Hundreds of ODNI staff reportedly face pink slips under Trump-picked Bill Pulte, who lacks intel experience
US President Donald Trump. Photo: REUTERS
The Trump administration on Monday began conducting mass firings at the top US intelligence agency, according to CNN.
The pink slips are reportedly being handed out to possibly hundreds of employees at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) and are being conducted by President Donald Trump’s hand-picked acting Director Bill Pulte, whose appointment attracted much controversy in Congress, as he has no background in intelligence.
“The deep state firings have begun,” a source told CNN, who first reported the firings. However, the specific number of jobs being eliminated has not yet been released.
According to CNN, Pulte showed up to his new job a day early last week after asking for a list of every employee in the office, apparently even catching outgoing Director Tulsi Gabbard off-guard.
The two departments expected to be hit hardest by the mass downsizing are the National Counterterrorism Centre and the National Counterintelligence and Security Centre, sources told CNN.
The firings were executed despite warnings from top Democrats on the Senate and House Intelligence Committees, who sent a letter to Pulte on Monday “warning him of the risks of making large cuts to the workforce,” according to CNN.
“We are concerned by reports that you intend to fire or place on leave hundreds of Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) officers as soon as this week,” Senator Mark Warner and Representative Jim Himes wrote in their letter.
“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 jeopardising the mission of an organisation explicitly created after 9/11 to prevent any future such terrorist attack,” they continued.
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Asked about the firings, the White House pointed to a recent social media post in which Trump said he had asked Pulte “to execute the immediate and needed downsizing of the office, reverting staff to their home agencies.”
A separate source told NBC News that Pulte “had ordered staff members to identify 400 employees to be fired from the National Counterterrorism Centre” in the coming weeks.
Cuts could jeopardise the government’s ability to detect and prevent terrorist plots’
Those cuts are concerning to lawmakers in both the House and Senate because the counterterrorism unit was 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 told NBC that the mass reductions in staffing “could jeopardise the government’s ability to detect and prevent terrorist plots.”
The joint letter sent to Pulte from Warner and Himes specifically addressed that issue.
“Given your lack of experience within the Intelligence Community, 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 wrote.
“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.”
