoted to the small number of Democratic Party candidates “posturing as ‘left’ or democratic socialists.”[10]
According to Martin, these latter candidates do not really represent a rival faction in the party as the political foundation of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) organization is “anti-communism” and “defense of the global interests of U.S. imperialism against social revolution.”
Martin notes that DSA standard-bearer Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez characteristically expressed no objection to Democratic Party candidates who hold a military-intelligence background, has repeatedly voted in favor of massive appropriations for the U.S. military and “intelligence community,” and has given full support to the U.S.-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine.
For Martin, the huge number of military and intelligence veterans running for Congress as Democrats reflects the Democratic Party’s status as a party of Wall Street, imperialism and war—much like the Republicans.
Indeed, most of the veterans running for Congress say on their websites that they want to help working Americans but do not advocate for cutting the trillion-dollar-plus military budget, which strips public funding from needed social programs.
Their critique of Trump often centers on demands for more aggressive military intervention in Ukraine or a tougher line on North Korea and China, which Wall Street regards as its greatest adversary.[11]
Additionally, the “CIA Democrats” do not demand a new Church committee to investigate the abuses of the intelligence agencies, or abolition of the National Endowment for Democracy, which has a long record of fomenting ethnic conflict and spreading propaganda in support of regime-change operations for which these Democrats are cheerleaders.
Ten from the military-intelligence apparatus are seeking reelection. ↑
Martin notes that military-intelligence Democrats will “vastly outnumber the relative handful of self-proclaimed ‘democratic socialists’ to whom the corporate media has given so much attention, and whom pseudo-left groups cite as evidence that the Democratic Party can be pushed to the left.” ↑
A New York Times profile of Conley, who currently has a slight edge in the polls, emphasized her opposition to calls to block military aid to Israel [she said she did not believe Israel’s actions in Gaza constituted genocide] and her support for Donald Trump’s Golden Dome, which many Democrats in Congress have called an unworkable boondoggle. The profile further specified Conley’s position that the federal government “ought to have every tool available to defend the country, including a drone detection product and an AI powered data analysis tool sold by companies where she worked for eighteen months after leaving government.” ↑
In another statement on Ukraine, Wellman wrote: “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is an attack on a sovereign democracy and a threat to the security of Europe and the United States. Ukraine and our NATO allies have stood with America, and we must stand with them. I support continued military assistance to help Ukraine defend itself and a strong, united NATO capable of deterring further Russian aggression. We cannot reward Vladimir Putin by allowing him to redraw international borders through violence or dictate Ukraine’s future. A lasting peace cannot be built by abandoning our allies or teaching authoritarian leaders that aggression succeeds.” ↑
- See Jeremy Kuzmarov, “CIA Director John Brennan Pressed Ukraine Government To Use Force in Donbass in April 2014,” CovertAction Magazine, October 1, 2026.
- For more on the murky circumstances of Foster’s death and government cover-up, see Jeremy Kuzmarov, “With the Clinton Brand Now Discredited, It’s High Time to Reopen the Investigation into the Death of Vince Foster,” CovertAction Magazine, January 5, 2022. Ivey is an anti-Russia, anti-China hawk with close ties to the Israel lobby. He is being challenged by CovertAction Magazine friend Sam Husseini who is running against him with the Green Party.
JSOC was headed by General Stanley McChrystal and became known for carrying out Phoenix-type assassinations. See Jeremy Scahill, Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield (Ashland, OR: Blackstone Publishers, 2013). ↑
Panetta received a Ukrainian parliamentary medal after visiting Kyiv in September 2024. Some of the anti-Russia and anti-China legislation that Panetta sponsored is detailed here. ↑
Auchincloss, who is currently in the U.S. Army reserves, is considered a shoo-in to defeat Republican Party challenger Thomas Stalcup in Massachusetts’s fourth district, which includes Boston suburbs Brookline and Newton. ↑
This extends to much of the liberal-progressive alternative media, which has been silent about it. Martin’s study is the main one in the World Socialist Web Site that is rarely cited in other outlets in the alternative media universe—like Jacobin, The Nation, Mother Jones and others like them—which often function as cheerleaders for DSA candidates and the supposed left wing of the Democratic Party. ↑
Most of the candidates do not advocate for leftist policies that could challenge corporate power and were adopted by progressives in earlier periods of American history like anti-trust laws, sweeping tax increases on the wealthy and inheritance taxes or nationalized industry. ↑
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About the Author
Jeremy Kuzmarov holds a Ph.D. in American history from Brandeis University and has taught at numerous colleges across the United States. He is regularly sought out as an expert on U.S. history and politics and co-hosts a radio show on New York Public Radio and on Progressive Radio News Network called “Uncontrolled Opposition.”
He is Managing Editor of CovertAction Magazine and is the author of eight books, including Obama’s Unending Wars (Clarity Press, 2019), The Russians Are Coming, Again, with John Marciano (Monthly Review Press, 2018), Warmonger. How Clinton’s Malign Foreign Policy Launched the U.S. Trajectory From Bush II to Biden (Clarity Press, 2023); with Dan Kovalik, Syria: Anatomy of Regime Change (Baraka Books, 2025), and Political Assassinations in America: The Intricate Nexus of Deep State Crime (Clarity Press, 2026).
Besides these books, Kuzmarov has published hundreds of articles and contributed to numerous edited volumes, including one in the prestigious Oxford History of Counterinsurgency .
He can be reached at jkuzmarov2@gmail.com and found on substack here.
