The Office of the Director of National Intelligence is continuing to shed staff, with acting Director of National Intelligence Bill Pulte announcing the latest round of layoffs this week.
Pulte was tapped to lead ODNI last month following the departure of DNI Tulsi Gabbard. He also serves as director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency.
“Since becoming acting Director of National Intelligence, our team has been smartly, and carefully, reducing the size of ODNI, re-focusing ODNI on national security, the law, and the statute,” Pulte posted on X shortly after midnight on Sunday. “As of this evening, we just finished a 4th round of thoughtful, measured layoffs.”
Pulte did not say how many employees were affected, what specific positions were targeted, or whether employees were fired or simply reassigned or returned to their home intelligence agency. ODNI did not respond to a request for comment.
The latest layoffs came as the Senate prepared to vote on the nomination of Jay Clayton, who President Donald Trump has selected to lead DNI on a permanent basis. Clayton is currently U.S. attorney for the southern district of New York.
The Washington Post reported earlier this month that 200 ODNI employees had been laid off or reassigned since June 1.
The latest cuts come as ODNI has been in the cross hairs of the Trump administration and congressional Republicans. ODNI was created in the wake of 9/11 to improve information sharing and address intelligence gaps.
Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Committee Chairman Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) has proposed capping the office at 650 full-time staff. Last year, he called for sending personnel at ODNI back to their home agencies “doing real intelligence work, not bureaucratic make-work.”
During her confirmation process early last year, Gabbard agreed to conduct a “thorough review” of ODNI’s size and makeup. Last August, she touted plans to cut the office’s annual budget by $700 million and its staff by 40%.
ODNI has not confirmed how many staff have been cut from the office since then. The Post, citing congressional aides, reports that ODNI now has “little more than half” of the 2,000 employees that worked in the office at the start of the Trump administration 18 months ago.
Meanwhile, during his confirmation hearing earlier this month, Clayton backed a smaller, “fairly lean” role for ODNI, while agreeing to review some of the cuts.
Clayton said ODNI should be a “focal point” for the other 17 U.S. intelligence agencies.
“There needs to be a place of oversight, a place to resolve conflict. I look at it as a ‘board of directors’ role,” Clayton said. “And to the extent that the ODNI has gotten into operations or started to play the roles of some of those other agencies, it probably should pull back because it’s difficult to be both operations and oversight, but I think an oversight role is important.”
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) pressed Clayton on cuts to ODNI’s various mission centers, including those focused on election security and cybersecurity.
During Gabbard’s tenure, ODNI drew up plans to eliminate the Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center, arguing the CTIIC was redundant to other offices across government. Gabbard’s plan also involved cutting both the National Counterproliferation and Biosecurity Center and the Foreign Malign Influence center.
“Will you restore the cybersecurity complement to your job as well as the biosecurity threats and as well as the Foreign Malign Influence Center?” Gillibrand asked Clayton.
“I can commit to making an assessment and to the extent that more resources are needed or more focus is needed or more coordination is needed,” Clayton responded.
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