The National Security Agency recently fulfilled a goal to shed around 2,000 employees, according to three people familiar with the spy agency. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity because the milestone has not been made public. An NSA spokesperson declined to comment.
The purge reflects months-long pressure by the second Trump administration to shrink the federal government and clean out alleged bloat and politicization in the intelligence community. Employees at the nation’s various spy agencies were initially extended deferred-resignation offers in February, and in May, news broke of the downsizing goals for the intel community and NSA specifically.
As in other federal agencies, some workers were fired, others quit, and still others accepted the deferred-resignation deals, under which they left government service early but were paid for several more months.
It’s not clear what percentage of NSA’s employees have left. The size of the agency’s workforce is classified; agency officials have said this helps conceal U.S. intelligence capabilities from foreign adversaries.
More cuts could be on the way. In February, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth asked service leaders to prepare plans to cut their budgets by some 8 percent in each of the next five years.
The agency has also been reorganizing some of its mission priorities, two of the people said, though one of them stressed this is not uncommon at the beginning of presidential administrations.
The NSA has been facing waves of internal strain and lower morale across its workforce amid a mix of leadership gaps, program cuts, and recent extensions of deferred resignation offers, Nextgov/FCW reported last month.
Throughout this year, Lt. Gen. William Hartman, NSA’s acting director who also leads U.S. Cyber Command in a dual-hatted role, has held multiple all-hands calls with the agency’s workers, where limited Q&A was allowed, said the second person.
Hartman has led NSA and Cyber Command in an acting capacity since April after the firing of Gen. Timothy Haugh, which was fueled by far-right activist Laura Loomer. The NSA’s top lawyer, April Falcon Doss, was also let go after Loomer advised that she leave the agency. Those events unfolded as leading officials from the agency and the combatant command have voluntarily departed this year.
Army Lt. Gen. Joshua Rudd, the deputy commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, has surfaced as the White House’s leading choice to head the agency and digital military command, two other people familiar with the matter said. The Record first reported Rudd’s emergence as top contender for the position.
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