revoked the security clearances of 37<\/a> current and former intelligence officials, many with ties to prior Democratic administrations.<\/p>\nEven as a top Democrat agreed ODNI could use a revamp, he argued Gabbard was not the person to deliver it.<\/p>\n
\u201cTwenty years after it was established, there is broad, bipartisan agreement that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence is in need of thoughtful reform. The Intelligence Authorization Act directs Director Gabbard to submit a plan to Congress outlining her proposed changes, and we will carefully review her proposals and conduct rigorous oversight to ensure any reforms strengthen, not weaken, our national security,\u201d Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a statement.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut given Director Gabbard\u2019s track record of politicizing intelligence \u2014 including her decision just yesterday to revoke security clearances from career national security officials \u2014 I have no confidence that she is the right person to carry out this weighty responsibility.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mark Zaid, a longtime national security lawyer, said the redesign was a clear effort to cut staff members who might push back against the Trump administration<\/p>\n
\u201cThis isn’t about reform. It isn’t about strengthening our intelligence agencies. It is about the Installation of loyalists & getting rid of anyone who opposes the patrimonialistic\/authoritarian policies of Trump, regardless of whether DEM or GOP,\u201d he wrote on the social platform X.<\/p>\n
But the plan won praise from Republican members of Congress.<\/p>\n
“Anyone involved in the IC and intelligence oversight has known for over a decade that the ODNI has been in desperate need of reform to return the\u00a0agency to its critical national security mission.\u00a0This is an excellent first step in the right direction,” House Intelligence Chair Rick Crawford (R-Ark.) said in a statement.<\/p>\n
“Correcting the direction of a large institution, grounded in its ways, will never be easy and will take time. It\u2019s bound to be laden with obstructions and those looking to undermine change. But change is in order. President Trump and Director Gabbard are leading the charge by not\u00a0just calling out the problems but taking action to address them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gabbard also proposes eliminating a number of other offices she accused, without evidence, of leaking intelligence of political biases.<\/p>\n
Among those slashed is the External Research Council, which Gabbard said amounted to \u201cpolitically appointed partisans who brought their external biases,\u201d as well as the Strategic Futures Group, responsible for long-term forecasting on threats, which Gabbard accused of being used \u201cto push a partisan political agenda.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not entirely clear how many staff work at ODNI, but that figure has been a target of Senate Intelligence Chair Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), who earlier this year said the office had nearly 2,000 staff.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe ODNI staff is measured in the thousands, when it should be measured in the dozens, maybe a few hundred,\u201d Cotton said at a hearing<\/a> at the beginning of the year.<\/p>\n\u201cI promise, that\u2019s going to change.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cotton on Wednesday praised the move, even as he referenced the need for congressional review.<\/p>\n
\u201cCongress created the ODNI to be a lean organization that used small staffs to coordinate across the Intelligence Community and execute specific, important tasks. Today\u2019s announcement is an important step towards returning ODNI to that original size, scope, and mission. And it will help make it a stronger and more effective national security tool for President Trump,\u201d he said in a statement.<\/p>\n
\u201cI look forward … to working with Director Gabbard to implement these reforms and provide the ODNI with the legislative relief necessary to ensure our Intelligence Community can focus on its core mission: stealing secrets from our adversaries.\u201d<\/p>\n
Updated at 6:42 pm. EDT<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard plans to slash 40 percent of the agency\u2019s staff by October in ...<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":313,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globaltaalenthq.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globaltaalenthq.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globaltaalenthq.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globaltaalenthq.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globaltaalenthq.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=311"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/globaltaalenthq.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":312,"href":"https:\/\/globaltaalenthq.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311\/revisions\/312"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globaltaalenthq.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globaltaalenthq.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globaltaalenthq.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globaltaalenthq.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}