US President Donald Trump’s administration continued its widespread efforts to downsize the federal government, as Central Intelligence Agency employees reported on Wednesday that they had received letters offering them resignation packages.
“These moves are part of a holistic strategy to infuse the agency with renewed energy, provide opportunities for rising leaders to emerge, and better position the CIA to deliver on its mission,” the agency said in a statement.
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Newly confirmed CIA Director John Ratcliffe had said that he intends to advance Trump’s aim of weeding out what he saw as inefficiency in government, but insisted, “We will collect intelligence, especially human intelligence, in every corner of the globe, no matter how dark or difficult,” and will “conduct covert action at the direction of the president, going places no one else can go and doing things no one else can do.”
“If all of this sounds like what you signed up for,” Ratcliffe told CIA staff, “then buckle up and get ready to make a difference. If it doesn’t, then it’s time to find a new line of work.”
The post of Director of National Intelligence, which oversees the CIA, has not been filled yet as Tulsi Gabbard’s nomination still stands before the Senate. She cleared the first hurdle on Tuesday, getting the thumbs-up from the Senate Intelligence Committee.
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It remained unclear on Wednesday whether the buyout offer will extend to all CIA employees, including senior officials with a high level of responsibility in ongoing operations and initiatives.
When interviewed on CNN, Rep. Pat Fallon (R-TX), the new chairman of the House Armed Forces Committee’s subcommittee on personnel, he said he had been in touch frequently with the administration on these sorts of “voluntary redundancy programs” and argued that those in senior positions will likely remain, as “those who love their jobs are generally good at them.”
Other agencies and departments targeted by the administration include the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Department of Education and the US Agency for International Development (USAID).
Created by Democratic President John F. Kennedy in 1961 to increase American influence in the world in the face of competition from the Soviet Union, USAID had administered tens of billions of dollars to Ukraine in recent years. But it was one of the first targets of the new administration, with Trump saying it was run by “a bunch of lunatics.”
Trump’s purges extended to the FBI, in response to that Department of Justice agency’s inquiries into his supporters’ riots on Capitol Hill in 2021, after Trump lost the 2020 presidential election. Questionnaires sent to FBI employees asked about their role in investigating that Jan. 6 attempted insurrection.
Also in Trump’s crosshairs this week is the Department of Education, created in 1979 by Democratic President Jimmy Carter, whose funeral Trump attended just last month. Dozens of staffers have been sent home already, and the White House is reportedly preparing an executive order to eliminate the department entirely.
Republicans have complained about a perceived left-leaning Department of Education agenda for years, with similar complaints at the local level in conservative states, mostly targeting schools’ embrace of policies towards transgendered students and teachings of “critical race theory,” which promotes the idea that Americans have held a racial bias since the country’s inception.
The Department of Education’s budget for 2024 was $241.7 billion, or about two percent of the nation’s budget. The allotment for USAID that same year was roughly $40 billion, while the total annual operating costs of the CIA are not released to the public.
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