Intelligencer writer Kerry Howley reports Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth still has not come to terms with department “infighting over leaks, drugs, and socks.”
As Howley notes, Hegseth is known for “shut[ting] down the hallway so he could film himself and post,” sources told the Intelligencer.
“It was clear from the beginning which parts of the job Hegseth most enjoyed: working out, posting about working out, and discussing the imminent removal of trans service members,” Howley writes. “... He liked the word ‘lethality’ almost as much as he liked the word ‘warfighter.’"
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It’s the kind of behavior, she says, one might expect from a leader who uses words like “OPSEC” in a March 15 text to Marco Rubio, JD Vance national security adviser Mike Waltz, and — unbeknownst to him — Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg.
“We are currently clean on OPSEC,” Hegseth said in an unauthorized Signal chat on a smartphone with what hack artists call “a large attack surface.”
“Why would Pete Hegseth say this into the Signal group?” demanded independent security researcher Micah Lee. “I’ve put a lot of thought into this, and I think he was just trying to sound cool.”
And looking cool appears important to a leader who “posted pictures of himself mid-push-up, tattooed biceps taut in the effort, and videos of himself running among younger, uniformed men,” writes Howley.
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But between push-ups, Hegseth never quite pinched any alleged leakers plaguing his department, including anonymous officials who shared with the press military plans to “reclaim” the Panama Canal. Dan Caldwell, a Hegseth aide; Colin Carroll, chief of staff to Deputy Defense Secretary Stephen Feinberg; and Darin Selnick, Hegseth’s deputy chief of staff, were among four officials in Hegseth’s inner circle who were ousted. Hegseth’s former chief of staff, Joe Kasper, was also pushed out of the Pentagon following what insiders described as a vicious “turf war.”
Carroll, speaking to the Intelligencer, says there were steps missing that typically follow leak investigations. There was a marked lack of curiosity regarding the men’s personal belongings, for starters. Neither their devices or homes were searched, and there was little effort to prevent alleged leakers from accessing classified information. Carroll tells the Intelligencer he attended a high-level security briefing the very next morning.
“There are, I don’t know, seven people in the Department of Defense who get the president’s daily briefing,” said Carroll. “If someone thought I was f-----g leaking, maybe, I don’t know, stop that before they let me go?”
None were given a polygraph test, either. They were not taken into custody. The “leakers” were simply forced back into their quiet former lives. The worst Caldwell, Selnick, and Carroll appear to have caught is Hegseth blasting them on ‘Fox & Friends’ for “leaking to the very same reporters” Hegseth’s secondSignalgate scandal involving him, his wife and his brother.
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New York Magazine reports Hegseth “still does not have a chief of staff or a deputy chief of staff” — according to new information from the department’s enduring leaks, and “the department is having trouble hiring anyone with relevant experience.”
Read the full Intelligencer report at this link.