Project 2025’s Intelligence Blueprint: Secrecy, Politicization, and the Dismantling of Independent Oversight
Project 2025 proposes to centralize intelligence power under direct presidential control, end public engagement by intelligence leaders, and revoke security clearances of former officials who speak out — all of which would dismantle the legal and institutional firewalls designed to keep the intelligence community politically neutral and accountable to law, not loyalty.
The intelligence community (IC) was designed after World War II to provide policymakers with objective analysis free from political interference — a core democratic safeguard against the use of secret information to punish opponents, manufacture consent for war, or shield the executive from scrutiny. Project 2025’s IC chapter, drafted for a future conservative administration, would effectively break that safeguard by placing the Director of National Intelligence under direct presidential control, revoking security clearances for former officials who discuss their work in public, and directing intelligence leaders to “work in the shadows” rather than engage with the media or Congress.
This is not a minor administrative tweak. At stake is the firewall that separates professional intelligence analysis from partisan propaganda. When the president can silence former directors (as Donald Trump already did in 2020 by revoking John Brennan’s clearance), the message is clear: speak truth to power at your own risk. When Congress is told to withhold information from the public, the very notion of legislative oversight collapses. And when leaks are investigated with the threat of losing pensions, whistleblowers who expose wrongdoing — exactly the kind the IC ombudsman flagged in 2020 — will think twice before coming forward. The result is an IC that serves the president, not the Constitution.
The chapter cites the Hunter Biden laptop letter as evidence of politicization, but its remedies — centralize power, silence dissent, classify everything — are themselves textbook politicization. The existing statutory firewall at 50 U.S.C. § 3024 and the role of the IC inspector general provide a different path: strengthen oversight, protect whistleblowers, and enforce rules that keep analysis independent of partisan control.
The humanitarian alternative
Replace the Project 2025 framework with the Intelligence Community Integrity Act, which would (1) codify DNI independence as a statutory requirement, (2) require Senate confirmation of all senior IC appointees, (3) expand and protect the role of the IC inspector general and the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, (4) establish a public clearinghouse for unclassified inspector general reports on intelligence activities, and (5) condition FISA Section 702 renewal on specific, enforceable reforms to prevent U.S. person queries without a warrant. This approach would preserve the IC's capacity to warn about threats while restoring public trust that the system will not be used for partisan political advantage.
Original source — excerpted
project2025 Project 2025 ch. 8: Media Agencies (pp 246-248)"— 213 — Intelligence Community The ODNI and CIA are undergoing a crisis of confidence based on several factors. First, President Barack Obama’s CIA Director, John Brennan, gravely damaged the CIA by minimizing the Directorate of Operations and exploiting intelligence analy- sis as a political weapon after he left office. Brennan's role in the letter signed by 51 former intelligence officials before the 2020 election is unclear, but in dismissing the Hunter Biden laptop as “Russian disinformation,” the CIA was discredited, and the shocking extent of politicization among some former IC officials was revealed. Restoring respect for the IC as an independent provider of information and analysis while also ensuring that it is responsive to the legitimate needs of poli - cymakers will require reinforcing essential norms and institutions. However, we should also recognize that achieving the perfect balance that avoids the pathologies of too much distance or too much closeness and responsiveness to policymakers is not only difficult, but probably impossible.22 Thus, given the very nature of the business and the political process, much will depend on the promotion of certain nor…"