100-plus spies fired after NSA internal chat board used for kinky sex talk

More than 100 US spies have been fired, and their security clearance revoked, after an internal NSA messaging system was used by staff to chat about their sex lives.

After the NSA – the National Security Agency, that is, not the other meaning – confirmed on state media it was "aware of posts that appear to show inappropriate discussions" by intelligence community employees and that "investigations to address this misuse of government systems are ongoing," Trump's Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard announced more than 100 people had since been terminated.

The messaging app in question is the NSA's Intelink, a secure intranet service used by various American military and intelligence teams to share information, including top secret and classified threat intel.

Federal workers said to have been involved in the NSFW Intelink chatter included personnel at the NSA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and US Naval Intelligence.

"There are over 100 people from across the intelligence community that contributed to and participated in … what is really just an egregious violation of trust," Gabbard told Fox News commentator Jesse Watters Tuesday. "What to speak of, like basic rules and standards around professionalism."

The NSA did not immediately respond to The Register's inquiries. We will update this story if and when we receive a response.

• Trump scrubs all mention of DEI, gender, climate change from federal websites
• Trump nukes 60 years of anti-discrimination rules for federal contractors
• Trump's DoD CISO pick previously faced security clearance suspension
• Incoming deputy boss of Homeland Security says America's top cyber-agency needs to be reined in

Writer and activist Christopher Rufo, working with Hannah Grossman of conservative think-tank the Manhattan Institute, on Monday said they had obtained chat logs from the "NSA's secret transgender sex chatroom" on Intelink and shared samples of the conversations via Elon Musk's X. 

"The servers are supposed to be used for government work, but gender activists have hijacked at least two channels — LBTQA and IC_Pride_TWG — to discuss fetishes, kink, and sex, all legitimized as 'DEI,'" Rufo thundered. "These trans employees discuss hair removal, estrogen treatments, and breast implants."

For the sake of journalistic scrutiny, El Reg pored over the sample logs, and what we've seen appears to be NSFW personal discussion of sex lives and preferences, the kind we reckon would be harmless among friends but would be career-limiting in plenty of professional settings, regardless of sexual orientation or gender. Think polycules, partners, penetration, and so on.

The argument made is that the only reason these staffers were allowed to discuss all this intimate stuff on work systems is because it fell under the DEI umbrella of protection. For now we're going to have to assume non-LGBTQIA workers weren't also having the same sort of naughty conversations on Intelink; if they were, one would hope they would be just as much in the firing line.

That said, Intelink has a history of being at least somewhat problematic. According to federal technology contractor Dan Gilmore, by late 2020, during the first Trump term, "hate speech was running rampant" on the internal communication service's collection of applications.

"I’m not being hyperbolic," he said in 2022. "Racist, homophobic, transphobic, Islamaphobic, and misogynistic speech was being posted in many of our applications ... On top of that, there were many employees at CIA, DIA, NSA, and other IC agencies that openly stated that the January 6th terrorist attack on our Capitol was justified."

Fast forward to 2025, and DEI – diversity, equity, and inclusion – initiatives and gender identity in particular are in the reinstalled Trump administration's cross-hairs.

During his first few weeks back in office, the President signed a slew of executive orders that ended anti-discrimination rules related to government contractors' hiring, training, and employment practices, and rolled back federal DEI efforts, scrubbing all mention of DEI and gender from federal websites. ®