Trump Fires Air Force Intel General Who Said Bombing in Iran Did Not Obliterate Their Nukes Facility

On Friday, the Pentagon fired Air Force Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse, the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency.Credit...Kenny Holston/The New York Times

By Julian E. Barnes and Eric Schmitt

The reporters cover national security and intelligence matters.

Nw York Times

The Pentagon has fired the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, a senior defense official and a senator said on Friday, weeks after the agency drafted a preliminary report that contradicted President Trump’s contention that Iran’s nuclear sites had been “obliterated” in U.S. military strikes.

Air Force Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse is the latest senior Pentagon official, and the second top military intelligence official, to be removed since Mr. Trump’s return to office. Gen. Timothy D. Haugh, the head of the National Security Agency, was ousted this spring after a right-wing conspiracy theorist complained about him.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also fired Vice Adm. Nancy Lacore, who was chief of the Navy Reserve, as well as Rear Adm. Jamie Sands, a Navy SEAL officer who oversaw Naval Special Warfare Command, a Defense Department official said on Friday. The Pentagon offered no immediate explanation why.

Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the senior Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the firing of General Kruse, who had a long career of nonpartisan service, was troubling. 

“The firing of yet another senior national security official underscores the Trump administration’s dangerous habit of treating intelligence as a loyalty test rather than a safeguard for our country,” Mr. Warner said.

The Defense Intelligence Agency is in charge of collecting intelligence on foreign militaries, including the size, position and strength of their forces. The agency provides the information to the military’s combatant commands and planners at the Pentagon.

The senior defense official, who was not authorized to speak publicly, said that General Kruse would no longer serve as the intelligence agency’s director, although it was not clear if he would be offered a different position in the Air Force or if he would retire. Two congressional officials said lawmakers were notified on Friday that Mr. Hegseth had fired General Kruse because of “a loss of confidence” in the senior officer.

Days after U.S. military strikes hit three of Iran’s nuclear sites in June, the Defense Intelligence Agency drafted a preliminary assessment that suggested Tehran’s nuclear program was set back only by months. Reports about the assessment by CNN and The New York Times prompted a fierce backlash from the White House.

In the days that followed, the White House and senior intelligence officials tried to paint a different picture, of a more successful operation against Iran. 

Mr. Warner linked Mr. Kruse’s firing directly to his agency’s assessment of that operation.

“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,” Mr. Warner said. “When expertise is cast aside and intelligence is distorted or silenced, our adversaries gain the upper hand and America is left less safe.”

General Kruse’s firing was earlier reported by The Washington Post.

It was unclear who would replace General Kruse, a 34-year Air Force veteran who had served in numerous senior intelligence jobs in Washington and overseas, including positions overseeing military intelligence operations in Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Indo-Pacific region.

The agency’s deputy director, Christine Bordine, will serve as acting director until General Kruse’s successor is approved by the Senate.

Several former senior intelligence officials said General Kruse has had a target on his back since the early days of the second Trump administration.

A visit by members of Elon Musk’s government efficiency team to D.I.A. headquarters earlier this year was disastrous, with DOGE members concluding the agency was bloated and its missions ill-defined, one former senior official said. 

Another official said the Trump administration was upset with the agency’s slow development of a database tool and wanted General Kruse to ditch it in favor of commercial systems. The tool, known as MARS, is meant to make managing intelligence data easier. It has been under development for years, under multiple administrations.

After the agency’s preliminary assessment of the military strikes in Iran became public, some White House officials began focusing on the fact that General Kruse had been appointed during the Biden administration. Some Trump administration officials want to replace all military leaders appointed by former President Joseph R. Biden Jr., the official said.

Other Trump administration officials viewed D.I.A. as too large, and were impatient for quick change.

The agency was created to be the military’s primary all-source intelligence shop, and many hoped it would replace the intelligence efforts of individual armed services. But the Pentagon never shut down the other service intelligence agencies.

So the Defense Intelligence Agency became the home of the misfit toys — missions and assignments no one else wanted or needed, the former defense official said.