The Office of the Director of National Intelligence ODNI

From 1947 to 2005 the Director of Central Intelligence wore two hats, running the CIA while nominally coordinating the whole intelligence community, a role most directors had neither the time nor the authority to perform. The 9/11 Commission concluded that the attacks had exposed a community of agencies that did not share what they knew, and recommended a separate head for all of them. The Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act, signed December 17, 2004, created the Director of National Intelligence, and the office began operating in April 2005 under John Negroponte.

The DNI leads the intelligence community, eighteen organizations spread across six departments and the CIA: among them the National Security Agency, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, the National Reconnaissance Office, and the Defense Intelligence Agency in the Pentagon, the FBI's intelligence branch, the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, and the intelligence offices of Treasury, Energy, Homeland Security, and the Drug Enforcement Administration, plus the intelligence arms of each military service. The Director serves as the President's principal intelligence adviser, oversees production of the President's Daily Brief, and controls the National Intelligence Program budget, about 73 billion dollars a year, which is disclosed only in total.

ODNI also houses centers that cut across agency lines: the National Counterterrorism Center, the National Counterproliferation and Biosecurity Center, the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, and the National Intelligence Council, which writes the community's consensus assessments, the National Intelligence Estimates. The Director is confirmed by the Senate. The office has always faced the criticism that it added a layer of bureaucracy without giving the DNI real command, since most intelligence agencies still answer day to day to their own cabinet secretaries.

In 2025 the Director announced a plan to shrink the office by more than 40 percent, eliminating centers and boards, and moved analysts and functions back to the agencies. The administration also dismissed the leadership of the National Intelligence Council and revoked security clearances of former officials and some critics. Supporters argued that the office had grown bloated and that some assessments had been shaded by politics. Former intelligence officials and members of both intelligence committees warned that the changes risked politicizing analysis and reversing the integration the 9/11 reforms were meant to achieve.