WASHINGTON, D.C. — Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, announced Wednesday that she would reorganize her office, eliminating the National Intelligence University and shrinking the Foreign Malign Influence Center, which tracked efforts by adversarial countries to manipulate U.S. elections.
The moves, shared with Congress in a memo, are part of an effort to fulfill Gabbard’s vow to shrink her office, something Republican lawmakers have pressed her to accomplish. But Gabbard has also framed the changes as part of her campaign to crush “the deep state,” a term she has used to describe civil servants and appointees from previous administrations that she sees as opposed to President Donald Trump’s policies.
The Foreign Malign Influence Center, created by Congress in 2022, coordinates efforts across intelligence agencies to monitor threats to elections and public debate. During the last election, intelligence officials held regular briefings to warn of attempts by Russia and other countries to manipulate the vote in the United States.
The center also issued warnings about deepfake videos that spread false information about Vice President Kamala Harris, and about videos from Russia that sought to spread false claims about damaged ballots and illegal voting.
But Republicans have criticized the Biden administration’s election-defense efforts, saying that its attempts to counter foreign disinformation curtailed the free speech rights of conservatives. Early in the second Trump administration, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency shut down its election-defense efforts, while Attorney General Pam Bondi ordered the FBI to dismantle its malign influence task force.
Even though the Foreign Malign Influence Center was created long after the 2016 presidential election, Gabbard has been deeply critical in recent weeks of its examination that year of Russian election interference. She has said the 2016 assessment was flawed, and has accused Obama administration officials of a “treasonous conspiracy,” comments that have earned Trump’s praise.
Because the center was created by Congress, it is difficult for Gabbard to eliminate it outright. Instead, the memo said she would fold its operations into another part of her office, called Mission Integration, that oversees national intelligence officers.
The reorganization plan also shrinks two other centers and folds them into the Mission Integration office. One of the centers is dedicated to cybersecurity, and the other focuses on chemical, biological and nuclear threats.
In a social media post Wednesday afternoon, Gabbard said her reorganization plan was a first step toward making her office more efficient and agile, saving taxpayers $700 million a year and “rooting out deep state actors.”
The memo said that the National Intelligence University, which is akin to a military war college that trains midcareer intelligence professionals, would enroll its final students in the fall. Over the course of the school year, it would move its academic programs to the National Defense University and other government schools. The National Intelligence University, based in Bethesda, Maryland, will close no later than June 1, the memo said.
The proposal immediately generated criticism on Capitol Hill among Democrats, many of whom were concerned about Gabbard’s decision Tuesday to revoke the security clearances of 37 current and former national security officials, including two Senate staff members. Many of those affected had worked on Russia analysis or foreign threats to U.S. elections.
Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, said that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence was in need of “thoughtful reform,” and that he and his colleagues would review her plan.
“But given Director Gabbard’s track record of politicizing intelligence, including her decision just yesterday to revoke security clearances from career national security officials, I have no confidence that she is the right person to carry out this weighty responsibility,” Warner said.
Gabbard’s office said that so far, she had decreased the number of employees at the office from 1,800 to 1,300, a figure reported earlier by Newsmax. According to the memo to Congress, Gabbard’s office was extending voluntary early retirement until March 31 to further shrink the workforce.
“It is my commitment to you, and my charge to the ODNI leadership team, that we will continue to drive efficiencies across the organization,” Gabbard wrote in the memo.
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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Source: The Garden Island