Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, says she has ended a task force she launched last year with the goal of rooting out politicization from intelligence agencies.
Members of the Director's Initiatives Group have been reassigned elsewhere, she told Reuters.
The decision to scrap DIG came after several missteps, two sources told Reuters, but Gabbard said it was supposed to be temporary.
"The Director's Initiatives Group was created as a temporary effort to surge resources to deliver on high-priority projects with near-term deadlines, including Presidential Executive Orders," Gabbard said.
"We are continuing to deliver results focused on our mission by maximizing the expertise and experience of those who were temporarily assigned to the Director's Initiatives Group by assigning them to teams across ODNI," she added, using the abbreviation for Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
The two sources cited missteps influencing the decision to end the task force, including that the group mistakenly linking a federal security worker to the planting of pipe bombs outside the respective headquarters of the Democratic and Republican parties in Washington on the eve of the Jan, 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, the sources said.
The ODNI spokesperson denied any mistake, however, saying that the agency had a legal duty to pass along an allegation from a whistleblower, and that the agency's legal counsel was involved.
The ending of DIG comes after Congress passed legislation in December requiring Gabbard to provide a classified report last month that included details on DIG leadership, staffing, and hiring practices.
Gabbard's office missed the deadline, but a DNI spokesperson said the agency would still provide the information to Congress.
Advocates of the DIG cite accomplishments such as the declassification of files related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and making good on a raft of President Donald Trump's executive orders shortly after he took office.
But critics saw its efforts to root out politicization in the intelligence community as highly partisan.
Another misstep included revealing the name of a CIA officer who was serving undercover overseas when revoking the security clearances of 37 current and former officials, most of them Democrats, a source alleged.
The DNI spokesperson denied that the CIA officer's identity had been revealed since it did not name any agency affiliation.
Reuters contributed to this report.
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