Anne Neuberger’s ascent to national security eminence has been a steady, impressive climb. Her eight-year tour through the National Security Agency has culminated in a powerful position in President Joe Biden’s National Security Council, where she helps guide national cybersecurity policy.

Since 2007, Neuberger’s rapid rise through some of the most secretive and consequential components of the US global surveillance machinery earned her a reputation as a hyper-capable operator where the government most needs one.

While her work has earned public plaudits, The Intercept learned Neuberger’s tenure at the NSA triggered a 2014 internal investigation by the agency’s inspector general following allegations that she created a hostile workplace by inappropriately berating, undermining and alienating her colleagues.

In 2015, the inspector general’s report found that there was not enough evidence to sustain allegations that Neuberger fostered a hostile work environment, but it did conclude that she violated NSA policy by disrespecting colleagues.

In the first of a series of letters to the inspector general in advance of the 2015 report, Neuberger denied the allegations against her. “I strongly disagree with the tentative conclusions of the OIG inquiry (that I sometimes failed to exercise courtesy and respect in dealing with fellow workers),” she wrote. “I firmly believe that I treated everyone with the respect and courtesy they deserved.”

Neuberger argued the complaints and the investigation reflected gender bias in a department with employees resentful of being led by a woman – especially one, agency officials pointed out in the report, tasked with curbing politically risky programmes in the wake of scandals sparked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

Almost a decade later, a new allegation of misconduct against Neuberger emerged from the White House, The Intercept’s investigation found. The allegation fit a pattern of behaviour established in the inspector general’s findings, this time involving an incident that took place in full view of a visiting delegation from a foreign ally.

The 2015 NSA inspector general’s report and details of the recent complaint – neither of which have been previously reported – not only complicate Neuberger’s public national security star persona, but also offer further evidence of serious discord at the top of American cybersecurity policy.

Beyond revealing Neuberger’s alleged interpersonal and managerial shortcomings, the inspector general’s report provides a rare, unflattering self-examination of the post-Snowden NSA as an HR nightmare filled with competing egos, long-standing rivalries, mutual distrust and ample pettiness.

“We need an absolutely efficient, agile, and well-integrated leadership team at the White House and in the major federal agencies, and we don’t have that.”

Attempts to form a cohesive cyber-defence policy at a national scale in the US have long been undermined by turf wars, with multiple agencies, offices and even branches of government laying claim to overlapping responsibilities. With the National Security Council’s privileged proximity to the president himself, discord within the NSC could particularly jeopardise the country’s ability to nimbly recognise and counter emerging and existing digital threats – a concern echoed by multiple sources with whom The Intercept spoke.

“We recognise that we’re extremely vulnerable; our adversaries are increasing their capabilities month over month,” a former senior US cybersecurity official told The Intercept, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the matter. The former official cited the intertwined work of offices like the national cyber director and agencies such as the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

“We need an absolutely efficient, agile and well-integrated leadership team at the White House and in the major federal agencies and we don’t have that. NSC, NCD, NSA and CISA need to operate in a well-integrated manner, and this kind of friction introduces risk and consequences for national security of our critical infrastructure systems. This matters.”

The allegations uncovered by The Intercept dovetail with a recent Bloomberg article indicating Neuberger’s management style was largely to blame for the February resignation of Chris Inglis, the first US national cyber director and a former NSA deputy director broadly liked by his peers.

According to Bloomberg, Inglis said Neuberger withheld information and undermined him as he tried to set the direction of the country’s cybersecurity strategy.

“Chris is deeply thoughtful and smart. He and I disagreed on encryption and surveillance issues, but he always argued with integrity,” Tufts University professor Susan Landau, a scholar of cybersecurity policy, told The Intercept. “I was really sorry to see him leave the national cybersecurity director position.”

