Who Moves Up, and Who's Pushed Out, in Pete Hegseth's Military

From New York Times, I'm Mike Obabaro. This is The Daily. For the past 18 months, Secretary of Defense Pete Hexeth has remade the top ranks of the U.S. military, dismissing or sidelining many who's rise, he believes, was aided by the DEI, and replacing them with officers who fit his definition of merit. In the process, many argue, Hexeth is prioritizing loyalty to him and his ideas over loyalty to the military itself. Today, Mike Holland, Greg Jaffe, takes us inside the hiring and firing for a single job that's become a case study for Hexeth's approach. It's Thursday, August 20th. Greg, welcome to The Daily. I know this is your first time on the show, so glad to have you. Yeah, thanks for having me. Pleasure is all mine. So I think it's fair to say that Secretary of Defense Pete Hexeth's desire to transform the senior ranks of the U.S. military is pretty well established by now. So why did you decide to pursue this story? So we knew that when Secretary Hexeth came in, and even before he came in, he talked about wanting to remove senior military officers, including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. And then in September of last year, good morning and welcome to the war department. He gives a big speech in which he again talks about the need to clean house, to remove people who he thinks have been inserted into the military by ideologues and have been manipulated into pursuing like diversity, equity, and inclusion program. No more identity months, DEI offices, and so it's a really broad campaign to sort of reclaim a military that he thinks has been taken over by leftist forces. And I think he blames, in some cases, the losses in Iraq and Afghanistan on the sort of the corruption of the officer corps of the United States military, and so he's going to fix that problem. We are clearing out the debris. You might say we're ending the war on warriors. And some of that happens in 2025. Within his first month, he fires a large number of people. His chief of staff were all fired Friday night. It's a pretty significant purge, some of the top ranks of the military. Right. We did a whole episode about CQ Brown, for example, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who was fired in this first wave. Yep. But I think we really start to see it in 2026 where the firings are continuing. Hexeth has fired more than a dozen generals in admiral since he took over his secretary, and he's blocking large numbers of people, women and people of color from getting promotions that they had earned at senior levels. And so Kate Kelly and I, who had been working on this, we'd found upwards of 65 to 70 people who had been either fired or blocked from promotions that they had earned. And that's about 10% of the entire General Officer Corps, which is, you know, admirals in general. Huge. But in reality, it's probably higher. So this is about as wide-ranging a house cleaning as one could imagine. Yeah. I've been covering the military since 1999, often on and I cannot think of anything remotely close to this in the last 26 years. And given all that, we wanted to understand both what it took to fall out of favor with Secretary Hexeth, but also to understand what it took to get hired in this Pentagon. And that's what led us to the story of Lisa Franchetti and Daryl Coddle, hoping it would help us understand in a broad sense how Secretary Hexeth was really changing the military in ways that were really transformative. So let's start with what you found about Lisa Franchetti, the member of that duo who was fired by Hexeth. What did you find out about her? So Admiral Franchetti has told her story in lots of interviews about how she grew up in Rochester, New York and she went to Northwestern University, which is not the normal path necessarily for naval officers. I was 17, I was going to Medille, the most amazing journalism school in the country, and that was going to be a reporter. She was a coxin on the rowing team, and so her job was to command the men rowing their boat. Oh, my God. So I learned a lot about leadership. You know, you have all these incredibly powerful individual athletes, but you need to get them to become part of the team. You know, I think that was about the extent of her naval experience prior to that. But what happened is I was wondering. But one day, she met a group of guys on campus who had decided to join the Navy to help pay for school. And I said, "Really? Tell me more." And they talked about free textbooks, a chance to see the world. And a recruiter sold her on the adventure of the Armed Forces. And you told me all kinds of amazing stories, see stories as I now know them, right, about the Navy. And I signed up on the spot. That's a story of actually a lot of people who join the service, who don't have an intimate familiarity with it, but are looking for some way to get ahead in their life, some benefit, in some sense of adventure. But I stayed for the mission, yeah, and just a chance to serve something greater than myself. I want to pull a thread out of it. And what is her experience once she joins the Navy? When she joins, it's the 1980s. And so they're still at that point something called the combat exclusion ban that's in place. And that prevents women from serving on combat ships or serving in combat aircraft. And really