Bill Pulte officially started his role as Acting Director of National Intelligence last Friday. By the following week, personnel at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence were cleaning out their desks.

Three business days. That might be a land-speed record for Washington.

One source said that "the deep state firings have begun" at ODNI, though the source declined to provide specific details on the number of positions being cut. What we do know is how Pulte spent his first days on the job — and it tells you everything about the man's approach.

He showed up last Thursday — before he even officially started — and requested a complete employee roster. That evening, he met with lawyers. By Friday, he was the Acting DNI. A few days later, the firings were underway.

No listening tours. No "getting to know the team" phase. No six-month review period where everyone keeps their job while a consultant writes a report nobody reads. Pulte asked for the list, talked to the lawyers, and started making decisions.

The intelligence community establishment fought hard to prevent exactly this. Senator Mark Warner introduced an amendment specifically designed to block Pulte from serving as Acting DNI by barring Senate-confirmed officials from the role. It failed on a 49-49 vote — with three Republicans, Senators Cassidy, Collins, and Murkowski, crossing over to vote against Pulte.

Three Republicans who apparently felt the intelligence community being filled with deep state plants was just fine. The amendment died anyway.

President Trump nominated Jay Clayton, the former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, to serve as the permanent Director of National Intelligence. Until Clayton is confirmed, Pulte is running the shop. And he's clearly not interested in keeping the seat warm.

The ODNI is one of those agencies that ballooned after 9/11 with the stated purpose of coordinating America's sprawling intelligence apparatus. Whether it accomplished that goal is a matter of some debate. What's less debatable is that it accumulated staff, budget, and institutional self-importance at a pace that would make any other federal bureaucracy proud.

Now someone showed up who looked at the org chart and started asking uncomfortable questions about what all these people actually do. The source's language is worth noting — not "restructuring has commenced" or "a workforce review is underway." The phrase was "the deep state firings have begun." That's not bureaucratic hedging. That's a status update.

Critics will argue this is reckless, that intelligence work requires institutional knowledge and continuity. There's a version of that argument that's reasonable. There's also a version where "institutional knowledge" means "we've been doing it this way for twenty years and we'd prefer not to explain why."

Pulte doesn't appear interested in distinguishing between the two. He's interested in the employee list and a conversation with the lawyers.

When your first act in a new job is requesting every name on the payroll, that's not onboarding. That's an audit.