Acting Director of National Intelligence Bill Pulte just put a number on the speed of his housecleaning at the nation’s top intelligence office.

On Tuesday morning, Pulte announced a fifth round of terminations inside the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and described it as “near final.”

The number that matters is how much smaller the office has become in only a few weeks: roughly 30 percent, by Pulte’s count.

A 30 percent reduction over a matter of weeks amounts to a deliberate reset, not ordinary attrition.

Pulte’s 30 percent figure appears to describe the cumulative reduction from a recent baseline, not the number of employees affected by Tuesday’s action alone. He did not disclose a position-by-position count or identify which offices were included in this round.

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President Trump tapped Pulte to lead ODNI on an acting basis after Tulsi Gabbard left the post. Pulte also remains director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, giving him two major federal roles during what may be a brief but consequential tenure atop the intelligence community.

Less than one day before the fifth-round announcement, Pulte said his team had completed a fourth round of what he called thoughtful, measured layoffs.

Five rounds in such a compressed period signal more than a routine reorganization.

Federal News Network reported after the fourth round that Pulte had not disclosed how many employees were affected, whether they had been fired or reassigned, or whether some were being returned to their home intelligence agencies.

The outlet also cited reporting that about 200 ODNI employees had been laid off or reassigned since June 1. It said the office now has a little more than half of the roughly 2,000 employees who worked there at the start of the Trump administration.

ODNI has not publicly confirmed those estimates. Pulte’s new statement is the clearest official update yet because it supplies a current benchmark: approximately 30 percent smaller than weeks ago.

The downsizing did not begin with Pulte.

In August 2025, an official ODNI release announced the ODNI 2.0 restructuring under Gabbard. The plan called for reducing the office by more than 40 percent and saving taxpayers more than $700 million per year.

That release said the overhaul would eliminate redundant missions, functions and personnel while refocusing ODNI on intelligence integration, strategic guidance and oversight.

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ODNI was created after the September 11 attacks to make sure the country’s intelligence agencies shared information and closed dangerous gaps. Its job was to coordinate and oversee the wider intelligence community, not become another sprawling operational agency.

The 2025 plan set its reduction target for the end of that fiscal year. At the same time, it called for preserving investments tied directly to the President’s national intelligence priorities and strengthening ODNI’s role as the central hub connecting 18 intelligence elements.

Agency leaders also tied the restructuring to a broader trust problem. They said a smaller office would be better positioned to expose politicized intelligence, stop unauthorized leaks, hold bad actors accountable and deliver objective information to policymakers.

That was the foundation Pulte inherited. His five-round sequence is moving the same overhaul forward at a pace that now can be measured against a weeks-old staffing baseline.

That distinction sits at the center of the current fight.

The administration’s position is that ODNI drifted far beyond its intended mission, layering bureaucracy over agencies already responsible for collecting and analyzing intelligence. Critics of the reductions argue that eliminating too much capacity could weaken coordination, cybersecurity, election security and other cross-agency functions.

Congress has its own blueprint for a leaner office.

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Tom Cotton has proposed legislation that would cap ODNI at 650 full-time employees. His plan would also transfer the National Counterintelligence and Security Center’s responsibilities to the FBI, move counterproliferation and biosecurity responsibilities to the CIA, and wind down the National Intelligence University.

Cotton described the original ODNI concept as a lean coordinating organization, not a bureaucracy where layers of officials coordinate with still more coordinators.

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Nothing in Pulte’s announcement says Tuesday’s action was carried out under Cotton’s proposal. The legislation and the personnel decisions are separate tracks.

But they are pushing in the same direction: a smaller central office, fewer overlapping functions, and more intelligence work placed back inside the agencies built to perform it.

Important questions remain unanswered.

Pulte did not say how many people were affected in the fifth round, which units lost positions, or how many employees were terminated outright instead of reassigned. He also did not say whether the remaining reduction will be completed before a permanent director takes over.

For now, two facts are unmistakable.

The fifth round is underway, and ODNI is approximately 30 percent smaller than it was only weeks ago according to the acting director responsible for the cuts.

If “near final” means what it sounds like, the rapid shrinking phase may be approaching its endpoint. The next test will be whether a much leaner ODNI can deliver the focused, apolitical intelligence mission the administration says this overhaul is designed to restore.

This is a Guest Post from our friends over at WLTReport. View the original article here.

 

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