President Donald Trump’s Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell on Thursday fired the Acting Director of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) in what insiders fear is a “purge.” Ambassador Grenell is a highly-controversial Trump loyalist who some worry is remaking the U.S. intel agencies into a group more favorable to the President’s personal agenda.
The firing of Russell Travers has stunned insiders, according to The Washington Post, which calls the now-former NCTC acting director a “highly-regarded career professional with more than 40 years of government service.”
Travers’s acting deputy, Peter W. Hall, was “removed” as well, and transferred to the National Security Agency.
“The removals have shocked Travers’s colleagues who are upset at the treatment of someone so well-regarded,” The Post reports.
Nicholas Rasmussen, former Director of the National Counterterrorism Center under both President Barack Obama and President Donald Trump, calls Travers a “consummate” national security professional who “helped keep us all safe,” and calls the firing “shameful.”