Signal controversy doesn’t derail Hegseth

Depending on whom you ask, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s leadership has boosted Pentagon morale to new heights or chopped it down to new lows. His supporters cite military recruitment numbers as evidence of high morale: Earlier this month, the U.S. Army reached 85% of its recruitment target for the fiscal year. Both the Air Force and the Navy met their 2024 goals and increased the target for 2025.

Hegseth’s critics say he already should have been fired for mishandling potentially classified information and focusing too much on his personal image. They also point out that the increases in recruiting numbers likely stem from changes the Army made prior to the 2024 presidential election.

Some media outlets reported last week that the White House was searching for Hegseth’s replacement, which the White House denied. The White House says the Pentagon has a problem with leakers who want to sabotage the defense secretary. Others say the Pentagon’s problem is not leaks but leadership.

What’s going on with Hegseth? Last month, national security adviser Mike Waltz accidentally added a journalist to a group chat with several Cabinet secretaries and high-level White House staff members. Over the messaging app Signal, they debated the timing and strategy for planned strikes on the Houthi terrorist group in Yemen. While Waltz apologized for the mistake, Hegseth drew heat for using the channel to share details about missile strikes in Yemen, information that would typically be related over Pentagon-secured networks. Then last week, sources within the Pentagon leaked to The New York Times that Hegseth created a separate Signal chat at about the same time that included his lawyer, his brother, and his wife. The Times has not published screenshots of the alleged second Signal chat, which it claims included details about the strike in Yemen. Hegseth’s wife, Jennifer, has no security clearance, while his brother is the Pentagon liaison for the Department of Homeland Security.

According to two anonymous sources, Hegseth has bypassed Pentagon security protocols to enable him to respond to Signal chats from inside secure areas.. Chief spokesman Sean Parnell said, “We can confirm that the secretary has never used and does not currently use Signal on his government computer.” The department also denied that Hegseth uses the third line to chat on Signal and said that instead it simply alerts Hegseth to Signal notifications on his personal devices, which are stored just outside his office.

Did Hegseth break the law? Signal is often downloaded on government phones, but it is not approved for sharing classified information. The app uses end-to-end encryption, making it extremely difficult to hack. Still, only official Defense Information Systems Agency networks or secured rooms are approved for the sharing of classified information. Pentagon employees may use Signal to coordinate travel plans or notify someone that they are sending classified information via another secured channel. According to a 2023 Defense Department memo, any app with a chat feature is not authorized to access private DOD information. The memo lists Signal as an example.

The military has never fired an official over a Signal conversation before, but unauthorized disclosure or handling of classified information has long haunted the military and the executive branch. In 2016, Hillary Clinton flouted classification and records laws when she deleted a private email server she used for State Department communications when she was secretary of state. At the time, Hegseth was a Fox News host and said he would have been court martialed in a similar situation: “If it was anyone other than Hillary Clinton, they would be in jail right now … because the assumption is in the intelligence community, if you are using unclassified means, there is likelihood that foreign governments are targeting those accounts.”

Did he put U.S. troops in danger? The March strikes against the Houthis in Yemen succeeded without loss of American lives, but the Signal situation has called into question whether bad actors could access the defense secretary’s communications.

Brian Marriott worked with Hegseth briefly at Vets for Freedom, a political advocacy nonprofit, in the early 2000s. Marriott said Hegseth should not face any penalties for his Signal chats, mainly because no one got hurt. He argued that the media are speculating about hypotheticals to damage Hegseth’s reputation.

“I don’t think that this particular story is the kind of story where someone gets fired or dismissed for it,” Marriott said. “If it’s not a threat to national security, then I don’t think it would be necessarily wrong for that information to be shared.”

The system for classifying national secrets is, however, based on the hypothetical risk to the United States if that information were improperly released. Leakers such as Jack Texeira, a National Guardsman who disclosed classified information on social media in 2022 and 2023, are punished for putting U.S. interests at risk, regardless of whether actual damage occurs. Texeira received a prison sentence of 15 years.

