WASHINGTON (AP) — The director of the National Intelligence Office will dramatically reduce the workforce and cut more than $700 million a year, the Trump administration announced Wednesday.
Tulsi Gabbard’s Director of National Intelligence said in a statement: “Odni has become bloated and inefficient in the last 20 years, and the intelligence community has been filled with abuse of power, unauthorized leaks of classified intelligence, and political weaponization of intelligence.”
She said the Intelligence Reports community must “make serious changes to fulfill its responsibility for the American people and the US Constitution by focusing on our core mission.”
The reorganization is part of a broader administration’s efforts to rethink the assessment of foreign threats to American elections. This is a politically loaded topic given President Donald Trump’s long-term resistance to the assessment of the intelligence news community that Russia intervened in his place in the 2016 election.
For example, in February, Attorney General Pam Bondy FBI Task Force has been dissolved We focused on investigating foreign influence operations, including those targeting our elections. The Trump administration has also significantly cut US cybersecurity and infrastructure security agencies that oversee the country’s critical infrastructure, including the electoral system.
Gabbard’s efforts to reduce the agency she leads are in line with the administration’s cost-cutting mandate, since the earliest days when Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency oversaw massive layoffs in the federal workforce.
That’s the latest headline move by a leading official who appeared to be unlikable for an analysis of Iran’s nuclear capabilities just a few months ago, but has emerged as a leading loyalist in recent weeks.
She has released a series of documents aimed at questioning the legitimacy of the findings of the intelligence news community on 2016 Russian election interference.
