US military officials urge Obama to remove NSA chief
High-ranking military officials in the United States have urged President Barack Obama to remove the director of the notorious National Security Agency.
Defense Secretary Ash Carter and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper recommended that the commander-in-chief dismiss Admiral Michael S. Rogers last month, sources familiar with the matter told The Washington Post on Saturday.
The revelation came as Rogers was being considered by President-elect Donald Trump as the director of national intelligence, in charge of overseeing 17 American spy agencies.
Without bothering to notify his superiors, Rogers met with the future president at Trump Tower in New York on Thursday.
He was assigned as the NSA and US Cyber Command chief in April 2014 after the extent of the spy agency’s activities was revealed by former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden.
The Obama administration seeks to create separate chains of command at the NSA and the military’s cyberwarfare unit but some lawmakers, including Republican Senator John McCain, the Senate Armed Services Committee chairman, oppose the change.
They argue that the Cyber Command should be able to maintain its access to the NSA resources.
The NSA’s widespread surveillance of Americans and foreign nationals, as well as political leaders around the world, was exposed by Snowden in 2013.
Snowden, who lives in Russia where he has been granted asylum, has said that US government surveillance methods far surpass those of an ‘Orwellian’ state, referring to George Orwell’s classic novel “1984,” which describes a society where personal privacy is continuously invaded by spy agencies.
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