Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

7. Intelligence Community · Minor

Minimize IC public presence and investigate all leaks

Partially done

213 7. Intelligence Community

“IC agencies, including the CIA, should minimize their public presence and vigorously investigate any and all leaks of information, classified or otherwise.”

What has happened

  1. Partially done

    The public-presence half moved once, and by statute rather than by IC choice: section 6405 of the Intelligence Authorization Act for FY2026 requires the DNI to terminate and wind down the Office of Engagement and repeals section 122 of the National Security Act (50 U.S.C. 3062), which had established that office inside ODNI, effective 90 days after enactment. One outward-facing ODNI office abolished; no IC-wide direction to minimize public presence exists.

  2. Partially done

    The leak-investigation half is delivered for the government as a whole: the Justice Department's final rule rescinded the 2022 amendments to 28 CFR 50.10, restoring the use of subpoenas, court orders and search warrants to obtain information from or records of members of the news media in investigations of unauthorized disclosures. That removes the principal legal constraint on vigorously investigating leaks; it is not itself an IC agency minimizing its public presence.

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

  • The repeal is confirmed at https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=granuleid:USC-prelim-title50-section3062&num=0&edition=prelim, which now reads “§3062. Repealed. Pub. L. 119-60, div. F, title LXIV, §6405(b), Dec. 18, 2025” and records that the section had “established the Office of Engagement within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence”.
  • #564 (the major ask on p. 214) is done on the same Justice Department rule; this item is partial because its Quote pairs leak investigations with a second object, public presence, on which only one office has moved.
  • The prosecutions that follow from the changed posture are recorded on #563.
  • This ask is also covered by a single negative search of the IC personnel-discipline and public-presence asks on pp. 213-214.
Action
restrict
Object
IC agencies' public presence and leak investigations
ID
562