limits the opportunity of women to ascend to high ranks in the service. Well, so when she arrives at the Navy, women, they can't even be on the ships that we most identify with the Navy itself, which to me sounds a little bit like being drafted to play professional basketball and being told that you can never go on the court. It's a pretty big deal. Yeah. And there's an interesting moment. So I think in 1989, she's one of 184 female surface warfare officers in the entire United States Navy. And one of those officers was chosen to command an auxiliary logistic ship. So this is a not a combat ship. Right. Exactly. And that the chief of naval operations, the job that Frank Ketti will someday hold, writes a letter to all 184 female officers saying, I look forward to the day soon when this will cease to be a special event. And so she's at a moment where things are just beginning to open up for women in the United States Navy. And it sounds like at pretty senior levels of the military, leaders want it to keep opening up from the content of that letter. Yeah, but that view isn't universally held. And it certainly wasn't universally held in the 1980s. The boss that I had at the time, he made it very clear to me that he didn't think women should be on our ship. And he was going to make sure that I did not succeed. Frank Ketti says she's basically told by her commanding officer that this experiment of having women on ships is not going to go anywhere. How did you deal with it being discriminated against knowing that a boss didn't want you to succeed? I just worked harder. And I was going to make sure that what he wanted to have happened wasn't going to happen. That attitude fuels her. It makes her work harder. And in the 90s, Clinton lifts the combat exclusion ban. And that allows women to serve on combat vessels and in combat aircraft. And it really opens up possibilities for somebody like Admiral Frank Ketti who then seizes that opportunity and rises up through the Navy. You were a destroyer captain, as was I, you were commander of destroyer Squadron 21. The Vampit Lions. The Vampit Lions. You were the Lion Queen. She commands an early Burke class destroyer, the USS Ross. Later, two aircraft carrier strike groups, you know, the aircraft carrier is really central to the way the United States Navy fights. And so in 2013, she's the first woman to actually command naval forces in Korea, which is a real hot spot at that moment. And she also is a senior officer on the joint staff in the Pentagon. So in a relatively short amount of time, Frank Ketti goes from not being allowed onto combat ships to command it, those same ships. And I imagine by this point, the word is out that she may be boss, boss material. Yeah. And in 2023, she's officially put up for the job, the top job in the Navy. You know, the Navy secretary selects three or four people who he thinks would be good for that job and submits that list to the Secretary of Defense, who at the time was a guy named Lloyd Austin. And after that list is put together, she's sort of widely rumored inside the Pentagon to be the front runner. But Austin looks at the list and he picks somebody else, a guy named Sam Paparo, who was a senior Navy officer in the Pacific. That's Austin's first choice. And when it goes to the White House, it's leaked to the press and there are stories in the media saying in a surprise move, it looks like they're going to end now. to donate Paparo rather than Admiral Frank Ketty for the job. - Okay. So she has knock on this job. - She doesn't look like she's gotten this job, but then it lands in the White House under President Biden. He looks at the list of candidates and he thinks, you know what? I want Frank Ketty for the job of Chief of Naval Operations and let's keep Paparo in the job and have him be the head of US Indo-Pacific Command. China is really important to the Pentagon and Paparo has spent more time in Asia than almost any senior officer. And so let's keep him focused on our most difficult problem when it comes to actual warfare. - So just to be clear, President Biden over rules his Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and says, I know you like this fella for the job of Chief Naval Operations, but I prefer Lisa Frank Ketty and I make the final decision here. - Yeah, and it's not unheard of, but it is unusual. Ultimately, this is the president's pick and the president chose to exercise that authority that he has. - And why did he pick her? - You know, one, she had a lot of experience. As I said before, she was considered the front runner for the job, so it wasn't like he was reaching deep into the ranks and picking an unknown. And two, I do think that Biden was interested in making history, interested in sending a message that a woman could rise to the top of the force. And so picking the first female Chief of Naval Operations, the first woman to serve on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that was a really big deal for Biden. But even as she's being confirmed, there's a bit of a backlash to it on the hill. - The committee meets today to consider the nomination of Admiral Lisa Frank Ketty to be the next Chief of Naval Operations. - At her confirmation hearing. She is pressed, as are many officers who are coming up for confirmation at this period about what she feels about DEI, what she feels about some of the