- CIA cuts contributions to some intelligence assessments amid disputes.
- ODNI group accused of circumventing protocols, CIA of blocking access.
- IG investigations allege CIA blocked ODNI’s access to COVID-19 intelligence.
The CIA has stopped contributing to some intelligence assessments, including those related to the Iran war, produced by the office of the nation’s top spy as disputes over intelligence sharing and responsibilities boil over, people familiar with the matter said.
Disputes between the CIA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) have flared for more than a year and have disrupted cooperation on national security analysis that presidents have long relied on to navigate complex foreign challenges, a US official and three people with direct knowledge of the matter said.
The sources spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal matters.
At the heart of the disagreements is a clash over a task force created in April 2025 by Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, the sources said.
The CIA, led by Director John Ratcliffe, alleges that Gabbard’s Director’s Initiatives Group acted recklessly by circumventing traditional intelligence-sharing and declassification protocols, two of the people said. ODNI officials say the CIA has consistently blocked the group’s access to intelligence.
The breakdown in intelligence cooperation comes at a perilous time for the Trump administration, with the United States embroiled in the Iran conflict and grappling with national security challenges ranging from Chinese military expansion to Russia’s war on Ukraine.
It also suggests that the post-September 11, 2001, reforms that created a director of national intelligence to coordinate the 18 U.S. intelligence agencies have not brought an end to dysfunction.
“ODNI is supposed to be the oil in the system that keeps the arteries of the intelligence community flowing, that removes blockages,” said Beth Sanner, a former deputy director of national intelligence during President Donald Trump’s first term.
“When you don’t do that, you create the potential for agencies to just retreat into their stovepipes, and you set yourself up for intelligence failures.”
Gabbard said last week that she will step down as Trump’s top spy on June 30, citing her husband’s illness. Trump said Tuesday he was appointing the head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, Bill Pulte, as acting director of national intelligence.
“The president and policymakers continue to receive the best intelligence and analysis” from the intelligence agencies, said Olivia Coleman, an ODNI spokeswoman, adding that ODNI and the agencies it oversees “communicate and collaborate daily with CIA counterparts across the full spectrum of intelligence products and operations.”
The Director’s Initiatives Group “operated within ODNI’s regulatory authorities and in support of the president’s orders,” Coleman said.
Reuters reported in February that Gabbard had disbanded the group and reassigned its staff elsewhere in her agency, amid a congressional investigation into its activities.
“Under Director Ratcliffe, the CIA moved quickly on President Trump’s priorities with a more aggressive agency that took smart risks to outmaneuver our adversaries and give the United States a decisive advantage,” said CIA Director of Public Affairs Liz Lyons.
White House spokesman Davis Ingle said Trump’s “peace through strength foreign policy is a proven approach that keeps America safe and deters global threats,” and the media’s efforts to sow domestic division would fail.
“President Trump has complete confidence in his entire exceptional national security team,” Ingle said.
Less cooperation on intelligence tasks
The CIA’s move to significantly reduce its contribution to assessments produced by Gabbard’s office is one of the most serious consequences of the agencies’ mutual distrust.
The CIA has been one of the main contributors to the reports prepared by the National Intelligence Council (NIC), the leading US analytical intelligence agency. The reports carry weight, especially during a war.
Two of the sources with direct knowledge of the matter said assessments of Iran – where the US military has been fighting since February – are among those the agency no longer regularly participates in.
The CIA and ODNI now operate largely as two separate analytical operations, the sources said.
At one point last year, in response to friction between the two agencies, the CIA stopped publishing NIC reports on the internal intelligence it controls, briefly limiting the availability of the analytical products, the sources said.
A US official said the reports were only being held for “a few hours” due to a “processing problem”.
The friction between the authorities started shortly after Gabbard took office in February 2025, the four sources said.
Among her first actions was to assert tighter control over the production of the Presidential Daily Brief, the sources said. The CIA had long taken a leading role in the preparation of maps, a highly classified daily compendium of intelligence reports prepared for the president.
The relationship further soured with the creation of the Director’s Initiatives Group to “root out” alleged politicization of the intelligence community, according to the sources.
The group also worked on declassifying documents related to the assassination of former President John F Kennedy, as well as investigating the security of election voting machines and the origins of COVID-19.
Critics, including some former intelligence officials, charge that the group was established as a tool to exact retaliation against Trump’s perceived political enemies.
Task force members at several points pressed the CIA to share intelligence and materials needed to complete ODNI-assigned probes, but believed that not enough was provided, according to two people with knowledge of the matter.
Deportation of CIA officers
In May 2025, Gabbard removed two senior CIA officers who headed the NIC.
An intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal government matters, said the ODNI removed the two “because they created a toxic work environment, as documented in a workforce investigation, and because they had a history of politicizing intelligence.”
The official did not provide evidence to support these claims.
Then, in August, Gabbard revoked the security clearances of 37 current and former officials, revealing in the process the identity of an undercover CIA officer serving overseas.
Gabbard accused the 37 of politicking and leaking intelligence, but did not provide evidence.
Former officials and others charged that the move was in part in retaliation for a 2017 intelligence assessment that Russia had used an extensive influence operation to influence the 2016 presidential election for Trump.
CIA-ODNI tensions spilled into the public domain last month when a CIA officer who spoke to the Director’s Initiatives Group told a Senate panel that the agency blocked the group’s access to intelligence on the origins of COVID-19.
That dispute has sparked an investigation by the Office of the Inspector General of Intelligence, an independent watchdog at ODNI, two people familiar with the probe said.
Reuters could not determine the scope of the probe.
