The Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard has announced a transformation of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) to refocus on executing its core national security mission. This will reduce ODNI by over 40% by the end of fiscal year 2025 and save taxpayers over $700 million per year and better enable ODNI to focus on fulfilling its critical role of serving as the central hub for intelligence integration, strategic guidance, and oversight over the Intelligence Community.
ODNI was created after the Islamist terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, exposed systemic failures across the Intelligence Community (IC). Its purpose was to integrate intelligence from and provide oversight over all IC elements (currently 18) in order to ensure the intelligence provided to the President and policymakers is timely, accurate, and apolitical.
“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,” said DNI Tulsi Gabbard. “ODNI and the IC must make serious changes to fulfill its responsibility to the American people and the U.S. Constitution by focusing on our core mission: find the truth and provide objective, unbiased, timely intelligence to the President and policymakers. Ending the weaponization of intelligence and holding bad actors accountable are essential to begin to earn the American people’s trust which has long been eroded. 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.”
ODNI 2.0 eliminates redundant missions, functions and personnel, and makes critical investments in areas that support the President’s national intelligence priorities, and focuses on rebuilding trust, exposing politicization and weaponization of intelligence, holding bad actors accountable, saving American tax dollars, and focusing on our core mission: protecting the safety, security, and freedom of the American people.
You can find an ODNI 2.0 fact sheet here.
The original announcement can be found here.