The Next DNI Must Finish Tulsi Gabbard's Work and Eliminate the ODNI
Cutting the ODNI was only a start; lasting reform requires abolishing it outright and restoring CIA leadership of U.S. intelligence.
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NOTE: My friend Fred Fleitz is a former Trump National Security Council Chief of Staff, a former CIA analyst, and a former senior staffer with the House Intelligence Committee. He knows this topic better than most.
Which bring me to the point. Fred’s prescription for ODNI, combined with his credentials, make him a perfect candidate to succeed Tulsi Gabbard as DNI. And if you’ve been following his occasional essays here, you know that he’s enthusiastically supportive of Tulsi’s work to expose and imprison the Russiagate coup plotters.
Fred would finish the job Tulsi started to truly reform the Intelligence Community. And there’s no greater reform than eliminating the ODNI itself, a Deep State bastion and boondoggle from the start. As Sam Faddis constantly reminds us, the IC is bloated, ineffective, politicized, and almost entirely devoid of the operational muscle it needs to do the job. Fred would get us there (and if we can’t have Fred, can we please have Sam?). — RDM
The Next DNI Must Finish Tulsi Gabbard’s Work and Eliminate the ODNI
by Fred Fleitz
June 8, 2026
Tulsi Gabbard’s resignation as Director of National Intelligence, effective June 30, marks the end of a short but consequential tenure. Appointed in early 2025, she inherited an Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) that had ballooned since its post-9/11 creation into a bureaucratic behemoth of roughly 1,800–2,000 personnel, widely derided for politicizing intelligence and meddling in domestic politics.
Gabbard made real progress downsizing and depoliticizing the ODNI. But President Trump’s next DNI must finish the job and finally eliminate this huge redundant intelligence bureaucracy to give our country the lean and effective intelligence agencies we need to address the new and dire security threats facing our nation.
Gabbard’s “ODNI 2.0” initiative, launched in August 2025, delivered the most aggressive cuts since the founding of the ODNI. She slashed staff by more than 40 percent — to just 1,300 employees — closed or downsized duplicative centers such as the Foreign Malign Influence Center, revoked security clearances for officials who had weaponized intelligence against Americans, and projected more than $700 million in annual savings. These steps attacked the mission creep, “DNI taxes” on other agencies, and empire-building that had turned the ODNI into a self-perpetuating bureaucracy rather than the small coordinating staff the 9/11 Commission originally envisioned.
Those reforms were long overdue. For two decades, the ODNI has replicated analysis already done by the CIA and other agencies, mobbed congressional hearings with unnecessary staffers, and imposed politically correct fads — from climate change to DEI quotas — on the entire Intelligence Community. Gabbard began draining this swamp. But the office itself remains the problem.
The proof that the DNI is unnecessary is staring us in the face. In President Trump’s second term, CIA Director John Ratcliffe has served effectively as the president’s principal intelligence adviser. He has delivered unvarnished, actionable intelligence directly to the president without the ODNI’s layers of bureaucracy, groupthink, or politicized gatekeepers. Ratcliffe has shown that the CIA director can once again function as the president’s senior intelligence official — coordinating the Intelligence Community when necessary — without any need for a bloated 1,300-person (or even 650-person) ODNI staff.
This is exactly the model I have advocated for years: eliminate the DNI position and its bloated office, return core functions to the CIA, and let U.S. intelligence agencies do their jobs.
In an August 2025 American Greatness article, I praised Senator Tom Cotton’s Intelligence Community Efficiency and Effectiveness Act as a strong step in the right direction. This legislation would cap the ODNI staff at 650, transfer duplicative centers to the CIA and FBI, and refocus the National Intelligence Council on coordination rather than redundant analysis.
Nevertheless, Cotton’s bold plan still falls short of the full elimination required. A smaller ODNI is still an ODNI — still prone to the same bureaucratic inertia and political capture that have plagued it since 2004.
Gabbard scored important successes as DNI: she proved dramatic downsizing of U.S. intelligence agencies is possible through executive action, restored public trust by confronting politicization, and refocused resources on genuine threats.
