US President Donald Trump fired General Timothy Haugh as director of the National Security Agency on Thursday, according to two officials familiar with the decision. Congressional Democrats denounced the removal of the nonpartisan official from a top security post.
Haugh, an Air Force general who is also head of US Cyber Command, was dismissed along with Wendy Noble, his deputy at the NSA.
"General Haugh has served our country in uniform, with honour and distinction, for more than 30 years. At a time when the United States is facing unprecedented cyber threats, as the Salt Typhoon cyberattack from China has so clearly underscored, how does firing him make Americans any safer?" Senator Mark Warner, vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a statement.
Salt Typhoon was a major Chinese hacking incident that lawmakers have called the largest telecommunications hack in US history.
Were the Trump administration's leaked war plans on Signal chat classified?
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Media outlets including The Washington Post had reported the firing on Thursday night, citing current and former US officials, who said they did not know the reason for Haugh’s dismissal or Noble’s reassignment.
Noble was reassigned to a job within the Pentagon's office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, the Post said. The NSA is part of the US Defense Department.
US Cyber Command deputy William Hartmann was named acting NSA director and Sheila Thomas, who was the executive director at the NSA, was named acting deputy, the newspaper said.
Earlier Thursday, Trump said he had fired “some” White House National Security Council officials, a move that came a day after far-right activist Laura Loomer raised concerns directly to him about staff loyalty.
Loomer during her Oval Office conversation with Trump urged the president to purge staffers she deemed insufficiently loyal to his “Make America Great Again” agenda, according to several people familiar with the matter. They all spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive personnel manner.
The Pentagon and White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Trump has said he wants his administration staffed with those who support his positions.
“We're always going to let go of people – people we don't like or people that take advantage of, or people that may have loyalties to someone else," he told reporters aboard Air Force One on Thursday.
Haugh was not on Signal chat
Representative Jim Himes, a Connecticut Democrat who is ranking member of the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee, also issued a statement condemning the firing and asking for an explanation.
"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," Himes said.
Warner, a Virginia Democrat, also noted that, unlike some other top Trump administration officials, Haugh was not on a discussion of military plans on the Signal commercial messaging app that inadvertently included a magazine journalist, raising security concerns.
"It is astonishing, too, that President Trump would fire the nonpartisan, experienced leader of the National Security Agency while still failing to hold any member of his team accountable for leaking classified information on a commercial messaging app," Warner said in his statement.
Read moreThe Atlantic publishes details of US attack plan shared in Signal chat
Trump, a Republican, has fired multiple top officials at US agencies and installed loyalists since beginning his second term on January 20.
Elon Musk, who is leading the Trump administration's effort to cut and streamline the federal government's workforce, visited the National Security Agency last month to meet Haugh.
The NSA is one of the United States' premier intelligence agencies and uses top-tier, specialised technology and systems to collect and analyse intelligence. US Cyber Command carries out both offensive and defensive operations and monitors the networks of the Department of Defense.
(FRANCE 24 with Reuters and AP)
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