Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on Wednesday introduced what she has billed as a major reorganization of the nation’s top intelligence agency that she promised would lower the workforce by almost 50% and “save taxpayers at least $700 million per year.”
Gabbard has already decreased the dimensions of the ODNI’s workforce by more than 500 staffers — roughly 30% — in accordance to a reality sheet.
The effort, dubbed “ODNI 2.0,” seems to largely goal plenty of subagencies and places of work inside the workplace that Gabbard deems to both be redundant or to have been “politicized,” together with the Foreign Malign Influence Center, which displays efforts by overseas entities to affect the American public, and the National Counterproliferation and Biosecurity Center, which displays the unfold of chemical, organic and nuclear weapons. Gabbard’s plan requires shutting down these entities and placing a few of their core features and personnel elsewhere within 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 stated in a press release. “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 factor, the Strategic Futures Group — the a part of the intelligence neighborhood accountable for producing long-range forecasts to information policymakers — can be shut down as a result of Gabbard believes “elements of the Intelligence Community’s deep state used [the Strategic Futures Group”] to push a partisan political agenda,” in accordance to the very fact sheet.
According to the very fact sheet, Gabbard’s workforce reviewed the group’s important analytical product, an annual so-called Global Trends Report, and located 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 reality sheet offered no proof to help that assertion. Gabbard and her workforce have beforehand confronted allegations of pressuring intelligence analysts to change their conclusions to match their views or to help the president.
It was not instantly clear how a lot of Gabbard’s introduced reorganization is already underway or has already taken place. Gabbard additionally despatched a three-page memo to Congress on Wednesday outlining a number of the proposed adjustments, together with places of work that she stated can 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,” however raised issues about Gabbard’s “track record of politicizing intelligence.”
Sen. Tom Cotton, the top Republican on the panel, known as the hassle “an important step towards returning ODNI to that original size, scope, and mission.”