US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has fired the head of the Pentagon’s intelligence agency and two other senior military commanders, as part of the latest round of personnel purges by the Trump administration, three US officials told Reuters. The reason for the dismissal of Lieutenant General Jeffrey Kruse, who led the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), was not immediately clear. Hegseth’s actions expanded on Friday to include the chief of US Naval Reserves and the commander of Naval Special Warfare Command.
All three officials said they were unaware of the reasons for their removal. US Senator Mark Warner, Vice Chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, commented, “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.” The Washington Post was the first to report the firing.
This move appears to be the latest effort by the Trump administration to punish current and former military, intelligence, and law enforcement officials whose views are perceived as being at odds with the President. In April, General Timothy Haugh was fired as director of the National Security Agency, part of a larger purge that affected over a dozen staff at the White House National Security Council. Hegseth has also targeted uniformed military officials at the Pentagon. In February, he dismissed Air Force General CQ Brown, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, along with five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shakeup of US military leadership. The chief of the US Air Force also made a surprise announcement this week that he would retire midway through his term.
While the exact reason for Kruse’s firing was not made public, it came after a preliminary DIA assessment was leaked to the media. The assessment stated that US airstrikes on three Iranian nuclear facilities on June 22 had only set back Tehran’s program by a few months. This finding directly contradicted Trump’s claim that the targets were “obliterated.” The leaked report, which was also reported by Reuters, reportedly infuriated Trump. The White House called the top-secret assessment “flat out wrong,” and Trump attacked the news outlets that obtained the report, calling them “scum” and “FAKE NEWS.”
The Trump administration has been conducting a widespread purge of US military and intelligence officers and diplomats, which it claims is part of an effort to reduce the size of the federal government, cut the budget, and punish the “politicisation or weaponisation” of intelligence. The news of Kruse’s firing came just two days after Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard announced that, on Trump’s orders, she was revoking the security clearances of 37 current and former US intelligence professionals. This week’s revocations are the latest in a series that has occurred during Trump’s second term, including those of Biden and former Vice President Kamala Harris. Earlier this week, Gabbard also announced a major overhaul of her office, planning to slash personnel by more than 40% by October 1 to save over $700 million annually.
