Also this week: I.C. predicted US-Israel split over Iran, Tulsi took orders from Hindi guru, Ratcliffe's screen test, Patel's "slush fund" for FBI loyalists, a Nord Stream psywar triumph and more
DNI Debacle: Hundreds of career intelligence professionals were bracing for their abrupt dismissals Thursday when Bill Pulte showed up for work as acting director of National Intelligence a day early and asked “for a list of every employee in the office so he could assess whether to fire them, two sources familiar with the matter told CNN.” According to Politico, Pulte directed the staff “to pull together a list of about 300 candidates to be fired from the National Counterterrorism Center [alone] in the coming weeks.” The appointment of Pulte, a Trump loyalist with no intelligence experience (or even an appropriate security clearance) set off bipartisan alarm bells in Congress, which refused to renew an already troubled electronic surveillance counterterrorism program as long as Pulte was DNI. Staffers were also puzzled by Pulte’s initial asks: (1) to take home the highly classified President’s Daily Brief; (2) a personal protective detail; and (3) “whether he gets his own government plane, appearing almost overly fixated on his ability to travel between DC, Florida and Chicago—between which he splits his time,” according to CNN. Pulte will also continue as head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which he has weaponized to investigate the personal finances of officials on Trump’s enemies list. Pulte’s appointment “is not just another poor personnel choice, former senior CIA operations executive John Sipher wrote in a New York Times Op-ed, “It is a warning about how this administration views intelligence itself—not as a sober instrument of national security and a profession built on evidence, but as a warehouse of disconnected secrets that could potentially be cherry-picked, stripped of context and used against the president’s enemies.”
Screen Test: Trump chose John Ratcliffe to be CIA director because, “if you were going to cast a guy to play CIA director, that’s who you’d pick,” the president told New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan for their blockbuster book, Regime Change, according to a review published Sunday in the paper.
Tulsi and the Cult: For decades, erstwhile DNI, MAGA convert and former Hawaii congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard’s political pronouncements and decisions were dictated by her eccentric and secretive Hindu guru in Hawaii, Chris Butler, The Washington Post’s Jon Swaine discovered during a years-long investigation, published Sunday. SpyTalk reported on Gabbard’s cult ties in a two-part series in Dec. 2024.
Tulsi’s Parting Gifts: Erstwhile DNI Tulsi Gabbard, “who was given a brief heads up on” Pulte’s day-early arrival at Liberty Crossing, the ODNI’s home in Virginia, bequeathed Trump yet another fond goodbye by declassifying “never-before-seen” documents related to Anthony Fauci and Fauci’s alleged role “in influencing and manipulating” intelligence community assessments on Covid,” Bloomberg Business FOIA warrior Jason Leopold revealed on X, posting a copy of one of the almost-completely redacted documents. Days earlier, Gabbard gave new life to a long debunked Russian disinformation claim that the U.S. operated biological warfare labs in Ukraine and elsewhere. The ODNI map and documents supposedly supporting the claim were full of errors.
Don’t miss this week’s SpyTalk podcast featuring New York Times intelligence reporter Julian Barnes on what the disarray at the ODNI and elsewhere means for U.S. national security.
Said It: U.S. intelligence warned the Trump administration that “Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is likely to take steps that will undermine President Donald Trump’s effort to reach a lasting peace deal with Iran”—a prediction that proved true hours after it appeared Friday in The Washington Post, when Israel launched new strikes against Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon. Another U.S. intel report that surfaced at CNN earlier in the week saying Iran could shut down the Strait of Hormuz “at will” also came true Saturday when Tehran announced it was closing the waterway again because of those Israeli strikes, which were supposed to cease as part of the “deal” Trump worked out with Iran—even though Israel was not a party to the talks. Iran’s long-term strategy seems aimed at widening the crack in U.S.-Israeli relations over their divergent interests—Trump’s to end the disastrous war at any cost, Netanyahu’s to crush the Iranian revolutionaries and their proxies once and for all.
Flying Saucers: The ODNI, the FBI, and Defense Department have established “a new interagency UAP Governance Board this week,” reports ICBrief, (The Pentagon calls UFO’s “unidentified aerial phenomena,” or UAP’s.) “The board’s charter tasks it with coordinating UAP investigations and assisting with timely declassification of UAP records under Executive Order 13526,” it said, drawing on reports from DefenseScoop and Liberation Times.
