BOMBSHELL: Bill Pulte Launches Major Intelligence Purge Under…

The long-promised reckoning with what critics of the administrative state have called the “deep state” has arrived in the U.S. Intelligence Community.

Acting Director of National Intelligence Bill Pulte, installed by President Donald Trump to lead the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, launched a wave of firings at the agency this week, with one source familiar with the matter delivering four words that quickly became a headline across Washington: “The deep state firings have begun.”

The moves represent the most aggressive restructuring of the nation’s intelligence coordination apparatus since the ODNI was established in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

Pulte, who previously served as head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, arrived at his new post with a mandate directly from President Trump to execute what the president described as the “immediate and needed downsizing of the office,” with staff to be returned to their home agencies.

According to multiple sources, Pulte fired six political appointees who had been put in place by former Director Tulsi Gabbard and removed dozens of career intelligence officials from their positions at the ODNI.

Specifically, 45 career officials who were on joint duty assignment at the agency, meaning they were working at ODNI but were technically employed by other agencies, were sent back to their home offices. Several of the political appointees who were considered close to Gabbard were among the first to be dismissed, with some having been walked out of the building on the day the firings began.

Pulte’s arrival at ODNI had already signaled his intentions clearly. Sources told multiple outlets that Pulte showed up to his new job an entire day before he was officially set to start, requesting a list of every single employee in the office. The early arrival caught even outgoing director Gabbard off guard. The move was widely interpreted as a signal that Pulte was not coming to manage the status quo but to fundamentally reshape the agency.

Trump had been explicit about his expectations for the new acting director. In a post on Truth Social, the president wrote that he had asked Pulte “to execute the immediate and needed downsizing of the office, reverting staff to their home agencies.” The White House, when asked by reporters about the firings, pointed directly to that post as the administration’s official position.

The firings come after a period of significant turbulence at the ODNI. Under Gabbard’s leadership, the agency had already undergone considerable downsizing. According to a document released in August 2025, ODNI had reduced its size by nearly 30%, or more than 500 staffers, in the first six months under Gabbard’s tenure, with plans to increase that reduction to 50%. Despite those cuts, Trump’s team clearly believed additional restructuring was necessary.

The broader context for these dismissals is a deeply held belief among Trump administration allies that the intelligence community, and ODNI in particular, has been infected by partisan actors who used their positions to undermine Republican presidents and advance a left-wing political agenda. This view gained significant momentum during Trump’s first term, when allegations of politically motivated intelligence assessments and bureaucratic resistance to presidential directives became a central theme of the administration’s conflicts with career government employees.

ODNI was created with a specific mission: to prevent the kind of information siloing between agencies that contributed to the intelligence failures leading up to the September 11 attacks. It serves as a policymaker and coordinator for the 18 agencies that make up the U.S. intelligence community and has historically acted as an important hub of analysis, responsible for producing interagency assessments that inform presidents. That origin story is at the heart of Democratic concerns about the scope and speed of the current restructuring.

Democrats on the Senate and House Intelligence Committees sent a letter to Pulte warning against large-scale cuts. “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,” the letter stated. The lawmakers argued that large cuts would follow on a substantial downsizing already carried out in 2025 and risk jeopardizing the mission of an organization created after 9/11 to prevent future terrorist attacks.

The Democratic lawmakers also raised pointed questions about Pulte’s qualifications. “Given your lack of experience within the Intelligence Community,” they wrote, “it is difficult to imagine that in such a short amount of time you have already developed fully informed views as to how to shrink ODNI without incurring risks to national security.” They argued that making significant structural changes to ODNI is not an appropriate course of action for anyone in an acting capacity, especially without consulting Congress.

Despite the Democratic warnings, the White House showed no signs of slowing down. Trump’s stated rationale for the restructuring reflects a broader governing philosophy that large federal bureaucracies accumulate power and self-interest at the expense of democratic accountability.

From the administration’s perspective, the ODNI had grown into exactly the kind of entrenched bureaucratic institution that resists presidential direction and pursues its own institutional agenda.

The two components of ODNI that had been most expected to face cuts were the National Counterterrorism Center and the National Counterintelligence and Security Center. However, initial reports suggested that the NCTC was not impacted by the first round of dismissals.

Pulte himself posted on X that he had spent time with the NCTC team and praised them for doing “an incredible job protecting our country under President Trump’s leadership.” Whether that reprieve holds as the restructuring continues remains to be seen.

Sources also revealed earlier in the week that Pulte had ordered staff members to identify 400 employees to be fired from the National Counterterrorism Center in the coming weeks.

Those potential cuts drew particular concern from lawmakers because the NCTC was specifically designed to monitor terrorist threats and pool information across federal agencies, a mission that was born directly from the catastrophic intelligence failures of September 11.

The Government Accountability Office reported in June 2026 that across the entire federal government, approximately 256,000 federal workers, representing 11% of the federal workforce, had been let go since 2025.

The ODNI firings represent the latest front in that broader reduction of the federal workforce, which the Trump administration has argued is necessary to eliminate waste, reduce bureaucratic bloat, and restore accountability to a government that had grown far beyond what the American people had authorized.

Trump later announced that Pulte would not serve in the acting role permanently. The president indicated he would nominate Jay Clayton, the former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, to the post on a permanent basis.

That announcement suggested the administration sees the current restructuring as a transitional phase, with Pulte serving as the agent of change before a more conventional national security figure assumes the role in a permanent capacity.