An influential Senate lawmaker is pushing for a workforce reduction at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), who just took the gavel of the committee in January, says he’s planning to put a “size cap” on ODNI. Cotton detailed his issues with ODNI during a Jan. 30 confirmation hearing for Tulsi Gabbard, President Donald Trump’s pick to serve as director of national intelligence.
“The ODNI staff is measured in the thousands, when it should be measured in the dozens, maybe a few hundred,” Cotton said as part of his opening statement. “I promise, that’s going to change. I intend to get personnel at the ODNI back to their home agencies doing real intelligence work, not bureaucratic make-work.”
In addition to returning detailed employees to their home intel agencies, Cotton also took issue with “career ODNI bureaucrats.”
He challenged Gabbard to “return the ODNI to its original size, scope, and mission.”
For her part, Gabbard committed to conducting a “thorough review” of ODNI’s size and functions.
“I think there are a number of contributing factors to the creation of centers, or not centers, but offices like the recently eliminated office of [Diversity, Equity and Inclusion] within ODNI, and other areas where I need to go in and assess the replication and the duplication of responsibilities that exist elsewhere and some of the other intelligence elements that ODNI has oversight over,” Gabbard said during the hearing.
On Tuesday, the intelligence committee voted 9-8 to advance Gabbard’s nomination to the full Senate.
ODNI size and functions
ODNI is an independent agency that supports the director of national intelligence in overseeing the $76.5 billion National Intelligence Program and the 18 U.S. intelligence agencies. Congress established the DNI position to integrate intelligence from across spy agencies and avoid the stovepipes that led to 9/11.
The DNI organizes the president’s daily brief, leads the National Intelligence Council and serves as the top advisor to the president on intelligence matters, though the director of the CIA is also a member of the president’s cabinet.
While the DNI establishes standards and guidance for the intelligence community, it does not have direct authority over other agencies’ budgets, operations and personnel.
Ron Sanders, a former federal executive who served as the intelligence community chief human capital officer from 2005 through 2010, applauded Cotton for pushing a new review of ODNI’s size.
“It is always appropriate to take a look at the ODNI itself,” Sanders said. “But it does fulfill an important mission.”
ODNI’s annual size and budget figures are classified, but information that has been publicly released indicate the office’s size has stayed relatively constant for more than a decade.
During last week’s hearing, Cotton referenced how ODNI “now publicly boasts nearly 2,000 people.” Similarly, a 2017 fact sheet released by ODNI states that “fewer-than-2000” staff had stayed “relatively constant” since 2007.
ODNI is organized into two primary directorates, Mission Integration (MI), and Policy and Capabilities (P&C), and various mission centers.
Cotton’s statements specifically focused on growth at the five mission centers: the National Counterterrorism Center, National Counterintelligence and Security Center, the National Counterproliferation and Biosecurity Center, the Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center, and the Foreign Malign Influence Center.
In her pre-hearing questions, Gabbard pointed to how most of ODNI’s staff either work in the mission centers or in the Mission Integration division.
“If confirmed, I will work to conduct a thorough review of each office and component to accurately assess the personnel requirements needed to fulfill their respective duties and find opportunities to improve efficiency, as appropriate,” Gabbard wrote.
Sanders said any review should examine the division of functions between ODNI and the various intelligence agencies. But he highlighted the National Counterterrorism Center as an example of where that conversation becomes complicated.
“[The NCTC] has a bona fide community-wide national, in fact, whole of government counterterrorism mission, and having FBI and CIA and NSA and other folks side by side, performing that mission is not only very healthy, but in my humble opinion, critical,” Sanders said.
He also highlighted how ODNI has historically also employed a heavy mix of contractor employees, as well.
“We had a lot of contractors,” Sanders said. “I’m not sure what they were doing, but we had a lot of them. I had as many contractors on my staff as I had government employees, and for the most part, those contractors were support people.”
In her responses to pre-hearing questions, Gabbard committed to looking at the mix of government employees and contractors at ODNI.
“While the majority of those working in the ODNI should be government employees to ensure that the core team is comprised of professional intelligence officers, contractors can add great value in the fields of innovation, technology and logistical support,” Gabbard wrote.
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