The director of the US National Security Agency was fired on Thursday, according to Democratic lawmakers, after President Donald Trump lasted his clearing of the US security institution.
The dismissal came just hours after President Trump dismissed a number of senior National Security Council officials following claims from an extreme right activist of his agenda “Make America Great again”.
Mark Warner, Vice President of the Senate Intelligence Committee, condemned the Timothy Haugh’s holiday, the NSA director who also runs the cyber command in the US, saying he had served “in uniform, honor and difference for more than 30 years”.
The Washington Post for the first time reported the crash of Hugh. His civilian deputy in NSA, Wendy Noble, re -set in another Pentagon position, Posti said.
The Pentagon and the White House did not respond to a comment request.
NSA is the main US agency responsible for collecting signal intelligence and NSC is the White House bureaucracy that advises the President on national security issues.
NSC fires occurred after a meeting between Trump and Laura Loomer, a right -wing social media personality and the plot theorist, who presented him research on some staff members and asked them to remove them.
Their boss, national security adviser Mike Waltz, was present at the Oval office meeting with Vice President JD Vance and other old officials, according to the New York Times, who was the first media outlet reporting the meeting.
One person acquainted with the development said at least three NSC officials had been fired, including Brian Walsh, who was responsible for intelligence issues, and Thomas Boodry, director of legislative issues that previously worked for Waltz when he was a member of the US Congress.
The White House also fired David Feith, the senior director of technology. Feith is a China hawk who would have played an instrumental role in pushing safety -related measures against Beijing, including export controls.
A second person said Waltz had been under rising pressure from the Maga camp, which saw it as a neoconservative with very extreme foreign policy views for countries from Iran to China. Another person said the crashes suggested that Waltz himself was increasingly on thin ice as he was unable to protect his people.
A NSC spokesman, Brian Hughes, declined to confirm or deny the fires, saying only that NSC “does not comment on staff issues”.
When asked about dismissals, Trump told reporters in the Air Force one: “We will always give up on people we do not like or people we do not think they can do work or people who may have loyalty to someone else.”
He denied shooting officials at the Loomer’s encouragement. “She makes recommendations for things and people, and sometimes I hear those recommendations like me with everyone.”
Loomer also aimed at Alex Wong, Deputy National Security Advisor and Ivan Kanapathy, senior NSC director for Asia. Both of China’s Hawks are respected.
Loomer has called Wong, a Chinese-American foreign policy expert, “Chinese national security adviser” in a social media post. The activist has targeted canopathy, a retired fighter pilot because he worked for a consultancy that employs several elderly Democrats previously criticized by the Trump administration.
Waltz was under pressure before the meeting on the discoveries he had created a group of conversation in Signal, a messaging application available to the public, to discuss details of a military strike against the Houthi rebels in Yemen, and had inadvertently invited an Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg to join.
The Pentagon Supervisor, the Office of the Inspector General of the Defense Department, announced on Thursday that an investigation had begun in the use of the Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth at the request of Senators Roger Wicker and Jack Reed, better Republicans and Democrats, respectively, in the powerful Armed Services Committee.
“According to our long policy, we do not comment on the ongoing investigations,” Pentagon said in a statement.
Warner said it was “stunning” that Trump would light Haugh, “NSA-partisan leader,” NSA “, while still failing to hold any member of his team for leaking information classified in a trading messaging app.”
