Hundreds Purged From Office of Director of National Intelligence
An Acting Director who could not get Senate approval is making radical changes.
NBC News (“Top intelligence agency begins mass firings under new Trump appointee, source says“):
President Donald Trump’s new acting director of national intelligence, Bill Pulte, began purging staff members at the office Monday, a source familiar with the matter confirmed to NBC News.
“The deep state firings have begun,” the source said.
[…]
Trump named Pulte the acting director this month and said on Truth Social that he had “asked him to execute the immediate and needed downsizing of the office, reverting staff to their home agencies.” Pulte, who has no background in national security matters, has been serving as head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency.
A separate source with knowledge of the matter told NBC News over the weekend that Pulte had ordered staff members to identify 400 employees to be fired from the National Counterterrorism Center, which is part of the U.S. intelligence community, in the coming weeks.
Pulte issued the instruction late Thursday — before he officially took over for outgoing Director Tulsi Gabbard, the source said. He started his new post Friday.
The potential cuts at the counterterrorism center are focused on an office set up after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to monitor terrorist threats and suspected militants and to pool information from across federal agencies. Former intelligence officials have said reductions at the counterterrorism center could jeopardize the government’s ability to detect and prevent terrorist plots.
In a letter to Pulte earlier Monday, the top Democrats on the congressional intelligence committees, Rep. Jim Himes D-Conn., and Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., said they were “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.”
“Making significant structural changes to ODNI, to include a reduction in force, is not an appropriate course of action for anyone in an acting capacity, let alone without consultation with Congress, and you should refrain from doing so,” their letter said.
[…]
Trump named Pulte to the nation’s top intelligence post after Gabbard announced she was stepping down for family reasons. Pulte was met with bipartisan concerns in Congress, in part because of his lack of national security experience.
Trump later said Pulte would not serve in the role permanently and announced he would nominate Jay Clayton, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, instead, but then he hit the brakes on Clayton’s nomination hours before his Senate confirmation hearing.
While someone with zero national security experience serving as DNI strikes me as bizarre, Pulte’s appointment as Acting Director appears to technically comport with the Vacancies Act. While the clear intent of the law is for the deputy to fleet up until a new permanent Director can be confirmed by the Senate, it grants the President authority to have any Senate-confirmed individual to fill an Acting role for no more than 180 days. The FHFA director is Senate-confirmed.
I fully concur with Warner that a major restructuring of an agency should be done by a Senate-confired permanent Director in consultation with, in this case, the Congressional Intelligence committees. But, to the extent the actions are otherwise legal (a determination beyond my expertise), an Acting official has the full authority of the office.
It’s unclear from this report or an essentially identical one from CNN whether these individuals have actually been terminated or merely reassigned to the home agencies from which they were seconded. The former almost certainly violates the law, presuming they are government employees with career status rather than probationary employees or contractors.
I have no strong opinion on whether substantial reductions in the size of the National Counterterrorism Center are warranted. Certainly, that mission is a considerably smaller facet of our national security strategy than it was even a decade ago. But, to the extent that it’s motivated by political score-settling rather than a consideration of where best to employ our limited intelligence collection and analysis capacity, it’s highly problematic.
Pulte is doing what Musk did and Vought has been doing – eliminating jobs with no regard for the consequences. Perhaps the NCC is overstaffed, but necessary reductions should be done carefully and without due haste, and by a Senate approved Director, not by a political hack who labels his actions as clearing out the (fever dream imagined) Deep State. And here I thought Pulte was going to direct spies to find dirt on people who had irritated the senile imbecile.
Elections have consequences, and Americans are, apparently, too stupid to anticipate what those consequences might be.
I’m sure our enemies overseas will happily remind us, once we lose the ability to track their movements.
As usual with Donald Trump, I am hard-pressed to think of what actions he might take that would be different from those taken by a president determined to weaken our country as much as possible on the world stage.
The “Agent Krasnov” memes often seem over the top, but this stuff make you wonder if there is a hint of truth to it.
There some laws that do not allow “acting” appointees from certain functions that fully appointed officials can engage. Not sure if DNI is one of those offices.
@Charley in Cleveland: There’s a “Deep State” in the sense that agencies and the people who work for them have strong policy preferences and will actively oppose Presidential attempts to move policy in a direction they disagree with. Democrats have historically found Defense, the Intelligence Community, and law enforcement agencies difficult to deal with and Republicans have tended to have trouble with State, USAID, HHS, HUD, and the like. The problem is that MAGA policies are so out of the mainstream that almost every policy initiative is going to face pushback.
@Tony W: Yup. We learned in the Trump 45 administration just how much our institutions relied on Presidents following norms and following sound advice. Trump 47 has dialed it up to 11.
When Congress created the office and that position years ago, one of the REQUIREMENTS was that the director have “extensive national security expertise.” Pulte has none, Jay Clayton also has none.
Someone who is not legally qualified to hold the position probably shouldn’t be permitted to make major changes, but here we are… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I don’t ever want to hear anything about how Republicans are more focused on national security than Democrats, ever again.
@James Joyner: This is my biggest disappointment with President Biden.
He squandered an opportunity to go beyond just modeling good behavior again – but rather to form a bipartisan Truth and Reconciliation Committee to create legislation and Congressional rules that would address the weaknesses found in our system during Trump 45
He believes in our system’s guardrails far more than I do.
Well, at least i know to avoid any construction by Pulte Homes when I’m looking for a new place.
When I read the headlines, my first reaction was that we were about to apply a reflecting pool fix to our national security. Reading a little more it seems that a post 9/11 group that looks for terrorism is the main target, and now I see some rationale. Terrorism accusations have been thrown around a lot. It’s terrorism this and terrorism that. A narcotrafficer doesn’t want to terrorize you, he wants you as a customer. Iran has actually not done much against Americans; no bombs on American soil, no kidnappings of Americans in America https://jinsa.org/jinsa_report/iran-backed-violence-against-americans/, and no taking over of aircraft. Maybe terrorism is overrated, and cutting back the terror hunters is reasonable.
I am obviously not knowledgeable in this field, and I am just expressing some thoughts. I am not qualified to run the DNI because I am not interested in kissing Donald’s ass which is the main qualification.
I ask myself why Trump would care about this at all. The National Counterterrorism Center isn’t a favorite electoral whipping boy. What is the motive? I will laugh if you say “saving money”. It’s chump change. Also, Trump doesn’t care about saving money.
But wait. What does the National Counterterrorism Center do? Here are some of the bullet points from its website:
* Produce integrated and interagency-coordinated analytic assessments on terrorism issues and publishes warnings, alerts, and advisories as appropriate.
* Maintain the national repository of known and suspected terrorists.
Hmm, so if it has carried out its mission, it has necessarily compiled and published information about domestic terrorists, including right-wing domestic terrorists. You know, like the convicted terrorists that Trump pardoned?
I think it has stepped on someone’s toes, and Trump wants revenge.