Pentagon and intelligence community chiefs have urged President Obama to remove the head of the NSA

The heads of the Pentagon and the nation’s intelligence community have recommended to President Barack Obama that the director of the National Security Agency, Adm. Michael Rogers, be removed. The recommendation, delivered to the White House on Oct 2016, was made by Defense Secretary Ashton Carter and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper Jr, according to several US officials familiar with the matter.

Action has been delayed, some administration officials said, because relieving Adm. Rogers of his duties is tied to another controversial recommendation: to create separate chains of command at the NSA and the military’s cyberwarfare unit, a recommendation by Clapper and Carter that has been stalled because of other issues. The news comes as Adm. Rogers is being considered by President-elect Donald Trump to be his nominee for director of national intelligence to replace Clapper as the official who oversees all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies. In a move apparently unprecedented for a military officer, Adm. Rogers, without notifying superiors, traveled to New York to meet with Trump at Trump Tower. That caused consternation at senior levels of the administration, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal personnel matters.