Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, announced Tuesday a new task force that would work on declassifying information in the public interest and improving efficiency inside the intelligence agencies.
Ms. Gabbard framed the work of the new task force, the Director’s Initiative Group, as an effort to eliminate the politicization of the agencies and to investigate episodes where intelligence was “weaponized” against people.
Some of the examples Ms. Gabbard’s office highlights as efforts to remove politics from the intelligence agencies have been seen by Democrats and Biden administration officials as political themselves, such as stripping security clearances from senior Democrats and opponents of President Trump.
But in a statement, Ms. Gabbard said the new push would restore trust in intelligence agencies.
“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,” Ms. Gabbard said.
Ms. Gabbard’s office did not name the members of the initiative group.
The group will review documents for potential declassification and release on a range of topics including the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, the intelligence community’s investigations of the health incidents linked to Havana syndrome and the investigation into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election. The group may also advise on the release of documents on the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, which President Trump ordered released.
Ms. Gabbard also said she would have the group assess whether information about the Biden administration’s alleged surveillance or censorship of Americans should be released. While her office provided few details, the Trump administration has criticized the Biden administration’s work against domestic terrorism and countering disinformation, arguing such efforts curbed the rights of Mr. Trump’s supporters.
The group will also make recommendations to end wasteful spending by the intelligence agencies and to cut bureaucracy. Senior administration officials have suggested that cumbersome structures inside some spy agencies have slowed the flow of intelligence to the President’s Daily Brief and other important intelligence documents.