Sue Gordon, the principal deputy director of national intelligence, will step down on Aug. 15, President Donald Trump announced. | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images white house Trump announces departure of No. 2 intelligence official Sue Gordon

President Donald Trump announced on Thursday that the country’s No. 2 intelligence official had resigned, adding more uncertainty to the search of who will eventually lead the country’s spy apparatus.

The president announced on Twitter that Sue Gordon, the principal deputy director of national intelligence, would step down on Aug. 15, the same day her boss of the last two years, Dan Coats, is slated to leave.


“Sue Gordon is a great professional with a long and distinguished career,” Trump wrote. “I have gotten to know Sue over the past 2 years and have developed great respect for her. Sue has announced she will be leaving on August 15, which coincides with the retirement of Dan Coats. A new Acting Director of National Intelligence will be named shortly.”

Gordon was in line to replace Coats at least in an acting capacity until Trump nominated a successor to oversee the nation’s clandestine community. The president initially tapped Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-Texas) for the position, but Ratcliffe quickly withdrew after a barrage of unflattering media stories about his background and his brief tenure on the House Intelligence Committee.

Gordon left a resignation letter for the president with a handwritten note that signaled she was leaving not leaving her post happily.

“I offer this letter as an act of respect & patriotism, not preference,” she wrote, according to a copy of the note provided by the White House. “You should have your team.”

“Godspeed, Sue,” she signed.

In her resignation letter, Gordon wrote that it had “been an honor” to serve in her role for the last two years.

“As you ask a new leadership team to take the helm, I will resign my position effective 15 August 2019, and will subsequently retire from federal service,” she wrote. “I am confident in what the Intelligence Community has accomplished, and what it is poised to do going forward. I have seen it in action first-hand for more than 30 years. Know that our people are our strength, and they will never fail you or the Nation. You are in good hands.”

Shortly after he announced Gordon’s departure, Trump tweeted that Joseph Maguire, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, which is responsible for the government’s national and international counterterrorism efforts, would be acting the acting director of national intelligence, responsible for overseeing 17 U.S. civilian and military intelligence agencies, including the NSA and CIA.

Joseph Maguire, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, which is responsible for the government's national and international counterterrorism efforts, was named to be acting DNI by President Donald Trump. | Al Drago/Getty Images

“Admiral Maguire has a long and distinguished career in the military, retiring from the U.S. Navy in 2010,” Trump wrote, adding that he “commanded at every level, including the Naval Special Warfare Command. He has also served as a National Security Fellow at Harvard University. I have no doubt he will do a great job!”

The move is sure to generate more anxiety throughout the intelligence community, which the president has long been suspicious of, going back to his campaign for the Oval Office.

Coats became director of national intelligence in early 2017, but his tenure was always in question because of his differences with the president on foreign policy. He publicly broke with the president on important issues like Russian interference in the 2016 election and the actions of North Korea, Iran and Syria.

A former intelligence official told POLITICO that morale had suffered at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and that people were hoping Gordon, who began her career at the CIA in 1980, would get the job if and when Coats left.

The official said Gordon had been told that she would not be considered for the job of director, and that she would not be selected to serve as the acting director, which came as a surprise in intelligence circles.

The president’s latest move is also sure to annoy members of Congress, especially Democrats who think that Trump, after the confirmation of Attorney General William Barr, is trying to stack the intelligence and law enforcement communities with loyalists.

A former official in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said that “this is very dangerous if it is a way of politicizing intelligence by installing an acting DNI who will do the president’s bidding.”

House and Senate lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have long praised Gordon’s leadership and believed her deep experience could steady the nerves of the spy community, especially after Ratcliffe’s nomination cratered after five days.

“Sue Gordon’s retirement is a significant loss for our Intelligence Community,” Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.), who was adamant that Gordon take the reins when Coats left, said in a statement.

“In more than three decades of public service, Sue earned the respect and admiration of her colleagues with her patriotism and vision,” Burr added. “She has been a stalwart partner to the Senate Intelligence Committee, and I will miss her candor and deep knowledge of the issues. I look forward to seeing what new challenges she will tackle next.”

Burr also praised the new acting director. “I’ve known Admiral Maguire for some time and I have confidence in his ability to step into this critical role,” he said in a statement.

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Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the panel’s top Democrat, similarly called Gordon’s departure “a real loss to our intelligence community.”

He said that Trump “has repeatedly demonstrated that he is seemingly incapable of hearing facts that contradict his own views. … Yet in pushing out two dedicated public servants in as many weeks, once again the President has shown that he has no problem prioritizing his political ego even if it comes at the expense of our national security."

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, who also called for Gordon to be named acting director after Trump dropped Ratcliffe, said the dual retirements of Coats and Gordon “represent a devastating loss to the Intelligence Community, and the men and women who serve in it.”

“These losses of leadership, coupled with a president determined to weed out anyone who may dare disagree, represent one of the most challenging moments for the intelligence community,” he added, saying it would be “up to Congress” to ensure that the clandestine community provides “independent analysis and judgement to policy makers.”

A former captain of the Duke women’s basketball team, Gordon went on to serve for nearly three decades at the CIA before becoming the No. 2 at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, a combat support agency within the Defense Department. She was sworn in as the fifth principal deputy director of national intelligence in August 2017.

She sat down with POLITICO last year and spoke about the intelligence community’s relationship with a president who often disagreed with their professional assessments.

“Just like every president that I’ve seen, there are days that we please him, but most often than not we’re the people who depress him when we come in the room to tell him the things that are going on in the world,” she said. “I have never felt that he demanded we say something that we couldn’t say. Whether he agrees with it or not is a little immaterial. If he’s having a hard time using it, we work harder to make our information useful.”

The White House, meanwhile, is still searching for a candidate to be the intelligence community’s next leader.

Among those Trump is considering is former Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.), who previously served as the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. He was appointed U.S. ambassador to the Netherlands in July 2017 and has come under scrutiny for remarks he made about Muslims and for clashing with the Dutch press, in one instance labeling a journalist who asked about his past comments as “fake news.”

Fred Fleitz, a former CIA analyst who served as national security adviser John Bolton’s chief of staff, has also been discussed as a potential replacement as director of national intelligence..

Natasha Bertrand contributed reporting.