Inside Pete Hegseth’s Pentagon Shake-Up

Hey what's news listeners, it's Sunday, September 13th. I'm Alex Osola for the Wall Street Journal. This is what's news Sunday, the show where we tackle the big questions about the biggest stories in the news. This week, we're zooming in on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's personnel changes in the U.S. military, and why they have one Republican Senator calling for Hegseth to be fired. This ticking office in January last year, Pete Hegseth has made a number of moves to reshape the U.S. military. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announcing today that troops will be tested annually for testosterone levels. Well the Pentagon is at war with so-called fat troops, and some active duty airmen have just weeks to prove that they're fit to serve. It is not just push-ups and pull-ups, grooming an appearance, also tightened, no beds or beards, his term not mine, another exact quote, "if troops want a beard, they can join special operations, otherwise shave." Among the biggest changes have been personnel shifts at the highest ranks of the Armed Forces. In April, Hegseth fired General Randy George, the Army Chief of Staff, and his hand-picked replacement, General Christopher Lenev, has lost support among Republican lawmakers who say he doesn't have enough experience. The journal also reported that earlier this summer, Hegseth cut short the career of four-star General Chris Donahue. These generals join a number of leaders from across the branches of the military who were fired, pushed out, or had their promotions blocked since Hegseth took office. To someone who doesn't follow a ton of military news, this may not seem like that big deal. After all, it's common to have some turnover when a new boss comes in. And in a memo last year, Hegseth did promise to slash the number of senior generals and admirals. But the US military isn't your typical workplace. As journal national security reporters Michael Gordon and Laura Seligman say, "No, these changes are fundamental to the military, to its values and how it functions. They join me now to discuss." Michael Lara, thanks so much for joining me. Michael, I want to start with a very specific moment in time. So last month, Army Secretary Dan Driscoll resigned. Who is Driscoll and why was this a big deal? Driscoll is a friend of Vice President J.D. Vance. They went to law school together, and he had been installed as Secretary of the Army and non-military position. And he was very close to Army leaders like General Randy George, who was asked from his post as chief of staff and some others. And there was a period of time when Driscoll was even speculated about as a potential successor for Hegseth. Hegseth basically forced him out. It was a big deal because it was about more than Driscoll. For a period of months, Secretary Hegseth has really trained his sights on the top leadership of the Army. Laura, Driscoll was one of a number of high-profile departures from the Army recently by one count as many as 20 generals or other top military leaders have been pushed out or left since Hegseth took office. "General Chris Donahue resigned in July. What is behind this sort of wave of people leaving?" Well, Hegseth actually came into office vowing to get rid of the woke generals, quote unquote, in the panic on, and to thin the ranks. And he started doing that really from day one. He got rid of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General C.Q. Brown, at the time, who was only the second black officer to hold that post. He got rid of the first female senior leader in charge of the Navy, a female admiral. He got rid of General Halsey, who is in charge of a U.S. Southern command. So there have been probably dozens of general and flag officers that he's ousted or forced into retirement or blocked from promotion. But as Michael said, this has fallen mostly on the Army in recent months. So there have been many firings over the last 18 months that Hegseth has been in office. He got rid of General Donahue, initially the problem was his involvement in the evacuation from Afghanistan in 2021 under Biden. He was the last man there. But then he did not fire several other people who were very closely involved in that evacuation. I think the thing that really ties them all together is most of these people were seen in some way to be not with the program and not sufficiently loyal. One thing that's striking about Hegseth as a Secretary of Defense is that he hasn't focused so much on what the U.S. force structure should be for threats in the decades ahead, or on what the strategy should be to counter a world in which the United States might need to deter China and Russia simultaneously, in which North Korea is building up its nuclear force. He's been a culture warrior, which is to say he's postured himself as somebody who's fighting wokeness in the ranks of the military, greatly exaggerated problem by most accounts. Right, here he is talking about his push to eliminate diversity efforts at a budget hearing in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee in April. We had a department that was obsessed with gender, ideology, and race, diversity, equity, and inclusion. In fact, the mantra you would hear dripping from the lips of generals and with a serious look on their face was our diversity is our strength, which is the single dumbest phrase in military history. Of course, our diversity is not our strength. Our unity is our strength, our shared purpose, the flag we wear, and the constitution we serve to defend. Michael, this comes at a pivotal moment for the military, particularly for the army as it faces challenges like developing munitions, right? The Pentagon has acknowledged that there's a big problem because what Ukraine has shown is that you can expend an exorbitant amount of munitions in a short period of time and you can imagine if you get yourself in a big war with China or Russia, what the requirements would be. A random, which is a moderate size war, is dramatized that already, and so the emphasis on munitions I think is a plus, whether they have the ultimate right answers we'll see, but the emphasis on it is necessary. It's part of an overarching acquisition overhaul that Secretary Hegseth and his deputy Stephen Feinberg have rolled out and really been working on for the past year and a half. They've called this the arsenal of freedom and they've really focused in a major way that hasn't really been done before on overhauling the Pentagon's very slow system of buying weapons. One of the big initiatives that Hegseth has done has been drone dominance and that's a program to procure small drones that are built commercially that then the military will take and deploy to their own ends and everything I've heard that program is doing really well and Feinberg has injected some private equity approaches into the Pentagon. He's had the government take equity stakes in defense firms like L3, really creative strategies that haven't really been tried before. We've been talking about the personnel changes to the