CIA sends ‘buyout’ offers to the entire workforce

Cnn
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Central Intelligence Agency became the first major national security agency on Tuesday, offering so-called buyouts to his entire workforce, a CIA spokesman and two other sources familiar with the offer said, part of President Donald Trump’s broad effort to shrink the federal Government and form it into his agenda.

The offer – which tells federal employees that they can finish their jobs and receive about eight months’ wages and benefits – until Tuesday had not been available to most national security roles in a apparent knowledge of their critical function of the nation’s security.

CIA Director John Ratcliffe personally decided he also wanted the CIA to be involved, one of the sources said.

The spokesman said the move is part of Ratcliffe’s efforts to “ensure that the CIA labor force is responsive to the administration’s national security priorities,” it adds “part of a holistic strategy to add to the Agency with renewed energy.”

Even when the offer was sent to the entire workforce on the agency, it was not immediately clear if everything would be allowed to take it. Some specific professions and areas of expertise appear to be limited, one of the sources familiar with the offer said, suggesting that the effort is far less sweeping than in civil service agencies not considered to perform national security work. There is also a warning for RatCliffe to maintain the flexibility to work through the time of officers in critical areas, according to another source familiar with the case.

The Office of Personnel Administration had issued internal guidance last week that some officers in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence may participate in the program, but that not all positions at ODNI will necessarily be justified, according to two other sources that are familiar with the communication.

The decision to include the CIA in the program seems to be a recent decision: From last week, the CIA labor force was still available that officials were trying to determine if they would be eligible for the program, one of these sources said.

The wide CIA offer was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.

Trump and his allies have claimed at various points that intelligence officers at the CIA have been part of a “deep state” determined to undermine him, and some critics have described the exposed resignation as a cleansing – some Trump officials have refused.

Some national security officials in Trump’s circuits believe that in recent years the CIA has been too heavily weighted against analysis at the expense of secret collection of intelligence and performing hidden operations – functions in the agency’s much less operating directorate.

Ratcliffe during its confirmation hearing promised to reinvest in both.

“To the brave CIA officers who listen anywhere in the world, if all this sounds like what you signed up, so tighten up and get ready to make a difference,” he said in his opening declaration. “If it doesn’t, it’s time to find a new working line.”

The program postponed resignation has caused a rebellion across government. The controversial offer that unions have called on members not to accept was revealed in a lot of -e -e -mail from OPM to Federal Employees on January 28.

The Trump administration is now planning widespread redundancies among the federal workforce, leaving employees across the government who do not accept the vulnerable resignation that is in danger of losing their jobs.

The redundancies, which are internally referred to as sweeping “reductions into effect”, are expected to begin shortly after the Thursday deadline that the Office of Personnel Administration set to workers to accept resignation, officials said.

The package allows them to leave voluntarily and be paid for through September 30, but do not have to continue working. It was not clear whether the same conditions used the offer that was sent to the CIA labor force.