On Wednesday, US intelligence chief Tulsi Gabbard announced she will make significant cuts to her office, declaring that it has “fallen short” of its mission and is “rife with abuse of power.” Gabbard said she will reduce the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) by more than 40% by the end of fiscal year 2025, a move estimated to save $700 million.
In a news release, Gabbard stated, “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.” In a series of social media posts, Gabbard added that she is “cutting bloated bureaucracy, rooting out deep state actors, and restoring mission focus.”
A four-page fact sheet on her department’s website outlines the plan for “ODNI 2.0,” which involves scaling back the office’s efforts in monitoring biosecurity, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and cyber intelligence threats, among other areas. When explaining the cuts to the Strategic Futures Group, the office’s intelligence forecasting unit, Gabbard’s team claimed they were “found to violate professional analytic tradecraft standards in an effort to propagate a political agenda that ran counter to all of the current president’s national security priorities.” The cuts were, at times, justified with accusations against previous Democrat-led administrations.
The fact sheet alleged that the Foreign Malign Influence Center—created to combat foreign threats to democracy and US interests—was “used by the previous administration to justify the suppression of free speech and to censor political opposition,” a reference to President Donald Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden. The document also highlighted previous reductions, stating that since “Gabbard’s first day, ODNI has already reduced its size by nearly 30%, with more than 500 staffers now off the books.”
In July, Gabbard accused former president Barack Obama of heading a “treasonous conspiracy” by claiming Russia interfered in American elections to help Trump. However, Gabbard’s claims contradict the findings of four separate criminal, counterintelligence, and watchdog investigations between 2019 and 2023, each of which concluded that Russia did interfere and assisted Trump in various ways. Critics have accused Gabbard, 43, of being closely aligned with Russian President Vladimir Putin and ousted Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
The purge goes beyond cutting the agency’s payroll. The New York Times reported on Tuesday that, at the president’s direction, Gabbard revoked the security clearances of 37 current and former national security officials, many of whom worked on Russia analysis or foreign threats to US elections. President Donald Trump took office promising to shrink the federal government and has since cut US foreign aid contributions, the Department of Education—which required approval from the US Supreme Court—and other agencies.
