Pentagon Fires the Defense Intelligence Agency Chief

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.

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 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 Defense Secretary Pete 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.

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.