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As recriminations fly among Biden administration officials over who bungled the Afghanistan withdrawal, some are questioning the responsibility of Russell Travers, who was fired by the Trump administration as acting head of the National Counterterrorism Center and subsequently rehired by President Joe Biden to lead the interagency process on the evacuation operation.
In March 2020, then-Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell fired Travers as acting head of the NCTC as part of the Trump administration’s efforts to streamline a bloated agency and remove ineffective individuals.
At the time, the move was decried by anonymous former officials as a “purge” of career professionals, as the Washington Post reported. “The removals have shocked Travers’s colleagues, who are upset at the treatment of someone so well-regarded, according to the two former officials,” the Post reported.
Travers would later in October 2020 sign a letter declaring the belief that the disclosure of emails found on Hunter Biden’s laptop “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”
In January, Biden rehired Travers as deputy homeland security adviser at the National Security Council to go after domestic extremists.
In June, Biden promoted Travers to senior deputy homeland security adviser at the NSC and put him in charge of evacuating Afghan special immigrant visa (SIV) applicants to the U.S., according to Politico.