Gabbard announces more cuts to top US intelligence agency
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard looks on during a cabinet meeting hosted by US President Donald Trump in the Cabinet Room of the White House in Washington
By Katie Bo Lillis, CNN
(CNN) — Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on Wednesday announced what she has billed as a significant reorganization of the nation’s top intelligence agency that she promised would cut the workforce by nearly 50% and “save taxpayers at least $700 million per year.”
Gabbard has already reduced the size of the ODNI’s workforce by more than 500 staffers — roughly 30% — according to a fact sheet.
The effort, dubbed “ODNI 2.0,” appears to largely target a number of subagencies and offices within the office that Gabbard deems to either be redundant or to have been “politicized,” including the Foreign Malign Influence Center, which monitors efforts by foreign entities to influence the American public, and the National Counterproliferation and Biosecurity Center, which monitors the spread of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. Gabbard’s plan calls for shutting down those entities and putting some of their core functions and personnel elsewhere in the agency.
“Over the last 20 years, ODNI has become bloated and inefficient, and the intelligence community is rife with abuse of power, unauthorized leaks of classified intelligence, and politicized weaponization of intelligence,” Gabbard said in a statement. “ODNI and the IC must make serious changes to fulfill its responsibility to the American people and the U.S. Constitution by focusing on our core mission: find the truth and provide objective, unbiased, timely intelligence to the President and policymakers. Ending the weaponization of intelligence and holding bad actors accountable are essential to begin to earn the American people’s trust which has long been eroded.”
One element, the Strategic Futures Group — the part of the intelligence community responsible for producing long-range forecasts to guide policymakers — will be shut down because Gabbard believes “elements of the Intelligence Community’s deep state used [the Strategic Futures Group”] to push a partisan political agenda,” according to the fact sheet.
According to the fact sheet, Gabbard’s team reviewed the group’s main analytical product, an annual so-called Global Trends Report, and found it “to violate professional analytic tradecraft standards in an effort to propagate a political agenda that ran counter to all of the current President’s national security priorities.” The fact sheet provided no evidence to support that assertion. Gabbard and her team have previously faced allegations of pressuring intelligence analysts to change their conclusions to fit their views or to support the president.
It was not immediately clear how much of Gabbard’s announced reorganization is already underway or has already taken place. Gabbard also sent a three-page memo to Congress on Wednesday outlining some of the proposed changes, including offices that she said will be “modernized, streamlined or sunset in Fiscal Year 2026.”
Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, acknowledged “broad, bipartisan agreement that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence is in need of thoughtful reform,” but raised concerns about Gabbard’s “track record of politicizing intelligence.”
Sen. Tom Cotton, the top Republican on the panel, called the effort “an important step towards returning ODNI to that original size, scope, and mission.”
The-CNN-Wire
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