President Donald Trump's director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, has a plan to cut the staff at the nation's top intelligence aggregating agency by 50 percent — and it's causing bitter divides, reported Politico on Wednesday.
"The move, dubbed ODNI 2.0, is the latest effort by the Trump administration to slim down the federal government, and comes after a wave of top-level departures at the ODNI’s Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center earlier this year," reported Maggie Miller and Dana Nickel.
As part of the broader effort by the Trump administration to lay off huge sections of the civil service, Gabbard "has already eliminated 500 staff and reduced the office’s size by 30 percent since she was sworn in to the role in February. The new plan would boost that number to over 40 percent and save more than $700 million annually."
Gabbard's main target is the Foreign Malign Influence Center, which monitors attempts by hostile foreign powers to sway public opinion in the U.S., as well as the Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center.
According to her DNI, these agencies' work is already handled effectively by other divisions, and Gabbard particularly slamed FMIC as being “used by the previous administration to justify the suppression of free speech and to censor political opposition” — likely a reference to its involvement in investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election, which Trump maintains to this day was a hoax despite an extensive investigation detailing the whole operation.
While Trump-aligned members of Congress, like Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), praised this proposal, it was promptly criticized by Democrats — as well as former members of the intelligence community.
“The ODNI was created to address obvious failures in coordination between intelligence agencies," one former NSA analyst told Politico. "It’s incomprehensible to think they can continue that work with half the staff.”
“There doesn’t seem to be a strategy,” a former senior CIA intelligence executive told the outlet. “To me, this seems to be just more of a constant reaction. Which is ironic, since that’s not intelligence analysis.”