The FBI says a proposal by House lawmakers to strip the bureau of its authority over counterintelligence efforts and hand it over to Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard would create confusion and undermine national security.
In a sharply worded letter to Congress, the FBI expressed its “strong objection” to the proposal, exposing a power struggle between Gabbard and the FBI’s director, Kash Patel, and other intelligence agencies.
“The FBI has consistently articulated its strong objection to the proposal, and believes it would cause serious and long-lasting damage to the US national security,” the unclassified letter said. “Furthermore, the FBI is aware of many other objections submitted by other members of the IC,” it stated, referring to the intelligence community.
The FBI argued that it has decades of experience in countering foreign espionage in the United States with a national network of 53 field offices, and that the proposal would create unnecessary bureaucracy and shift authority to officials without relevant expertise.
“The cumulative effect would be putting decision-making with employees who aren’t actively involved in Cl operations, knowledgeable of the intricacies of Cl threats, or positioned to develop coherent and tailored mitigation strategies,” it said, referring to counterintelligence.
The clash over the FBI’s leading role in counterintelligence marks the latest case of tensions between Gabbard and her counterparts in government, with the intelligence chief seeking a larger profile for her office.
Gabbard has engaged in turf battles with the CIA, blindsiding the spy agency by revoking security clearances for current and former national security employees without consulting with CIA officials, NBC News has reported. Gabbard’s office has denied that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence failed to properly confer with colleagues at the CIA over the security clearances.
CIA and other intelligence officials share many of the FBI’s misgivings about the House proposal, according to two people with knowledge of the matter.
Asked about the disagreement, the ODNI and the FBI said in a joint statement that the two agencies “are united in working with Congress to strengthen our nation’s counterintelligence efforts to best protect the safety, security, and freedom of the American people.”
The New York Times first reported on the FBI letter.
The U.S. government defines counterintelligence as protecting against leaks from American spy agencies, hunting down foreign spies and countering economic espionage.
In its letter, the FBI refers to a draft letter from Gabbard about the House proposal, saying it “vigorously disagrees” with her position. NBC News has not seen the draft letter from Gabbard cited by the FBI.
An intelligence community official said that “healthy debate between agencies helps us to best protect national security and best carry out the president’s agenda” and that “Congress is rightfully evaluating reforms to the poorly coordinated, undefined, and often disjointed counterintelligence enterprise.”
The official added that the FBI’s letter was “a pre-emptive response to an ODNI deliberative process document” as part of government agency coordination and that “deliberative process documents are not final products.”
The FBI’s letter came as lawmakers in the House and the Senate are haggling over an intelligence policy bill. The Senate’s proposal does not call for shifting counterintelligence authority to Gabbard’s office, congressional aides said.
The House bill would grant the director of national intelligence the authority to approve counterintelligence activities, but it does not define precisely what that could mean, the FBI said in its letter.
“Would a counterintelligence related prosecution be considered an ‘activity’ that must receive approval from this new Director, outside of the current DOJ chain?” the letter stated, referring to the Justice Department. “Would that give the new Director of the Counterintelligence Center authority over the FBI/Attorney General for all counterintelligence investigations?”
“This entire provision will ultimately cause confusion among agencies and will not yield whatever intended benefits are sought,” it said.
Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said he was open to a review of how counterintelligence activities are managed, but opposed dismantling the FBI’s leading role and giving the ODNI operational control.
“That’s not what ODNI was created for, and it puts it in direct tension with the agencies it’s supposed to support,” Warner said in an email. “This approach risks creating turf battles and undermining the effectiveness of our Intelligence Community. ODNI should be a force multiplier, not a competing agency.”
The chair of the House Intelligence Committee, Republican Rep. Rick Crawford of Arkansas, last month praised the House intelligence policy bill that would empower Gabbard as “the first major reform Congress has pursued of our nation’s counterintelligence posture in over two decades,” which he said was long overdue.
“While our adversaries in the Chinese Communist Party, Russia, Iran and terrorist groups operate on a war footing against the United States, too often we have remained reactive, complacent and risk-averse,” he added.
Crawford’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The director of national intelligence position was created in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, in an attempt to improve coordination and information sharing among the country’s spy agencies.
