We got us a very unfunny joke for Secretary of Defense. Let me adjust that. There’s no doubt quite a lot of laughing going on among the foreign surveillance and espionage teams in Moscow and Beijing, and probably Tehran, Riyadh, New Delhi, and Islamabad. But elsewhere, a lot of grim headshaking.
U.S. allies of longstanding no longer have to deal only with Donald Trump’s sneering, incoherent anti-Europeanism and anti-NATOism, but now also the loose cannon causing chaos at the Pentagon—Pete Hegseth. He’s a lucky spy’s potential bonanza with his reckless sending of a look-at-these-details-of-the-attack-we’re-gonna-launch message via a breachable, officially unauthorized, commercial app, Signal. As we learned last week, he sent the same operational stuff via his personal cell phone. And as we learned two days ago, he also used an unsecured hookup to the internet to connect Signal to his personal laptop in his office.
But it’s not just his rookie treatment of these most elementary security matters that troubles many Pentagon observers. The “chaos” and “mess” there since Hegseth’s arrival on the job has led to considerable consternation among people whose consternation should constern us all.
This slightly re-edited essay was originally published at The Journal of Uncharted Blue Places.
You can also find me @meteorblades.bsky.social
Distrust almost certainly is rising abroad. What ally’s intelligence agency wants to work with the Pentagon now when casual group chats have apparently replaced loose lips? And when Americans with the highest security clearances are sharing classified material with people having no security clearance at all? If this self-described super-patriot warrior Hegseth had the slightest bit of self respect, if he truly cared about national security, he wouldn’t be calling journalists “hoaxsters” to defend himself against their reporting the truth of his disregard of basic security measures. He would have honored his own previous meritorious military service and resigned a month ago. But he’s instead chest-beating about “restoring” the war-fighting capacity of what has long been unarguably the most powerful military ever to exist and berating the media for supposedly making up stuff while poor, put-upon Pete is just doing his job.
So, yes, it’s been a no-brainer for weeks that the secretary should most definitely resign. However, there’s some other folks who should go too. Start with Roger Wicker, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, followed by every Republican on it. They knew that, best case scenario, Hegseth would be incompetent for the job by virtue of inexperience. They recommended him anyway. What we’ve been getting so far ain’t best case. And the outcome of the next mistake he makes because of his inexperience (or arrogance) could be a lot worse than merely cracking some smiles among Russian or Chinese spies.
But let me summarize how we got here if you’ve somehow missed it.
Hegseth the brave soldier is a deeply unqualified, organizationally inexperienced, anti-feminist, white supremacist that tough-guy-enamored Trump and Senate Republicans put in charge of overseeing the largest, most powerful, most lethal, and most well-funded entity on planet Earth. What happens at the Pentagon affects, in big ways and small, every country on Earth. We can talk about the blessings and curses of that particular geopolitical fact another time. For now the matter is our own national security. It’s not about whether it’s a good or bad or imperial idea for the United States to be bombing the Houthis in Yemen. Or whether a particular air strike there was a “success.” Those are discussions for another day.
The matter here is Spycraft 101. Hegseth has failed it miserably. If you want the short version in song, here ya go, three minutes worth:
I don’t know if Hegseth made personal phone calls or texts home when in his younger days he was under fire in Iraq or Afghanistan. That certainly wouldn’t have been smart. But the foreign adversaries he faced weren’t capable of or interested in intercepting a mere captain’s chats amid exploding IEDs and small arms fire.
Today is different. As President Barack Obama’s foreign policy adviser Susan Rice said in a recent MSNBC interview, getting the ability to tap into a U.S. Secretary of Defense’s phone is the 4th or 5th most valuable prize in spydom.
As we’ve found out in the past few days, besides having sent classified operational information of a coming air strike via Signal (a message which mistakenly reached The Atlantic’s editor), Hegseth also sent the same information intentionally to kin and pals via his unsecured private cell phone. A phone whose (verified) number is all over the internet, as Der Spiegel and The New York Times discovered. To be clear, Signal encrypts messages during transmission. But knowing a phone number means over-the-wire malware can be installed that allows an adversary (or ally) to read messages at their origin or destination where they are not encrypted. This doesn’t mean they did so with Hegseth’s messages, but they could have.
In an interview with the Times’s Pentagon reporter Helene Cooper, Mike Casey, the former director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, said, “There’s zero percent chance that someone hasn’t tried to install Pegasus or some other spyware on his phone.” Glenn S. Gerstell, a former general counsel for the National Security Agency, told Cooper, “If you use your phone for just ordinary daily activities, you are leaving a highly, highly visible digital pathway that even a moderately sophisticated person, let alone a nefarious actor, can follow.”
Which is why you Don’t. Use. Your. Unsecured. Personal. Phone. for doing your job. Hegseth is either an idiot or intentionally violated what he knew to be a bad idea. Or both. We know he was warned that using Signal was a bad idea. So his intentionality is a given.
