What should we do with the ODNI? One plank owner’s thoughts

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has just released its proposed fiscal 2026 Intelligence Authorization Act, and it includes what’s left of Sen. Tom Cotton’s, R-Ark., legislation to “reform” the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Among other things, the SSCI’s proposal would eliminate Cotton’s original ODNI “cap” of 650 Full Time Equivalents and instead give DNI Tulsi Gabbard 90 days to identify “the maximum [staffing] level required” for its mission...whatever that is. And that’s the $64 question!

As an aside, the bill would also move some of the centers out from the Office to various Intelligence Community agencies, change some of the senior titles, move the National Intelligence University to the National Defense University and impose other changes too complex to enumerate here. But all seem to have a common goal: that is, to reduce the size and presumably, the reach (“intrusiveness”?) of the ODNI. However, while the SSCI legislation is an improvement over the Cotton bill, most of these changes still deserve much deeper independent study, rather than a relative rush to judgement...indeed, those changes warrant the same level of intense scrutiny afforded their origins back in 2004 (see below). 

And as I said, there remains a fundamental, a priori question that someone needs to address: What’s the ODNI’s mission? What role (if any) should ODNI play in the collection, production and communication of US intelligence in this, the 21st century? 

A bit of historical background 

At the risk of stating the painfully obvious, the principal reason for establishing the ODNI in the first place can be found in the ashes of 9/11 and to a lesser extent, the subsequent Iraq weapons of mass destruction debacle...in other words, by looking squarely into the “rear view mirror” of history. 

Thus, ODNI was created by the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act in part to break down the historic stovepipes—as personified by the distrust and lack of information and intelligence-sharing among IC professionals—that existed before 9/11. To quote the congressional committee studying that tragedy, those agencies failed to “connect the dots” and thus may have failed to stop it. And unless we want a repeat of those twin tragedies, what we learned then needs to be taken into account now, even as we may look forward. 

We will never know whether 9/11 could have been prevented with more interagency collaboration, but we do know that the bureaucratic silos and insularity that characterized the IC before—with its agencies divided by separate cabinet chains of command, departmental budgets, core intelligence specialties, etc.—was the reason the ODNI was created in the first place.   

However, its initial intent has seemingly faded, potentially leaving individual IC elements to fend for themselves. That is particularly the case with the smaller IC agencies, those hidden in mega-departmental budgets. Just look at what’s happening with the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, an important IC component that has apparently been lost in “big” State’s priorities. So, while the fiscal 2026 Intel Authorization Act is a good place to start a re-examination of all this, it still begs that seminal question posed above: That is, what should the ODNI’s mission be?  

My perspective as a long time senior civil servant and ODNI “plank owner” is relevant here. Indeed, I was one of the first appointed to that fledgling Office and came to it having helped “stand up” and/or transform the Internal Revenue Service, the Department of Homeland Security, the Defense Department and even the Senior Executive Service, among others. Note that that perspective, along with those of many of my original ODNI colleagues, is recounted in a recent special issue of the Central Intelligence Agency’s respected Journal of Intelligence Studies and is also worth a read. 

That special issue treats all this in depth, but it is easy to summarize the challenge. As one of Ms. Gabbard’s DNI predecessors (accurately!) observed, collaboration and information-sharing has always been an “unnatural act” amongst bureaucratically separate IC agencies, and that must be the starting point for this discussion. 

Five options for ODNI’s the future 

There are at least five viable options to consider in that regard: 1. No ODNI at all, an option rejected by the Congress back in 2004 when it passed the IRTPA. 2. A minimal oversight role that would lightly oversee the activities of the IC’s many agencies, opining on things like their budgets and who is to lead them, but without any clout to decide them. 3. A coordination and collaboration role, in which ODNI would actively facilitate more information sharing amongst the IC’s agencies, and where necessary, coordinate the content of their intel assessments, advising POTUS and/or the Congress on them as appropriate.4. An independent integration and production role, in which ODNI would have the capability to do all the above, as well as to synthesize and produce its own separate intelligence collection and/or analyses (or evaluations of agency products) where necessary and independently report to POTUS, the cabinet or the Congress as required.

Of course, there’s a fifth option as well: consolidation and control of the IC as part of a centralized Department of Intelligence reporting to POTUS as a member of his/her cabinet, much like DHS’s Secretary after the merger of some 22 agencies in the Homeland Security Act back in 2004. That would vest a Senate-confirmed Secretary of National Intelligence with “authority, direction, and control” (just like other cabinet secretaries) over the various agencies currently comprising the IC. But while that option was considered in the debates surrounding the IRTPA, it upset way too many bureaucratic “kingdoms” back then, and it would likely suffer the same fate now. 

However, while Options 1 and 5 were both soundly rejected (for good and not-so-good reasons) in the debate presaging the IRTPA, the ODNI has evolved incrementally since, as bureaucracies are wont to do, in part because it served as a convenient place to “hang” various organizational orphans (like climate change, for example) because there was no better place to put them.  

Of course, each of the options above has staffing (and thus cost) implications as well, ranging from having “none” to a role that would staff ODNI at current or even higher staffing levels. That said, an oversight role could probably be staffed within the original 650-person Cotton cap, especially if (a) the various more operational centers and NIU were moved out from ODNI and their staff “head counts” not counted against ODNI, and (b) the CIA’s “old” Community Management Staff, which ODNI took over as part of its original complement, were to be reviewed and its staffing revised once the ODNI’s mission was expressly clarified. 

Simply put, unwinding the DNI now (and/or dismantling parts of the IC, like INR), without any real forethought, would inadvertently risk returning us to those same bureaucratic silos and stovepipes that existed before 9/11, much to our peril. 

Before closing, a word about the National Intelligence University. I’ve been on its foundation since its inception (I even “owned” it at one point during my tenure at ODNI—before NIU and its head count bounced back to DIA—so I know a little about it.) And I reluctantly support realigning it (again) to the NDU, as proposed by the SSCI...vs. killing it outright, as the Cotton bill would have proposed. 

The latter was not a good option. Intelligence remains an obscure, arcane discipline, and it needs “deep thinkers” to understand it, just as joint warfighting needs “deep thinkers” (both senior military officers and senior civilians) to do the same. NDU has a long (and congressionally supported) history of “professional military education” in that regard, and DOD is big enough to absorb the NIU staff and mission without missing a beat. So, the SSCI’s proposed transfer to NDU, while not optimal, is better than nothing, just as long as someone remains in the business of teaching intelligence to current and future leaders. 

Decide on its purpose first, then staff it

But to belabor the point, the SSCI has left open the fundamental question: What exactly is the ODNI’s role? And whether that role is determined by the Congress, POTUS and/or (by default) the DNI, it should NOT be made blindly, and certainly not without more in-depth study. 

So, here is the bottom line in all of this: The Congress needs to take a deep breath, avoid a rush to legislative judgement and ask itself and lots of others (like current and former DNIs) just exactly what the ODNI is supposed to do. And I would argue that the antecedent reasons that led to its creation are still extant, so as a consequence, I would still have it perform a “coordination and collaboration” (perhaps on steroids) role as originally intended. 

But that’s just me. Smarter people than I need to weigh in on this important issue—after all, our national security is at stake here—and it warrants much deeper independent study, so I would ask the SSCI to commission the National Academy of Public Administration to look at this...under strict time limits, so that this does not gather any dust, and more importantly, so that we do not inadvertently trigger another 9/11. 

And unless and until Congress changes the law, the DNI must and should continue to serve (and be staffed) as “the President’s principal intelligence advisor” as required by IRTPA, whether anyone, the current DNI included, likes it or not.