By Ian Werther in News — 19 Mar 2026

FBI probes former U.S. counterterrorism chief Joe Kent for allegedly sharing classified information.

Joe Kent, the former head of the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center, is reported to be under FBI investigation for allegedly sharing classified information improperly. Multiple U.S. outlets, including Semafor, the Associated Press, and The New York Times, cited anonymous sources saying the investigation was already underway before Kent’s resignation on the 17th.

Kent appeared on Tucker Carlson’s show the day after his resignation and said his attempt to relay concerns to President Trump was blocked, describing a broader pattern of restricted channels and limited transparency within the administration.

The Charnel House, located in a corner of the graveyard at St Helen's Church in Cliffe, Kent, England. The Charnel House was built during the mid 19th century. It was used as a make-shift mortuary until the bodies were taken away to be buried. Its location close to the river Thames is key as bodies found were washed up or floating along the Thames were retrieved and taken to the charnel house to be stored awaiting identification and burial.
The building continued to be used until the start of the twentieth century, when a series of Public Health Acts forced buildings such as this to become redundant. After this, the Church used it for storage and at one time a hive of bees was also put in there to deter intruders. It is now classified as a Grade II listed building by English Heritage. — Representative image for context; not directly related to the specific event in this article. License: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

Kent also said there was no evidence Iran was developing a nuclear weapon, and he speculated that Israel could have prompted U.S. military action because it had promised to strike first. He argued that Israel’s actions could put American interests in the Middle East at risk, and he suggested that Israeli and U.S. media experts helped push the Iran threat narrative.

Additionally, Kent claimed that Israeli officials personally lobbied Trump, and that some of the information they presented could not be verified by U.S. government officials.

An oast, oast house or hop kiln is a building designed for kilning (drying) hops as part of the brewing process. They can be found in most hop-growing (and former hop-growing) areas and are often good examples of vernacular architecture. Many redundant oasts have been converted into houses. The names oast and oast house are used interchangeably in Kent and Sussex.
They consist of a rectangular one or two storey building (the "stowage") and one or more kilns in which the hops were spread out to be dried by hot air rising from a wood or charcoal fire below. The drying floors were thin and perforated to permit the heat to pass through and escape through a cowl in the roof which turned with the wind. The freshly picked hops from the fields were raked in to dry and then raked out to cool before being bagged up and sent to the brewery. The Kentish dialect word kell was sometimes used for kilns ("The oast has three kells") and sometimes to mean the oast itself ("Take this lunchbox to your father, he's working in the kell"). The word oast itself also means "kiln".
Oasts are generally associated with Kent, and the oasthouse is a symbol associated with the county.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oast_house — Representative image for context; not directly related to the specific event in this article. License: CC BY 2.0. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

The article notes that the National Counterterrorism Center is a governmentAnalytical unit that identifies and tracks terrorist threats, and it operates under the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI).

During a public hearing of the Senate Intelligence Committee on the 18th, the DNI head Tulsi Gabbard faced a question about whether intelligence agencies judged there to be an immediate threat from Iran. He declined to give a direct answer, saying that only the president can decide what constitutes an imminent threat, and that Trump had concluded there was one. For U.S. readers, the episodes touch on how intelligence is reported, how policy is shaped in real time, and how relationships with allies and perceived threats influence American security and foreign policy.

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