Pulte Dismisses Top ODNI Experts on World’s Hot Spots

Purge Includes Many Senior Staff at the National Intelligence Council

From the front lines at Liberty Crossing:

The termination notices came early in the morning via email—from Human Resources. Then the new managers in the front office came by and, in a cool, “professional” manner, assured the cashiered staff that they weren’t being axed because they were suspected of being part of some “Deep State” plot to undermine the president. But the more than 50 intelligence officials and analysts—including a huge chunk of the senior staff at the National Intelligence Council (NIC)—who were abruptly fired this week by the new acting Director of National Intelligence, Bill Pulte, were given no further explanation for their dismissals.

The NIC is charged with being the ODNI “bridge” that conveys finished intelligence products to policymakers. But no cause for removal was cited to the dismissed staff members; no adverse personal actions were reported to justify any of the cuts, which in most cases transferred officials who had been detailed to ODNI back to their home agencies. “It was done with a sledgehammer,” said an ODNI source intimately familiar with the tumultuous events inside the office’s Liberty Crossing complex in northern Virginia this week. “But there seemed to be a randomness to it.”

It could have been worse. According to one report, Pulte planned an immediate bloodletting of some 300 jobs from the 1,300-strong staff.