New in SpyWeek: Pulte Eyes Mass Cuts in Counterterrorism, National Intelligence
Also this week: I.C. predicted US-Israel split over Iran, Tulsi took orders from Hindi guru, Ratcliffe's screen test, Patel's "slush fund" for FBI loyalists, a Nord Stream psywar triumph and more
DNI Debacle: Hundreds of career intelligence professionals were bracing for their abrupt dismissals Thursday when Bill Pulte showed up for work as acting director of National Intelligence a day early and asked “for a list of every employee in the office so he could assess whether to fire them, two sources familiar with the matter told CNN.” According to Politico, Pulte directed the staff “to pull together a list of about 300 candidates to be fired from the National Counterterrorism Center [alone] in the coming weeks.” The appointment of Pulte, a Trump loyalist with no intelligence experience (or even an appropriate security clearance) set off bipartisan alarm bells in Congress, which refused to renew an already troubled electronic surveillance counterterrorism program as long as Pulte was DNI. Staffers were also puzzled by Pulte’s initial asks: (1) to take home the highly classified President’s Daily Brief; (2) a personal protective detail; and (3) “whether he gets his own government plane, appearing almost overly fixated on his ability to travel between DC, Florida and Chicago—between which he splits his time,” according to CNN. Pulte will also continue as head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which he has weaponized to investigate the personal finances of officials on Trump’s enemies list. Pulte’s appointment “is not just another poor personnel choice, former senior CIA operations executive John Sipher wrote in a New York Times Op-ed, “It is a warning about how this administration views intelligence itself—not as a sober instrument of national security and a profession built on evidence, but as a warehouse of disconnected secrets that could potentially be cherry-picked, stripped of context and used against the president’s enemies.”
Screen Test: Trump chose John Ratcliffe to be CIA director because, “if you were going to cast a guy to play CIA director, that’s who you’d pick,” the president told New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan for their blockbuster book, Regime Change, according to a review published Sunday in the paper.
Tulsi and the Cult: For decades, erstwhile DNI, MAGA convert and former Hawaii congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard’s political pronouncements and decisions were dictated by her eccentric and secretive Hindu guru in Hawaii, Chris Butler, The Washington Post’s Jon Swaine discovered during a years-long investigation, published Sunday. SpyTalk reported on Gabbard’s cult ties in a two-part series in Dec. 2024.
