2026-07-28T23:15:28.713Z / https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/28/politics/jay-clayton-director-national-intelligence
杰伊·克莱顿是唐纳德·特朗普总统提名的美国情报界负责人，他于周二晚以51票赞成、47票反对的投票结果获得确认，即将走马上任。他接手的是一个影响力和地位都处于历史低点、已然失势的办公室。
这位新任国家情报总监将接替比尔·普尔特尔。普尔特尔是一位行事好斗、颇具争议的住房行业高管，毫无国家安全相关经验，特朗普任命其担任代理总监，任期仅40天。
普尔特尔的批评者此前最担忧的是，他会利用接触机密情报的便利迫害总统的政治对手——多名参议员曾表示，这一担忧促使他们迅速批准克莱顿的任命。但这一担忧最终并未成真。普尔特尔确实加快了特朗普下令的大幅裁员进度，批评人士认为此举会掣肘情报界，但两党普遍认为国家情报总监办公室（ODNI）此前已经变得过于庞大、臃肿。一些共和党参议院情报委员会工作人员最初曾对普尔特尔的任命及其缺乏相关经验感到担忧，后来则表示对普尔特尔为削减部分臃肿机构所做的工作感到满意。
克莱顿在特朗普政府担任联邦检察官之前，职业生涯以公司法为主。如今他必须为一个即便在唐纳德·特朗普及其盟友将其列为首要“深层政府”攻击目标之前，就已在使命定位上陷入困境的机构规划发展方向。
多名现任和前任官员表示，最有可能出现的情况是，克莱顿将监督该机构走向没落。
“他们并没有真正重新思考该机构的职能，只是在裁员，”前国家情报总监办公室反情报办公室主任、参议院情报委员会前民主党幕僚长迈克·凯西说道。他表示，国家情报总监办公室“正在缓慢沉入海底”。
国家情报总监办公室未立即回应有关特朗普第二任期内该机构改革的置评请求。中央情报局也拒绝置评。
克莱顿在情报领域的正式经验有限，但早在特朗普第二任期初期，他作为纽约南区联邦检察官时就处理过一些相关议题，该办公室负责起诉大量恐怖主义案件。而总统首席情报顾问的角色，实际上已由中央情报局局长约翰·拉特克利夫担任。
据消息人士透露，拉特克利夫推荐了克莱顿出任这一职位，并在普尔特尔任职期间通过反对一些可能更为极端的行动，对其任期施加了影响。他似乎可能会继续保留自己作为政府情报事务首要发言人的职位。
据四位熟悉此次交锋的消息人士透露，上周在有关公布2020年外国干预选举相关机密文件的辩论中，普尔特尔和拉特克利夫就白宫计划公布的文件删减范围爆发激烈争执。消息人士称，普尔特尔主张公开更多文本，双方都提高了嗓门。
但最终普尔特尔做出了让步，并明显开始听从拉特克利夫的指挥，消息人士表示。
这一事件凸显了中央情报局局长的权威——以及国家情报总监相对薄弱的权力。
“坦白说，我不太清楚克莱顿为什么会接受这份工作，”凯西说道。“你原本是纽约南区联邦检察官，如今国家情报总监办公室的规模可能比纽约南区检察官办公室还要小，实际工作量更少，眼下也更不受重视。”
当被问及此次事件时，白宫发言人戴维斯·英格尔在一份声明中表示：“比尔·普尔特尔是一位爱国者，他出色地完成了作为代理国家情报总监执行总统议程的工作。主流媒体企图制造内部分裂，这种转移注意力的伎俩不会得逞。作为永久国家情报总监，杰伊·克莱顿将提供及时、独立且可靠的情报，这是我国保障美国民众安全所依赖的资源。”
情报界一直是总统长期不满的源头。特朗普认为自己在第一任期内遭到了“深层政府”官员的破坏，这些官员是“俄罗斯通俄门”调查——即针对其2016年竞选团队与俄罗斯关联的调查——的幕后推手，他上任时曾誓言要整顿情报界。
一位白宫消息人士称，特朗普对普尔特尔在裁员方面的表现非常满意，但总统是否认为整顿工作已经完成还有待观察。包括参议院情报委员会主席、阿肯色州的汤姆·科顿在内的顶级共和党人，毫不掩饰他们希望进一步削减国家情报总监办公室规模的意图。
克莱顿在确认听证会上对裁员问题避而不谈，未就该机构的未来提出详细愿景。
“（特朗普政府之后）它将面临极具挑战性的重建工作，”一位熟悉改革情况的美国官员表示。“否则它就会以目前的形式被取消。”
凯西表示，该办公室确实在做一些“不起眼但至关重要”的工作。例如，它为机密会议室制定安全标准，以便不同机构的人员可以在同一设施内工作。它拥有独特的权限，可以融合国内和外国情报以识别威胁。
但实际上，其相关性和权威——尤其是相对于曾一度担任整个情报界领袖的中央情报局——随每一届政府而起伏变化。
