Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has positioned herself as a leader in exposing how American intelligence officials have long evaded accountability for misleading the nation — not just about Russiagate, but also into war.
Gabbard indicated in an August interview with New York Post columnist Miranda Devine that a reckoning is under way; however, there remain challenges — including some posed by antagonistic holdovers from previous administrations.
“When you talk about how do we change this, we have to recognize that both of them — [ex-CIA Director] John Brennan and [ex-DNI] James Clapper, as leaders in the intelligence community — they have their own disciples,” said Gabbard. “They have a lot of their own people that they brought in with them or that they mentored in a mirroring of their own image, and many of those people still exist within the intelligence community now.”
Gabbard made abundantly clear to the “bad actors” on Wednesday that she means business.
Hours after announcing that she had revoked the security clearances of 37 current and former officials over their involvement in the Russiagate scandal, Gabbard revealed that she plans to radically shake up her 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.
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Photographer: Aaron Schwartz/CNP/Bloomberg via Getty Images
“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,” the DNI continued.
To this end, Gabbard indicated that she is working on “ODNI 2.0”: “the start of a new era focused on serving our country, fulfilling our core national security mission with excellence, always grounded in the U.S. Constitution, and ensuring the safety, security, and freedom of the American people.”
One of the key differences between ODNI 1.0 and ODNI 2.0 is that the new version will be a great deal lighter.
‘Ending the weaponization of intelligence and holding bad actors accountable are essential to begin to earn the American people’s trust.’
Gabbard plans to can over 40% of the workforce at her agency by the end of fiscal year 2025 — layoffs her office indicated will save taxpayers over $700 million annually and improve the ODNI’s efficacy “as the central hub for intelligence integration, strategic guidance, and oversight over the Intelligence Community.”
Since assuming the role of director of national intelligence, Gabbard has already reduced the ODNI by nearly 30%, canning over 500 staffers.
Blaze Media contributor and investigative reporter Steve Baker noted that the personnel at these intelligence agencies have “been overwhelmingly bad guys.”
“We’re talking about a massively large percentage of the intelligence services,” Baker said. “The lying employees are there to subvert the America First and Trump agenda and are actively doing so.”
Baker suggested that one of the reasons this has taken so long is that before cutting deeper, Gabbard, like other Trump agency heads, first had to deal with obstructionist holdovers in more senior positions.
While these layoffs may help maximize efficiency at the ODNI, Baker acknowledged that “there’s a lot of casualties of war in this,” particularly when it comes to newer employees on probationary status.
In addition to trimming the fat, the DNI is effectively closing a number of subagencies that have become “redundant.”
A fact sheet from the ODNI indicates that the ODNI’s Foreign Malign Influence Center now faces the same fate as its congressionally mandated partner organization at the State Department, the Global Engagement Center — the rebrand of which Secretary of State Marco Rubio closed in April.
The ODNI noted that the FMIC earned extinction when it was “used by the previous administration to justify the suppression of free speech and to censor political opposition.”
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Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
The National Counterproliferation and Biosecurity Center and the Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center have similarly been targeted in the restructuring and deemed redundant.
According to the ODNI, “descoping” or “refocusing” these three subagencies alone will save taxpayers $46 million a year.
After a determination that that the “unique intelligence-related capability at [the National Intelligence University] is narrow in scope and does not require a stand-alone university,” the school’s intelligence-related programs are being transferred to the National Defense University for an estimated savings of $40 million annually.
Gabbard is also closing the ODNI’s Reston, Virginia, campus and moving the National Intelligence Council to the main ODNI campus in nearby McClean.
The ODNI noted further that Gabbard already removed the partisan holdovers on the External Research Council for leaking classified information to reporters.
When asked to comment on whether suspected “disciples” or bad actors were among those now facing termination, a spokesperson for the ODNI told Blaze News that ‘offices were refocused for a number of reasons including because they ‘may have been used to weaponize intelligence against Americans’ and were used ‘by the deep state to push a partisan agenda.'”
“Ending the weaponization of intelligence and holding bad actors accountable are essential to begin to earn the American people’s trust, which as long been eroded,” Gabbard explained.
Blaze News has reached out to the ODNI for additional comment.
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