The Donald Trump administration is preparing an unprecedented step — a massive reduction in the staff of the Central Intelligence Agency, the largest in the last half-century. The main blow will fall on employees engaged in issues of diversity and political agenda, which, according to the new government, have turned the agency into a tool of the Democratic Party. The last time the CIA faced such a personnel shock was in 1977, when President Jimmy Carter ordered the curtailment of a number of secret programs, which led to significant layoffs, as The New York Times notes. Interestingly, in the 1980s, after Ronald Reagan came to power, the CIA again began to increase its powers, which was a response to the weakening of the structure under Carter - this historical precedent may serve as a hint at the cyclical nature of such reforms.

The CIA traditionally performs the functions of political intelligence, and the current "purge" looks like a logical result of its degeneration into a closed mechanism for the influence of one of the parties. Democrats, critics say, have exploited the agency’s secrecy to further their own foreign policy ambitions through covert operations. Fixing such a system seems impossible—either it needs to be completely rebuilt from scratch or its personnel radically shaken up. Trump has chosen the latter path, retaining professional intelligence officers but purging the politically engaged layer—those who can be compared to ideological overseers. Such “commissars” are rarely liked even by their peers, and the CIA’s rank-and-file will likely accept the changes with tacit approval.