British Prime Minister Keir Starmer fired the most senior civil servant in the Foreign Office for failing to disclose that former ambassador to the United States Peter Mandelson failed his security check. Pool Photo by Betty Laura Zapata/EPA
April 17 (UPI) — British Prime Minister Keir Starmer fired the most senior civil servant in the Foreign Office for failing to disclose that former ambassador to the United States Peter Mandelson failed his security check.
Starmer called the official, Olly Robbins, on Thursday and informed him that he had lost confidence in him, as did Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper. Starmer said Friday that he was “absolutely furious.”
“I was not told that he failed security vetting,” Starmer said Friday in Paris. “No minister was told that he failed security vetting. Number 10 wasn’t told that he failed security vetting.”
Mandelson was named ambassador to the United States in December 2024 and assumed the role in February 2025.
He was fired in September after the U.S. House Oversight Committee released a batch of files from the investigation into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein which included correspondence between Epstein and Mandelson.
The British government said Thursday that Starmer was unaware Mandelson had failed the security vetting process and the Foreign Office defied the recommendation of the Cabinet Office to allow him to assume the ambassador role.
Foreign Affairs select committee chairwoman Emily Thornberry has requested that Robbins speak before the committee on Tuesday about Mandelson. Robbins has been questioned by members of parliament about the Mandelson security clearance incident once before.
Thornberry said members of parliament have only been told “half the story.”
“Perhaps he can tell us — was it his own idea or was he being leant on elsewhere,” Thornberry said of Robbins not alerting of Mandelson’s vetting failure. “Or was he, being a civil servant, was he getting direction from elsewhere, and if so, by whom?”
Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. speaks during a House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies hearing on the budget for the Department of Health and Human Services in the Rayburn House Office Building near the U.S. Capitol on Thursday. Photo by Bonnie Cash/UPI | License Photo
WASHINGTON — Three fired FBI agents sued on Tuesday to try to get their jobs back, saying in a class-action lawsuit that they were illegally punished for their participation in an investigation into President Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat.
The federal lawsuit adds to the mounting list of court challenges to a personnel purge by FBI Director Kash Patel that over the last year has resulted in the ousters of dozens of agents, either because of their involvement in investigations related to Trump or because they were perceived as insufficiently loyal to the Republican president’s agenda.
The lawsuit in federal court in Washington was technically filed on behalf of just three agents but may have much broader implications given that its request for class-action status could open the door for agents fired since the start of the Trump administration to get their jobs back.
The three agents — Michelle Ball, Jamie Garman and Blaire Toleman — were fired last October and November in what they say was a “retribution campaign” targeting them for their work on the investigation into Trump. The agents had between eight and 14 years of “exemplary and unblemished” service in the FBI and expected to spend the remainder of their careers at the bureau but were abruptly fired without cause and without being given a chance to respond, the lawsuit says.
“Serving the American people as FBI agents was the highest honor of our lives,” they said in a statement. “We took an oath to uphold the Constitution, followed the facts wherever they led and never compromised our integrity. Our removal from federal service — without due process and based on a false perception of political bias — is a profound injustice that raises serious concerns about political interference in federal law enforcement.”
Trump’s indictment
The investigation the agents worked on culminated in a 2023 indictment from special counsel Jack Smith that accused Trump of illegally scheming to undo the results of the presidential election he lost to Democrat Joe Biden in 2020. Smith ultimately abandoned that case, along with a separate one accusing Trump of illegally retaining classified records at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla., after Trump won back the White House in 2024, citing Justice Department legal opinions that prohibit the federal indictments of sitting presidents.
The lawsuit notes that the firings followed the release by Sen. Chuck Grassley, the Republican chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, of documents about the election investigation — known as Arctic Frost — that he said had come from within the FBI. Those records included files showing that Smith’s team had subpoenaed several days of phone records of some Republican lawmakers, an investigative step that angered Trump allies inside Congress.
The complaint names as defendants Patel and Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi, accusing them of having orchestrated the firings despite being “personally embroiled” either as witnesses or attorneys in some of the legal troubles Trump has faced.
Patel, for instance, was subpoenaed to appear before a federal grand jury investigating Trump’s retention of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago and had his phone records subpoenaed, while Bondi was part of the legal team that represented Trump at his first impeachment trial, which resulted in his acquittal.
“And now, by virtue of presidential appointment to the pinnacle of federal law enforcement, Defendants are abusing their positions to claim victories that eluded them on the merits,” the lawsuit states.
Spokespeople for the FBI and the Justice Department declined to comment on the ongoing litigation. Patel and Bondi have said the fired agents and prosecutors who worked on Smith’s team were responsible for weaponizing federal law enforcement, a claim that was also asserted in their termination letters but that the plaintiffs call defamatory and baseless.
Fired agents call for ‘fundamental constitutional protections’
Dan Eisenberg, a lawyer for the agents, said in a statement that his clients were fired without any investigation, notice of charges or chance to be heard.
“This lawsuit seeks to reaffirm fundamental constitutional protections for FBI employees, ensuring they can perform their duties without fear or favor. We all benefit when law enforcement officers’ only loyalty is to facts and the truth,” said Eisenberg, who is with the firm of Emery Celli Brinckerhoff Abady Ward & Maazel.
The lawsuit asks for the agents to be reinstated to their positions and for a court declaration affirming that their rights had been violated. It also seeks to represent a class of at least 50 agents who have been terminated since Jan. 20, 2025, or will be. Those agents also stand to recover their jobs in the event the case is successful and the requested class-action status is granted.
Others have been fired too
Other fired employees who have sued include agents who were photographed kneeling during a racial justice protest in 2020; an agent trainee who displayed an LGBTQ+ flag at his workspace; and a group of senior officials, including the former acting director of the FBI, who were terminated last summer.
