This & That

Counter Attack – New Intelligence Authorization Act Seeks to Curb Power of DNI

The response from Chairman Tom Cotton and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence to the action of DNI Tulsi Gabbard was predictable.

The SSCI has now framed the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2026 [LINK] to modify the “responsibilities and authorities of the Director of National Intelligence.” [Section 402]

[SOURCE – Sec 402 LINK]

We knew this was coming.  The Intelligence Community does not like rogue actors amid their ranks, especially if those people have cross-silo access.  The silo system is designed to protect the Deep State.  Any entity who can cross reference the inserted information becomes a risk to the enterprise.

Senator Cotton cannot directly oppose Tulsi Gabbard without exposing himself.  Thus someone, not the SSCI, writes the legislative changes to the Intelligence Community rules and procedures and Tom Cotton simply advances them.  That’s the way DC operates.

[TWEET LINK]

Additionally, Chairman Cotton does not want the DNI to investigate or generate its own intelligence.  Cotton demands the ODNI just accept and regurgitate the intelligence Tulsi Gabbard would be given by the other agencies; no independent review of analysis permitted.  All of these actions push the Intelligence Community power center back into the CIA and away from the prying eyes of the DNI.  That’s the SSCI motive.

WASHINGTON DC – A top Republican senator is proposing a sweeping overhaul of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, slashing the workforce of an organization that has expanded since it was created in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Under a bill by Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, the chair of the Intelligence Committee, the ODNI’s staff of about 1,600 would be capped at 650, according to a senior Senate aide familiar with the proposed legislation.

ODNI’s workforce was about 2,000 in January, but National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard has already overseen a reduction of about 20% as part of the Trump administration’s drive to shrink the federal workforce. The reduction in the staff Gabbard oversees could weaken her role in the intelligence bureaucracy.

[…] The attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, exposed a failure to share information across spy agencies with catastrophic results. As a result, Congress established the ODNI to oversee all of the country’s 18 intelligence services, including the CIA, and manage bureaucratic turf wars from a complex outside Washington, D.C.

What started as a relatively small office under the national intelligence director in 2005 has expanded over the last 20 years to include in-house analysis teams and centers focused on counterterrorism and counterintelligence. Cotton has described the ODNI as a bloated bureaucracy that should return to its original mission of coordinating the work of other spy agencies instead of producing its own reports and duplicating other agencies’ efforts.

“Congress in no way wanted yet another unruly bureaucracy layered on top of an already bureaucratic intelligence community,” Cotton said at Gabbard’s confirmation hearing in late January. “Unfortunately, 20 years later, that’s exactly what the ODNI has become.”

Gabbard herself expressed support for downsizing the ODNI’s workforce at the hearing, saying she would work with Cotton and other lawmakers to eliminate “redundancies and bloating.” (read more)

In the lead up to the election I outlined what the DNI could do with untapped power already given to the office.  DNI Tulsi Gabbard has been following a path close to that outline.  Now, we see Washington DC responding to that affirmed power structure and actively working to neuter the DNI.  A very predictable outcome.

The only intelligence silo more corrupt than the CIA is the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that oversees it.