books that are touting the importance of DEI, whether it has a place in the United States Navy. - So again, I'm very focused on war fighting, war fighters and winning. - And she largely says that's what she's about. - I will develop a process and I will focus on war fighting, war fighters and winning. - Thank you. - She's about the Navy and she's about naval operations and naval warfare and that's her focus, not diversity. - With that, I will adjourn the hearing. - But knowing what I know about Pete Hegseth and what's coming around the corner, I'm guessing that all of this, including how she was chosen by Biden, is at the heart of her eventual demise. - Yeah, so she's confirmed by the Senate with only one dissenting vote. I think it's 95 to one with some people not voting 'cause they weren't there. So she's got overwhelming support from the Senate. Republican to Democrats think she's qualified, but Pete Hegseth is clearly bothered by this. - And that's why this book is gonna take a lot of people off. Women and men are different. Women shouldn't be in combat at all. - And so he publishes a book in 2024 in which he really takes aim at her, among others, but her on a couple of pages in which he says and argues that she's not qualified for this job and she only got the job because she was a woman. - Because of how Washington works, they're gonna change the standards, they're gonna push for quotas. - And he identifies Admiral Frank Ketti as emblematic of everything that was wrong with the Biden approach. As somebody who prioritizes diversity over competence. - Any general that was involved, general Admiral, whatever that was involved in any of the DEI woke shit, it's gotta go. - And at that point, Hegseth is a Fox and Friends weekend host and a military expert for Fox. And so within a matter of months after this book comes out, Hegseth is picked by President-elect Trump at that moment to be his Secretary of Defense. It's a really controversial pick. Hegseth is not very experienced and when Hegseth is chosen by Trump, Frank Ketti has read his book or is aware of what's in his book and she realizes that her days are probably numbered. - And what does she do? - Well, at that point, she calls together all the four stars in the United States Navy. I think there are half dozen of them or so to the Pentagon and they discuss what to do if she's fired, who should replace her. And I think she's also really concerned about the politicization of the force. That these forces will sort of divide the Navy, divide admirals against each other, will lead to people campaigning for the job and freelancing. And so she basically says to them, like, hey, this is a really big stressful movement. We need to put the United States Navy ahead of ourselves on our own career ambitions. - So even at this moment when she knows her career is probably over, she's saying, how do we protect the Navy? - Yeah, how do we protect the institution? (gentle music) - But what she doesn't know at the time is that someone in that four star meeting that she had is quietly doing exactly what she cautioned not to do, which is reaching out to Secretary Hegseth and trying to position himself to take her job. (gentle music) We'll do it back. - So Greg, tell us about this Naval officer who does the very thing, Frank Yeti doesn't want anyone to do, which is to basically begin lobbying for her job even before she's been fired. He mentioned his name earlier, Darryl Coddle. - Yeah, so he's a highly accomplished and decorated admiral. - My early Navy days, Ron board submarines. - Comes up through the submarine fleet, he commands U.S. submarines and the Pacific. - You're surrounded by a nuclear reactor and enough ordinance to make anyone a little nervous. - Benny's in charge of U.S. forces command, which is a really important East Coast command that essentially trains and makes sure Navy ships are ready to go to war. - Down there, I had to constantly ask myself, am I thinking clearly? Am I thinking strategically? Are we doing the right things for the right reasons and at the right time? And those questions haven't changed. - It does very well on that. So well, in fact, when they're considering Admiral Frank Yeti in 2023, that Admiral Coddle is one of the people on the list the Navy puts forward to Secretary Austin as a possible candidate for the Chief of Naval Operations job. - Interesting. So he's in the mix for that big-aid job under President Biden. - Yeah, and he really wants it. It's clear that he really wants it. But the Navy, I think, views him as a better candidate for U.S. strategic command, which is the command that oversees all of our nuclear weapons. It's a really important command. It's not as high profile, the span of control, the span of what you kind of accomplish is not as great. And so I think Admiral Coddle is much more interested in the Chief of Naval Operations job that much more high profile job. - Hmm, and it sounds like when he recognizes that Frank Yeti is probably in trouble in the same way that she herself recognizes that he begins to make clear he wants the job. How does he do that? - Yeah, so it's really interesting. And this is something that I had never encountered before. So, you know, Hegseth is nominated for the job. It's not clear that he's going to get the job. It's looking pretty dicey for him. And so what we heard from several officials