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<i>Ronald Kessler is a former investigative reporter for The Post and the Wall Street Journal and the author of “The CIA at War: Inside the Secret Campaign Against Terror” and </i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Secrets-FBI-Ronald-Kessler/dp/0307719707/ref=asc_df_0307719707?mcid=f770c04d571636bda7b8bc836d3249a1&hvocijid=2472454326772439082-0307719707-&hvexpln=73&tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=692875362841&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=2472454326772439082&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9008156&hvtargid=pla-2281435178618&psc=1" target=_blank><i>“The Secrets of the FBI.”</i></a>

If President-elect <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/donald-trump/" target="_blank" class="contextual_link">Donald Trump</a> is looking for a quick and widely supported way to reduce the federal budget, he should look no further than abolishing the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). The current debate in Washington may center on former congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard’s qualifications to run the agency, but the truth is, there’s hardly a more bloated or unnecessary bureaucracy in the entire federal government.

The agency was formed after the 9/11 Commission recommended the appointment of a national intelligence director with budgetary authority to better coordinate the work of the intelligence community and resolve differences among its various components.

As proposed by the commission, the national intelligence director would not head a major agency. Rather, the appointee would have a “relatively small staff of several hundred people, taking the place of the existing community management offices housed at the CIA,” according to <a href="https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/GPO-911REPORT" target=_blank>the commission’s report</a>.

After President George W. Bush and Congress endorsed the national intelligence director proposal, the office was created <a href="https://www.dni.gov/index.php/ncsc-features/123-about" target=_blank>in April 2005</a>. However, rather than maintaining <a href="https://govinfo.library.unt.edu/911/report/911Report.pdf" target=_blank>a staff of several hundred</a>, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence quickly ballooned into an agency with 1,750 employees within a few years. It is now housed in a building next to the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) in McLean, Virginia, and has several satellite offices.

Though a small segment of its employees work for the NCTC, which is vital, the rest of the ODNI has done virtually nothing to enhance the intelligence effort.

That point was underlined when then-Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/US/director-national-intelligence-james-clapper-briefed-london-arrests/story?id=12458010" target=_blank>admitted in a December 2010 interview</a> with ABC’s Diane Sawyer that he was unaware of the arrests of 12 suspected terrorists in London. The story had been all over the news for most of the day.

This embarrassing lapse spotlighted the folly of creating a bureaucracy on top of operational agencies already on the alert for terrorist threats.

In my 2011 book, “The Secrets of the FBI,” <a href="https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/news/pressrel/press-releases/fbi-director-names-arthur-cummings-executive-assistant-director-for-national-security-branch" target=_blank>Arthur M. Cummings II</a>, who headed FBI counterterrorism and counterintelligence investigations as executive assistant director from 2008 to 2010, offered a candid assessment: He said the ODNI often gets in the way and produces little of value to the bureau.

Most of the time, the national intelligence director’s office asks for special reports from the CIA, FBI and other agencies within the intelligence community. What becomes of these reports is unclear. Indeed, <a href="https://irp.fas.org/news/2009/04/odni-ig-1108.pdf" target=_blank>a 2008 report by Edward Maguire</a>, the national intelligence director’s inspector general, said a majority of ODNI employees his staff interviewed had no idea what the agency does or is supposed to do.

“The majority of the ODNI and [intelligence community] employees (including many senior officials) whom we interviewed were unable to articulate a clear understanding of the ODNI’s mission, roles, and responsibilities with respect to the IC,” the report said.

If such a shocking report were issued on an office in the private sector, that office would be abolished immediately. But the ODNI has only grown in size. Before its establishment, a small staff of several dozen employees in the office of the director of central intelligence coordinated the intelligence community agencies.

Nor are taxpayers allowed to see how much of their money is being wasted on this boondoggle. The agency’s budget comes out of the intelligence and defense budgets and is classified.

While the ODNI is responsible for presenting intelligence to the president, the intelligence itself comes from the CIA. A number of intelligence officials have told me that the ODNI massages it, adds its own assessments — and often delays making timely adjustments as new information comes in.

“The intelligence community operators are doing a good job,” Cummings told me for my book. “It’s the massive bureaucracy [the ODNI] around them that slows things down and frustrates the effort. You have this big planning machine generating endless meetings. We would walk out of the meetings shaking our heads.”

Disbanding the ODNI would make the intelligence community more accountable and agile while eliminating a wasteful and useless federal bureaucracy.

Ronald Kessler

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Trump should abolish this wasteful intelligence agency

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