- ‘What did the Romans ever do for me..?’ - 28th July 2026
- It’s all Greek to me - 27th July 2026
- Counting the cost… - 24th July 2026
During 23 years with the BBC, and in a 42 year career (when he was trained to use clear and simple language, avoiding jargon), for our Editor, Welshman Phil Parry, exposing the weakness as well as inexperience of senior officials with huge influence over ordinary people’s lives, has always been a mainstay of his journalism, and now this is put centre stage by news that the man appointed to take over as head of a leading US spy agency from a woman who quit (and hadn’t supported the Iran war), previously built houses…
It has always seemed pretty basic to me.
Senior officials leading departments should, at the very least, have gained experience in running something like that, so mistakes (in theory) would be minimised.
This means that the department in question should run smoothly, and ordinary people who rely on it would (supposedly) be served properly.
Sadly this is not always the case, and when my suspicions are aroused, I scrutinise the person’s CV to find out what he or she has actually done in the past.
So it is with Bill Pulte, a 38 year old whose background is in home construction and private equity.
On June 2 Donald Trump appointed him to serve as acting Director of National Intelligence (DNI).
Mr Pulte has been Director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) since March 2025, and is heir to his family’s residential development firm, PulteGroup, which was founded by his grandfather in the 1950s.
He previously founded a private equity firm, Pulte Capital, and is seen as a loyal Trump supporter encouraging prosecutions of the president’s perceived political enemies.
For example Mr Pulte, has had a go at the New York Attorney General, Letitia James and California’s senator Adam Schiff, both Democrats, as well as the Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, an appointee of Joe Biden’s.
He will succeed Tulsi Gabbard, a former congresswoman who resigned on May 22, citing her husband’s ill-health.
Ms Gabbard, a long-standing anti-war advocate, had been sidelined from most important foreign-policy debates, including the decisions to attack Venezuela and Iran.
The law establishing the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) (post 9/11) specified that anyone nominated leading it “shall have extensive national security expertise”.
Every previous DNI has been either a former intelligence executive, military officer or elected official, but Mr Pulte is none of these things – his main qualifications for the role make sense only in MAGA-land.
The president has not said whether he intends to nominate Mr Pulte for the role on a permanent basis, which would require confirmation by the senate, and that could prove difficult.
In 2019 Mr Trump chose John Ratcliffe, then a congressman, to be DNI, who had at least sat on various national-security committees, including the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
Yet Mr Trump withdrew the nomination after questions arose about Mr Ratcliffe’s qualifications, (he later secured the job and is now director of the CIA.)
But by comparison with Mr Ratcliffe, Mr Pulte is an intelligence neophyte.
Yet he would be good on advising you on getting money to build your house – perhaps like all the others I’ve exposed over the years, he should explain how he will serve ordinary people…
Details of Phil’s, astonishing decades-long journalistic career (when focusing on weak officials was always central), as he was gripped by the rare neurological condition Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia (HSP), have been released in an important book ‘A GOOD STORY’. Order it now.
