Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said on Tuesday that more than 100 intelligence officers will be fired for participation in sexually explicit messages in chat rooms in the national security agents.
“There are more than 100 people from the entire intelligence community who have contributed to and have participated in what is actually just a gross violation of trust,” Gabbard said in an interview with Jesse Watters of Fox News. “Today I issued a guideline that they will all be terminated and their safety authorizations will be withdrawn.”
“They were brutal to use an NSA platform intended for professional use to perform this kind of real, really horrible behavior,” she added.
The messages reportedly exchanged in the chat room were first reported by conservative activist Christopher Rufo, who writes for City Journal.
DNI spokesperson Alexa Henning said earlier on Tuesday on X that various intelligence services have been assigned to identify and terminate employees who participated in the sexually explicit conversations by Friday and withdraw their safety statement.
“The DNI sent a memo in which all intelligence services were instructed to identify the employees who participated in the 'obscene, pornographic and sexually explicit' chat rooms of the NSA and to end their work and withdraw their security power,” Henning said.
A senior officer of the administration told CNN that members of the rank and file in the intelligence community contacted Gabbard on the issue.
Gabbard's comments come hours after the NSA said it was aware of messages that “seem to show of inappropriate discussions” by intelligence staff and announced that investigations were underway.
“The community does not represent potential abuse of these platforms by a small group of individuals. Research to tackle this abuse of government systems are underway, “the agency said in a statement about X.
CNN's Jake Tapper has contributed to this report.
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