Gabbard Seeks to Consolidate Her Control of President's Daily Brief

New York Times

14-05-2025

Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, is moving the assembly of the president's daily intelligence brief from the C.I.A. headquarters to her own complex, according to officials briefed on the move.
The brief, a summary of intelligence and analysis about global hot spots and national security threats, is overseen and presented to the president by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. But C.I.A. officers write much of the analysis in the document and produce it, pulling together articles and graphics on the agency's classified computer systems.
Ms. Gabbard's decision comes as President Trump has openly mused to aides over time about whether the office she leads — which was created after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to improve interagency coordination — should continue to exist, according to two people with knowledge of his remarks. Ms. Gabbard has discussed Mr. Trump's concerns with him directly and has considered how to overhaul the office, according to one official.
The decision was announced internally on Tuesday. C.I.A. staff were told in a memo from the agency's directorate of analysis that such a move had been considered several times over the years.
The memo, which was described to The New York Times, said there was 'much to be worked out about transition timelines and our own processes.' The infrastructure to create the briefing is sizable and owned by the C.I.A. and could be difficult to move or replicate at Ms. Gabbard's office.
Moving the production of the daily brief was one of two decisions Ms. Gabbard made on Tuesday. She also ordered the National Intelligence Council to relocate to her headquarters.
The moves are part of an effort by Ms. Gabbard to shore up the role of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and ensure that she has oversight and control over two of the most important functions of her post. Critics of her agency argue that its work should be folded back into the C.I.A., whose current director is John Ratcliffe.
An official from Ms. Gabbard's office said that physically moving the daily brief was intended to speed response times to certain queries. The official said the move was meant to offer the president more 'timely and actionable' intelligence.
A White House spokesman did not respond to an email seeking comment, including about whether Mr. Trump had raised questions about whether the O.D.N.I. needed to continue as an agency. The C.I.A. declined to comment.
Former intelligence officials raised questions about the move. Beth Sanner, who oversaw the president's intelligence brief in the first Trump administration, said it would be 'a huge mistake.'
'Ultimately and ironically, it would probably reduce the O.D.N.I. role because it would separate their oversight from the C.I.A. teams doing most of the work,' Ms. Sanner said. She added, 'It would create inefficiencies and risk miscommunication and mistakes. Ironically, over time, this probably will lessen O.D.N.I.'s oversight role and give C.I.A. more control — out of sight, out of mind.'
The C.I.A. memo said that while the directorate of analysis role in supporting the daily brief would evolve, 'we will remain laser-focused on the president's and Director Ratcliffe's priorities and our core mission — generating and delivering insight with impact, free from political or personal bias.'
It is not clear how many C.I.A. personnel assigned to the P.D.B., as the brief is called, and to the National Intelligence Council will move. People familiar with the matter, who were not authorized to discuss internal concerns publicly, said a number of employees at the agency were looking for new assignments to avoid moving to Ms. Gabbard's office.
The relocation of the National Intelligence Council was reported earlier by Fox News, which also reported that Ms. Gabbard had removed the acting chair of the council, Michael Collins, and his deputy. Mr. Collins is a senior C.I.A. officer who had been detailed to the council, and current and former officials confirmed that he has been sent back to the C.I.A.
Mr. Collins is known for his expertise on China. During the Biden administration, he helped with the strategic planning that led to the C.I.A.'s China Mission Center. Mr. Ratcliffe has praised the focus on China and promised to expand those efforts.
Mr. Collins and the council had been caught up in a dispute over the truth of Mr. Trump's claim in March that a criminal gang, Tren de Aragua, is controlled by Venezuela's government. That claim is a central premise of Mr. Trump's invocation of a wartime law to deport people accused of being members of the gang to a Salvadoran prison without due process.
In February, the intelligence community circulated an assessment that reached the opposite conclusion. The administration asked the National Intelligence Council to take a second look at the available evidence, but in an April memo, intelligence agencies reaffirmed the findings contradicting Mr. Trump.
Laura Loomer, the far-right activist who has successfully lobbied the administration to fire other security officials, then attacked the National Intelligence Council on social media as 'career anti-Trump bureaucrats' who 'need to be replaced if they want to promote open borders,' posting images of Mr. Collins's résumé and an article about the council's assessment.
An official briefed on the matter denied that Mr. Collins's removal was connected to the Venezuela assessment or to Ms. Loomer.
Before the creation of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in 2004, the C.I.A. was responsible for assembling the President's Daily Brief and overseeing the National Intelligence Council, which brings together disparate intelligence agencies to examine various issues and writes intelligence estimates and other assessments.
After the director of national intelligence took responsibility for both, the operations remained at the C.I.A.'s headquarters in Langley, Va. just outside Washington. The view was that analysts and officers working on the products would be closer to the C.I.A. analysts who drafted most of the articles. The headquarters of the director of national intelligence, known as Liberty Crossing, is a few miles away.
But an official briefed on the decision to move the P.D.B. and the National Intelligence Council to the headquarters of the director of national intelligence said it would allow Ms. Gabbard and her staff members to reshape the brief in response to questions from Mr. Trump and other policymakers.
Mr. Trump picked Ms. Gabbard for the role relatively early in the presidential transition. He has questioned whether the office needs to continue to operate and has discussed with Ms. Gabbard how to overhaul it, according to one person with knowledge of the discussions. Some observers of the intelligence community have also suggested that it may have outlived its utility, though that discussion is parallel to one about whether it has grown well past the size it was originally intended to be.
Controlling the production of the daily brief may give Ms. Gabbard a more direct line to Mr. Trump and his core circle in the West Wing.
An array of senior officials are given a version of the brief and many have a personal briefer. Those officials often send questions or requests back to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
Congress gave the office oversight of the National Intelligence Council and President's Daily Brief to ensure that it evaluated information from all the spy agencies, not just the C.I.A. Ms. Gabbard's decision would put the people working on the brief closer to those responsible for overseeing the ultimate product.
Since taking the role, Ms. Gabbard has frequently sought to communicate her attentiveness to Mr. Trump's stated interests on her social media feed, including by saying that all files related to President John F. Kennedy's assassination would be immediately declassified without redactions, as the president wanted.
Tens of thousands of pages were ultimately released, including some with various people's Social Security numbers visible, prompting the White House to move to contain the fallout.
The files have yet to show anything that reveals new information about who was behind the assassination.