The Office of the Director of National Intelligence just got 200 people lighter, and Acting DNI Bill Pulte is out here on social media letting everyone know he is absolutely not done swinging the ax. As USA Journal reported, Pulte announced his fourth round of layoffs on X Sunday evening, describing them as thoughtful and measured, which is government speak for "we made a spreadsheet before we did it."
So here is the backstory. Pulte took over after Tulsi Gabbard stepped down in June, and since then, the ODNI has gone from roughly 2,000 employees to barely over half that number, according to congressional aides. The Washington Post covered these cuts with what can only be described as the energy of someone watching their favorite restaurant get demolished. Two hundred jobs gone since June 1, and apparently more pink slips are on the way.
Now, why would anyone think the intelligence community needed a makeover? Oh, just a few small things that came up during Trump's primetime address last week. Apparently CIA analysts were softening their assessments about Chinese election interference on purpose. FBI officials literally described themselves as operating a shadow government to keep intel away from the White House. NSA personnel doctored a Presidential Daily Briefing to hide conclusions about China trying to tank a sitting president's chances. And, in a move that sounds like it came straight out of a spy thriller written by someone who ran out of ideas, burn bags full of documents ordered destroyed under the Obama administration were found sitting around FBI headquarters completely unburned. Someone had one job.
The ODNI sits on top of all 18 intelligence agencies, which means it was essentially the corporate headquarters of this entire circus. Pulte is now arguing you cannot reform an institution by keeping the same people who wrecked it and just sending them a strongly worded email about doing better.
Media outlets are predictably framing these cuts as politically motivated purges of dedicated career professionals. And look, some of those people probably were just regular folks caught up in a massive reorganization. But calling everyone in the intelligence community a nonpartisan actor requires ignoring some inconvenient facts, like FBI officials on the Vice President's protective detail who were voting for Biden and actively opposing Trump's immigration enforcement. Or CIA analysts who buried assessments that were unfavorable to Democratic interests. These are not tinfoil hat theories. These are things found in declassified documents and inspector general reports.
To his credit, Pulte is not just firing everyone with a lanyard. He visited the National Counterterrorism Center last month and called those folks true professionals and American patriots. So apparently the strategy is to keep the people who are actually doing national security work and remove the ones who were treating the intelligence apparatus like their personal political playground.
Four rounds of layoffs complete. More on the way. Whether you think this is long overdue accountability or government downsizing gone wild probably depends on how you feel about an intelligence community that was allegedly hiding information from the president it was supposed to be serving. Either way, Bill Pulte is not slowing down, and he is very much letting you know about it on social media.
Read more conservative news commentary at: USA Journal News