familiar with the interaction is that at this point, Admiral Coddle directs a senior officer on his staff to reach out to Hegseth to help Hegseth prepare for his confirmation hearing. He makes this offer several times over the course of the month of December. The call never happens. But the message gets through to Secretary Hegseth that this is somebody who's kind of on the team. - Interesting. And perhaps a little bit bold for the military. What else do we learn about Coddle's communications with Hegseth? - So two days after Admiral Frank Yeti is fired, a senior officer on his staff again reaches out to Hegseth's brother. This time of a much more overtly political message, essentially that there's no one more in line with Secretary Hegseth's vision for remaking the military than Admiral Coddle. And that Admiral Coddle wants to remove, quote, woke barriers that he sees as weakening the force. And it seems like the point of this text message was to show, hey, I'm politically and ideologically aligned with you and your vision for the military. - Ha, I mean, this sounds quite literally like what, Frank Yeti would be asking that no one ever do, which is not just reaching out and lobbying for a job, which it sounds like she would disapprove of. But saying, I'm with you, ideologically, I'm your person, I will be loyal. That sounds quite out of protocol, out of the norm. - Yeah, it was very much a violation of protocol. This is really unusual because we expect our military officers to be a political. We don't want Republican generals and Democratic generals. We want them to serve the institution and the country. And so when you have people short-circening the process and auditioning for jobs, it really starts to undermine trust in the institution. And I think not just Admiral Frank Yeti would have objected to that, but I think most of the chiefs of any of the services would have had a problem with that kind of outreach. You know, there's a concept in the Navy, a saying, it goes ship, shipmate, self. And at the core of that is the survival. success of your ship comes first. The next is your sailors, your shipmates, the people who you serve with, and you put yourself last. And when you politicize the force, when you put ideology, or ambition ahead of those things, you really start to break down the bonds that make for an effective fighting force. The bonds that make people willing to sacrifice their lives for something bigger. And what comes of Codal's outreach? Well, the first thing that happens is Hegseth fires Frank Ketty. And remember, at this time, he's only about a month into the job. So he's still pretty new. He gets a list of three nominees of people who the Navy thinks should get this job. Admiral Codal is not on that list. And so there's a meeting in the Pentagon in which Hegseth is briefed on the sort of the three options that the Navy is recommending. And he looks at that list and says, where's Codal? Potentially, or even probably because he's remembering all these texts and emails that are coming through from this very senior Navy guy saying, I'm your guy, and I'm with you. Yes. And it turns out that Admiral Codal is the only person that Secretary Hegseth introduced for the Chief of Naval Operations job. And so he picks him. The examination is set to go to the White House when a problem arises, which is what? So Admiral Codal has a significant inspector general complaint against him. It's essentially a year old, but it's been sitting in the system and it needs to be dealt with. This is what you say inspector general, you basically mean like the kind of internal HR world of the Navy. It sounds like the IG is the internal watchdog. So what happens is the complaint centers around some remarks he made to sailors at essentially an awards banquet. And they're talking about the Navy's sexual assault awareness program. And Codal says, look, if I strip naked and cover myself in honey and go walking through the forest and I get attacked by a bear, I have some responsibility for that attack. Another one that he uses is, you know, if I put on gold chains and a fancy gold watch and I go walking through Harlem and I get assaulted, you know, I bear some responsibility for my decisions. So eventually some of the sailors who hear these remarks complain to the IG. Greg, I'm thinking back to the email that Codal wrote to Hegseth where he says, I'm with you on being anti-woke and changing the culture of the military. And it sounds like with these kinds of comments, he's definitely not on board with the progressive culture that has arrived in places like the US military that would say that comments like that are not appropriate. I think that's right. Yeah. And so when Admiral Codal has to deal with this, he reaches out to a lawyer named Tim Parlatory. Parlatory has represented other naval officers dealing with these IG complaints. He also represented Secretary Hegseth when Secretary Hegseth was accused of sexual assault a few years ago. Now he's working as a special advisor inside the Pentagon. Wow. So Codal's connections to Hegseth keep getting bigger and more complicated. So at this point, where does Codal's nominations stand? Where does it go? So the IG concludes that he didn't do anything wrong. And then that clears the pathway for Admiral Codal's nomination to go to the White House. Good morning, everyone. The