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FOIA Documents ‘Scrubbed’ From Intelligence Agency Website

Last year, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence removed all documents from its FOIA reading room. Emails say a Biden-era FOIA release caused a “fuss.”


Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard at a swearing-in ceremony in the Oval Office of the White House on Wednesday, Feb. 12, 2025.Photographer: Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA/Bloomberg

By Jason Leopold
April 24, 2026 at 10:30 AM EDT

Welcome back to FOIA Files! Last May, for unexplained reasons, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence took down its website. Days later, the site was restored. But a ton of material was missing, notably hundreds of intelligence-related documents released over the years in response to Freedom of Information Act requests. Why? I filed a FOIA request to find out (surprise, surprise). This week, a year after I filed my request, and sued ODNI to compel the release of records, the agency sent me more than a dozen pages of emails that offer some answers. The communications call into question the Trump administration’s pronouncement that it’s “the most transparent administration in American history.” If you’re not already getting FOIA Files in your inbox, sign up here.

At first glance, the disappearance of documents from ODNI’s FOIA page in early May seemed to be connected to a swirling controversy at the agency run by Tulsi Gabbard. On May 5, transparency expert Lauren Harper at the Freedom of the Press Foundation received a copy of an intelligence assessment from a unit of the ODNI on Tren de Aragua, a notorious Venezuelan gang.

The assessment undercut President Donald Trump’s rationale last year for invoking the Alien Enemies Act to justify deporting alleged gang members to a notorious prison in El Salvador without due process. (Harper filed a FOIA request for the assessment on April 25, 2025. Ten days later, ODNI’s FOIA office sent her the partially redacted assessment, a remarkably quick turnaround time for any intelligence agency.)

FOIA and find out
Around the same time, according to the batch of emails I just received, top officials at ODNI began directing subordinates to dismantle the agency’s FOIA webpage. They “scrubbed” scores of previously released intelligence-related documents on a wide range of topics and other FOIA-related material.

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