Gabbard set to cut 40% of staff in national intelligence overhaul

WASHINGTON (CN) — Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard announced Wednesday she would terminate over 40% of the office’s personnel by the end of 2025, asserting that the so-called “ODNI 2.0” would save over $700 million per year.

In a press release, Gabbard described the move as necessary to address “bloat” and refocus the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to improve effectiveness in executing its national security mission.

“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. “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.”

Since Gabbard was confirmed in February, she has already terminated 500 staffers at ODNI, a 30% reduction from the nearly 1,850 at the agency.

According to an ODNI fact sheet, the restructuring will impact the Foreign Malign Influence Center, the National Counterproliferation and Biosecurity Center and the Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center. Several core functions from those offices will be integrated into ODNI’s Mission Integration and National Intelligence Council.

The External Research Council and the Strategic Futures Group will be eliminated, as both entities “operated as hubs for injecting partisan priorities into intelligence products,” Gabbard said.

According to Gabbard, the Foreign Malign Influence Center had become redundant, as the National Intelligence Council and the National Counterintelligence and Security Center already monitor foreign influence efforts. Its restructuring is projected to save at least $7 million per year.

She asserted that the center was used by the Biden administration to “justify the suppression of free speech and to censor political opposition,” pointing to coordination between the center and tech companies like Twitter, Google and Facebook to remove an October 2020 New York Post story regarding Hunter Biden’s laptop.

The National Counterproliferation and Biosecurity Center had also become redundant, due to the National Intelligence Council also monitoring the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Gabbard said the center added the “Biosecurity” designation during the Covid-19 pandemic, but since then “taking action to address global health issues” was outside of ODNI’s core mission.

According to the fact sheet, “descoping” the center would save approximately $29 million per year.

As part of the effort, ODNI and 18 other intelligence community elements will work to eliminate “wasteful contracts and duplicative staff,” which Gabbard estimates would eliminate $1.3 billion in annual recurring costs by the end of the fiscal year.

On Tuesday, Gabbard announced she had stripped the security clearances of 37 current and former officials who she said “abused public trust by politicizing and manipulating” information, including several officials who involved in former President Barack Obama’s probe of Russian influence in the 2016 presidential election.

Among the officials include Stephanie O’Sullivan and Vinh Nguyen, both of whom worked under former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and were involved in the Russian probe.

“Being entrusted with a security clearance is a privilege, not a right,” Gabbard said in a post on X Tuesday. “Those in the intelligence community who betray their oath to the Constitution and put their own interests ahead of the interests of the American people have broken the sacred trust they promised to uphold.”

Wednesday’s announcement is the latest move in the Trump administration’s widespread effort to shrink the federal government — an effort that has resulted in the shutdown of the U.S. Agency for International Development, the gutting of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the U.S. Agency for Global Media.

The effort, spearheaded in the early months of Trump’s second term by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, faced significant legal pushback as federal workers unions filed suit and federal judges froze many of the administration’s cuts.

However, in recent weeks the D.C. Circuit has ruled in favor of the Trump administration — for example, finding that the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia was the wrong venue for terminated CFPB employees to bring their claims.

Instead, the Trump-appointed majority ruled they should have brought their claims to the Merit Systems Protection Board. The MSPB is one of several independent agencies where Trump has summarily terminated Democratic appointees.

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