ceremony marks an important transition for our Navy. So last summer, summer of 2025, he succeeds Admiral Frank Eddy and becomes the new Chief of Naval Operations. With the promise to work every day to make our sailors better warriors, our families more supported. And in his speech, he brings up this idea of sailors first in serving with integrity. Sailors are my priority. I pledge to lead with integrity, honor, and resolve. And he also parrots Hegseth's language of domination and strength to ensure that our Navy remains and forever will be the most dominant lethal and credible maritime fighting force the world has ever known. Now let's get to work. Greg, help make sense of this firing and this hiring. We start with Lisa Frank Eddy, who President Biden picks. I think pretty self-consciously, because he wants to have a woman in that role. Hegseth comes along and says, that's not how I'm going to be doing business, so fire sir. And picks, Coddle, it seems in large part because Coddle shares Hegseth ideology and has found multiple ways to communicate that. So how should we be thinking about all of that together? Yeah, I should note that spokesman for both the Secretary of Hegseth and Admiral Coddle have said that these decisions were made on merit. But it seems pretty clear that the firings were not about merit. You know, it's completely legitimate to fire somebody for competence if they make a mistake or lose a war. But Frank Eddy did nothing wrong as far as we can tell. She was fired and Coddle was hired, at least in part for reasons tied to politics or ideology. And that's a really dangerous place for the military to go. And dangerous exactly why? Because I guess there must be plenty of people who imagine that other senior military officials have found ways to ingratiate themselves with military leaders and to communicate that, you know, I'm your person. Why does what happened here seem so problematic? Well, I think when you start firing people for political reasons, it's not just the person you fire, but it's the message that sends throughout the entire force that, hey, if you want to move up, if you want to succeed, there are political litmus tests or political gates that you have to pass through. And then you start making day-to-day decisions, maybe even really important military ones, based on will this make the boss happy? Because that's kind of how I got my job in the first place. Yeah. War is a really tough, complicated endeavor, as we're seeing in Iran right now. And so you want your best warfighters, not your most politically aligned warfighters, to be promoted. You want people to be able to tell the boss when they're wrong. You want senior officers to provide unvarnished military advice, even when it may not be popular or what the civilians want to hear. Now, have other administrations initially distrusted the generals? They inherited from past presidents? Yes, that has happened, but they never took steps to fire and replace them with more ideologically aligned officers, because they knew it was a really slippery slope. It could lead to places that weren't good for the military or for the country. I just want to end by spending a moment on the other side of this tale, the person we started, this episode with, and that is Lisa Franketti, and the demography of the military, because the reason why all the changes were made to let her rise up through the ranks, and the reason why ultimately it seems President Biden put so much emphasis on having her be in that role is there was a desire to have women leading and lead branches of the military. What is the status under Hegsf, who is clearly not sharing that priority of women in the leadership of the military? Yeah, so this time for the first time in at least a decade, if not longer, there will be no women nominated to Admiral Rank. Women make up about 21 percent of the Navy, and so that means you've got a leadership of the Navy that increasingly looks less and less like the force that it oversees. I think, you know, it also means that young female officers who are coming up have fewer people who provide a sort of a pathway to success, who show them what the opportunities available to them are. I think that's tough for them. I think it's also heartbreaking for people like Admiral Franketti and other senior female officers who fought hard to get where they got. Okay, thank you very much. Appreciate it. Of course, thanks for having me. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. For the first time in U.S. history, the gross national debt surpassed $40 trillion, an ominous milestone in the country's inability to balance its checkbook. The U.S. massively outspends what it earns to pay for its military, safety net programs like Medicare and Social Security, and for tax cuts like those passed by President Trump. Trump has repeatedly promised to restore financial order, but since his first election back in 2016, the national debt has doubled. And this year alone, the United States is already on track to borrow $2 trillion dollars. Today's episode was produced by Shannon Lynn, Adrian Hurst and Jessica Chuck. It was edited by Michael Benoit and Patricia Willens and contains music by Alicia B. E. Tube and Dan Powell. Our theme music is by Wunderling. This episode was engineered by Chris Wood. And that's it for the Daily. I'm Michael Barrow. See you tomorrow.