Pulte Takes Helm at ODNI, Purges Iran Skeptics and Hollows National Intelligence Council

Bill Pulte, a Trump loyalist with no intelligence background, assumed the role of acting Director of National Intelligence on June 19, inheriting an office already shrunken by his predecessor and immediately reshaping it further. Pulte retains his concurrent role as director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, making him the first person to simultaneously lead ODNI and a separate executive agency. It is also the first time since ODNI's creation in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks that the office has been led by someone with no prior intelligence or national security experience who did not previously hold a security clearance. The personnel moves Pulte executed within his first 11 days reveal three distinct policy vectors: eliminating holdovers aligned with Iran-skeptic views, concentrating analytic power at the CIA, and preserving ODNI's orientation toward the 2020 election.

The clearest dismissal signal came with the removal of Will Ruger. Ruger, the deputy director of national intelligence for mission integration, was placed on administrative leave, according to CBS News. His portfolio included overseeing the President's Daily Brief and the National Intelligence Council. Ruger had previously held senior positions at organizations affiliated with the libertarian Koch network and the isolationist Defense Priorities think tank; he had publicly opposed the maximum pressure sanctions campaign against Iran and potential U.S. military operations against the regime, and had defended the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. His removal tracks with the broader policy friction that preceded Tulsi Gabbard's departure. Gabbard's exit came amid speculation that she had been sidelined after publicly contradicting the administration on Iran, including her congressional testimony that Iran had made no efforts to rebuild its nuclear enrichment capabilities after earlier U.S. and Israeli strikes. In March, Gabbard's top aide Joe Kent, who led the National Counterterrorism Center, resigned, stating that Iran posed no imminent threat to the United States. Pulte's early personnel actions consolidate the Iran-hawkish position across the intelligence apparatus.

In total, six career and political intelligence staff were terminated and 45 were returned to their home agencies, according to three sources familiar with the personnel moves. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Tom Cotton confirmed that Pulte told him roughly 45 to 50 career officers were being sent back to their home agencies, while a smaller number of front-office personnel were leaving federal service entirely. A significant share of those departures came from the National Intelligence Council, the body Congress established to produce strategic-level, all-source analysis for senior policymakers. The NIC was historically housed at the CIA before Congress created ODNI under the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004. According to The Daily Wire, Pulte is working closely with CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Sen. Tom Cotton, both of whom view ODNI's coordinating function as a constraint on individual agencies. The practical consequence of thinning the NIC, whether deliberate or incidental, is that strategic analytic influence shifts back toward Langley. The CIA did not deny the coordination, with CIA spokeswoman Liz Lyons stating that Ratcliffe "continues to support acting DNI Pulte's mission to advance the President's priorities."

The downsizing is not without prior precedent within the current administration. The push began under Gabbard, whose office announced plans to cut roughly 40 percent of ODNI's workforce, framing the effort as a streamlining measure projected to save more than $700 million annually. Gabbard's predecessor program, which she called ODNI 2.0, targeted approximately 40 percent of the agency's headcount. Pulte's current round of removals therefore layers additional reductions onto an organization that critics argue has already been materially weakened. Sens. Mark Warner and Rep. Jim Himes warned in a joint letter that further large cuts "risk jeopardizing the mission of an organization explicitly created after 9/11 to prevent any future such terrorist attack." Warner separately introduced legislation to bar presidents from installing acting directors at ODNI, requiring any vacancy to be filled from a pool of Senate-confirmed officials already within the office. Pulte's appointment also contributed to the collapse of a bipartisan deal to reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the provision that authorizes collection of foreign intelligence targeting persons overseas. That authority expired June 12.

The elections dimension of ODNI's posture did not depart with Gabbard. Gabbard drew congressional criticism in January when she appeared at elections headquarters in Fulton County, Georgia, as the FBI executed a search warrant and seized ballots and records related to the 2020 election. According to Politico, Trump has since directed Pulte to pursue the declassification of documents related to the 2020 election, and Pulte tapped Christina Norton, a former Republican National Committee official, as his chief of staff. [POLITICO] The appointment of a party operative to the top administrative post at ODNI, combined with the declassification mandate, positions the office to continue operating in domestic electoral terrain that intelligence professionals and congressional overseers have said falls outside ODNI's statutory mission under 50 U.S.C. § 3023.

The confirmation pathway for a permanent director remains uncertain. Trump nominated Jay Clayton, the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan, to serve as the Senate-confirmed director. Senate Republican leaders moved to confirm Clayton quickly to resolve the impasse, but Trump abruptly directed Clayton not to appear for his scheduled confirmation hearing. Trump then conditioned Clayton's confirmation process on the prior confirmation of Jamie McDonald, Trump's pick to replace Clayton as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. Until Clayton is confirmed, Pulte continues to hold both the acting DNI role and the FHFA directorship, with no statutory time limit on the acting appointment under current law.