Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth fired the military’s top intelligence officer, according to the Washington Post. Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, is the second high-profile Air Force general this week to be relieved or abruptly announce their retirement.
The services top general, Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin, announced Monday he was retiring after only two years in the position, a job which is nearly always held by the same officer for a four-year term. Several news sources reported that Allvin was being forced out by Hegseth, but would be allowed to announce his retirement. Unlike Kruse, the Air Force has said Allvin will remain as chief of staff until his replacement is confirmed by the Senate.
The Washington Post first reported Kruse’s firing on Friday, citing people familiar with the matter. The Pentagon confirmed Kruse’s exit in a curt one-sentence statement: “Lt. Gen. Kruse will no longer serve as DIA Director,” a senior defense official said in a statement.
His firing comes two months after Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth criticized a DIA report that said the large American airstrikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, trumpeted by Hegseth and President Donald Trump as a historic success, damaged but did not destroy the installations.
No reason for Kruse’s dismissal was given, except a “loss of confidence,” according to the Washington Post. That term is widely used throughout the military when commanders are relieved, and can cover a wide range of reasons, ranging from poor on-duty performance to personal misconduct.
Kruse previously served as Director of Intelligence for Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve and then Director of Intelligence for U.S. Indo-Pacific Command. He took over as Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency in February 2024.
Allvin is a former test pilot who spent much of his career flying cargo planes before moving into command and senior staff positions, and was the Vice Chief of Staff of the Air Force before being tapped for the service’s top job in 2023.
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Kruse and Allvin are the latest officials in a top military position to be removed from their jobs under Hegseth and Trump. In February, Trump fired several top military leaders who were women or non-white, including Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Gen. Charles “CQ” Brown Jr., Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti, and Coast Guard Commandant Linda Fagan. The Air Force’s second in command, Gen. James Slife, was also relieved. In April, Hegseth fired Vice Adm. Shoshanna Chatfield from her role as senior NATO planner, and Air Force Gen. Timothy Haugh, who was both the head of U.S. Cyber Command and oversaw the National Security Agency, was relieved of his command.
In June, a DIA report on Operation Midnight Hammer, the U.S. bombing campaign on Iranian nuclear facilities, found that the bunker buster bombs and cruise missiles severely damaged three nuclear sites, but did not totally destroy them, as the administration initially claimed.. After the report came out, Hegseth criticized it as “preliminary,” saying it would take “weeks” to fully assess the strikes. “There’s low confidence in this particular report. It says in the report there are gaps in the information,” he said at a June 26 Pentagon news conference.
