Hegseth fires head of Defense Intelligence Agency, Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has fired Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, the latest senior military or intelligence officer to lose his position in a wider purge of national security agencies’ top ranks, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The people didn’t immediately cite a reason for the dismissal other than “loss of confidence,” a catchall term Hegseth has used to justify the sacking of other senior military officers this year.

The ouster of Kruse was the first acknowledged in what military officials said could be a spate of firings on Friday. Others removed include Vice Adm. Nancy Lacore, the chief of the Navy Reserve, and Rear Adm. Milton Sands, a Navy SEAL officer who oversees Naval Special Warfare Command, according to two additional people familiar with the matter, who like others interviewed spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the Trump administration’s targeting of current and former intelligence officers.

The firing of Kruse follows a preliminary assessment from the DIA – the Pentagon’s main intelligence wing – of U.S. military strikes on Iran’s three main nuclear sites in June, which prompted angry backlash from the Trump administration after it was first reported by CNN and the New York Times.

That preliminary report assessed that Iran’s nuclear capabilities had been set back only a matter of months, in contrast to Hegseth’s and President Donald Trump’s statements that the capabilities had been “obliterated.”

A DIA spokesperson confirmed that Kruse is no longer head of the agency, adding that his deputy, Christine Bordine, would become acting director. The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Since entering office, Hegseth has fired a slate of America’s most senior military officers, including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr.; the chief of naval operations, Adm. Lisa Franchetti; the commandant of the Coast Guard, Adm. Linda Fagan; and the Air Force vice chief of staff, Gen. James Slife.

Gen. David Allvin, the chief of staff of the Air Force, announced Monday he would step down in November, after being asked to retire last week and forced out of his position.

The Trump administration has simultaneously purged a number of spy agency heads, whose roles, like the military’s, are supposed to be apolitical.

In April, Trump fired Gen. Timothy Haugh, the head of the powerful National Security Agency, which conducts electronic and digital eavesdropping. Haugh and his deputy, Wendy Noble, were dismissed after far-right activist Laura Loomer advocated for their ouster.

In May, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard removed the acting chair of the National Intelligence Council, Michael Collins, and his deputy. The move came after the NIC, a respected analytic hub, wrote an assessment that contradicted Trump’s rationale for invoking the Alien Enemies Act and deporting alleged Venezuelan gang members without due process.

Kruse became director of the Defense Intelligence Agency in December 2023. The Air Force general had previously served as top military adviser to Gabbard’s predecessor, Avril Haines.

Less known than spy agencies like the CIA, the DIA is the principal intelligence office for the military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff and provides tactical intelligence to U.S. military personnel in the field. It also runs a classified information-sharing network called the Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System, or JWICS.

A former senior military intelligence official called Kruse a “consummate professional” who took care of those working for him. He was “sort of the poster child for success as an Air Force intelligence guy,” working his way up through a series of challenging positions, the former official said.

“It is perhaps unsurprising that General Kruse’s removal as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency comes on the heels of a DIA assessment that directly contradicted the president’s claim to have ‘obliterated’ Iran’s nuclear program,” Sen. Mark R. Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a statement.

“That kind of honest, fact-based analysis is exactly what we should want from our intelligence agencies, regardless of whether it flatters the White House narrative,” Warner said.

In a statement, Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., Warner’s counterpart on the House Intelligence Committee, said that “If the Administration has cause to fire Director Kruse, they must provide that information to Congress immediately. Otherwise, we can only assume that this is another politically motivated decision intended to create an atmosphere of fear, something that chills the ability of the Intelligence Community to do its job and protect national security.”

The DIA assessment that angered Trump and Hegseth was intended to be an initial look at the damage to Iran’s nuclear sites from U.S. strikes that included bunker-busting bombs known as Massive Ordnance Penetrators. Subsequent analyses by U.S. intelligence agencies and private analysts have confirmed significant damage to the sites that nonetheless falls short of the White House’s claims of obliteration.

A Trump administration official familiar with internal discussions about Kruse indicated the general’s future has been uncertain for months, with Gabbard initially looking to replace him. The general was a target in part because the NSA under Haugh and the DIA were seen as closely aligned, the official said.

A military official assigned to the DIA said it had been impressive watching how Kruse managed the strains and pressures on the agency during the Trump administration so far. The general has been “very transparent in a way that I honestly didn’t expect” in explaining how issues would be handled with staff and when he did not know what path the administration was pursuing, the official said.