military under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Michael, what do these changes mean for the military's ability to do its job to address threats to U.S. national security? The military is pretty capable and well-trained and substantial and secretaries of defense come and go and the military remains and it's able to do its job. But in terms of the military's capabilities, they're proceeding largely with what they were doing before with the very important exception of the U.S. Army as Laura noted since Hegseth has removed people like General Donahue and General George who are very much associated with a whole variety of initiatives to modernize the Army which leaves the Army's future I think a little bit up for grabs. We reached out to the Pentagon about that but we didn't hear back before wrapping up this episode. But also as part of our research producer Pierre-Bienna-May and I spoke to two people who'd retired from high-ranking positions in the military. They both had a negative view of the kinds of changes that Hegseth was making among military's leadership and one of the things they both brought up was a lack of transparency about why some people were fired. Here's David LaPanne who served as a senior communications officer for the Marine Corps before retiring in 2015. These individuals who were fired as far as most people know didn't do anything wrong. They weren't under investigation. There weren't allegations so it causes people to question how am I supposed to continue in my career and progress and be promoted when I don't understand anymore what the rules are, what the standards are. The other person we spoke with took it a step further. Peter Carelli retired as a four-star Army general in 2012 and he said a lack of transparency could make the military worse. If in fact this is a politicized officer corps and I believe that's where we're headed it is a weaker one against our enemies and a more pliable one against our own constitution. I think that's what we all have to be concerned about. Michael why do these former officers see a lack of transparency as such a big deal? Because the American military is not supposed to be a political institution, the military is supposed to be ideally a meritocracy, the decisions on the selection of military officers are made by promotion wards that are supposed to be insulated from outside info. influence and favoritism, and so here you have a civilian inserting himself directly in that process. One thing we've done a lot of reporting on is how Hegseth has been very much isolated in the past year. He kind of came into office wanting to hear opinions from all corners of the Pentagon, and now more and more he's relying on an inner circle of five or six very, very close advisors to kind of filter the information coming in. Turning to outside the military, Laura some Republican lawmakers have criticized Hegseth's firings of senior officers, Susan Collins of Maine called it deeply troubling, and Mike Rogers of Alabama said he was, quote, "tired of all the churn." Tom Tillis from North Carolina called on President Trump to fire Hegseth. What has Hegseth's relationship been like with Congress overall? Even from his confirmation hearing Hegseth has had a contentious relationship with Congress. He largely snubbed Congress in the first year or so of his tenure. He rarely briefed Congress, even Republicans. We heard a lot of complaints that they were not getting the information that they needed regarding the boat strikes on alleged drug traffickers in Latin America regarding the Iran War. In recent months, you can see that he's been making more trips to the hill. He's been trying harder to get lawmakers on his side because he needs their support to pass a proposed $1.5 trillion budget for the military for next year, but he's not really getting a distraction. Okay, so that could directly affect the kind of funding that the military receives, but Michael, I mean, really what this comes down to is Does Hegseth still have Trump's support? Yes, he has the support and a minimum of the person who counts the most, which is the president, because he knows that Hegseth will defend him in all of the controversies that might arise. Also, Hegseth is not averse to the employment of US military domestically that's happened already to some extent, and he's very actively pursuing the administration's agenda to seal the border, which has largely been carried out into project force in the Western Hemisphere. Could what Hegseth is doing now have a long lasting impact on the military? Yes, because I think civil military relations are in a bit of a crisis now. You know, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, CQ Brown, who's very carefully spoken had an essay a few months ago where he decried some of the things that have been happening in civil military relations, including promotions on the basis of political favoritism and the use of forces in US cities, ostensibly, for law enforcement actions. And just to jump in and note here that in response to Brown's criticisms, a spokesman for the Pentagon told the journal that Brown carried out President Biden's DEI policies and was a "loyal foot soldier" for one of the most politicized eras in US military history. But Michael, back to your point about how personnel changes are affecting the relationship between civilians and the military. Those will have a long-standing effect, they'll certainly affect the way Americans look at the military and the way people within the military also look at serving in the armed forces. If you don't believe you're necessarily rise in the ranks on the basis of merit alone. Laura, how about with some US allies? Do we have a sense of what other countries make of these moves and whether that could affect relations down the road? We've certainly seen that some of our allies in Europe and in Asia are kind of appalled that the changes that Pete Hegseth has made within the ranks of the military, allies who appreciate a relatively stable military process and military leadership. One thing that is particularly concerning to our allies in Europe is that Hegseth's Pentagon has started this review of the US military footprint in Europe and that could result in tens of thousands of troops pulled back from Europe and that's in a really pivotal moment where you see intelligence that Russian President Vladimir Putin is potentially looking at ramping up the war in Ukraine and bringing that to NATO. So I think our European allies are in a tough spot right now and looking at what's happening in the Pentagon with some concern. And I want to note that we reached out to the Pentagon about those concerns within Congress and among US allies, but we didn't hear back in time. Michael Gordon, Laura Salligman, thank you both so much for joining me. Thanks so much for having me. Thank you. And that's it for what's new Sunday for September 13th. Today's show was produced by Pierre B&M with Deputy Editor Chris Inzli. I'm Alex Osula and we'll be back tomorrow morning for the brand new show. Until then, thanks for listening.