Tulsi Gabbard, the U.S director of national intelligence, has stated that more than 100 intelligence officers from 15 organisations had been fired for discussing sexually explicit content on a government chat service.
The National Security Agency administered the chat application, which was intended for discussions about sensitive security issues. However, intelligence officials revealed last week that a group of staffers utilised it for sexually explicit communications.
According to officials, the conversations included an explicit mention of gender reassignment surgery.
Gabbard said she had issued a directive to fire more than 100 people who participated in the discussions and to strip the officers of their security clearances.
She said the chats were an “egregious violation of trust” that violated “basic rules and standards” of workplace professionalism.
A spokesperson for the office said on the social media platform X that Gabbard had sent a memo to all intelligence agencies asking them to identify all employees who had participated in the National Security Agency’s sexually explicit chat rooms by Friday.
Gabbard put her actions in the larger context of her efforts to depoliticise the intelligence community and the Trump administration’s efforts to hold employees accountable.
The CIA and Gabbard’s office have moved to fire an undisclosed number of employees who worked on diversity issues during the Biden administration. That action was paused by a federal judge who was reviewing the action and was expected to make a ruling on Thursday.
Unlike with the explicit chats, there is no allegation of wrongdoing by the officers involved in recruiting and diversity efforts, and the officers have sued the government arguing they should be offered other posts.
She said after she took the action to fire the people involved in the chat, and other officers came forward to tell her about other inappropriate activity.
“People are stepping forward because they are all on board with the mission to clean house and refocus on our core mission of serving the American people,” Gabbard said.
