Tulsi Gabbard Shuts Down Controversial Spy Task Force Amid Whistleblower Allegations

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard announced Wednesday that her office shut down this week the panel known as the Director’s Initiative Group (DIG), a high-profile intelligence reform task force, less than a year after its creation, as Gabbard faces scrutiny over a whistleblower complaint.

Gabbard’s Office of the Director of National Intelligence established the DIG in April 2025 to examine systemic issues within the U.S. intelligence community. The group’s mandate included identifying and addressing what Gabbard described as the “politicization” of intelligence gathering, recommending ways to reduce spending, and evaluating whether certain high-profile reports should be declassified.

According to The Wall Street Journal, an anonymous U.S. intelligence official submitted a complaint to the Office of the Intelligence Community Inspector General in May 2025. Based on interviews with officials familiar with the matter conducted by the Journal, the allegations center on an intercepted National Security Agency phone call between two foreign intelligence operatives that included a discussion of a person close to President Donald Trump.

The whistleblower claimed that Gabbard chose to limit the routine dissemination of that intelligence and instead routed it to her office and the White House Chief of Staff, allegedly bypassing normal channels. When an intelligence community employee files a complaint under the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act, regulations generally require the complaint to be referred to Congress within 21 days if it is deemed both urgent and credible.

Gabbard’s office has strongly denied wrongdoing and challenged several assertions about how the case was handled. In a social media post, she called the claim that the complaint was hidden “a blatant lie” and reiterated that she was never in possession or control of the document in the way critics describe. She also contends that the legal deadline to transmit the complaint to Congress only applies when a complaint is determined by an inspector general to be both urgent and credible, which she alleges was not the case.

In a statement to Reuters, Gabbard said the DIG was always intended to be temporary and tied to early priorities in her tenure overseeing coordination of the nation’s 18 separate intelligence agencies. “In less than one year, we’ve brought a historic level of transparency to the intelligence community,” she said, “My commitment to transparency, truth, and eliminating politicization and weaponization within the intelligence community remains central to all that we do.”

She also added that, despite being unable to disclose how many officers worked in the DIG, they would all be assigned to their previous or new offices. The DIG’s creation came as Gabbard, who took over the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) in February 2025 under Trump, signaled a sweeping reorientation of U.S. intelligence priorities, vowing to “refocus our intelligence community.”

According to POLITICO, under Gabbard’s watch, the intelligence community has revoked the security clearances of dozens of current and former officials, in some cases tied to allegations of politicization, and released declassified analyses questioning established findings about Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

PBS also reported that her office has undertaken budgetary restructuring, including plans to reduce ODNI’s workforce and cut more than $700 million from its annual budget. In May 2025, she dismissed two senior intelligence officials she said opposed the administration’s priorities. According to Reuters, Congress passed legislation requiring Gabbard to provide classified details about the DIG’s leadership and operations in December 2025. The ODNI missed that reporting deadline but has pledged to comply.