Intelligence officials are continuing to investigate sexually explicit messages that were posted on a government chat tool, the National Security Agency said Friday, exchanges that prompted the nation’s top intelligence official to order the firing of more than 100 officers this week.
In a statement on Friday, a spokesman for the National Security Agency said the messages were posted on Intelink, a tool that the N.S.A. manages for the entire intelligence community.
“N.S.A. takes the allegations of recently identified misconduct on Intelink very seriously,” the spokesman said in a statement. “Behavior of this type will not be tolerated on this or any other N.S.A.-hosted system.”
The existence of the messages was disclosed on Monday by Christopher F. Rufo, a conservative activist. Intelligence officials confirmed that the National Security Agency managed the system that had been used for the sexually explicit chats.
People briefed on the inquiry said some of the chat logs that were made public had been altered or manipulated, in some cases to remove classified markings or other material. But the people familiar with the inquiry said some context was removed from the exchanges and screenshots in other instances might not have been accurate representations.
Long-serving U.S. civil servants said there was little doubt that some of what was posted was inappropriate for any workplace, much less a system in classified networks that is meant for intelligence sharing. At least one of the chat rooms involved was shut down last year, according to a U.S. official.
One U.S. official said the people ordered to be fired were all participants in the chats and had made contributions. It is not clear how many of them had written comments deemed inappropriate.
Many of the messages that have come under scrutiny had to do with gender transition treatments and sexual matters. One of the chat rooms where some of the comments were posted focused on gender and transgender issues; it was unclear how many of the officers set to be fired were transgender.
The Pentagon is moving to dismiss transgender troops from the ranks of the military. And critics of the move to fire dozens of intelligence officers have called it a purge of L.G.B.T.Q. workers, a charge that Trump administration officials deny.
Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, said on Fox News on Tuesday that she had issued a directive to fire more than 100 officers at 15 agencies and strip them of their security clearances.
Many of those officers, including ones at the National Security Agency, were suspended. Other intelligence agencies reported Friday the results of their inquiry into how their employees used the chat system, U.S. officials said.
The director of national intelligence does not have the power to directly fire officers at the N.S.A. or the C.I.A. Nevertheless, officials said Ms. Gabbard’s oversight position meant that her order would be carried out.
The N.S.A. statement also said the agency was taking steps to comply with Ms. Gabbard’s directive.
“As the service provider, we are actively investigating and working to ensure the director of national intelligence and our partner I.C. agencies have necessary information to take appropriate actions in line with” the national intelligence director’s orders, the spokesman said.
People briefed on the investigation said it was unclear whether there was any formal or informal relationship between the chat room and L.G.B.T.Q. affinity groups at the N.S.A. or other intelligence agencies. The affinity groups were shut down after President Trump’s order ending diversity programs in the federal government.
While some screenshots appeared to suggest that the chats messages were affiliated with those groups, people briefed on the investigation had not confirmed that.
The system managed by the N.S.A. has previously come under scrutiny. In 2022 and 2023, questions were raised about the intelligence platform being used to exchange messages supporting the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and vaccination skepticism and comments that demeaned transgender people.
In 2023, a spokesman for the director of national intelligence said that all officers were required “to adhere to our established principles regarding respectful, professional behavior in all areas of the workplace.” Employees who engaged in inappropriate conduct would be “subject to various accountability mechanisms,” he said.
