Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has fired Lieutenant General Jeffrey Kruse, the head of the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), citing a ‘loss of confidence’ as the reason, according to reports.
Gatekeepers News reports that Kruse, who took over the agency in February 2024, will no longer serve as DIA Director, with Deputy Director Christine Bordine assuming the role of Acting Director effective immediately.
The dismissal appears to be connected to an initial assessment by the DIA in June, which indicated that strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities had a limited effect. This assessment contradicted President Donald Trump’s claim that the facilities had been “obliterated” or “totally obliterated”. The DIA report was marked as “low confidence” due to its preliminary nature, having been compiled just 24 hours after the strikes.
Kruse’s firing is part of a larger shake-up in national security leadership under Hegseth’s watch.
Regarding the DIA assessment, Hegseth previously stated: “It was preliminary, a day and a half after the actual strike, when it admits itself in writing that it requires weeks to accumulate the necessary data to make such an assessment… It points out that it’s not been coordinated with the intelligence community at all. There’s low confidence in this particular report.”
