National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard said Tuesday that more than 100 intelligence agents from 15 agencies have been fired for sexually explicit discussions in government chat tools.
The chat program is managed by the National Security Agency and is intended to discuss sensitive security issues. However, a group of employees used it for discussions that included sexual themes, an intelligence reporting official said this week. The chat also included explicit discussions about gender transition surgery, officials said.
The chat transcript was first disclosed Monday by Christopher Luffo, a conservative activist who writes for the City Journal.
Gabbard, who appeared on Fox News on Tuesday evening, said he fired more than 100 people who participated in the debate and issued an order to officers to strip them of security clearance. She said the chat was a “severe violation of trust” that violated the “basic rules and standards” of workplace professionalism.
An office spokesperson said Gabbard had sent a note to all intelligence news agencies asking him to identify all employees who have participated in “sexually explicit chat rooms” on the NSA tool by Friday. I mentioned it in X.
Gabbard put her actions in a larger context of efforts to depoliticize the Trump administration's efforts to hold intelligence news communities and employees accountable.
“What we do today is just the beginning of what we see across the Trump administration by holding these individuals accountable,” Gabbard said. She added that as authorities “we can begin to rebuild trust in these institutions as they “have started cleaning homes, eradicating corruption and corruption, and moving towards weaponization and politicization.”
The Central Intelligence Agency and Gabbard's office moved to fire a private number of employees who addressed diversity issues during the Biden administration. The actions were suspended by a federal judge who had reviewed the lawsuit and were expected to rule on Thursday.
Unlike explicit chat, there were no allegations of fraud by officers involved in recruitment and diversity efforts, and the officers argued that other posts should be provided to the government.
Gabbard, who appeared in Fox, said the Trump administration is trying to drive away officers whose main loyalty is on its own, not the United States or its constitution. She said that after taking action to fire people involved in the chat, other officials came forward to tell her about other inappropriate activities.
“Everyone is moving forward as people are taking part in their mission to refocus on our core mission of serving the people of America,” Gabbard said.