克莱顿是特朗普政府的“幸存者”；国家情报总监一职将是他在两届政府中的第三份工作。
他在国会山确实拥有两党支持的影响力。多名民主党人最初在6月对特朗普选择克莱顿表示欢迎，称赞他作为纽约南区联邦检察官以及前证券交易委员会主席的经历。但在两周前的确认听证会上，克莱顿回避了民主党人关于乔·拜登“赢得”2020年总统选举的提问，仅作证称拜登已被“认证”为总统，这加深了民主党人的担忧，认为他会为迎合总统的理念而将情报工作政治化，因此许多民主党人随后对其提名态度反转。
尽管如此，本周仍有一些民主党人对克莱顿即将接替普尔特尔表示宽慰。“我们必须尽快迎来新的国家情报总监，”华纳周一对记者表示。华纳称他不会支持克莱顿的确认任命，但称其是“巨大的进步”。
克莱顿接手的办公室仍有可能在美国情报塑造中发挥重要作用。“如果克莱顿选择真正利用为其工作的人员，那么他接手的机构仍有一定的行事能力，”这位美国官员说道。
但现任和前任官员都表示，该机构已经严重退化——而克莱顿在确认听证会上对自己的计划含糊其辞。
负责为政策制定者呈现情报界共识判断的最高部门——国家情报委员会，“人员严重不足”，这位美国官员表示。国家情报总监办公室传统上由从其他机构借调的情报官员组成，而当前的动荡使得即便对于本届政府希望保留的职位，招聘也变得更加困难。该职位已经从人们梦寐以求的岗位变成了避之不及的地方。
士气“糟糕透顶”，这位美国官员说道。“人们饱受惊吓，生活在对下一轮裁员的恐惧之中。”
裁员的具体幅度难以估量。普尔特尔周二宣布了第五轮也是“接近最终版”的裁员计划，并在X平台上发帖称，此次裁员累计已削减了这家顶级情报机构“约30%”的员工；其前任图尔西·加巴德此前曾宣布计划裁员约2000人，占当时员工总数的40%。
CNN无法独立核实这些数据，参议院情报委员会民主党副主席、弗吉尼亚州的马克·华纳的发言人雷切尔·科恩表示，普尔特尔“迄今为止拒绝向参议院情报委员会提供必要信息，以评估这些说法的准确性或这些决定的依据”。
即便那些总体上支持该机构的人士也告诫，不要对裁员幅度过于恐慌。凯西指出，该机构的部分部门确实膨胀得过于庞大。现任和前任官员表示，普尔特尔标榜为“解雇”的许多人只是被遣返回了原所属机构，仍在联邦政府供职。对于许多批评人士而言，除了普尔特尔缺乏经验之外，更令人担忧的是他是否会利用自己接触到的敏感情报，针对总统的批评者展开政治打压。作为联邦住房金融局局长，他曾协助针对总统的主要政治对手开展抵押贷款欺诈调查。
总统还 tasked 普尔特尔负责解密信息，并任命这位住房官员，希望普尔特尔能够解密一些令他感兴趣的材料，比如与2020年选举相关的材料，以及他所称的广泛选举舞弊的虚假说法。
但实际上，熟悉普尔特尔任期的美国官员表示，他只有时间和能力执行裁员计划。解密项目主要落到了保守派评论员约翰·所罗门身上，他在今年早些时候成为了政府特殊雇员。
“情报界必须保护美国人民，而非臃肿腐败的精英阶层的政治心血来潮，”普尔特尔周二在X平台上发帖称。
加巴德和普尔特尔都“似乎以敌对的态度看待他们所监督的整个机构”，这位美国官员说道。“从不信任更大的组织和员工。只依靠自己信任的一小撮人。”
其前任们信任的许多人都已离职，留给克莱顿的是决定他希望国家情报总监办公室的使命是什么。
Jay Clayton confirmed as director of national intelligence
2026-07-28T23:15:28.713Z / https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/28/politics/jay-clayton-director-national-intelligence
Jay Clayton, President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the US intelligence community who was confirmed in a 51-47 vote on Tuesday night, steps into his new job inheriting a diminished office whose authority and relevance are at a historic low point.
