Pulte cuts 51 staffers from intelligence office after Trump order

Bill Pulte removed 51 staffers from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, terminating six career and political intelligence employees and sending 45 back to their home agencies. The people pushed out did not have tasks, or their assignments were outdated, and Pulte had been asking deputies and other directors for ideas on cuts before deciding the number was enough for now. No staffers were removed from the counterterrorism group, and no further firings were planned for now.

ODNI sits atop the intelligence community, overseeing and directing the National Intelligence Program and working to improve integration and information sharing across the government’s spy agencies. It was created after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, when lawmakers moved to fix the coordination failures exposed by the 9/11 Commission and later launched the office in 2005.

President Donald Trump pushed to shrink the office. Trump first named Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte acting director of national intelligence on June 2, then later said he “wouldn’t mind” staffing cuts at ODNI. On June 10, Trump ordered Pulte to execute an immediate downsizing and return staff to their home agencies. On June 22, Sen. Mark Warner and Rep. Jim Himes said large cuts could jeopardize the mission of an office created to help prevent another Sept. 11-scale failure. Warner has separately said the intelligence community is “terrified” of showing information to Pulte.

In 2025, Tulsi Gabbard announced ODNI 2.0, a plan to cut nearly half the workforce and consolidate several intelligence centers. The overhaul would save taxpayers more than $700 million a year. Pulte ordered staff to identify 400 employees to be fired from the National Counterterrorism Center in coming weeks, a separate round that was not part of the first 51 removals.