US intelligence officials reacted with alarm after the White House fired the head of the National Security Agency and his deputy after a meeting between Donald Trump and a far-right activist.
General Timothy Haugh, who led the spy service as well as US Cyber Command, was fired on Thursday night along with his deputy, Wendy Noble, and five senior aides at the National Security Council, another agency under the Defence Department, the Washington Post reported.
The reasons for the dismissals were not immediately clear but followed a meeting between Laura Loomer – a self-styled investigative journalist and activist who advocates a hardline right-wing agenda – and the president on Wednesday at the White House, in which she accused senior staff of disloyalty.
Trump confirmed firing staff without naming them on Thursday with a reference to disloyalty.
“Always we’re letting go of people,” he told reporters. “People that we don’t like or people that we don’t think can do the job or people that may have loyalties to somebody else.”
Loomer appeared to take credit for the moves.
“NSA Director Tim Haugh and his deputy Wendy Noble have been disloyal to President Trump. That is why they have been fired,” she posted on X, claiming that Haugh was “hand-picked” by General Mark Milley, who served as the top military official during Trump’s first term before becoming a critic of the president.
Right-wing activist Laura Loomer (Photo: Ted Shaffrey/AP)“Thank you President Trump for being receptive to the vetting material provided to you,” Loomer added.
The sackings were criticised by senior Democrat members of Congressional intelligence committees.
Jim Himes, the top ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, called for an immediate explanation of the decision.
“I am deeply disturbed by the decision to remove General Haugh as Director of the National Security Agency,” he posted on social media. “I have known General Haugh to be an honest and forthright leader who followed the law and put national security first – I fear those are precisely the qualities that could lead to his firing in this Administration.”
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Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chair Senator Mark Warner said: “It is astonishing that President Trump would fire the nonpartisan leader of the NSA while still failing to hold any member of his team accountable for leaking classified information on Signal.”
Warner accused the president of taking “staffing direction from a discredited conspiracy theorist,” in reference to Loomer, who once described the 9/11 Al-Qaeda attacks as an “inside job.”
Haugh is known as a leading specialist in cyber operations with more than 30 years of military service, who previously led a group conducting offensive operations against Russian election interference.
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