In the MSNBC interview, Rice pointed out that in any other administration a Secretary of Defense who had done as Hegseth did and lied about it would have been expected to resign instantly, with grave apologies, or been fired after a few hours of impatient presidential foot-tapping. In 2016, Hegseth himself prescribed the proper punishments:
Trump, a guy who usually enjoys firing people, has continued to stick up for Hegseth and so far succeeded in keeping party leaders from publicly doing what they should. Supposedly there’s been a month’s worth of pressure by “some Republicans” to get Hegseth out, but if this actually is the case, it hasn’t budged the president, according to anonymous sources. Loyalty reigns. Until it doesn’t. Trump may come around on Hegseth if the political fallout becomes too much. That could be today, tomorrow or next month.
Meanwhile, as can be seen in Amy Zimet’s report at Common Dreams, some support for Hegseth borders on idolatry. She cites the bizarre, war gamer-like bravado from Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin, the enrolled Cherokee who only talks about being Native when in Washington, never in his home state:
"I will lead the breach. I will lay down cover fire. I will take the high ground. I’ll expose myself to enemy fire," he screeched. "We must bring back integrity, focus, and put the Warfighter first...I stand with Pete Hegseth." Sighed Josh Marshall: "They're just thirsty as fuck." Many noted in response that Mullin is a plumber. "YOU'RE A FUCKING PLUMBER. YOU'VE NEVER SERVED," wrote one. "You could have but you didn't. We had the longest war in US history and you sat that shit out (but) now you want to be a big tough guy for the idiot who can't keep a secret. Go clear a drain of your own bullshit."
Mullin is one of the 14 Republicans on the Senate Armed Forces Committee. Knowing what they (allegedly) know about the complexity and power and opacity of the Department of Defense, all 14 nevertheless chose to recommend Hegseth for the Pentagon job despite his drastically limited organizational experience, extremist political views, apparent abuse of alcohol. and short temper. These were red flags one at a time, much less combined.
Sen. Roger Wicker, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, continues to show poor judgment regarding Pete Hegseth. National defense is not enhanced with blind obedience to Donald Trump.
Yet, over the objections of every committee Democrat, the 14 Republicans recommended him. Knowing what they knew, they ignored the red flags. Each one alone was in a position to stop this recommendation. But knowing what they knew, they nonetheless voted against common sense and for Hegseth in the full Senate. It took a tie-breaking Vice President Vance to clinch the confirmation. Just one more courageous vote would have blocked Hegseth when added to the three Republican defectors—Lisa Murkowski, Mitch McConnell, and Susan Collins. However, not one committee Republican could muster that courage.
To maintain a generous post-Easter spirit, we perhaps can give a pass to the yes votes from Republican Senators not on the Armed Services Committee. They aren’t as well informed about military matters, having specialized in something else during their Senate careers. So they depend on their committee colleagues to advise them. But the committee members themselves? They get no pass. They have no excuse for their recommendation. This is their bailiwick. They all sought to be on this powerful, prestigious committee. They are supposed to have good judgment about matters of defense, matters of national protection and survival. And yet they apparently can’t even read a frickin’ résumé.
The worst of the batch is Chairman Roger Wicker. He has 28 years of military service, including 24 in the Air Force Reserve. At 15 years he is the longest serving and most influential Republican on the committee. He knew about Hegseth’s deficits. He even publicly raised some “concerns” weeks before the vote. He could have swayed others, and if not, been himself the fourth Republican vote needed to block Hegseth’s confirmation. Or he could have talked privately with Trump about withdrawing Hegseth and giving him an ambassadorship to Chad or somewhere.
Knowing what he knew, Wicker instead ultimately praised the guy and gave him a thumbs-up. The other Republicans on the committee with military service who did likewise are Dan Sullivan, Joni Ernst, Rick Scott, Tom Cotton, and Tim Sheehy. They too had to have known about Hegseth’s fatal-to-the-job inadequacies. Did they simply choose to cower before Dear Leader and gamble that any trepidation they had about this guy would not blossom into irreparable disaster? What were they thinking—I don’t want Donald to yell at me? Whatever was actually on their minds, they put their loyalty to the president above their loyalty to the country and got someone they knew couldn’t do the job approved to do it.
We all make mistakes. Sometimes even something we usually do well goes awry. And, if we’re honest, we try not to repeat the mistake. But the committee Republicans first mistakenly voted to confirm Hegseth knowing what they knew. And now, knowing what they know from seeing what they see of the man in action, they repeat their mistake by failing to call for his immediate resignation or firing. Some readers may consider labeling these moves as “mistakes” too generous a description. I won’t argue. But whatever the case, by mistake, malice, or cowardice, these folks have demonstrated they cannot be trusted with matters of national defense. Every single one of them should follow Senator Wicker off the committee. Or better yet, they should get out of the Senate altogether. No way will any of that happen, of course.
