CIA offers buyouts to employees as Trump aims to transform federal government

The CIA confirmed Wednesday that it offered buyouts to employees who volunteer to resign, the latest group of federal workers to receive such a proposal as President Trump pushes to transform the federal government.

A CIA spokesperson declined to say how many people received the offers or whether they face any deadline to decide. 

However, the buyout offered to CIA employees differs from the “fork in the road” offer extended to other federal employees and includes Voluntary Early Retirement Authority, known as VERA, and resignation options. And it will not be available to all CIA staff, CBS News has learned. 

VERA enables agencies that are being substantially restructured or reorganized to “temporarily lower the age and service requirements in order to increase the number of employees who are eligible for retirement,” according to OPM. It’s intended to encourage more people to voluntarily separate from their positions earlier and allow employees “to receive an immediate annuity years before they would otherwise be eligible.”

There are multiple national security exceptions for the CIA buyouts — though it’s not immediately clear exactly who might be included in these. While the CIA received an agency-wide message similar to the email sent to Office of Personnel Management personnel, eligibility for CIA personnel is limited and based on the mission requirements of certain employees, CBS News has learned. Those who work on high-priority issues may not be approved for the buyout. 

For example, some personnel with specialized skill sets designed for intelligence collection, including fluency in some foreign languages, will not be eligible to receive the buyout. 

In a statement a CIA spokesperson said of the buyouts that CIA Director John Ratcliffe “is moving swiftly to ensure the CIA workforce is responsive to the Administration’s national security priorities,” adding that “these moves are part of a holistic strategy to infuse the Agency with renewed energy, provide opportunities for rising leaders to emerge, and better position the CIA to deliver on its mission.” The Wall Street Journal first reported the CIA resignation offers.

The Office of Personnel Management has already offered millions of federal workers about eight months of salary if they agree by Thursday to leave their jobs. The CIA and other national security agencies were initially exempted, but the CIA offers suggest few corners of the government will escape Mr. Trump’s overhaul.

Mr. Trump has long criticized America’s intelligence agencies, and his new CIA director, John Ratcliffe, has promised big changes, claiming the CIA has strayed from its original focus on human-collected intelligence.

Since he took office last month, Mr. Trump has launched an attempt to gut and reshape several federal agencies, most notably the U.S. Agency for International Development, which has been largely dismantled by Trump and billionaire Elon Musk, the leader of Trump’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency.

National security experts have warned that deep cuts to the CIA and other agencies could put lives at risk by hampering their mission or reducing the flow of intelligence between the U.S. and its allies. Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the senior Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, urged CIA employees to carefully weigh the offer.

“There are few government agencies more essential to our national security than the CIA,” Warner said in a statement. “A lot of federal employees, including at the CIA, are my constituents, and I’ve been warning them that these ‘buyouts’ are empty promises, since Congress hasn’t approved any money to do it. I’d hate to see people resign and then get stiffed like the contractors on President Trump’s construction projects.”

Though the precise number is classified, the CIA employs thousands of people engaged in the collection and analysis of foreign intelligence, both at its headquarters in Virginia, as well as overseas postings.

Ratcliffe told the Senate Intelligence Committee in January that the CIA must do a better job of harnessing technologies such as artificial intelligence and quantum computing while also expanding the agency’s use of human intelligence collection.

“We’re not where we’re supposed to be,” Ratcliffe said as senators considered his nomination.

contributed to this report.