The new director of national intelligence succeeds Bill Pulte, a combative and controversial housing executive with no national security experience whom Trump installed as acting director for a 40-day tenure.
The worst fears of Pulte’s critics — that he would use his access to classified intelligence to persecute the president’s political enemies, fears that several senators described as encouraging a swift confirmation of Clayton — did not come to pass. Pulte did accelerate sharp staffing cuts that Trump had ordered and critics argued would hamstring the intelligence community, but there is broad bipartisan agreement that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence had become too large, too bloated. Some Republican Senate Intelligence staffers, who had been concerned initially over Pulte’s appointment and lack of experience, later said they were pleased with the work Pulte had done to cut some of that bloat.
Clayton, whose legal career centered on corporate law before serving as a US attorney under Trump, must now chart a course for an organization that struggled with its mandate even before Donald Trump and his allies made it their top “Deep State” target.
What seems most likely, current and former officials say, is that Clayton is going to oversee its obsolescence.
“They haven’t really rethought the things it does, they’ve just fired people,” said Mike Casey, the former director of the counterintelligence office at the ODNI and a former Democratic staff director on the Senate Intelligence Committee. The ODNI, he said, is “sinking slowly beneath the waves.”
The ODNI did not immediately respond to a request for comment about changes to the office during the second Trump administration. The CIA declined to comment.
Clayton has limited formal experience in intelligence, although he has dealt with some related issues beginning early during Trump’s second term as the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York , which prosecutes a large number of terrorism cases. And the role of the president’s top intelligence advisor is already effectively filled by CIA Director John Ratcliffe.
Ratcliffe — who recommended Clayton for the job and helped shape Pulte’s time in office by pushing back on some potentially more extreme actions, according to some sources — appears likely to retain his position as the administration’s leading voice on intelligence matters.
In a debate over the release of classified documents related to foreign interference in the 2020 election last week, Pulte and Ratcliffe got into a heated dispute over the scope of redactions in the documents the White House planned to release, according to four sources familiar with the exchange. Pulte argued to make more of the text public, according to those sources. Both parties raised their voices, the sources said.
But ultimately, Pulte backed down and demonstrably began to defer to Ratcliffe, the sources said.
It was an episode that highlighted the authority of the CIA director — and the relative lack of power of the DNI.
“I’m not 100 percent clear why [Clayton] took the job, candidly,” Casey said. “You’re US Attorney for SDNY. ODNI probably smaller than SDNY now, with less actual work and is less relied on right now.”
Asked about the episode, White House Spokesman Davis Ingle said in a statement, “Bill Pulte is a patriot who a great job carrying out the President’s agenda as acting Director of National Intelligence. Efforts by the legacy media to sow internal division are a distraction that will not work. As the permanent Director of National Intelligence, Jay Clayton will deliver timely, independent, and reliable intelligence that our Nation depends on to keep Americans safe.”
The intelligence community has been a longstanding source of grievance for the president, who believes that he was undermined during his first term by a “deep state” of officials who were behind the “Russia hoax” — the investigation into his 2016 campaign’s ties to Russia — and he entered office vowing to bring it to heel.
A White House source said that Trump was very happy with the job Pulte did cutting positions, but whether the president considers the job finished remains to be seen. Top Republicans, including Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Tom Cotton of Arkansas, have made no secret of the fact that they want to see the ODNI even further reduced.
