“I know exactly what I’m doing,” Hegseth told reporters Tuesday.
By Wednesday, however, other defense officials were increasingly skeptical of that, especially after The Atlantic magazine revealed the details that Hegseth shared in the Signal chat about the pending strike on Houthi rebels in Yemen, including the timing and types of aircraft.
“It is safe to say that anybody in uniform would be court-martialed for this,” a defense official told CNN. “My most junior analysts know not to do this.”
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But former national security and intelligence officials say it’s Hegseth who looks particularly bad given the level of detail he shared.
“The egregious actor here is Hegseth,” said one former senior intelligence official. “He’s in the bullseye now because he puts all this out on a Signal chat.”
Interviews with multiple current and former national security officials this week, including career military and civilian officials, reflect growing concerns about Hegseth’s leadership at the Pentagon.
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Many of his orders are verbal and based on gut instinct rather than a deliberative, multi-layered process, people familiar with his methods said.
“He’s a TV personality,” one of the sources said. “[A general officer] makes a recommendation, and he’s like, ‘Yeah, yeah, go do it.’ [Former Defense Secretary] Lloyd Austin would never be like, ‘Yeah, yeah, go do it.’
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Several DoD officials told CNN that Hegseth seems more preoccupied with appearances than with substance—wanting to appear more “lethal” than his predecessor and pulling resources from elsewhere in DoD to achieve that image.
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“Of all the things they could be doing, the places they’re putting their focuses on first are really things that just don’t matter … This was literally a waste of our time,” a defense official told CNN of the content purge. “This does absolutely nothing to make us stronger, more lethal, better prepared.”
And Hegseth is outranked and outclassed by his predecessors:
Hegseth ultimately rose to the rank of Major before leaving the National Guard in 2021, and has the least experience of any Senate-confirmed defense secretary in recent history.
His immediate predecessor Austin, a four-star general, served for 41 years and commanded US Central Command; former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper served as the Secretary of the Army before being confirmed as SecDef; and former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, also a 40-year veteran and four-star general, commanded US Central Command as well before being confirmed as Trump’s first secretary of defense.
Concerns about Hegseth’s judgment come roaring back after group chat scandal