Marriott said he understood the purpose of classification, but he thinks Hegseth’s situation is different.

“I think that the story is kind of like the election itself,” Marriott told me. “The current narrative about Secretary Hegseth and his leadership style is different. Just like the new administration, Secretary Hegseth said he’s going to come in and make these changes and root out waste, fraud, and abuse and be a change agent within the department.”

What is his defense? Hegseth insists that he has not shared classified information outside of appropriate channels. Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell and White House deputy press secretary Anna Kelly both stated that no classified information was shared in any chat, but they did not confirm or deny whether the chats existed. Hegseth has turned his attention to an internal investigation to find the leakers not only of the second Signal story but also other details about Panama Canal plans and private meetings with Elon Musk. The Pentagon placed three top-level staffers on administrative leave last week as part of the agency’s leak investigation. Former senior adviser Dan Caldwell signed a joint statement along with Colin Carroll, chief of staff to the deputy secretary, and Dan Selnick, deputy chief of staff, that they were being scapegoated. All three were fired and escorted from the Pentagon on Friday.

“Disgruntled former employees are peddling things to try to save their [jobs], and ultimately, that is not going to work,” Hegseth said in a Fox and Friends interview, using an expletive.

The White House is blaming the media and political opponents for pushing negative coverage of the secretary.

“I have 100% confidence in the secretary. I know the President does, and really the entire team does,” Vice President J.D. Vance told reporters last week. “The best testament to his leadership of the military is that for the first time in a very long time, we don’t have terrible recruitment problems in the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force. That’s a great testament to his leadership. And I wish, frankly, the press talked more about that and not about anonymous sourcing from random staffers.”

What do we know about the suspected leakers? Democratic lawmakers sounded the alarm over the hirings of Caldwell, Carroll, and Selnick due to their conservative leanings. Caldwell and Selnick had previously worked with Hegseth at veteran nonprofits. In an interview with Megyn Kelly, Colin Carroll said he’s been used as the fall guy.

“We’re not the deep state. We’re not disgruntled former employees,” Carroll said. He accused Hegseth of ignoring Pentagon infighting while focusing on finding leaks and refining his image.

Why are people speculating about Hegseth’s firing? After news outlets published reports about the alleged second Signal chat, several lawmakers called for Hegseth’s resignation or removal, including Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., a retired Air Force general. “He’s acting like he’s above the law—and that shows an amateur person,” Bacon told Politico. Last week, NPR reported that the White House was quietly looking for a replacement, which the White House press office has denied. When asked whether Hegseth should remain, President Trump said any concerns over Signal are “a waste of time … he’s doing a great job—ask the Houthis how he’s doing.

Mike Nelson is a former Army special forces officer who served generals in U.S. Central Command, or Centcom. He thinks that the existence of the first reported Signal chat was a fireable offense.

“Understanding what devices and communications mechanisms to use was not a gray area; it was very clearly understood,” Nelson said regarding methods for sharing classified information. He said that when strike information comes from Centcom, officials such as the secretary of defense can choose where to send it and whether to declassify it. But the review process takes some time.

“Hegseth sent that information 10 minutes hot off the press from Centcom about imminent strikes. No matter what the secretary claims, there’s no way under any interpretation that information was not classified,” Nelson said. “It demonstrated some pretty poor judgment on his part.”

But he worries that the second Trump administration will allow further issues to slide to avoid the appearance that the president made a mistake in his nominees.

“By failing to actually address that and instead focusing on the idea that these are disloyal people who are leaking, that gives him political cover,” Nelson said. “I think it’s become a lazy defense because it works for the president that those around him think they can deflect any criticism as deep state anonymous smears. That doesn’t speak to the claims behind the allegations themselves.”

In an interview with The Atlantic, published on Monday, Trump said he had spoken with Hegseth: “He’s gonna get it together. I had a talk with him, a positive talk, but a talk with him.”