The Pentagon has fired the head of the Defence Intelligence Agency, a senior defence official and a senator said on Friday, weeks after the agency drafted a preliminary report that contradicted President Trump’s contention that Iran’s nuclear sites had been “obliterated” in US military strikes.
Air Force Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse is the latest senior Pentagon official, and the second top military intelligence official, to be removed since Trump’s return to office. Gen. Timothy D. Haugh, the head of the National Security Agency, was ousted this spring after a right-wing conspiracy theorist complained about him.
Defence secretary Pete Hegseth also fired Vice-Adm. Nancy Lacore, who was chief of the Navy Reserve, as well as Rear Adm. Jamie Sands, a Navy SEAL officer who oversaw Naval Special Warfare Command, a defence department official said on Friday. The Pentagon offered no immediate explanation why.
Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the senior Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the firing of General Kruse, who had a long career of non-partisan service, was troubling.
“The firing of yet another senior national security official underscores the Trump administration’s dangerous habit of treating intelligence as a loyalty test rather than a safeguard for our country,” Warner said.
The Defence Intelligence Agency is in charge of collecting intelligence on foreign militaries, including the size, position and strength of their forces. The agency provides the information to the military’s combatant commands and planners at the Pentagon.
The senior defence official, who was not authorised to speak publicly, said that General Kruse would no longer serve as the intelligence agency’s director, although it was not clear if he would be offered a different position in the Air Force or if he would retire. Two congressional officials said lawmakers were notified on Friday that Hegseth had fired General Kruse because of “a loss of confidence” in the senior officer.
Days after US military strikes hit three of Iran’s nuclear sites in June, the Defence Intelligence Agency drafted a preliminary assessment that suggested Tehran’s nuclear programme was set back only by months. Reports about the assessment by CNN and The New York Times prompted a fierce backlash from the White House.
In the days that followed, the White House and senior intelligence officials tried to paint a different picture, of a more successful operation against Iran.
Warner linked Kruse’s firing directly to his agency’s assessment of that operation.
“That kind of honest, fact-based analysis is exactly what we should want from our intelligence agencies, regardless of whether it flatters the White House narrative,” Warner said.
New York Times News Service