But her too-short tenure still has agenda items left undone: above all, the ODNI itself survived. Key specialized functions were cut without fully reallocating them to other intelligence agencies, and momentum stalled once the most obvious bloat was removed. These partial reforms left the deeply flawed ODNI structure intact and probably will lead to future mission creep the moment a less reform-minded DNI takes over.
President Trump gave his Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon, a bold mandate: shut down the wasteful and politicized Department of Education. He should give his nominee to be the next DNI a similar mandate: finish what Gabbard started and abolish the ODNI entirely. Restore the CIA director as the head of America’s Intelligence Community and return the position to the title it held for nearly sixty years: Director of Central Intelligence.
Use executive authority to transfer remaining personnel and functions back to the CIA, NSA, and FBI. Send the thousands of detailees from other agencies home. Sell the costly Liberty Crossing headquarters in high-priced Tysons Corner, Virginia. Move the president’s Daily Brief and strategic analysis where they belong — under the CIA director.
Congress should then codify these changes by repealing the relevant sections of the 2004 Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act and passing legislation that makes permanent the lean, coordinated Intelligence Community we actually need.
As I argued in January 2025, it is time to make American intelligence great again. Our nation urgently needs nimble, modernized intelligence agencies to confront today’s grave and growing threats: China’s aggressive espionage and military buildup, Russia’s hybrid warfare, Iran’s nuclear ambitions and terrorist proxies, and the rapidly advancing dangers of AI, cyberwarfare, and drone technology. We can no longer afford bloated intelligence bureaucracies that care more about domestic politics and internal empire-building than America’s national security.
Tulsi Gabbard disrupted the U.S. Intelligence Community status quo. President Trump should direct his next DNI to complete this mission. Eliminating the ODNI is not radical; it is common sense. It is the only way to deliver the lean, effective, and depoliticized Intelligence Community to protect our nation in an increasingly dangerous world.
— Fred Fleitz is a former CIA analyst and staff member with the House Intelligence Committee. In 2018, he served as the National Security Council Chief of Staff and as a Deputy Special Assistant to President Trump. This article appeared at American Greatness.
With sincere respect to the host's well-articulated position, I disagree.
IMHO, (and research) ODNI was intended to overcome the very harmful information silos that "naturally" occurred (due to corruption and less-than-ideal management) across all of the government intelligence-focused agencies. The bloat & mission creep was definitely wrong but can be codified out and prevented. Tulsi partially proved that.
But Tulsi Gabbard is a very unique / unusual sort of government official - she's actually honest and operates with integrity and fidelity to her responsibilities, and has dutifully operated in accordance to what her direct superior, the POTUS 47, has requested and ordered!!
By contrast, none of Pres. Trump 45's previous Senate-approved intel agency officials had any majority of those dimensions. It seems apparent to me that Obama's ODNIs worked as instructed by Obama, they did not undermine him. But I'm not 100% certain...
And IDK if Bush 43's ODNI's were loyal to their boss or not, because I don't recall reading the same detailed reporting about his ODNI as we now do about PDJT's.)
IMHO eliminating the ODNI will return us to the information silo-laden Intel Community deep state mess that existed prior to ODNI concept. That's because we cannot guarantee that EVERY Intel agency will have an honest Director who has integrity and works as directed by the POTUS and for the American people's benefit. At least in any foreseeable future beyond Trump.
I doubt that 650 is/was Director Gabbard's ultimate headcount goal, but going from thousands to dozens in a short time period is very likely a highly risky and extremely difficult if not impossible task. I would guess that if Pres. Trump had another term or his successor in 2028 carries forward the same policies regarding the Intel Community, the number would/ could shrink by at least another 60 to 75%.
If the Senate could be relied upon to approve a new President's selections for IC agency Directors, then ODNI might not be required. But we are nowhere near getting to that point. yet. Senate seems to believe their role is not Advise and Consent, but rather to Advise and Obstruct.