Acting Director of National Intelligence Bill Pulte has fired six political appointees put in place by former Director Tulsi Gabbard and eliminated dozens of career intelligence officers from their roles, in response to 4 sources acquainted with the strikes.
The 45 career officers have been on joint responsibility task on the company — which means they have been working on the ODNI however are technically employed by different companies — and have been despatched again to their house workplaces, the sources stated.
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The National Counterterrorism Center, a part of ODNI that had beforehand been anticipated to be a key goal for Pulte, was not impacted by the cuts, one supply acquainted with the state of affairs stated.
Pulte said on X Tuesday night, “Today, I spent time with the National Counterterrorism Center team, who is doing an incredible job protecting our Country under President Trump’s leadership. The room was filled with true professionals and American patriots. It is a privilege to work beside them.”
Another supply acquainted stated there could possibly be as many as two dozen extra firings within the coming weeks, however would unlikely transcend that. This supply stated that Pulte has been consulting career intelligence officers on the cuts.
The removals signify the primary main transfer in Pulte’s mandate to make drastic reductions on the spy workplace, which had already been slimmed down beneath Gabbard. The ODNI, which acts as a policymaker and coordinator for the 18 companies that make up the US intelligence neighborhood, has been a goal of some on the MAGA proper who imagine it’s made up of a “deep state” decided to undermine the president.
NCS has reached out to the ODNI for remark.
Trump put in Pulte within the acting position with a mandate to “execute the immediate and needed downsizing of the office,” the president wrote in a Truth Social put up. Pulte, who has no national safety expertise, initially triggered alarm bells amongst some Republicans on Capitol Hill.
But in response to two sources acquainted with closed-door discussions with Pulte on the Hill, some of these issues have been eased.
“Senators were surprised at the Pulte pick for sure,” stated one Republican Senate staffer. “But since Trump announced him, Pulte put together a detailed strategic plan to implement Trump’s reform agenda at DNI, he is working closely with (the Senate Intelligence Committee), and he’s executing great. Republican Senators have been impressed. Don’t be surprised if he stays in for awhile.”
In different phrases, this individual stated, “Pulte being willing to rock the boat and send a bunch of people back to their agencies and gut the bureaucracy is a feature, not a bug for Republicans.”
Top Democrats on the Senate and House Intelligence Committees, in the meantime, have warned that mass cuts might threat US national safety.
In a letter despatched to Pulte on Monday, Sen. Mark Warner and Rep. Jim Himes wrote, “We are concerned by reports that you intend to fire or place on leave hundreds of Office of the Director of National Intelligence officers as soon as this week.”
“While there is room to consider responsible reductions to ODNI’s workforce, any large cuts would follow on a substantial downsizing that has already occurred in 2025 and risk jeopardizing the mission of an organization explicitly created after 9/11 to prevent any future such terrorist attack,” the lawmakers wrote.
The ODNI, created to keep away from the type of stove-piping of intelligence between companies that partly contributed to the US’s failure to catch the 9/11 plot in time, has additionally lengthy confronted bipartisan criticism for bureaucratic inefficiency. Its relevance and authority — specifically relative to the CIA, whose director used to behave because the chief of the entire neighborhood — have ebbed and flowed relying on the administration.
But it has traditionally acted as an necessary hub of evaluation for the US authorities, chargeable for producing the type of interagency assessments that inform presidents. The President’s Daily Brief, for instance, is an ODNI product.
The prospect of widespread cuts to an company that has already struggled to take care of morale — and, some officers say, appeal to and keep prime expertise inside the authorities — has additional diminished an workplace that was as soon as a coveted job posting. Gabbard in 2025 introduced that she deliberate to chop the workforce by 40 %. Now, one of the sources acquainted with the dismissals stated, the workplace areas are “more than half unoccupied and disheveled.”
“The staff is numb and unhappy,” this supply stated. “One person compared it to the trauma of the Covid pandemic.”