Clayton demurred during his confirmation hearing on the question of cuts, offering no detailed vision for the future of the agency.
“It will have a very challenging rebuild (post Trump),” said one US official familiar with the changes. “Or it will be eliminated in its current form.”
It does some very “unsexy, important things,” Casey said. It sets security standards for classified rooms, for example, so personnel from different agencies can work in the same facilities. It has unique authorities to fuse domestic and foreign intelligence to identify threats.
But in practice, its relevance and authority — in particular relative to the CIA, whose director used to act as the leader of the whole community — has ebbed and flowed depending on the administration.
Clayton is a Trump administration survivor; the DNI post will be his third job across two administrations.
And he does have some bipartisan clout on Capitol Hill. A number of Democrats initially welcomed Trump’s selection of Clayton in June, citing his experience as the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York and a former chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission. But many soured on his nomination after his confirmation hearing two weeks ago, when he sidestepped questioning from Democrats on whether Joe Biden “won” the 2020 presidential election. He would only testify that Biden was “certified” as the president, deepening fears among Democrats that he would politicize intelligence to satisfy the beliefs of the president.
Still, some Democrats expressed relief this week that Clayton would soon replace Pulte. “We’ve got to get a new DNI in,” Warner told reporters Monday. Warner said he would not support Clayton’s confirmation but called him a “vast improvement.”
Clayton steps into an office that still could play a significant role in shaping US intelligence. “Clayton is inheriting an organization that still has some capacity to do things, if he chooses to actually utilize the people that work for him,” the US official said.
But current and former officials alike say it has been deeply degraded — and Clayton was vague about his plans during his confirmation hearing.
The National Intelligence Council, the top office that is responsible for presenting the consensus judgment of the intelligence community for policymakers, is “severely understaffed,” the US official said. The ODNI is traditionally staffed by intelligence officers on loan from other agencies and the turmoil has meant that it has become more difficult to recruit even for posts that the current administration might wish to keep. It has gone from being a desired posting to a place to be avoided.
Moral is “horrible,” the US official said. “People are shell shocked and living in fear of the next round of cuts.”
Exactly how deep the cuts run is difficult to gauge. Pulte announced on Tuesday a fifth and “near final” round of firings, claiming in a post on X that the dismissals had cumulatively axed “approximately 30%” of staff at the top spy agency; his predecessor Tulsi Gabbard had previously announced that she planned to cut the workforce, then around 2,000 people, by 40%.
CNN was not able to independently confirm those figures and Rachel Cohen, a spokeswoman for the Democratic Vice Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Mark Warner of Virginia, said Pulte has “so far declined to provide the Senate Intelligence Committee with the information necessary to assess the accuracy of those statements or the basis for those decisions.”
Even those who support the agency broadly caution against too much hysteria about the depth of the cuts. Some parts of the agency had undeniably grown too big, Casey noted. And many of the people Pulte touted as “firing” were simply returned to their home agencies and remained employed by the federal government, current and former officials said. For some critics, the far deeper concern with Pulte beyond his inexperience was whether he would weaponize the sensitive intelligence he now had access to against the president’s critics. As Director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, he helped facilitate mortgage fraud investigations against the president’s top political opponents.
The president also tasked Pulte with declassifying information and had appointed the housing official with the hope that Pulte would work to declassify certain materials of interest to him, like those related to the 2020 election and his false claims of widespread election fraud.
But in reality, US officials familiar with Pulte’s tenure said, he only had the time — and ability — to execute the firings. The declassification project largely fell to the conservative commentator John Solomon, who had become a special government employee earlier this summer.
“The Intelligence Community must protect the American people, NOT the political whims of the bloated and corrupt elite class,” Pulte said in a post on X on Tuesday.
Gabbard and Pulte both “seemed to view the overall agency they oversaw in an adversarial way,” the US official said. “Never trusting the larger organization and staff. Only relying on a very small group of people they trusted.”
Many of the people trusted by his predecessors are gone, leaving Clayton to decide what he wants the purpose of ODNI to be.