Top congressional Democrats are protesting against the firing of Gen Tim Haugh as director of the National Security Agency (NSA), with one lawmaker saying the decision “makes all of us less safe”.
Haugh and his civilian deputy at the NSA, Wendy Noble, have been dismissed from their roles, the Washington Post reported late on Thursday, with CNN reporting likewise, both outlets citing multiple unnamed officials and other senior sources close to the matter who had requested anonymity.
US defense department spokesperson Sean Parnell on Friday thanked Haugh “for his decades of service to our nation, culminating as US cyber command commander and National Security Agency director”.
“We wish him and his family well,” Parnell’s statement said, confirming Haugh’s departure without elaborating on why he was departing.
On Friday afternoon, the NSA website had been updated with both Haugh and Noble no longer listed in their roles.
Lt Gen William J Hartman was instead listed there as acting director of the NSA and Sheila Thomas as his acting deputy.
Haugh also headed US Cyber Command, which coordinates the Pentagon’s cybersecurity operations. Hartman has been appointed acting head of the command, according to the website.
The NSA notified congressional leadership and top lawmakers of the national security committees of Haugh’s firing late on Wednesday but did not give reasons, the Associated Press reported, citing a source. Senior military leaders were only informed on Thursday, the news agency said.
The NSA declined to comment and referred the Guardian to the Department of Defense, which said it would provide more information when it became available.
Outrage from critics was fulsome. Senator Mark Warner, vice-chair of the Senate intelligence committee, said in a statement: “General Haugh has served our country in uniform, with honor and distinction, for more than 30 years. At a time when the United States is facing unprecedented cyber threats … how does firing him make Americans any safer?”
Representative Jim Himes, the ranking member on the House intelligence committee, said he was “deeply disturbed by the decision”.
“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 added. “The intelligence committee and the American people need an immediate explanation for this decision, which makes all of us less safe.”
Senator Jack Reed, a Democrat from Rhode Island, said Donald Trump “has given a priceless gift to China, Russia, Iran and North Korea by purging competence from our national security leadership”.
“In addition to the other military leaders and national security officials Trump has fired, he is sending a chilling message throughout the ranks: don’t give your best military advice, or you may face consequences,” Reed added.
Earlier on Thursday, Donald Trump said he had fired “some” White House national security council officials, a move that came a day after the 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.
Loomer posted on X in the first moments of Friday morning: “NSA Director Tim Haugh and his deputy Wendy Noble have been disloyal to President Trump. That is why they have been fired.”
She added a screed about how they had been hired by Joe Biden during his presidency and were, she said, “hand picked” by Mark Milley, then chair of the joint chiefs of staff, the most senior uniformed officer in the military. Milley served Trump in his first term in the White House but has since turned fiercely critical, calling the president dangerous and “fascist to the core”, and was fired in the early days of Trump’s second term. The 47th US president then also revoked Milley’s security clearance. Biden, the 46th US president, had pre-emptively pardoned Milley in his final days in office, following threats from Trump that the veteran had been treasonous and should face the death penalty.
Loomer added Haugh had been “referred for firing” and Noble had been Haugh’s “Obama loving protégé” who was nominated by Biden and promoted diversity, equity and inclusion at the agency. Loomer noted: “This is called VETTING.”
She also said Noble was a protege of James Clapper, director of national intelligence in Barack Obama’s presidency, and said Clapper should be in prison.
Trump spoke to reporters on Air Force One on Thursday afternoon after the earlier firing of six national security agency staffers below the level of Haugh and Noble, based on recommendations from Loomer, a extremist cheerleader for Trump and a white supremacist with an incendiary social media presence who has no political experience outside of unsuccessfully running for US Congress in Florida twice.
“Always we’re letting go of people,” Trump said. “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.”
The firings came as Trump’s national security adviser Mike Waltz continued to fight calls for his ouster after using the publicly available encrypted Signal app to discuss planning for the sensitive 15 March military operation targeting Houthi militants in Yemen.
Warner said on Thursday night: “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 – even as he apparently takes staffing direction on national security from a discredited conspiracy theorist in the Oval Office.”
Haugh met last month with Elon Musk, whose so-called “department of government efficiency”, or Doge, has roiled the federal government by slashing personnel and budgets at dozens of agencies. In a statement, the NSA said the meeting was intended to ensure both organizations were “aligned” with the new administration’s priorities.
Haugh had led both the NSA and Cyber Command since 2023. Both departments play leading roles in the nation’s cybersecurity. The NSA also supports the military and other national security agencies by collecting and analysing a vast amount of data and information globally.
Cyber Command is known as the US’s first line of defence in cyberspace and also plans offensive cyber-operations for potential use against adversaries. The defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, recently ordered the office to pause some offensive cyber-operations against Russia, in another sign of how Trump’s administration is transforming the work of the nation’s intelligence community.
Renée Burton, a cybersecurity expert who previously worked for the NSA, told CNN the removal of the personnel was “alarming” and the disruption would “expose the country to new risk”.
The Associated Press contributed reporting
