WASHINGTON — Bill Pulte walked into his new role as Director of National Intelligence and immediately asked for names of officials to cut. He was on a mission to do what President Donald Trump had asked of him: “execute the immediate and needed downsizing of the office.”
That mission has set off a firestorm within the intelligence community. The Daily Wire has learned that Pulte is working closely with CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Republican Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton, who view DNI’s oversight as a hindrance to individual intelligence agencies.
Their opponents argue that downsizing and cutting ODNI’s oversight only enables the very deep state that Trump so adamantly wants to root out.
Trump’s mandate to Pulte didn’t expressly say to fire people, but instead to send them back to their home agencies. That appears to be largely what Pulte is doing: since he took over, more than 50 ODNI staff have been removed from their jobs, an administration official confirmed to The Daily Wire. Forty-five of those individuals were returned to their home agencies, while six career officials were fired.
A senate source familiar with the matter told The Daily Wire that Pulte is working closely with Cotton and Ratcliffe, as well as the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Contrary to media reporting, that senate advisor said, the senators like Pulte and enjoy working with him. Asked about reports that Pulte’s cuts have been contradictory or disorganized, the senate source pushed back, saying: “His cuts have been deliberate.”
The CIA would not comment directly on Ratcliffe’s interactions with Pulte, but spokeswoman Liz Lyons told The Daily Wire that Ratcliffe “continues to support acting DNI Pulte’s mission to advance the President’s priorities.”
ODNI did not respond to multiple requests for comment from The Daily Wire.
News that Pulte would assume the acting DNI role sparked massive backlash from Democrats and some Republicans. Critics pointed to his lack of intelligence experience and said he’d be a hatchet man for the president. Even Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters in early June: “We don’t need a weaponized DNI.”
His treatment of the outgoing Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard drew criticism as well. Gabbard was supposed to stay in her role until the end of June, but Pulte, eager to get started (and make use of his limited time as acting DNI), aggressively pushed for Gabbard to leave early, a senior intelligence official shared. The move angered Gabbard’s supporters, particularly because Gabbard had agreed to a particular timeline with President Trump in light of her husband’s cancer diagnosis.
One notable Pulte victim was Will Ruger, the deputy director of national intelligence for mission integration, who was placed on administrative leave. He led the intelligence community’s “collaborative integration efforts and primary intelligence support to policymakers through the President’s Daily Brief and the National Intelligence Council,” CBS News first reported.
Some conservatives worry Pulte’s cuts will result in a weakened ODNI that can’t rein in rogue agencies like the FBI and CIA. Under Gabbard’s direction, DNI had already cut 40% of staff, leaving the agency with less than 1,400 employees, compared to the estimated 38,000 of the FBI and 20,000 of the CIA.
“The mistake is they’re getting rid of people who are loyal to POTUS,” a former intelligence official alleged, “and if they get rid of ODNI there is no one to do actual effective oversight of the Intelligence Community.”
ODNI’s supporters also point to the recent weaponization of the FBI, for example, against Trump and his allies under President Joe Biden, arguing that the bureau still is staffed with agents that were part of this weaponization and that oversight is still needed.
“The DNI manages the National Intelligence Program budget, giving the ODNI real fiscal leverage over FBI Counterintelligence operations,” a second former intelligence official said. “Given that the FBI Counterintelligence Division has been completely rogue since Trump came down the escalator, and because Congress has proven itself incapable of conducting any real oversight of the FBI and CIA, the Trump Administration should be cautious when liquidating a component of the USG with true oversight ability.”
Congress has oversight over the FBI and the CIA, but at the end of the day, the lawmakers are only briefed on what the agencies choose to tell them. In some cases, the senior intelligence official said, Congress will never know “unless shit goes so badly that they can’t hide it.”
The DNI position was created after 9/11. Before, the CIA director effectively ran the entire intelligence community in addition to his own agency.
Cotton outright made the case that things may have been better off then on the Senate floor this week: “Unfortunately,” he said, “I think we can now assess a couple decades on, that it is something of a failed experiment itself.”
The Arkansas lawmaker, who said he wants ODNI to be downsized and streamlined, noted that ODNI does serve some functions that could possibly be “performed elsewhere.” He shared that he spoke with Pulte this week about sending officers back to their home agencies and reducing ODNI to its original size, but he denied reporting that “mass firings” had begun.
“If Director Pulte can, in fact, take these steps in the right direction, I think that can benefit Jay Clayton once he is confirmed,” Cotton shared. “Mr. Clayton will be able to inherit an organization that has already been downsized, and he can hit the ground running on day one, to continue that work, and to ensure that the DNI is promoting our intelligence communities’ important work — not hindering it.” Hardliners like Steve Bannon view Cotton’s stance as an effort to promote the CIA.
“When you see Tom Cotton and Lindsey Graham talking about this, it’s not to go after the Deep State,” argued Bannon on his show. “It’s to downsize DNI from its administrative or supervisory function over the intelligence community to what I call ‘CIA supremacism.’”
But other members of the intelligence community view ODNI as a massive hindrance to the work that they are trying to accomplish.
One senior government official questioned the efficacy of the layered bureaucracy of ODNI and exactly what the agency accomplishes, noting, “They are not the action arm.”
“The action arm is the FBI. Gonna arrest a spy? The FBI does that. The information arm is the CIA and the NSA,” the official noted. “[ODNI] don’t produce any intelligence either.”
Pulte is only serving as acting DNI — the president chose Jay Clayton, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, as his nominee for permanent Director of National Intelligence.
Clayton has received strong support from numerous Republican senators, including Cotton and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, but Trump abruptly told Clayton not to attend his confirmation hearings earlier this month after lawmakers allowed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to lapse.
Speaking from Switzerland during his trip to the G7, the president said he’ll leave Pulte as acting DNI “as long as it takes to get everybody else approved.” He noted that he is against FISA if it does not come with the SAVE America Act attached to it.
“Look, he’s a very legitimate guy,” the president said of Pulte. “He’s very smart. He’s a brilliant guy.”
“Why are they afraid of this guy?” he added. “I mean, they’re so afraid of him, they’ll do anything not to have Pulte go in there. He’s a very capable guy, and they’re worried about that.”
Pulte is notoriously close to the president, and he certainly has the president’s confidence for now. In the meantime, it appears that he will continue to downsize DNI. A senate advisor familiar with the matter told The Daily Wire of the cuts: “I think this is the start, not the end.”