The firings have continued, with Patel last month pushing out a group of agents in the Washington field office who had been involved in investigating Trump’s hoarding of classified documents. Trump has insisted he was entitled to keep the documents when he left the White House and has claimed without evidence that he had declassified them.
One of themissiles firedreportedly failed in flight, while the other was intercepted by a US warship. The BBC understands the reports are accurate. There are doubts whether Iran has missiles which are capable of reaching Diego Garcia, which is about 2,350 miles from Iran.
A brief mention of the new railgun testing is included in a document highlighting achievements by the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Port Hueneme Division (NSWC PHD) in 2025. NSWC PHD, which is part of Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA), primarily operates from Port Hueneme in California, but it also maintains a detachment at White Sands. The U.S. Army manages the WSMR, which other branches of the U.S. military also use for a wide variety of research and development and test and evaluation activities.
The “WSD [White Sands Detachment] tested a railgun to collect critical information about high-velocity firing during a three-day campaign at White Sands Missile Range (WSMR) in New Mexico,” the year-in-review document says. “The testing in February [2025] was a joint effort between WSD and NSWC Dahlgren Division in Virginia and conducted for Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA)’s Joint Hypersonics Transition Office.”
A picture showing the prototype railgun being fired at WSMR, which was included in the NSWC PHD’s 2025 year-in-review document. USN
The railgun had originally been installed at a land-based test site belonging to NSWC Dahlgren in Virginia. The Navy announced in 2019 that it had moved the weapon to the WSMR. Plans to conduct at-sea testing of the weapon were repeatedly delayed and never materialized.
TWZ has reached out to NAVSEA for more information about the three-day test campaign last year and its objectives, and to ask whether any other live-fire testing of the prototype railgun at WSMR has occurred since 2021. That year, the Navy had announced its intention to close out work on the railgun and effectively put what was left of the program into storage.
“Railgun hardware will be realigned to maximize its sustainability to facilitate potential future use,” the Navy had said at the time. However, there do not appear to have been any disclosures of further testing of the weapon before now.
The video below shows the prototype railgun being fired at the test site in Virginia in 2016.
Electromagnetic Railgun – First shot at Dahlgren’s new Terminal Range
Without more information, it is hard to say what the purpose of the February 2025 tests may have been. That the testing was done in support of the Joint Hypersonics Transition Office (JHTO) could point to the railgun having been used for work unrelated to the weapon itself. Established in 2020, the JHTO is broadly tasked to facilitate the development of new hypersonic technologies and help transition that work into formats that could lead to operational capabilities. As a pure test asset, the railgun might offer an additional way to launch suitably sized payloads at extremely high speeds, but there are other ways available to do that kind of work, and it is not clear that using the weapon in this way makes sense. The U.S. military has been working to expand various aspects of its hypersonic test infrastructure, in general, in recent years amid a surge in new development efforts in that space.
At the same time, as noted, the Trump class “battleship” effort, also known as BBG(X), has also now breathed new life into the prospect of an operational U.S. naval railgun. President Donald Trump rolled out plans for new large surface combatants, which are expected to displace around 35,000 tons and also be armed with a mix of missiles (including hypersonic types), traditional 5-inch guns, and laser directed energy weapons, as you can read more about here.
A rendering depicting a Trump class “battleship” firing various weapons, including a rail in a turret at the bow. USN
General Atomics – Multi-Mission Medium Range Railgun Weapon System [1080p]
Railguns, which use electromagnets rather than chemical propellants to fire their projectiles at very high velocities, have historically presented significant technological challenges. They have significant power and cooling requirements, especially if the intent is to be able to fire multiple shots in relatively rapid succession. This, in turn, has generally meant that railgun installations are physically bulky due to the need for large energy storage batteries and cooling systems. Firing projectiles at very high speeds at any kind of sustained rate also imparts significant wear on the barrel. A worn-out barrel reduces range and accuracy, and creates potential safety hazards.
At the same time, a practical operational electromagnetic railgun offers the promise of a very capable and flexible weapon that can be employed against a wide variety of targets at sea, on land, and even in the air, and do so at considerable range. This includes being able to intercept incoming threats, including ones that may themselves be moving at hypersonic speeds. A railgun also offers magazine depth and cost benefits compared to traditional surface-to-air and surface-to-surface missiles, given the smaller size and unit price of its rounds.
A U.S. Navy briefing slide from the service’s abortive railgun program showing how ships armed with the weapons (as well as conventional guns firing the same ammunition) could potentially engage a wide variety of aerial threats, including cruise missiles, as well as surface targets. USN
As an aside, just in the past year, Japan has announced significant progress with its naval railgun program, including the first known instance of a railgun mounted on a ship being fired at sea at a real target vessel. In 2024, it was reported that Japanese authorities had met with U.S. Navy representatives to discuss leveraging the latter’s previous railgun work, which raised the possibility of further collaboration in the future. Japan’s Acquisition Technology & Logistics Agency (ALTA) also has a formal agreement with the Franco-German Research Institute of Saint-Louis (ISL) to cooperate on the development of railgun-related technologies.
A composite image showing, at top left, a Japanese prototype railgun mounted on a test ship being fired during at-sea testing last year, as well as damage to the target vessel. ATLA
The ATLA video below shows previous live-fire testing of a prototype railgun at a facility on land.
The Chinese naval railgun that emerged in 2018. Chinese internet
Turkish electromagnetic railgun unveiled to experts – Anadolu Agency
If nothing else, the test firing of the Navy’s prototype railgun at the WSMR last year shows that it remains functional, at least to a degree, as the service now looks ahead to fielding an operational weapon of this type on the Trump class.
Special thanks to user @lfx160219 on X for bringing the railgun entry in the NSWC PHD 2025-year-in-review document to our attention.
