The Next DNI Must Finish the Job and Eliminate the ODNI

Tulsi Gabbard’s resignation as Director of National Intelligence, announced last week and 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 and widely derided for politicizing intelligence and meddling in domestic politics.

Gabbard made important progress in 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 in 2025. She slashed staff by more than 40 percent—to roughly 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 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 US 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. However, 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 record still has some shortcomings: 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 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 America actually needs.

As I argued in American Greatness 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.

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Fred Fleitz previously served as Chief of Staff of the Trump National Security Council. He is vice chair of the America First Policy Institute. He is the author of North Korea, Nuclear Brinkmanship, and the Oval Office, which was just released by Texas A&M Press.