Threats, leaks and infighting: Pentagon chaos rattles Hegseth

Donald Trump has begun to ask people around him about Pete Hegseth’s performance, and the defence secretary is increasingly concerned at the possibility the President will fire him.

Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth is feeling increasingly vulnerable in his position. Picture: AFP.

Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth was rattled.

Word had leaked that he was planning a classified briefing for Elon Musk on China, a revelation that infuriated President Trump and raised alarms inside the Pentagon given Musk’s business ties to Beijing.

“I’ll hook you up to a f – – -g polygraph!” Hegseth shouted at Adm. Christopher Grady, the then-acting Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, according to two people familiar with the exchange. Hegseth demanded proof that Grady hadn’t leaked news of the March 21 briefing.

Grady was never subjected to a polygraph, and Hegseth would go on to accuse a number of other people for the leak, including Lt. Gen. Doug Sims, the Joint Staff director, who Hegseth also threatened with a polygraph test.

But for Hegseth, the episode marked a turning point in an already rocky tenure. Coming just days after revelations that the former Fox News host had shared sensitive military information in unsecured group chats, the leaks deepened his frustrations and eroded his trust in his close circle of advisers, the officials say.

Problems only snowballed from there. At least five political appointees have been fired or resigned, and Hegseth has said he is referring some of the aides for criminal investigation. Meanwhile, he is under investigation by the Pentagon’s inspector general for the alleged mishandling of classified information.

The Joint Staff declined to comment about the exchange, and the Pentagon didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte at the Pentagon. Picture; AP.

Hegseth’s anxiety only intensified after the leaks of Musk’s briefing, fuelled by a string of new revelations that he brought his wife to sensitive meetings, that the White House asked the Pentagon to develop military options for the Panama Canal, and that he shared sensitive information about U.S. strikes in Yemen on a second Signal chat that included his wife, brother, and personal lawyer.

Every new leak of sensitive Pentagon operations or planning induce new concerns and fears in Hegseth, a senior defence official said.

Trump, who in recent days has spoken with Hegseth on the phone and met with him in the White House, has indicated he will stand by the defence chief. He has praised him for “doing a great job,” and blamed “disgruntled employees” for the leaks. Still, Trump has begun to ask people around him about Hegseth’s performance, and his advisers have closely watched his recent media appearances.

On his end, Hegseth has become increasingly concerned about how Trump is perceiving the situation and the possibility of being fired, according to defence officials and people familiar with the Pentagon’s leadership. He has spent hours on the phone shoring up support outside the Pentagon, and was late to multiple meetings during his first trip to the Asia-Pacific region.

As questions have mounted about Hegseth’s political survival, he has backed the abrupt dismissal of key aides and longtime advisers over as-yet unproven allegations of leaking information. He has narrowed his inner circle, trusting a junior retiring Marine to serve as his top adviser. And despite close advisers’ counsel to appear calm and collected on camera, he has opted for a combative approach, confronting the media head-on and defiantly defending his leadership, the officials said.

“As you may have noticed, the media likes to call it chaos,” Hegseth said of the Pentagon turmoil in a speech at the U.S. Army War College in Pennsylvania on Wednesday. “We call it overdue.” Hegseth, 44 years old, runs a $800 billion-plus agency, which includes more than two million troops around the world. It is the largest military on the planet, and Trump has plans to boost its budget to $1 trillion.

Pentagon officials said this week they were no longer sure who they should be working with inside Hegseth’s team because of what one described as the “revolving door” of staffers. Hegseth sees his videos and social-media posts, in which he speaks directly to the public or works out alongside troops, as appealing to the current force and the MAGA base.

The overlapping crises have left Hegseth’s front office without a chief of staff, deputy chief of staff, or senior adviser. But while he has echoed his boss in blaming the “deep state” and entrenched bureaucrats for the leaks – alleging they wanted to sabotage his agenda – the high-profile firings targeted longtime aides who had known him for years and guided him through his bruising confirmation before following him into the Pentagon.

Hegseth, who had served as major in the Army National Guard, came into the job with the least experience of any previous defence chief and a deep distrust of the department he now leads. Defence officials had hoped that he would lean on career officials even as he pursued a mandate from Trump to shake up the building.

Instead, he quickly let go of several longtime support staff for the top Pentagon leaders, down to the seasoned scheduler in the front office. He also fired the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Chief of Naval Operations and several other generals and admirals without saying why.

Some staffers didn’t go quietly.

In a text exchange seen by the Journal, Colin Carroll, the ousted chief of staff to Deputy Defence Secretary Stephen Feinberg, labelled the person he blamed for his dismissal, Hegseth’s then-chief of staff Joe Kasper, “a f – – g coward.” One fired adviser, Dan Caldwell, on Monday denied being the source of the leaks and alleged the investigation had been “weaponized” against the fired employees. “The entire Department of Defence cannot continue to be consumed by chaos,” he told Tucker Carlson in an interview. Caldwell, who had worked with Hegseth at a private veterans group, said he didn’t know why he had been fired or what time of investigation the Pentagon was conducting.

Republican staffers on the Hill are frustrated, a congressional aide said, because Caldwell and several of the other fired advisers had been their main points of contact for Hegseth. At least one Republican senator has publicly called for Hegseth to surround himself with more experienced staffers.

Hegseth denied again on Tuesday that he had shared classified information or war plans, characterising the chat that included his family as “informal, unclassified coordinations for media coordination and other things.”

In private meetings with top commanders, some defence officials described Hegseth as polite and appreciative in the early days of his tenure, leading several to think they could work with him. They said he had the same disarming nature when he called generals, admirals, and other top defence officials to let them know they had been relieved.

Several foreign officials have also found Hegseth unexpectedly affable and agreeable in closed-door meetings – a contrast to his aggressive public persona. Several countries, including Panama, have sought to enlist what they call Trump’s “golden boy” to their cause, finding him a much more effective advocate for their interests than other officials like Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

But they also describe a short-staffed team that has only gotten smaller in recent days. Marine Col. Ricky Buria, a military assistant to Hegseth, has recently sought to retire from the military to become Hegseth’s newest aide, a defence official said, the first in what will likely be a new wave of advisers. The Pentagon is also planning to move Sean Parnell, the spokesman and a longtime friend of Hegseth, to be a part of the secretary’s staff.

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