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

7. Intelligence Community · Minor

Restrict IC leaders' public and media appearances

Not started

214 7. Intelligence Community

“IC leaders should practice extreme restraint in engaging with the public and the media. … Potential restrictions on such appearances could supplement this norm, preventing political leaders from using IC officials to support an Administration position as they do with military leaders.”

What has happened

  1. Not started

    No restriction on IC leaders' public and media appearances was found, and the negative is no longer taken from a 403. ODNI's own RSS feed was read in full on 2026-09-03 — 536 items spanning 2005 to 2026-08-20, ODNI's complete public inventory of releases, reports, remarks and Intelligence Community Directives — and it carries no policy, directive or memorandum on media appearances. The only three ICDs published in the window are ICD 124 (Electronic Medical Devices), ICD 711 (Prepublication Reviews) and ICD 712 (Requirements for Certain Employment Activities by Former Intelligence Community Employees), all posted 2026-05-01. ICD 711 is the nearest neighbor and is not this ask: prepublication review of writings by current and former employees is a long-standing regime, not a restriction on leaders' appearances. How far this negative reaches: ODNI's published record; an unpublished internal media policy cannot be excluded. No executive order, ODNI directive or agency policy on the allowlist restricts them, and the practice runs the other way: the CIA has kept an Office of Public Affairs with a Director named in the window (2025-02-18), and the Director has issued public statements on Iran's nuclear program, on declassifications and on analytic retractions, and delivered public remarks at an Amazon Web Services summit.

    No action found yet. This entry is the starting point, not a finding.

Research log

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

Research notes

  • The one structural change in the direction of this ask is section 6405 of P.L. 119-60 Division F, which abolishes ODNI’s statutory Office of Engagement effective 2026-03-18. That removes an office, not a leader’s ability to appear, so it carries #562 rather than this item.
  • Corrected on 2026-09-03: dni.gov and odni.gov can be read, despite an earlier note that they refused to open. dni.gov redirects to odni.gov, which opens, and ODNI’s RSS feed is the site’s complete public inventory — the substitute for its search box, which refuses every query.
  • 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
Public and media appearances by IC leaders
ID
567