‘Bloated bureaucracy’: Tulsi Gabbard forms task force to curb spy-agency abuses

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on Tuesday announced the formation of a task force that will declassify intelligence and attempt to uproot the politicization of the U.S. intelligence community.

The goals of the new Director’s Initiatives Group (DIG) at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence are transparency and accountability, restoring trust in the intelligence community and ending the weaponization of government, Gabbard said.

“President Trump promised the American people maximum transparency and accountability. We are committed to executing the President’s vision and focusing the Intelligence Community on its core mission: ensuring our security by providing the President and policymakers with timely, apolitical, objective, relevant intelligence to inform their decision-making to ensure the safety, security and freedom of the American people,” said Gabbard in a statement.

The DIG has also been charged with rooting out “bloated bureaucracy” in the intelligence community.

The task force will help execute a January executive order on the declassification of documents related to the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, and Martin Luther King Jr. and a March executive order declassifying intelligence related to Crossfire Hurricane.

Crossfire Hurricane, the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s counterintelligence probe of President Donald Trump, relied on the debunked Steele Dossier to get a warrant for a wiretap on Trump campaign advisor Carter Page. Some documents released through the Freedom of Information Act about Crossfire Hurricane have been heavily redacted.

The task force is also reviewing for potential declassification the Biden administration’s censorship of social media posts — such as the takedown of posts about the COVID-19 vaccine and the origins of COVID-19.

Ending the politicization of the intelligence community has been a priority of FBI Director Kash Patel, the lead investigator on the House Intelligence Committee’s investigation into Crossfire Hurricane, and Central Intelligence Agency Director John Ratcliffe, who criticized the agency in 2023 for downplaying intelligence pointing to a lab origin of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, due to geopolitical concerns.

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