NSA Director General Keith Alexander will retire in next six months

(UPI) -- National Security Agency Director General Keith Alexander and deputy John “Chris” Inglis will both be retiring in the coming months.

Alexander has spent eight years leading the NSA although much about his tenure is still unknown. News about his retirement comes months after infamous NSA security leaker Edward Snowden released thousands of classified documents revealing that the agency had been conducting secret surveillance programs monitoring the online activities of U.S. citizens and foreign targets.

Inglis will retire by the end of this year and Alexander will leave no later than March or April 2014. Both men are leaving their positions voluntarily and their replacements have not been found as of yet, according to reports.

Vice Admiral Michael Rogers, the commander of the US Navy’s 10th Fleet and US Fleet Cyber Command, could be a potential replacement for Alexander. An unnamed official described Rogers as “a good leader, very insightful and well thought of within the community.”

Despite the “sensationalized” reporting about the NSA’s surveillance tactics, Alexander has remained steadfast in his support of the agency’s tactics.

“I believe it is in the nation’s best interest to put all the phone records into a lockbox that we can search when the nation needs to do it, yes,” Alexander said in response to a question about whether the NSA seeks to store “the phone records of all Americans”

A Wired magazine profile said Alexander built the NSA “over the past eight years by insisting that the US’s inherent vulnerability to digital attack requires him to amass more and more authority over the data zipping around the globe.”