New in SpyWeek: Pulte Signals ODNI Elections Role, Gabbard's Guru Unmasked, Trump's Mexican Moles, Death of a CIA Rebel
Also this week: AI Mole-Hunter Goes Rogue, Israel's intel flop, Bolton's apology, a clever new Russian disinformation ploy, an MKULTRA hearing, Trump strips Anthropic from NSA
Fast Acting Pulte: Acting Director of National Intelligence Bill Pulte has hired a Republican elections-monitoring operative as his chief of staff, signaling that he intends to get involved somehow in the upcoming congressional elections, the New York Times reported on Friday. Christina Norton will continue to hold the same job at the federal housing agency he still leads, but “much of her recent work for the G.O.P. has centered on election issues, including efforts to monitor voting sites during the 2024 presidential election.” In 2024 she oversaw “a poll watcher program that included conservative conspiracy theorists, including Jack Posobiec, who helped spread the false ‘Pizzagate’ stories about child abuse at a restaurant in Washington.” (The ODNI has no remit for domestic law enforcement, although in January erstwhile DNI Tulsi Gabbard threw herself into the FBI’s seizure of Georgina ballots.) On Thursday, Pulte addressed headquarters staff and proclaimed, “My message was simple, we are focusing DNI on being an apolitical intelligence agency that gives the President the best intel and operates based on the law and the statute.” Earlier in the week, Pulte ousted more than 50 top staffers at the ODNI, including, SpyTalk’s Michael Isikoff reported, “the senior national intelligence officers for Russia-Ukraine, Europe, East Asia, China and weapons of mass destruction.”
Tulsi and the Guru: In TV interviews and policy statements over the years, Congresswoman and DNI Tulsi Gabbard “repeatedly used words and phrases recommended in memos that do not identify who was providing the advice,” The Washington Post’s Jon Swaine reported in a blockbuster deep dive last weekend, but strong indications are that it came from her breakaway Hare Krishna guru in Hawaii Chris Butler, Swaine and his colleagues wrote in a Thursday follow-up piece. “The Post obtained the memos from Rebecca Saltzburg, a former digital strategist for Gabbard’s campaigns, who was also a member of the faith group that Gabbard grew up in, a Hare Krishna offshoot called the Science of Identity Foundation.”
RIP John Stockwell: The former CIA covert operative in Vietnam and Africa, whose idealism and love of adventure eventually ran aground in agency operations he found morally repulsive, died this month in Austin, Texas. He was 88. “Mr. Stockwell’s body was found in a wooded area near his home on June 14,
