First Congress and then voters will decide whether President Trump’s apparent effort to utilize U.S. aid to compel political favors from Ukraine’s government warrants his removal from office. Whatever happens, there is one certainty: One of the biggest casualties of the Trump presidency will be trust in the intelligence community.

Intelligence politicization has been a problem for decades. After Ronald Reagan defeated President Jimmy Carter, for example, the intelligence community revised (against both evidence and logic) its earlier conclusions that the Soviet Union had used biological weapons, fearing that to maintain that conclusion would give Reagan an excuse to turn away from arms control talks.