The CIA
Yes I am speaking about the US CIA
What does CIA stand for ?
The Central Intelligence Agency.
When you gut the CIA, you are left with CA or Central Agency, for there is no Intelligence.
A body that is basically left to deal with issues from the seat of ones pants.
The question is not if you can live without that, for you can, but how long.
These are the folks responsible for knowing what anyone who would seek to do us harm and how they intend to do that.
So, how do you know when an adversary is bluffing a nuclear strike ? Do you just bow down to the threat to avert perceived destruction ?
You have to know, and know in an instant just how you stand.
You also have to have plans on how to react to any one of thousands of threats that may not seem likely, but often show themselves anyway.
You can’t thwart and attack you know nothing about and will suffer of it.
Know that there has never been any agency from any government in the world ever that could not stand some reform.
But the method in doing reform always has a processes. Gutting Intelligence is not one of them.
It is not something you can recover from short of 5 years if ever completely.
Things change very much faster then most realize, so it does not take long to be completely out of touch with reality.
It takes years to train people and a few more for them to develop trusted relationships.
This is not something you can re-instate with a stroke of a pen. But that is all it takes to destroy it.
But inevitably, if 47 is going to do underhanded deeds abroad, the CIA will likely find out. The only reason you might want to rid yourself of watchdogs.