WASHINGTON, D.C.: The Director's Initiatives Group, a task force launched last year by U.S. spy chief Tulsi Gabbard to root out politicization in intelligence agencies, was shut down by her.
Critics accused the DIG of being a tool used by the Trump administration for partisan attacks.
Following comments from two sources about missteps by the task force, Gabbard said she had reassigned members of the DIG to other parts of her agency, but denied any missteps.
"The Director's Initiatives Group was created as a temporary effort to surge resources to deliver on high-priority projects with near-term deadlines, including Presidential Executive Orders," Gabbard said.
"We are continuing to deliver results focused on our mission by maximizing the expertise and experience of those who were temporarily assigned to the Director's Initiatives Group by assigning them to teams across ODNI."
Members of Congress have scrutinized the DIG, and many have called its structure secretive. Through legislation passed in December, Congress ordered Gabbard to provide a classified report in January on the leadership, staffing levels, and hiring practices at the task force.
However, Gabbard's office missed the deadline, but said the agency would still provide the information to Congress.
The news that the DIG task force has been shut down comes at a sensitive time for Gabbard. Democrats are worried about her presence at an FBI raid on January 28, where ballot boxes and other election materials were taken from a Georgia county archive.
Reuters also reported last week that Gabbard's office supervised an investigation into voting machines in Puerto Rico last year, and officials took control of several machines.
The White House defended Gabbard's role in reviewing U.S. election security. However, Democratic leaders in Congress say she has gone beyond the limits of her intelligence role and fear the Trump administration might try to influence future U.S. elections. Some senators even called for her resignation after new details about her connections emerged.
Supporters of the DIG point to achievements such as releasing classified files about President John F. Kennedy's assassination and quickly carrying out several of President Donald Trump's executive orders after he took office. Critics, however, believe the task force's efforts to remove political bias from intelligence agencies were themselves politically motivated.
For example, the ODNI said it was a major success to declassify documents that Gabbard claimed showed former President Barack Obama had intelligence officials create an assessment that Russia wanted Trump to win the 2016 election.
But this claim was disputed by a 2025 CIA review, a 2018 bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report, and Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who charged 25 Russians. Obama denied any wrongdoing.
In an interview with Reuters last year, Senator Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said he believed the DIG was conducting a "witch hunt" against intelligence officers it saw as disloyal to Trump, though he did not provide specific proof.
Two sources said mistakes also led to the decision to close the task force. One error involved wrongly linking a federal security worker to the pipe bombs placed outside the Democratic and Republican party headquarters in Washington, D.C., before the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot.
An ODNI spokesperson denied this was a mistake, saying the agency was legally required to pass along a whistleblower's claim and that its legal team was involved.
Another source said the DIG revealed the name of a CIA officer working undercover overseas while canceling the security clearances of 37 current and former officials, most of them Democrats. The ODNI spokesperson denied this, saying no agency affiliation was mentioned.
