Posted originally on CTH on May 24, 2025 | Sundance

I have been requested to update and revisit my outline from summer 2024 when I discussed the potential for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), a position now occupied by DNI Tulsi Gabbard.  As a new White House strategy begins to surface, perhaps revisiting what is possible will provide a perspective not often discussed.

Confronting a weaponized Intelligence Community is of great interest, because it is a component battle against the main tools of the Fourth Branch of Government.  The IC influence is in every policy related to Trump’s domestic and foreign agenda. Taking control and neutering the capabilities of the IC and CIA specifically, is an important undertaking.

Again, as I originally noted in 2024, “This is going to be a little odd, because factually almost no one knows what the position of Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) is about.”  Sometimes you have to wait until people reach a point of frustration, when they turn around and say, “Hey, about that thing”…

The ODNI was created as an outcome of the 9-11 Commission recommendations.  In the era shortly after 9/11, the DC national security apparatus was constructed to preserve continuity of government and simultaneously view all Americans as potential threats.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) were created specifically for this purpose.

Washington DC created the modern national security apparatus immediately and hurriedly after 9/11/01.  DHS came along in 2002, and within the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 the ODNI was formed. 

When Barack Obama and Eric Holder arrived a few years later, those newly formed institutions were viewed as opportunities to create a very specific national security apparatus that would focus almost exclusively against their political opposition.

Here is the weird part.  The ODNI was formed in 2004, with the intent for the office to be the pivot point of a national security radar.   The DNI was intended to provide information to domestic agencies about foreign terror networks that would prevent something like 9-11 from happening again.  However, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence has never, not for one day, operated on this intent.   This is why they are such a critical position from my perspective.

The office was new, not established yet as a functioning silo, when Barack Obama and Eric Holder arrived in 2009.  They quickly dispatched an idiot, James Clapper, into the operation so they could weaponize around the office’s fulcrum point.

Prior to the DNI office existing, the CIA radar would sweep externally and then report to the Office of the President. The DNI was intended to take external radar sweep (CIA) and make it a full 360° circle, adding a sweep inside the USA that would be handled by the Dept of Homeland Security.

The DHS sweep and the CIA sweep would then be combined into a central collection hub called the ODNI.  Everyone with responsibility for “national security” could access the ODNI material. Essentially, and presumably, post 9-11 nothing like jihadists practicing flying airplanes would be missed again – at least that was the intent.

The weird part is, because the DNI was immediately weaponized the office has never functioned to the purpose of its intent.

No one truly knows what the office possibilities consist of, because no one has ever seen anyone try to functionally control the hub.  If you think I’m joking about the intent of Obama and John Brennan using the DNI watch this video. This is before Brennan became CIA Director; this is when Brennan was helping Barack Obama put the pillars into place.

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For the intents of this outline, the takeaway is how the DNI office has never been used for good.  In a strategic way, that can be used to our advantage if you are talking about leveraging information/intelligence silos against each other.

Example:  The DNI can assemble material from any silo.  Meaning the DNI can reach into any IC agency and extract anything they want.  Under the original authorities given to the DNI, this authority exists.  So, let’s spread the wings on this office and do exactly what it is permitted to do, only this time extract for the purpose of showing the President what is happening in every silo.

In essence, the DNI *CAN BE* deployed like a super strong cross-silo inspector general’s office.  Force the other IC agencies to comply with the demands of the DNI.  This has never been done. But the DNI has this unique power.

The DNI can make the FBI, DOJ, DOJ-NSD, NSA, DoD, DoS and CIA provide anything and everything they demand.  Instead of the other silos using blocks and threats against the office of the President, use the authority of the DNI to get them without confrontation.   Then, use the DNI to declassify the documents (if requested or authorized by POTUS), instead of the originating silo.

Can you see how the DNI office can be repurposed to be a seriously strong weapon in the toolbox of the President, against the schemes of those inside the various IC silos.  The DNI could become much more important than the CIA Director, NSA Director, FBI Director, Attorney General, etc, because the DNI can just show up and say, “Give me this.”  That’s the whole functional purpose of the DNI office that has never been exerted; let’s flippin’ use it.

Let’s use the office of the DNI as the central information hub that takes information from inside the corrupt agencies, then provides that information to the President who puts sunlight upon it.  Each corrupt silo penetrated with disinfectant.  This could begin a process to pull down the shadow operations and let the American public see what has been happening inside our IC apparatus.

To accomplish this approach the National Security Advisor to the President would be one person who could tell the DNI exactly what they are looking for.  Or the President can give directions specifically.

Secretary of State/National Security Advisor Marco Rubio is now in control of the National Security Council (NSC), and he has begun stripping down the extraneous noise, duplicated personnel and refocused the group on core objectives.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio is in a rather fortuitous position as Nat Sec Advisor, because he was the Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI).

We have outlined the dubious nature of the SSCI for over a decade; however, as a participant in that silo system and as a gang of eight member within the intelligence apparatus, Rubio has a very unique understanding of what the IC does behind the scenes.

If President Trump empowers Rubio to monitor the IC system, in combination with DNI Tulsi Gabbard as a partner in the objective, that is a very powerful White House balance against the IC pressure directly from the office of the President.

Rubio monitoring the intelligence apparatus with specific intent, then providing Trump with details on what appears to be happening and where.   With the approval of the President, the NSA (Rubio) then turns to the DNI and says, “POTUS wants to drill down on this.”

Raw, unfiltered, unredacted information.   The silo administrators end up in a fight with the ODNI, not the office of President Trump.  President Trump then uses the power of his office to support the demands of DNI Tulsi Gabbard and National Security Advisor Rubio.

Under this approach DNI Tulsi Gabbard has a lot more power; yet, funnily, it is power the office already had – yet have never utilized.

If you look at the geopolitical world and events unfolding through the prism of this Trump strategy against the IC meddling, suddenly things start to make sense.

As former chair of the SSCI, Marco Rubio knows exactly how all of these IC elements intersect and operate.  As a former intelligence Gang of Eight member, Rubio knows how U.S. intelligence information is shaped and weaponized. If my suspicions are accurate on this dynamic, we are likely to see the worst elements of the intelligence apparatus unload vicious attacks toward Marco Rubio.