Nord Stream Caper: Everybody quickly pointed fingers at Russia for the Sept. 2022 undersea explosions that ruptured the Nord Stream gas pipelines connecting Russia and Germany. The actual Ukrainian attackers and their American allies were “overjoyed by the proliferation of fake news,” writes The Wall Street Journal’s chief European political correspondent, Bojan Pancevski, in a new book, The Nord Stream Conspiracy. “The story turns out to have been crazier than anyone could have guessed,” Semafor’s Ben Smith said in a June 15 review. “For all the early speculation that only a high-tech military could have pulled it off, Pancevski reveals that the Ukrainians recruited a team of thrill-seeking amateur divers who had trained to go far deeper than military professionals would risk. Their leader, whom he calls Freya, had been a party girl and nude model [who] in Pancevski’s telling, was the first into the freezing, choppy Baltic waters.” Adds Smith: “The American media look here like fools, as does the conspiratorial mirror image imagining a vast secret US operation. The CIA and other Western intelligence agencies knew about the Ukrainian plot and actively or passively misled the press and the public.”
Israeli Spy Firm Targeted Mamdani: France’s cybersecurity agency accused the Israeli tech company BlackCore of interfering in the mayoral elections in New York won by Zohran Mamdani. BlackCore also interfered in Scottish elections earlier this year by targeting the first minister, John Swinney, the Scottish National party, and the Scottish government “on four occasions,” the disinformation detection agency Viginum said, according to The Guardian. Other targets were “countries such as Togo and Angola.”
Rush Jobs: David Rush, he of the gold bars in the basement, “operated a highly classified intelligence program approved by Congress several years ago to use large quantities of cash to obtain critical information about American adversaries…and held a rank that is the CIA’s equivalent of an army general,” the Wall Street Journal reported this week, citing “people familiar with the matter.” Intelligence veterans fear that investigations into Rush’s alleged creation of a fake program to funnel $42 million worth of gold bars, cash and luxury watches to himself will bring to light legitimate super-secret programs in the agency’s Science and Technology wing, responsible for developing exotic weapons like the U-2 spy plane and electronic surveillance systems. “You could start to see things exposed that shouldn’t be discussed, things that are real and truly sensitive,” Mark Fowler, a former senior CIA officer who ran spying operations against Iran, told the Journal.
Pentagon’s Secretive Billionaire: “Media-shy financier Stephen Feinberg has quietly amassed extraordinary influence over US military spending,” the Guardian’s Aram Roston writes in an in-depth profile. “The 66-year-old billionaire founder of the private equity giant Cerberus Capital Management,” who has served as the deputy secretary of defense since March 2025, “has far eclipsed [SecDef Pete] Hegseth in actual influence and impact,” multiple sources told Roston.
FBI Losses: Former FBI Special Agent Kayla Staph laments how she and colleagues experienced in shooter situations were forced out because of “FBI leadership’s” politicization of hiring and assignments. “In late spring of 2025, I witnessed the political targeting of the on-scene commander of the barricade situation, resulting in his resignation,” she writes in Justice Connection, an organization of former DoJ and FBI personnel. “I had chosen to resign when it became clear to me that upper FBI leadership was using the power of the FBI to undermine justice. But witnessing this particular political targeting escalated my concern. During the first year of this administration, over 3,500 people left the FBI, including officials who were forced out or summarily dismissed for partisan reasons, and those who resigned due to untenable circumstances.” Last week Rep. Jamie Raskin of Mayland, ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, accused FBI Director Kash Patel of using a “personal slush fund” to reward aides and his security detail for their loyalty. “Why are these agents receiving extra pay simply for doing their jobs?” Raskin wrote in a 15 June letter to Patel. “Are they, in fact, collecting bonus compensation for engaging in actions outside of their duties and outside of the law?” (The Guardian)
FBI Gains: “The FBI Disabled 13 Websites Backed by Suspected Chinese Agents That Sought Sensitive U.S. Information from Security Clearance Holders,” the DoJ reported. Elsewhere, it charged a San Diego resident conspiring to provide material support to Hamas.
Secret Service Heist: “The Trump administration’s budget office has redirected $352 million that was intended in part for Secret Service training and recruitment to what it described as security measures at the White House, a government database shows.” (Washington Post)
Trial Trial Again: “Claiming an Antifa Plot, U.S. Charges 15 in Minneapolis With Conspiracy”—so went the New York Times’ careful June 16 headline, suggesting skepticism about the charges. “The conspiracy indictment was filed as federal prosecutors in Minnesota had trouble sustaining many criminal cases filed against Immigration and Customs Enforcement protesters,” the story said.
Nice work, Jeff. And congrats to Christine Gralow for being more than eighteen months ahead of the Washington Post.