Before setting foot in the Pentagon, Pete Hegseth had something to prove. He was confirmed as defense secretary by the narrowest vote margin in modern history, 51-to-50, after facing withering allegations about excessive drinking, sexual assault and the lack of relevant experience to lead the federal government’s largest agency.
But as we’ve seen in the new Trump era, personal missteps and lack of experience can become bona fides for one’s potential as a bureaucratic change agent. And so it was with Mr. Hegseth, the former Fox News host and Army National Guard major, who quickly got to work cultivating the image of a common soldier shaking up the Pentagon and pushing military brass to get back to basics.
Last week’s shocking report that Mr. Hegseth shared sensitive information about a yet-to-be-launched air attack in Yemen on an unclassified messaging app is now straining the limits of his credibility as an everyman — and his fitness to lead the American military’s 2.1 million service members.
Americans stationed across the globe know if they violate similar security protocols, they can expect swift reprimand, the loss of security clearance and perhaps a court-martial. In his first departmentwide message on Jan. 25, Mr. Hegseth told troops he was a firm believer in holding everyone to account. “Our standards will be high, uncompromising, and clear,” he wrote. Now those same operational security standards don’t appear to apply to him. What message is sent to American troops if that imbalance continues?
Mr. Hegseth, so far, has insisted he didn’t do anything wrong in the ordeal, which began March 24 after The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg revealed he had been inadvertently added to a Signal chat by Michael Waltz, President Trump’s national security adviser. The text exchange Mr. Goldberg published two days later, which was among senior Trump administration national security officials — all of them political, none military — discussed preparations for a military operation in Yemen. The messages show that Mr. Hegseth, unprompted, texted out the types of aircraft that would be used and the timing of the airstrikes on Houthi militia targets, hours before the mission was set to begin.
Mr. Hegseth has maintained that information was not secret, but a quick look at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s 2014 guide on classified material reveals otherwise, stating “information providing indication or advance warning that the U.S. or its allies are preparing an attack” is considered top-secret. That assessment appears straightforward, so why does Mr. Hegseth, or anyone else, claim the texted plans weren’t classified?
For now, the affair raises profound questions about whether Mr. Hegseth can handle an actual national security crisis, after he’s managed to blunder into such a major unforced error.
Why did Mr. Hegseth, or his fellow officials, fail to notice a stranger on the text chain? Even if we make allowances for that mistake, he committed a more novice error: Providing minutiae on an air attack to the most senior officials in the federal government via text message is as unnecessary as it is reckless. To some current and former military officers who read through the conversation, Mr. Hegseth appeared to be acting more like a junior officer boasting to superiors than the secretary in charge of overseeing the mission’s execution.
It’s difficult to imagine that two of his recent predecessors, Jim Mattis and Lloyd J. Austin III, who retired six ranks above Mr. Hegseth as four-star generals, would have copy and pasted such details onto a publicly available app. It’s not that either man flawlessly executed the role of defense secretary, but at least they were accountable. Mr. Austin was widely criticized for failing to immediately disclose his cancer surgery and hospitalization to President Biden and other officials during his tenure. When the information became public, he took responsibility and fielded questions about it from the media at the Pentagon for 30 minutes. His department embarked on a 30-day review, and later published an extensive inspector general’s report.
Mr. Hegseth, so far, hasn’t shown that he is willing to admit any fault. Instead, he has taken a defiant tone, attacking Mr. Goldberg’s credibility and arguing that “nobody was texting war plans.” He said later, “All I would say is the strikes against the Houthis that night were devastatingly effective, and I’m incredibly proud of the courage and skill of the troops.”
Most of the deliberations inside the Trump administration have focused on Mr. Waltz, who, rather than the defense secretary, created the problem by starting the chat. “Hegseth is doing a great job,” Mr. Trump told reporters last Wednesday in the Oval Office. “He had nothing to do with this.”
Mr. Hegseth’s aides have used social media to mount a defense of their boss. Various arrays of photos and videos were published under Pentagon accounts featuring Mr. Hegseth laughing, shaking hands and exercising with American service members. “Out-of-touch DC beltway elites clearly live in an alternate reality,” Sean Parnell, the chief Pentagon spokesman, wrote on X. “Anyone who watches Secretary Hegseth’s interactions with our troops can see he’s been a transformational leader for the Department of Defense & a fierce advocate for every man & woman in uniform.”
Mr. Hegseth has made other errors. He wasted millions of dollars for military deportation flights and detention operations at Guantánamo Bay for a few hundred detainees — only for them to be flown elsewhere soon after. In February, he delivered a ham-fisted speech in Brussels that left Ukraine weaker at the negotiating table with Russia — statements that Vice President JD Vance had to walk back a day later. Last month, the defense department nearly gave Elon Musk a classified briefing on a potential war against China before the briefing was called off at the last minute.
Recent reporting from The Associated Press questions whether Mr. Hegseth has violated a federal nepotism law because his brother and his traveling partner, Philip Hegseth, works as a liaison officer to the Defense Department for the Department of Homeland Security. The 1967 law states that government officials “may not appoint, employ, promote, advance” relatives to any civilian position within an agency over which they exercise control. The AP article came the same day as a Wall Street Journal report that said Mr. Hegseth brought his wife to two sensitive meetings with foreign military officials at the Pentagon and in Brussels. (Mr. Parnell said Philip Hegseth’s position was valid and denied the allegations about the secretary’s wife.)
These may be stumbles, but from a military perspective, none are as clear cut as those Signal chat logs. Mr. Hegseth must, at the very least, own up to his mistake. He’s already seen his first trip as secretary through the Asia-Pacific region overshadowed by calls for accountability. He now risks losing the trust of the military responsible for life-and-death missions every day — the very troops Mr. Hegseth affectionately calls his “fellow soldiers.”
W.J. Hennigan writes about national security issues for Opinion from Washington. He has reported from more than two dozen countries, covering war, the arms trade and the lives of U.S. service members.
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