Almost eight years after the NSA investigation into Neuberger in the autumn of 2022, a senior official with CISA filed a complaint about Neuberger, according to three sources familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The employee alleged Neuberger, by then on detail to the National Security Council, pointed at the door and ordered her out like a child during a meeting with US cybersecurity colleagues and a delegation of visiting Indian government officials.

The sources conveyed dismay about the encounter, particularly because of the strategic partnership between the US and India on cybersecurity issues. CISA declined to comment on the record for this story. Neuberger and the White House did not respond to inquiries.

Before Neuberger became a Biden-era staple of the think-tank and media conference circuit, she was a senior official at the NSA, where she ran an office collaborating with the American private sector. Several years into her career, in 2014, the NSA investigated Neuberger, by then its chief risk officer, to determine whether she had fostered a hostile work environment.

The allegations are detailed in a 54-page report, released internally in June 2015 by the agency’s Office of the Inspector General. The report outlines numerous complaints that Neuberger verbally abused and undermined her colleagues, according to a partially redacted copy provided to The Intercept through a Freedom of Information Act request. The report had previously been released by the NSA following a FOIA lawsuit by journalist Jason Leopold.

Complainants made repeated allegations ranging from Neuberger berating co-workers to blocking colleagues from accessing important information. Although her name is redacted throughout, a source familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity confirmed Neuberger was the subject of the report. The NSA declined to comment.

The NSA inspector general’s office did not find a “preponderance of evidence” to support the hostile workplace claims, but the report noted that Neuberger violated NSA policy because she “failed to exercise courtesy and respect in dealings with fellow workers.” The report said her “conduct had a negative impact on the work environment and individuals (for example, people were sometimes left feeling ‘savaged’ and ‘practically in tears,’ shaking and afraid, skittish and scared).”

Many of the testimonies in the report describe the post-Snowden NSA of 2014 in a state of disarray. In 2013, after Snowden blew the whistle on the reach and power of the NSA’s secret surveillance, the agency was embarrassed by outrage from foreign allies and Americans alike; calls for reforms grew in Washington.

In the report the following year, Neuberger is criticised for “risk aversion” – what her superiors told the inspector general were moves to protect the NSA from “political risk.”

Testimony from Richard Ledgett, NSA deputy director at the time, suggests that Neuberger’s caution arose from his and other top officials’ orders. “NSA must ensure that anything that is questioned by the public is able to be fully explained,” the inspector general’s report on Ledgett’s testimony says. There were “cowboys” at the agency, Ledgett said and the orders would have rankled some NSA veterans. (Ledgett did not respond to a request for comment.)

Whatever Neuberger’s contribution to the dysfunction, the report sheds light on painfully low morale and general aimlessness among agency staff in the wake of Snowden’s disclosures.

“I don’t know what our mission is anymore to be honest,” one employee complained in the report. For Neuberger’s defenders cited in the report, this generally dismal post-Snowden mood was exculpatory evidence concerning her conduct. One NSA employee’s sworn testimony described a redacted office within the agency as a “cesspool of misery and losers, a dead weight environment,” and argued those who accused Neuberger of abusive behaviour “lack marketable skills and would have a hard time being gainfully employed elsewhere.”

Far from being a managerial menace, Neuberger’s defenders argue, she was the victim of a gendered “mutiny” by a cadre of bitter NSA men who resented her meteoric rise and efforts to balance the agency’s risk. According to one anonymous account reported by the inspector general, Neuberger was told by a co-worker that “there was a ‘cabal,’ a group of white men that were resistant to [Neuberger] and did not like the changes she was making.”

A separate high-ranking official who also used the word “cabal” described it as a “‘secret society’ that went to the [deputy director] to get [Neuberger] fired.” The cabal’s efforts culminated in what would come to be known inside the NSA as the “mutiny letter.” The emailed catalogue of grievances against Neuberger was sent to Teresa Shea, who at the time ran the agency’s much-vaunted Signals Intelligence Directorate, the office that oversees the agency’s global spying efforts, and later forwarded to Ledgett, then NSA deputy director.

• The Intercept report