By Jonathan Landay, Erin Banco and Patricia Zengerle
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. President Donald Trump fired General Timothy Haugh as director of the National Security Agency, in a national security purge that sources said on Friday included more than a dozen staff at the White House national security council.
NSA director Air Force General Haugh, who is also head of U.S. Cyber Command, was dismissed along with Wendy Noble, his deputy at the NSA, two sources familiar with the decision said.
Two other sources said at least 10 staff were let go at the NSC, along with four senior directors, including the entire International Organization (IO) Directorate, which works with international and multilateral groups like the United Nations.
No reason was given for the firings, which took place after the Republican president had an Oval Office meeting with Laura Loomer, a far-right political activist known as a conspiracy theorist, who said on X.com she had given Trump a list of officials she considered disloyal to him.
The White House declined comment and the Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Trump has said he wants his administration staffed with those who support his positions.
"We’re always going to let go of people – people we don’t like or people that take advantage of, or people that may have loyalties to someone else," he told reporters aboard Air Force One on Thursday.
The IO directorate at the National Security Council works with international and multilateral groups, including the UN and Group of Seven. FBI Director Kash Patel formerly served in the directorate.
In both terms, Trump has deprioritized his administration’s participation in some of these groups, focusing instead on an "America first" approach to foreign policy.
The NSC firings also included Daniel Gastfriend and Tim Sheeran, both directors with the health security and biodefense directorate, two sources said.
Media outlets including The Washington Post had reported Haugh’s firing on Thursday night, citing current and former U.S. officials, who said they did not know the reason for Haugh’s dismissal or Noble’s reassignment.
Noble was reassigned to a job within the Pentagon’s office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, the Post said. The NSA is part of the U.S. Defense Department.
U.S. Cyber Command deputy William Hartmann was named acting NSA director and Sheila Thomas, who was executive director at the NSA, was named acting deputy, the newspaper said.
HAUGH WAS NOT ON THE SIGNAL CHAT
Democrats criticized the firings, saying they represented a threat to national security.
Representative Jim Himes, a Connecticut Democrat who is ranking member of the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee, denounced the firings and asked for an explanation.
"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 said.
Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat, noted that, unlike some other top Trump administration officials, Haugh was not on a discussion of military plans on the Signal commercial messaging app that inadvertently included a magazine journalist, raising security concerns.
"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," Warner said in his statement.
Trump, a Republican, has fired multiple nonpartisan top officials at U.S. agencies and installed loyalists since beginning his second term on Jan. 20.
In February, he fired Air Force General C.Q. Brown, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who was dismissed along with five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of U.S. military leadership.
Elon Musk, who is leading the Trump administration’s effort to cut and streamline the federal government’s workforce, visited the National Security Agency last month to meet Haugh.
The NSA is one of the United States’ premier intelligence agencies and uses top-tier, specialized technology and systems to collect and analyze intelligence. U.S. Cyber Command carries out both offensive and defensive operations and monitors the networks of the Department of Defense.