Declaring that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence has become “bloated” and has “failed to fulfill its mandate,” DNI Tulsi Gabbard announced Wednesday the first structural overhaul of the agency since its founding 20 years ago, in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, as a layer of authority over the 18 other agencies that comprise America’s $100 billion intelligence community.
“ODNI and the intelligence community must make serious changes to fulfill its responsibility to the American people and the U.S. Constitution,” Gabbard said in a statement, “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. Under President Trump’s leadership, ODNI 2.0 is the start of a new era.”
Led by a cadre of senior ODNI officials with decades of collective experience in the intelligence community and armed forces, Gabbard’s “mission review” for her agency is shuttering some internal units at ODNI — for reasons of efficiency and politicization in each case, the officials said — and reducing the agency’s workforce. Gabbard’s aides claimed the changes will slash excess staffing by more than 40% and save U.S. taxpayers an estimated $700 million annually in repurposed funds.
Officials said Gabbard briefed the results of her review, and her recommendations, to President Trump in the Oval Office two weeks ago, and that he gave the director a “green light” on that occasion for her to proceed as she had outlined.
“If left to its own devices, the intelligence community will not look inward at itself,” one senior ODNI official told reporters Wednesday. “It’s been sub-optimized for a very long time.”
Among the changes being implemented by Gabbard’s team immediately are the closure and consolidation of the Foreign Malign Influence Center, a 3-year-old creation of Congress and the Biden administration that, by its own description, “leads the intelligence community on threats to democracy and U.S. national interests from … subversive, undeclared, coercive, or criminal activities by foreign governments, non-state actors, or their proxies.” FMIC was also responsible for identifying foreign interference in U.S. elections.
ODNI officials said FMIC had been utilized by the Biden administration to suppress conservative speech. As an example, the officials pointed to the role the center played in the series of events in which a New York Post exclusive about Hunter Biden’s laptop, filled with incriminating messages, emails, and photos, was removed from Twitter, now X, during the 2020 election. Shortly before that occurred, ODNI said, FMIC “coordinated with [Twitter] and other Big Tech platforms, like Facebook and Google, on their responses to the story.”
Also being consolidated within other units is the National Counterproliferation and Biosecurity Center. Originally named the National Counterproliferation Center, this unit has been a part of ODNI since the agency was created by the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004. The NCBC website says the center’s mission is to “counter and halt” the spread of weapons of mass destruction and their delivery systems, as well as “biosecurity and foreign biological threats.”
Gabbard’s aides said NCBC had become “redundant,” given the focus on WMD within other units, such as the National Intelligence Council, and that “taking action to address global health issues falls well outside of ODNI’s core mission.”
Also deemed redundant was the Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center, formed to coordinate a consistent approach to cyber collection and investment across the intelligence community. By Wednesday evening, the center’s home page featured a new banner reading: “This is historical material. The website is no longer updated and links to external websites and some internal pages may not work.”
Similarly, in a move announced jointly by Gabbard and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, National Intelligence University, founded in 1962, will shut down and be merged with National Defense University.
Since President Trump returned to office, ODNI has steadily cut its workforce, from 1,800 people in January to around 1,500 as of the beginning of August. With Wednesday’s cuts, the total number will be reduced to approximately 1,300. ODNI officials said some employees from the shuttered centers would be receiving pink slips today, with 60 days to find a new job. Still other efficiencies were achieved by returning ODNI detailees to their home agencies and by not filling vacancies.
Asked if Gabbard had considered abolishing ODNI altogether, as some intelligence professionals have urged for years, her aides said she had, even going so far as to declare, “It’s fine if I’m the last director of this agency.” Ultimately, however, Gabbard’s review convinced her that ODNI could resume effective operations if pared back.
Sen. Tom Cotton, the Arkansas Republican who chairs the Intelligence Committee, recently introduced legislation called the Intelligence Community Efficiency and Effectiveness Act of 2025. Among other provisions, it would cap ODNI’s personnel at 650 full-time equivalent employees.
“I hope that Gabbard implements what she’s planning on, but she needs to go much further,” said Fred Fleitz, a former CIA analyst and chief of staff for the National Security Council, now a Newsmax contributor. “We should be cutting at least a thousand employees from this worthless bureaucracy. And I hope Gabbard will consider what Sen. Cotton wants to do.”
Gabbard’s overhaul of ODNI comes amid a series of releases of declassified documents orchestrated by her office, aimed at proving that the intelligence community was heavily politicized under the Obama administration. She has referred former President Barack Obama to the Justice Department on that score, and Attorney General Pam Bondi has responded by directing the empanelment of a grand jury to look into the matter.
The former president and his top intelligence aides have all denied any wrongdoing. Likewise, former President Joe Biden has denied having weaponized any elements of the intelligence or law enforcement communities.
ODNI sources said more such declassification packages are forthcoming.
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