Cnn
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The Trump administration dismissed the Director and Deputy Director of the National Security Agency, the powerful cyber-reporting office of the United States, according to members of the Senate and the intelligence committees of the Chamber and two former familiar officials with the issue.
The dismissal of General Timothy Haugh, who also leads the American cyber command – the offensive and defensive cyberbullying of the military – is a major reshuffle of the American intelligence community which sails significant changes during the first two months of the Trump administration. Wendy Noble, the deputy of Haugh at the NSA, was also abolished, according to the former officials and legislators.
The best Democrats in the Senate and the Intelligence Committee of the Chamber, Senator Mark Warner and representative Jim Himes denounced the dismissal of Haugh, who held the positions since February 2024, in statements on Thursday evening.
It is not immediately known why Haugh and Noble were dismissed. Lieutenant-General William Hartman, an experienced military officer and the deputy of the Cyber Command, should serve as a manager of the interim command and the NSA, said the two former officials.
The new layoffs occurred in the dismissal of several staff of the National Security Council, after Laura Loodor, the far -right activist who said once September 11 was an internal job, urged President Donald Trump at a meeting on Wednesday to do so, arguing that they were unfair. It was not clear if the shots were linked.
The Cyber Command and the NSA refused to comment and returned CNN to the office of the Secretary of Defense, who could not be immediately joined to comment. CNN asked for comments from the National Security Council of the White House.
Last month, HAGH welcomed the billionaire Elon Musk, who oversees the Ministry of Efficient Government, at the NSA and Cyber Command headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland.
Some current and former defense officials say there is a growing culture of fear within the ranks of officers within the Ministry of Defense, among those who fear that they can be dismissed at any time for driving deemed insufficiently faithful to Trump.
HAGH was not in the group of group now infamous on the signal of the messaging application, in which the defense secretary Pete Hegseth and other senior officials discussed a sensitive military operation targeting the Houthis in Yemen while ignoring that a journalist was part of the group. During a hearing of the House Intelligence Committee last week, the director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and the director of the CIA, John Ratcliffe, were toasted about the chat debacle of the signal group, HAGH said that, in general, there is risks to use the application.
NSA is one of the most powerful and critical espionage agencies in the United States government. Its code breakers and computer officers carry out intelligence operations around the world which provide information to the president and its main advisers. The cyber command was created more than a decade ago to combat growing foreign threats in cyberspace and has matured in the years that have followed.
The cyber command played a leading role in defense of the American elections against influence and foreign interference, in particular by dropping an offline Russian troll farm during the 2018 elections and defending against Iranian pirates during the 2020 elections.
Renée Burton, a cybersecurity expert who spent more than two decades at the NSA, called the news of the Éviction de Haugh and Burton “alarming”.
“The NSA mission is vast and extremely complicated,” Burton told CNN. “General HAGH and Mrs. Noble built the expertise and credibility necessary to supervise such a vital part of our national security. Replacing them will not be easy and the disturbance will expose the country to new risks. ”
In an unprecedented purge of the senior army in February in February, Trump drew the best American general for a few moments before Hegseth pulled the head of the US Navy and the Chief of the Air Force.
This story has been updated with additional details.