Amaryllis Fox Kennedy, the former CIA officer who served as a top deputy to Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, has resigned from her White House roles, the second of Gabbard's senior lieutenants to leave over the conflict with Iran.
Kennedy sent an email to colleagues earlier this month announcing she was leaving to return to the private sector. The message praised President Trump and made no mention of the war, the Daily Mail reported. But sources familiar with Kennedy told the Washington Post that her departure stemmed from disagreement with Trump's decision to launch strikes on Iran.
The gap between what Kennedy wrote and what unnamed sources say she believed tells its own story. And it raises a question worth asking plainly: if you disagree with the commander-in-chief's national security decisions, is a quiet exit the right move, or does it leave a vacuum that serves no one?
Kennedy's exit follows Joe Kent's resignation in March. Kent, who served as director of the National Counterterrorism Center, stepped down after claiming Israeli leaders had misled Trump about the imminent threat Iran posed to the United States. His resignation letter went further, blaming Israel and its "powerful American lobby" for dragging the U.S. into the war.
Trump dismissed Kent as "very weak on security."
The back-to-back departures leave Gabbard's inner circle notably thinner at a moment when the intelligence community faces wartime demands. Gabbard herself has faced persistent calls to resign over her opposition to U.S. military action in Iran. She has not stepped down.
Instead, Gabbard offered measured praise for her departing deputy. She told the Daily Mail:
"We are grateful to Amaryllis Fox Kennedy for her leadership and exceptional service. Under her leadership, we successfully aligned the Intelligence Community agencies with the Administration's and ODNI's goals, driving a unified approach to our mission."
That statement frames Kennedy's tenure as a success. It says nothing about why she left.
Fox Kennedy's biography reads like a Washington novel. A former CIA officer with operational experience, she married Bobby Kennedy III, RFK Jr.'s eldest son, in 2018 at a beachside ceremony at the Kennedy family's Cape Cod compound in Massachusetts. The couple first met at Burning Man. They have two children.
Her family connections gave her a powerful patron. RFK Jr. backed her bid to become deputy director of the CIA after Trump's 2024 election. Republican senators blocked that appointment, worried she would impose disruptive changes at the agency.
She landed instead in a constellation of roles: deputy to Gabbard at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, associate director at the Office of Management and Budget, and member of Trump's Intelligence Advisory Board. Three positions simultaneously, spanning intelligence operations and budget oversight.
Current and former U.S. officials raised concerns about one person managing both intelligence direction and oversight functions. The arrangement was unusual. Whether it was productive or problematic depends on whom you ask.
People familiar with Kennedy's work said she focused on East Asia, human espionage, and new intelligence-gathering technologies. She also worked closely with Gabbard to craft a national intelligence strategy that laid out operational objectives for the entire U.S. intelligence community.
One of her most visible efforts involved pushing for the declassification of historical documents tied to the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and Martin Luther King Jr., a cause with obvious personal resonance given her marriage into the Kennedy family and one that aligned with the president's own stated priorities.
None of that work, by any account, had anything to do with Iran.
Kennedy's farewell email praised the president and cited a desire to return to the private sector. Sources close to her told a different story to the Washington Post, that the Iran strikes drove her out.
If the sources are right, Kennedy chose the polite route. No public letter. No inflammatory accusations. No blaming foreign governments or domestic lobbies, as Kent did. She simply left and let others explain why.
That restraint is worth noting. But it also means the public record contains two competing accounts: Kennedy's own words, which point to a routine career transition, and anonymous sources, which point to a policy rupture. Neither account has been confirmed by Kennedy herself on the record.
The Daily Mail contacted the White House for comment. No response was reported.
Gabbard now faces a practical challenge. Two trusted deputies, Kent and Kennedy, have walked away in a matter of months. Both departures trace back to the same issue: the U.S. posture toward Iran. Gabbard's own skepticism of military action in the region is well documented and has made her a target of critics who want a more aggressive approach.
Losing senior staff over the very issue that defines your political vulnerability is not a crisis. But it is a pattern. And patterns in Washington tend to accelerate.
The intelligence community does not run on autopilot. It requires experienced hands at the controls, especially during active military operations. Every empty chair at ODNI or the National Counterterrorism Center is a chair that needs filling, fast, and with someone who can execute the president's strategy without reservation.
There is nothing wrong with resigning over a policy disagreement. It is, in fact, one of the more honorable traditions in government. You serve at the pleasure of the president. When you can no longer support his decisions in good conscience, you leave.
But the intelligence community is not a think tank. It is not a place where dissent gets workshopped over coffee. When the president orders strikes, the people charged with providing him intelligence need to be fully committed to the mission, not quietly shopping their objections to reporters on the way out the door.
Kent made his objections loud and specific, however controversial. Kennedy, if the sourcing is accurate, kept hers private while letting surrogates do the talking. Neither approach changes the underlying reality: the president made a decision, and two senior intelligence officials decided they could not live with it.
That is their right. It is also the president's right to have people around him who will carry out his orders.
Washington rewards the graceful exit. But the country needs intelligence officials who stay in the fight, or leave with their reasons on the record, not whispered through intermediaries.
