US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has fired the head of the Pentagon’s intelligence agency and two other senior military commanders. This is the latest move in what appears to be a broader purge of Pentagon officials by President Donald Trump’s administration. It was not immediately clear why Lieutenant General Jeffrey Kruse, who led the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), was dismissed.
According to Reuters, a US official speaking on the condition of anonymity said that in addition to Kruse, Hegseth also ordered the removal of the chief of US Naval Reserves and the commander of Naval Special Warfare Command. Senator Mark Warner, Vice Chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, stated that the move highlights the Trump administration’s “dangerous habit of treating intelligence as a loyalty test.”
This appears to be the latest attempt by the Trump administration to penalize current and former military, intelligence, and law enforcement officials whose views are seen as being at odds with the President. In April, Trump also fired General Timothy Haugh as director of the National Security Agency. In February, Hegseth dismissed Air Force General CQ Brown, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in an unprecedented shakeup of US military leadership.
Kruse’s firing came after a preliminary DIA assessment was leaked to the media, suggesting that US airstrikes on Iranian nuclear facilities had only set back Tehran’s program by a few months. This finding contradicted Trump’s claim that the targets were “obliterated.” The leaked report reportedly infuriated Trump, and the White House denounced it as “flat out wrong.”
