Bill Pulte walked into his new role as Director of National Intelligence and immediately asked for names of officials to cut. He was on a mission to do what President Donald Trump had asked of him: “execute the immediate and needed downsizing of the office.”
That mission has set off a firestorm within the intelligence community. The Daily Wire has learned that Pulte is working closely with CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Republican Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton, who view DNI’s oversight as a hindrance to individual intelligence agencies.
Their opponents argue that downsizing and cutting ODNI’s oversight only enables the very deep state that Trump so adamantly wants to root out.
Trump’s mandate to Pulte didn’t expressly say to fire people, but instead to send them back to their home agencies. That appears to be largely what Pulte is doing: since he took over, more than 50 ODNI staff have been removed from their jobs, an administration official confirmed to The Daily Wire. Forty-five of those individuals were returned to their home agencies, while six career officials were fired.
A senate source familiar with the matter told The Daily Wire that Pulte is working closely with Cotton and Ratcliffe, as well as the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Contrary to media reporting, that senate advisor said, the senators like Pulte and enjoy working with him. Asked about reports that Pulte’s cuts have been contradictory or disorganized, the senate source pushed back, saying: “His cuts have been deliberate.”
The CIA would not comment directly on Ratcliffe’s interactions with Pulte, but spokeswoman Liz Lyons told The Daily Wire that Ratcliffe “continues to support acting DNI Pulte’s mission to advance the President’s priorities.”
ODNI did not respond to multiple requests for comment from The Daily Wire.
News that Pulte would assume the acting DNI role sparked massive backlash from Democrats and some Republicans. Critics pointed to his lack of intelligence experience and said he’d be a hatchet man for the president. Even Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters in early June: “We don’t need a weaponized DNI.”
His treatment of the outgoing Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard drew criticism as well. Gabbard was supposed to stay in her role until the end of June, but Pulte, eager to get started (and make use of his limited time as acting DNI), aggressively pushed for Gabbard to leave early, a senior intelligence official shared. The move angered Gabbard’s supporters, particularly because Gabbard had agreed to a particular timeline with President Trump in light of her husband’s cancer diagnosis.
One notable Pulte victim was Will Ruger, the deputy director of national intelligence for mission integration, who was placed on administrative leave. He led the intelligence community’s “collaborative integration efforts and primary intelligence support to policymakers through the President’s Daily Brief and the National Intelligence Council,”CBS News first reported.
Some conservatives worry Pulte’s cuts will result in a weakened ODNI that can’t rein in rogue agencies like the FBI and CIA. Under Gabbard’s direction, DNI had already cut 40% of staff, leaving the agency with less than 1,400 employees, compared to the estimated 38,000 of the FBI and 20,000 of the CIA.
“The mistake is they’re getting rid of people who are loyal to POTUS,” a former intelligence official alleged, “and if they get rid of ODNI there is no one to do actual effective oversight of the Intelligence Community.”
ODNI’s supporters also point to the recent weaponization of the FBI, for example, against Trump and his allies under President Joe Biden, arguing that the bureau still is staffed with agents that were part of this weaponization and that oversight is still needed.
“The DNI manages the National Intelligence Program budget, giving the ODNI real fiscal leverage over FBI Counterintelligence operations,” a second former intelligence official said. “Given that the FBI Counterintelligence Division has been completely rogue since Trump came down the escalator, and because Congress has proven itself incapable of conducting any real oversight of the FBI and CIA, the Trump Administration should be cautious when liquidating a component of the USG with true oversight ability.”
Congress has oversight over the FBI and the CIA, but at the end of the day, the lawmakers are only briefed on what the agencies choose to tell them. In some cases, the senior intelligence official said, Congress will never know “unless shit goes so badly that they can’t hide it.”
The DNI position was created after 9/11. Before, the CIA director effectively ran the entire intelligence community in addition to his own agency.
Cotton outright made the case that things may have been better off then on the Senate floor this week: “Unfortunately,” he said, “I think we can now assess a couple decades on, that it is something of a failed experiment itself.”
The Arkansas lawmaker, who said he wants ODNI to be downsized and streamlined, noted that ODNI does serve some functions that could possibly be “performed elsewhere.” He shared that he spoke with Pulte this week about sending officers back to their home agencies and reducing ODNI to its original size, but he denied reporting that “mass firings” had begun.
When the Iranian missiles and drones came for the nerve center of America’s naval operations in the Middle East, some of them hit their mark.
The U.S. Navy base in Bahrain was repeatedly targeted between late February and June. Strikes that got through caused extensive damage, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of satellite imagery, social-media footage and interviews with current and former servicemembers—damage that the Pentagon hasn’t publicly acknowledged. Hit hard were the command headquarters and at least a dozen other buildings, along with two satellite communications terminals.
The military said no one was killed at the base, known as Naval Support Activity Bahrain, and that the strikes didn’t significantly impact operations. The U.S. evacuated most personnel but has kept a small staff on the ground.
Over the course of the war, “Centcom rightfully prioritized the protection of people over buildings, and our strategy of protecting people worked. Iran shot more than 8,000 missiles and drones and only two hits resulted in U.S. fatalities,” said Capt. Tim Hawkins, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command, which oversees U.S. forces in the Middle East. Hawkins also said the U.S. military inflicted far more damage to Iran than it received, with the U.S. striking more than 13,500 targets.
The extensive damage done to America’s sole naval base in the Middle East—along with hits to at least 20 U.S. sites across the region, including military installations and diplomatic facilities—has the U.S. re-evaluating its entire footprint in the region, according to U.S. officials familiar with the deliberations.
Damaged sites include warehouses, a water tank, two satellite communications terminals and a communications management facility, and the headquarters building for the U.S. Navy in the Middle East.Airbus
The military is now considering revamping the base in Bahrain, reducing the U.S. presence in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia and moving some bases or base functions west, farther from the reach of Iranian missiles and drones, according to the officials familiar with the deliberations.
Structures that were attacked may not be rebuilt. Command and control nodes could be moved underground. And military capabilities could become more spread out across the region, the officials said, though they cautioned that no decisions had been made.
Israel is one of the locations being considered for basing, according to two of the officials. The country hosted dozens of U.S. aircraft, including jet fighters and refueling planes, during the war.
The U.S. government pressed commercial satellite imagery providers in April to restrict access to images showing destruction at American bases as well as the broader conflict zone, making it difficult to see the full scope of the damage. Officials said the move would help protect U.S. forces.
A record-breaking heat wave has disrupted life across Western Europe, exposing the continent’s vulnerability to scorching temperatures that are expected to be the norm with climate change. Schools have closed because of lack of air conditioning; electrical grids are under strain; and authorities have slowed trains as rails are deformed in the heat. In Paris, where temperatures reached 108 degrees Fahrenheit this week, the city allowed residents desperate to escape the heat to swim in the polluted Canal Saint Martin.
Schools in Western Europe largely lack air conditioning, which wasn’t a problem when temperatures were cooler. But this heat wave and several previous ones came unusually early, before summer vacation.
In France, 3,000 schools have closed completely, and 10,000 have cut back on their hours. In the U.K., more than 1,000 have shut down.
European housing is ill-equipped to protect inhabitants from extreme heat.
Three-quarters of European housing stock is energy inefficient, according to the Europe Environment Agency. In France, 90% of homes are vulnerable to overheating, and half are considered to be “boilers” that are incapable of holding cool air.
European households have been steadily adding air conditioning as heat waves become more frequent and intense—but they still use the technology far less than the U.S.
