Tulsi Gabbard Says ODNI 2.0 ‘Will Save Taxpayers $700 Million Every Year’

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard appeared on Fox News Wednesday to discuss sweeping reforms to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI).

During an appearance on “Jesse Watters Primetime,” Gabbard told viewers that Congress created the ODNI two decades ago after the intelligence failures of 9/11. The office was designed to integrate intelligence across agencies and ensure the president received accurate, timely, and apolitical information. But she said the institution strayed far from its mission.

“It is rife with politicization, weaponization, the very thing that it was created to try to prevent and get after. And, unfortunately, it has failed to meet its mandate. And so this launch today of ODNI 2.0, as you said, we will save taxpayers more than $700 million every year, cutting the organization by over 40% and making sure that those who are working at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence are aggressively getting after our core mission,” Gabbard told Jesse Watters.

Gabbard said that instead of delivering timely and objective intelligence to the president, the agency has ballooned into a bloated bureaucracy that undermines its original purpose.

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“And this office was created by Congress to get after those problems, to make sure that there is one independent body providing that oversight over the intelligence community, integrating intelligence, making sure that the left hand is sharing information with the right hand,” Gabbard said.

“And fundamentally and most importantly, ensuring that the intelligence that is being provided to the President of the United States is timely, it is relevant, and it is apolitical, objective, that he is actually getting the information he needs to make the critical decisions that he makes every single day. Fast forward to where we are today, ODNI has more than doubled in size. It is bloated with bureaucracy.”

Gabbard on Wednesday announced a 40% personnel cut and the closure of politicized centers in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence as part of her sweeping reform. After months of audits by her chosen team, she unveiled “ODNI 2.0,” the first major overhaul in the office’s history. (RELATED: Tulsi Gabbard Revokes Nearly 40 More Security Clearances In Wake Of Russiagate Fallout)

Congress established the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in 2004 through the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act, aiming to end the dangerous “stovepiping” of intelligence that contributed to the 9/11 attacks. Despite those reforms, recent reporting and declassified documents show that silos and secrecy have continued to plague the intelligence community.

One of the most glaring examples came in 2017, when the Intelligence Community Assessment claimed Russia sought to help Trump win the 2016 election. Newly released documents revealed that much of the raw intelligence was spun or even fabricated and kept hidden from most officials, controlled by a small group led by then–CIA Director John Brennan in violation of established tradecraft standards.

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