March unfolded like a stress test for U.S. counterterrorism authorities.

The month opened with a gunman in an Iranian-flag shirt killing three people at a bar in Texas. Then, an attack with homemade explosives outside the mayor’s mansion in New York City. Next came a deadly shooting March 12 on a Virginia college campus and, the same afternoon, a car-ramming at a Michigan synagogue. Days later, agents arrested a man charged with threatening a mass shooting at an Ohio mosque.

To current and former national security officials, these were omens, signs of the dangers they predicted last year when President Donald Trump began redirecting counterterrorism resources toward his mass deportation campaign.

They had warned of a diminished ability to respond should major global events inflame threats at home and abroad. Now, they say, the war in Iran has locked the Trump administration into a showdown with a sophisticated state sponsor of terrorism at a time when U.S. security agencies have hemorrhaged expertise and leadership is in flux.

The urgency of the moment has trained a spotlight on Sebastian Gorka, the White House counterterrorism adviser tasked with drafting a blueprint for fighting homegrown and international threats. Nearly a year ago, Gorka declared a national counterterrorism strategy “imminent.” By July, he was “on the cusp” of unveiling the plan — a phrase he repeated three months later in October. And again in January.

To date, no strategy has appeared, and no explanation for the delay. When it is finally released, current and former counterterrorism personnel say, they expect a document rooted in politics rather than intelligence, with little detail on how to combat threats after a year of deep cuts across national security agencies.

“Strategies are only worth the amount of resources you put into them,” said a former senior official who served in the first Trump administration. “We’re entering very dangerous territory.”

The shifting promises are unsurprising to colleagues familiar with the brash, quick-tempered Gorka, a gate crasher in Washington’s buttoned-up defense establishment. His threats and boasts are laced with grandiose language and delivered in a booming, British-accented voice.

ProPublica interviewed more than two dozen national security specialists across party lines to trace Gorka’s path to one of the most sensitive jobs in government. Nearly all spoke on condition of anonymity because of the Trump administration’s record of retaliation.

His ascent, they said, tells the story of a startling transformation of the U.S. counterterrorism agenda in Trump’s second term. Eye-rolling over Gorka’s bombast has given way to anxiety about the administration’s preparedness to identify and stop major plots.

In the first Trump administration, Gorka lasted just seven months before being forced out by the “adults in the room,” as some staffers referred to the more moderate gatekeepers then around the president. In that brief stint, he reportedly struggled to obtain security clearance and faced an outcry over ties — which he denies — to a far-right group in Hungary.

After the exit, he hosted a right-wing podcast and popped up in ads selling fish-oil pills for pain relief. Then his fortunes changed again with the 2024 election that swept Trump back to power, this time with a more conspiratorially minded wing of the Make America Great Again movement. Gorka’s loyalty paid off with a phoenixlike return to the White House in a role sometimes called “counterterrorism czar.”

“I’ve been waiting 25 years for this job,” he confided on his podcast before taking office.

The first year of Trump’s second term was so frenzied that even the colorful Gorka faded into the background as the administration dismantled federal agencies and created a secretive, sometimes deadly immigration force. Now, however, the counterterrorism director’s role is coming back to light as hostilities roil the Middle East and heighten the risk of attacks in the United States or against American interests or allies overseas.

Days before U.S. military operations began in Iran, FBI Director Kash Patel fired a dozen personnel from a counterintelligence unit that monitored threats from Iran, CNN reported — part of a wider purge of some 300 agents specializing in counterterrorism.

Former officials said the sudden loss of that many colleagues is devastating to the sensitive, granular work of preventing attacks.

“I don’t think about it in raw numbers. I think about it in the wealth of expertise and knowledge that has been cut across all levels,” a former senior Justice Department official said. “What you lose is that nuance — with a smaller team, you can only go so deep.”

An FBI spokesperson said the bureau does not comment on personnel numbers but that agents are “working around the clock” and had disrupted four alleged U.S.-based terrorist plots in December alone. “The FBI continuously assesses and realigns our resources to ensure the safety of the American people,” the statement said.

ProPublica sought an interview with Gorka directly and via the White House. He did not respond to a detailed list of questions but assailed the requests in two posts on X, where he has 1.8 million followers. The first was a “no,” along with insults, addressed to several journalists who had asked him to comment on the strategy. In the second post, directed at ProPublica, Gorka accused the reporter of writing a “putrid piece of hackery.”

“If the criticism is we’re killing too many Jihadis (759) since 20th January 2024, or rescuing more US hostages in 12 months (106) than Biden did in 4 years, I stand by our historic wins for AMERICA First,” Gorka wrote, with an apparent typo. Trump took office in January 2025.

White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said in an email that the restructuring of agencies “has made the entire foreign policy apparatus even more responsive to potential threats” and praised Gorka for “an incredible job” leading interagency talks.

“Anyone attempting to smear him and the President’s national security team is only revealing that they haven’t been paying attention for the past year,” Kelly wrote, “as anyone with eyes can see that our homeland is more secure than ever.”

Inattention “can be deadly”

Gorka has emerged as one of the last men standing after a tumultuous stretch for U.S. counterterrorism leadership.

His original boss, national security adviser Mike Waltz, was booted to the United Nations after the Signalgate scandal, leaving the role to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who was already juggling portfolios and is busier now with Iran.

Another blow came when Joe Kent, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, resigned last month in protest of the war in Iran, which he said was pushing the United States “further toward decline and chaos.”

Gorka was livid. He told an audience at the Council on Foreign Relations that he called Kent the day of his resignation and left a message calling him an “utter disgrace” for criticizing the president in wartime.

“At the end of my voicemail,” Gorka recounted, “I said, ‘Good riddance to you, Joe.’”

Within days, Gorka was angling for Kent’s old job at the counterterrorism center, the government’s hub for analyzing terrorist threats, the Washington Post reported. Colleagues said they weren’t surprised — the role brings more power — but added that Gorka would likely face a tough Senate confirmation process if nominated.

The leadership disarray compounds the risks of hollowed-out counterterrorism operations, say national security analysts.

At a time when hundreds of personnel typically would’ve been assigned to thwarting attacks amid international conflict, the administration “has gutted this capacity through firings, forced resignations, and slashed budgets,” a panel of national security analysts wrote in the journal Lawfare.

The Justice Department acknowledged in budget proposal documents that its National Security Divi