The Trump administration is pushing ahead with a major reduction of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), intent on eliminating some 1,200 personnel posts over a series of years as part of an overall effort to reduce the size of the federal government. Those reductions will chiefly be accomplished by attrition, including a hiring freeze and early retirement, not through large-scale layoffs.
The reductions are all part of a broader effort hitting thousands of positions within the U.S. intelligence community, ranging from agencies such as the National Security Agency (NSA) to the Defense Intelligence Agency. The plan, lawmakers have been briefed on, is meant to realign agency staffing with administration national security priorities and streamline the agencies' work.
CIA Director John Ratcliffe has said that these moves are intended to energize the agency, provide opportunities for rising stars, and strengthen the CIA's capacity to carry out its mission, with a continued emphasis on objective intelligence collection and clandestine operations as set by the president.
