Summary
The CIA has reportedly offered buyouts to its entire workforce as part of efforts to align with Trump’s national security priorities.
The agency is also freezing conditional job offers, potentially rescinding those not fitting its new focus on drug cartels, Trump’s trade war, and countering China.
CIA Director John Ratcliffe’s office says the move is part of a broader strategy to reshape the agency.
This follows Trump’s wider government downsizing plan, which includes mass federal buyouts and aligns with Project 2025’s goal of replacing workers with political appointees.
Current scuttlebutt is this has been less than a 1/10th as effective as Clinton’s reduction in force, and isn’t even beating normal retirement numbers.
If trump had just done buyouts and VERA from the start thru official channels, he might have gotten close to doing as much harm as neoliberals did 30 years ago to the federal workforce
But no one trusts it after how it started.
Surely this would be an absolute intelligence clusterfuck for the US if the entire CIA staff just… left.
Only if you think that the U.S. having an intelligence-gathering capacity is a good thing. I’m guessing Putin is not in favor of it.
With Trump as President and Tulsi Gabbard in charge of national intelligence, Putin probably doesn’t mind because he’ll get the intelligence soon enough anyway.
