SCOOP: Inside Tulsi Gabbard's plans for "ODNI 2.0"

Transparency and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) have historically been in conflict, but Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard is resetting that relationship once again with her rollout of ODNI 2.0.

ODNI 2.0 is a major redesign intended to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the DNI’s office. The changes that Gabbard is rolling out merge the decades of military, private sector, and government service that she and her team bring to the table, and have been well-received by the DNI’s career staff, many of whom emailed ideas directly to Gabbard herself.

Gabbard’s reforms will save taxpayers around $700 million per year, and are separate from the $1 billion of savings that the Trump administration is aiming to achieve within the intelligence community (IC) itself.

“Trust in these [IC] institutions has been damaged,

Multiple senior ODNI officials explained the changes, in detail, to the Washington Reporter and to a handful of other media outlets. The reforms are geared towards “ensuring core mission and national security threats” are prioritized.

Under President Joe Biden, DEI initiatives exploded at the DNI. One of Gabbard’s first moves was the abolition of these programs.

One of Gabbard’s senior staffers said that the DNI’s DEI regime jeopardized national security by both deemphasizing merit and by requiring hours to be spent on courses in order for promotion.

Gabbard’s changes, which were worked on in close collaboration with the White House, the Hill, and the IC, center on twin pillars of President Donald Trump: “efficiency and transparency,” one of the officials explained.

The efficiency component is about more than just eliminating positions — the DNI’s staff will shrink by approximately 200 positions when this reorganization is complete next month. It also focuses on maximizing cost, processes, and structures to both keep Americans safe and prevent waste of their funds.

“Government is great at creating things, it is not great at sunsetting them,” the official explained.

And sunsetting is exactly what Gabbard and her team have in mind. Multiple components of the DNI itself are being outright eliminated or are being folded into other agencies.

Former DNI Richard Grenell attempted to start a process similar to this in the final years of the first Trump term. Outside of that, a reorganization of this kind has never been attempted, Gabbard’s staff said.

At the top of Gabbard’s chopping block is the Foreign Malign Influence Center (FMIC), which her team explained was heavily politicized under Biden.

The massive reforms complement what Gabbard recently announced — the revocations of security clearances of dozens of officials who were involved in the Russiagate hoax.