By Mary Margaret Olohan. Media: DailyWire.com
WASHINGTON—Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard will announce Wednesday afternoon that she is refocusing her agency to aggressively execute its national security mission, shrinking the Office of the Director of National Intelligence nearly 50% and saving hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars.
Gabbard described the changes as “ODNI 2.0,” in a statement on Wednesday, calling the shift “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.”
ODNI will be reduced by almost 50% by the end of the fiscal year 2025, ultimately saving taxpayers over $700 million per year, senior DNI officials shared with The Daily Wire. This will be done by combining agency centers and reducing personnel.
The ODNI workforce will receive an email on Wednesday afternoon informing them of the changes. Employees will also be notified if their position has been eliminated, alerting them that they will be separated from the ODNI by September 30.
A message to the ODNI workforce viewed by The Daily Wire states that the changes will reduce personnel by 30-40%.
The announcement comes after a months-long review of ODNI to ascertain, in accordance with President Donald Trump’s executive order, how ODNI could best fulfill its mission to integrate intelligence from and provide oversight over all intelligence community elements to make sure that it provides timely, accurate, and apolitical intelligence to Trump and lawmakers.
Senior ODNI officials who assisted in the months-long mission review briefed members of the press on Wednesday at ODNI’s headquarters in McLean, Virginia, a few hours before Gabbard made the official announcement.
These officials stressed that the review was “incredibly thoughtful” and thorough, specifically taking into account the feedback from staff whom Gabbard encouraged, during her first days in her role, to come to her with ideas on how to improve ODNI.
“Tulsi has had a lot of direct contact from people around the building who are super excited,” explained one senior ODNI official.
Gabbard briefed Trump on ODNI’s findings about two weeks ago, the officials shared. They declined to comment specifically on what Gabbard and Trump said in that private meeting, but stressed that all of the president’s priorities are reflected in ODNI 2.0 and that it was created in accordance with the president’s executive orders and green-lit by him.
These officials dwelt on how “ODNI 2.0” seeks to institute culture changes in the agency by building and maintaining an elite workforce that is focused on fulfilling the agency’s national security mission — “grounded in the U.S. Constitution, and accountable to the President of the United States and to the American people.”
“Every position should add value, and every individual should feel like they are making a difference,” stressed another senior ODNI official.
“Action without intelligence is foolish, intelligence without action is useless,” another senior DNI official noted. “Every piece of intelligence should inform a policy decision or a military, covert, or diplomatic action. Or it is not worth the paper it is written on.”
As a result of the review, several intelligence centers will be refocused or folded into themselves, including the Foreign Malign Influence Center, the National Counterproliferation and Biosecurity Center, and the Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center.
Additionally, ODNI will shut down the National Intelligence University and transfer its intelligence-related programs to the National Defense University, where the Defense Department and ODNI will work to transition current students to other institutions to allow them to complete their programs appropriately.
“The decision has been made to transfer the National Intelligence University from ODNI to the Department of Defense’s National Defense University to the greatest extent possible,” reads a letter, signed by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Gabbard, sent to the National Intelligence University’s faculty and staff on Wednesday.
The letter explains that “this effort aligns with President Trump’s focus on increasing efficiencies across the government and will enhance the quality of our education programs.”
“Our people come first, and as faculty, staff, and students, your welfare and well-being are of our highest concern during this transition period,” the letter notes. “You will be in good hands under the Defense Department’s National Defense University leadership.”
Gabbard and ODNI are also leading coordination across the 18 intelligence community groups to “eliminate wasteful contracts and duplicative staff,” a declassified DNI fact sheet notes, and the proposed reductions amount to approximately $1.3 billion in annual recurring costs. Those reductions will be “fully realized by the end of FY 2025,” according to ODNI.
The agency was created after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks revealed “systemic failures” throughout the Intelligence Community, Gabbard’s office said in a release. It was intended to integrate intelligence and provide the president and United States lawmakers with “timely, accurate, and apolitical” information — but Gabbard and her team believe it has failed to fulfill that mandate.
“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 explained in a Wednesday 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 policy makers.”
Gabbard argues that ending the weaponization of intelligence and holding bad actors accountable are “essential” to earning back the trust of the American people.
“Under President Trump’s leadership, ODNI 2.0 is 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.”
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