NSA and Cyber Command leader Gen. Timothy Haugh was fired Thursday night, seemingly in a White House effort to remove officials deemed not loyal enough to President Donald Trump.
Haugh, who had served in the job for about a year, was fired alongside several deputies who were moved or dismissed, according to multiple reports.
The firing was first reported by the Washington Post on Thursday night. The New York Times soon after reported it was recommended by far-right activist Laura Loomer, who, earlier in the day, met with the president to recommend a handful of staffers in the president’s National Security Council be terminated. Those firings soon followed.
A former senior national security official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to be candid, said the timing with the Loomer meeting couldn’t be coincidental, especially since Haugh is well-regarded by colleagues.
An NSA spokesperson referred Nextgov/FCW to a Pentagon press email address, which declined to comment and said more information would be provided as it becomes available. The White House and the National Security Council did not return requests for comment.
Loomer, in an early Friday X post, appeared to confirmed the firing. She said Haugh and his deputy Wendy Noble were disloyal to Trump, saying their affiliation with past officials vilified by the president made them unfit to serve.
“Look at the people who are crying about my meeting with President Trump and the firing of NSC AND NSA officials today. The people crying are the people who worked to undermine Donald Trump, members of the Democrat Party, and the mainstream media,” Loomer, who has made racist attacks at former Vice President Kamala Harris and once suggested that the September 11 attacks were an inside job, Loomer said in a follow-up post.
Haugh could not be immediately reached for comment. Mark Warner, D-Va., vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, condemned the move.
“At a time when the United States is facing unprecedented cyber threats, as the Salt Typhoon cyberattack from China has so clearly underscored, how does firing him make Americans any safer?” he said, referring to a Chinese government cyber intrusion into swaths of U.S. telecommunications systems discovered last year.
Warner added it was “astonishing” that Trump would fire an official not involved in an infamous Signal chat that inadvertently included The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief, which made headlines over the past two weeks and raised serious questions about the Trump administration’s handling of sensitive and classified information.
The move may plant seeds for NSA and Cyber Command to be led by separate officials. The signals intelligence titan and the combatant command have been traditionally led in a dual-hatted role, though there have been talks among Trump officials about separating the two.
Haugh succeeded Gen. Paul Nakasone, who retired from the role early last year.
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