WASHINGTON — Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard announced plans Wednesday to cut her agency’s workforce by up to 40% in the coming weeks — and eliminate several offices that “politicized” the flow of critical information.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence had been staffed by more than 1,800 employees when Gabbard was sworn in but is expected to retain just 1,300, while at least three offices deemed redundant will be shut down, according to senior officials.
Not all of that reduction in force will come from firings, with many employees shifted to other executive branch agencies.
The “core functions” of those offices — Foreign Malign Influence Center (FMIC), National Counterproliferation and Biosecurity Center and the Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center — will be taken up either by ODNI’s Mission Integration office or the National Intelligence Council.
The latter comprises the most senior intelligence analysts, who help oversee more than a dozen agencies.
ODNI officials claimed in a briefing with reporters that the FMIC had eroded civil liberties and damaged Americans’ trust, particularly during the Biden administration — and even aided big tech platforms in moving to censor speech like The Post’s bombshell story on former first son Hunter Biden in October 2020.
One official compared the office to the State Department’s Global Engagement Center, which Secretary Marco Rubio closed down in April following similar accusations of suppressing free speech.
The other two offices focused on monitoring threats involving weapons of mass destruction and cyberattacks — both of which are handled by other existing executive branch agencies.
Additionally, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has agreed to absorb the National Intelligence University into his department’s National Defense University for all intelligence-related programs and courses.
“This effort aligns with President Trump’s focus on increasing efficiencies across the government and will enhance the quality of our educational programs,” Gabbard and Hegseth wrote in an Aug. 11 memo reviewed by The Post.
The overall initiative, branded “ODNI 2.0,” could save US taxpayers up to $700 million, the officials projected.
“Across the organizations, the process reviews we’ve made have been incredibly thoughtful,” one official said. “By removing these constraints, that enhances our ability to take on new priorities.”
Another official said diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives had saddled the intelligence community with inefficiencies — and Gabbard’s revamp of the office would help it “pivot to an elite workforce.”
The announcement comes just two days after the spy boss revoked security clearances for 37 current and former intelligence professionals, most of whom are no longer serving in the federal government.
At least one former aide to ex-DNI James Clapper, Vinh Nguyen, had been working for the National Security Agency as an AI officer — one of two areas that officials said Gabbard is getting the intel community to focus on.
Gabbard announced the changes in a message to the workforce Wednesday afternoon, saying ODNI was “at a crossroads.”
According to the officials, the DNI chief had held discussions with President Trump about abolishing the intel office entirely, but a months-long review of its functions reaffirmed its ability to provide crucial oversight.
Gabbard has drawn attention to that through the publication of explosive declassified files about the crafting of a 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) that showed Obama administration officials using their offices to inflate claims of collusion between Russia and Trump’s presidential campaign.
“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,” she said in a statement.
“ODNI and the IC must make serious changes to fulfill its responsibility to the American people and the US Constitution by focusing on our core mission: find the truth and provide objective, unbiased, timely intelligence to the President and policymakers,” she added.
“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.”
Clapper, who served as DNI from 2010 to 2017, told CNN last month that he’d already “lawyered up” after the declassified files on purported Russian collusion became public.
The Trump administration has since begun a grand jury probe of Clapper, former CIA Director John Brennan and former FBI Director James Comey for their involvement in the 2017 ICA report.
