The director of the powerful wiretapping and cyberespionage service, the National Security Agency, was fired Thursday, according to two current and one former U.S. officials.
Gen. Timothy Haugh, who also heads U.S. Cyber Command, was let go along with his civilian deputy at the NSA, Wendy Noble, according to the officials.
Noble was reassigned to a job within the Pentagon’s Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security. The NSA is part of the department.
Haugh, who assumed his dual position just over a year ago, was traveling on Thursday and could not be reached for comment. Sean Parnell, a spokesman for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, did not respond to a request for comment.
The current and former officials said they did not know the reason for Haugh’s dismissal or Noble’s reassignment.
The named acting NSA director is Lt. Gen. William J. Hartman, who was the Cyber Command deputy, one of the officials said. Sheila Thomas, who was the executive director at the NSA, was named acting deputy, the official said.
Haugh last month hosted Trump adviser and U.S. DOGE Service head Elon Musk at the NSA’s headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland — Musk’s first known visit to a U.S. intelligence agency. The visit went well, officials familiar with the engagement said.
Haugh is a cyber professional with more than 30 years of military service, including as head of Cyber Command’s Cyber National Mission Force, which led offensive cyber military operations overseas, and as commander of the 16th Air Force in San Antonio.
He ran Cyber Command’s half of the “Russia Small Group,” a joint effort with the NSA to defend the 2018 midterm election from Russian interference. The NSA portion was led by Anne Neuberger, who went on to serve in the Biden administration as a deputy national security adviser for cyber and emerging technologies.
During the election defense effort in 2018, Haugh led offensive operations against Russian trolls and launched initiatives to disclose publicly Russian spy agency malware and to conduct “Hunt Forward” missions to boot Russian intelligence from Eastern European government networks, recalled Jason Kikta, who was at the time lead defensive cyber operations planner for Cyber Command.
“His tenacity in countering Russian efforts was impressive to watch,” said Kikta, who retired from the command in 2022. “So why this administration would fire someone who was so innovative and aggressive is beyond me.”
The surprise dismissals, which shocked and dismayed current and former agency officials, followed on the heels of Thursday’s string of firings of at least five key aides on the White House National Security Council staff. The NSC purge came a day after a far-right activist visited the Oval Office and urged President Donald Trump to remove certain people whom she viewed as disloyal to Trump and his “America First” agenda.
Reaction from the Democratic leaders of the House and Senate intelligence committees was swift.
Sen. Mark R. Warner of Virginia, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said that Haugh served with distinction.
“At a time when the United States is facing unprecedented cyberthreats, as the Salt Typhoon cyberattack from China has so clearly underscored, how does firing him make Americans any safer?” Warner said in a statement.
“I am deeply disturbed by the decision” to remove Haugh, Rep. Jim Himes (D-Connecticut), Warner’s counterpart in the House, said in a statement.
Himes described Haugh as 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.”
Dan Lamothe and Alex Horton contributed to this report.
