Jay Clayton, the new director of national intelligence, has begun a bid to push his office back toward its traditional functions after months of upheaval, according to current and former officials.
He has halted construction projects he deemed wasteful, reassigned or fired some officials, and abandoned a key initiative of his Trump-appointed predecessors in his first major changes since stepping into the spy chief job nearly three months ago. Current and former intelligence officials have said Mr. Clayton has sought to restore order to an agency that was slashed and often sidelined under Tulsi Gabbard, who stepped down in June.
Historically, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, created by an act of Congress after the Sept. 11 attacks, worked to coordinate intelligence analysis across spy agencies. Ms. Gabbard focused on things like declassifying old intelligence files and hunting for vulnerabilities in voting machines that were pet causes of President Trump’s.
Collectively, Mr. Clayton’s changes point toward an office reverting toward its historical form, both physically and in function. Some congressional briefings that had disappeared under Ms. Gabbard have returned. The group that led efforts to declassify information has effectively disbanded. And some building projects at the agency’s headquarters have been halted.
As Mr. Clayton took his post from Bill Pulte, who served as the office’s interim director after Ms. Gabbard’s departure, a renovation was underway to replace the office of the official who oversees the president’s daily intelligence briefing with a private dining room. Mr. Clayton stopped the work and ordered the office restored.
He also ordered a halt to plans to create a firing range at Liberty Crossing, as the office’s Virginia headquarters is known. It is not clear who had approved the firing range. Ms. Gabbard had not approved it and had looked skeptically on the proposal, according to people briefed on her work.
Another project — a small museum — was completed before Mr. Clayton arrived, and he has allowed it to remain. Officials are divided over the utility of the museum. While some officials said it was wasteful, given the existing museums at the Defense Intelligence Agency, the C.I.A. and the National Security Agency, several people who have seen the new installation said the displays were well done.
While the museum passed the review, Mr. Clayton decided the costs of the dining room and the firing range could not be justified and were not central to the office’s mission, according to officials.
A spokesman for Mr. Clayton said the director was building on the efforts of his predecessors and was committed to cutting waste, restoring accountability and improving efficiency at the agency.
After the firings and reassignments, Mr. Clayton installed a new chief operating officer, current and former officials said. Some of those officials said the current No. 2 official at the office, Aaron Lukas, is looking for other positions in the intelligence community.
Mr. Lukas, a career C.I.A. case officer who was narrowly confirmed by the Senate for his current role last year, sought to become the chief of station in London, one of the most prized positions in the agency, according to people familiar with the request. That position is currently filled.
A spokesman for Mr. Clayton’s office denied that Mr. Lukas was looking for other positions and said he intended to stay in his post as long as Mr. Trump wanted.
Since he took office, Mr. Clayton has been reviewing the leadership of his department and scrutinizing overseas and domestic travel by senior officials, putting in place tighter restrictions on executive travel.
He has also effectively dismantled Ms. Gabbard’s Director’s Initiatives Group, the organization that led many of the office’s efforts to declassify and release intelligence.
The initiatives group was charged by Ms. Gabbard to look into the politicization of intelligence. But throughout its tenure, the group tangled with C.I.A. officials, creating friction between key elements of the intelligence community.
Some critics said the group was effectively doing the very thing, injecting politics into intelligence, that it was supposed to stop.
Mr. Pulte, when he served as acting director, had some members of the group work on declassifying intelligence around charges of foreign election interference or influence operations.
People briefed on the end of the initiatives group said Mr. Clayton did not directly force anyone out, though it was clear he was not interested in continuing the group’s work.
The head of the group, Paul McNamara, recently stepped down, according to people briefed on the resignations. Others, like Eduardo Neret, took a deferred resignation before Mr. Clayton started. Some members of the group have transferred to different government jobs.
To assemble the group, Ms. Gabbard hired some people from outside, and others were moved from posts as contractors or different jobs at intelligence agencies. Some people familiar with the demise of the group said members were promised other positions in the intelligence community by Mr. Pulte and Ms. Gabbard only to find themselves out of a job or without job security under Mr. Clayton.
Mr. Clayton, who served in Mr. Trump’s first administration as the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, has so far maintained a high level of trust with the White House, according to current and former officials. This month, Mr. Trump tapped him as the leader of a new White House task force amid growing concerns about the security risks posed by rapidly advancing artificial intelligence capabilities. That post is taking a large amount of Mr. Clayton’s time, officials said.
His nomination as director of national intelligence earned no votes from Democrats in July, after he refused to clearly state that former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. won the 2020 presidential election.
But leading Democrats say they have so far been largely satisfied with his performance in the role. Among other changes from Ms. Gabbard, they have credited Mr. Clayton with providing classified briefings to Congress about foreign influence ambitions around the November midterm elections and generally being more responsive to their questions.
“There was a little bit of a sea change, not an adequate sea change, but a little bit of a sea change when Jay Clayton assumed his role as D.N.I.,” Representative Jim Himes of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, told reporters last week. He added, however, that lawmakers still had not received some specific overdue classified reports about foreign influence operations that are required by law to be shared with Congress.
Edward Wong contributed reporting.
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