Two former officers accuse Hegseth of firing them for questioning orders

Two former U.S. military officers have accused Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth of forcing them out after they questioned his orders, according to a report.

The officers, who spoke anonymously to MS NOW for fear of reprisals from the Pentagon, said Hegseth effectively pushed them into early retirement after treating their concerns about his directives as insubordination.

One of the officers said Hegseth is “intimidated by people who have real warfighting background and don’t just talk about the warrior ethos.” The officer also said, “I think he just can’t stand people around who will call him on his bulls***.”

They argued that if Hegseth were serious about promoting “warfighters,” he would not have removed Gen. Christopher Donahue, the top Army commander for Europe and Africa, from his post.

Hegseth has not commented on the report, but a Pentagon spokesperson denied the claims and called them “completely false.”

Donahue is a former Delta Force leader and was the last U.S. soldier to leave Afghanistan in summer 2021, a withdrawal Hegseth has described as “chaotic,” “disastrous” and a “humiliating retreat.”

He is one of nearly three dozen officers and admirals the article says have been fired or sidelined since Hegseth took charge of the Department of Defense early last year. The article also says he has blocked the promotion of 40 senior colonels or Navy captains selected for flag rank.

Other names cited as having been sent to the exit include Navy Secretary John Phelan, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George and Vice Admiral Shoshana Chatfield, the military’s representative to NATO.

Critics have said Hegseth’s targets have often been women, people of color, judge advocate generals and officers associated with the Afghanistan withdrawal, which he considers mishandled.

The officers interviewed also suggested that Hegseth is more interested in consolidating power than in reforming standards, pointing to his speech at Marine Corps Base Quantico in September.

“What he was trying to do was establish primacy over the armed forces in a public way,” one officer said. “‘We can get the most senior people in the military to do exactly what we’re going to tell them to do.’”

The officers also said they had spoken to active-duty troops who felt conflicted about staying in the service under Hegseth’s leadership.

“For many of us, part of it is a sense of loyalty to the organization that is bigger than these clowns,” one said. “We know that in the organization, there are still good people trying to do good things and we don’t want to say things that might hurt them.”

Acting Pentagon Press Secretary Joel Valdez told MS NOW, “Not a single general officer or flag officer has been fired raising concerns about any issue. That charge is completely false. If they believe what they’re saying to be true, then they should put their names on their statements on the record.”

The Independent said it had reached out to the Department of Defense for comment.

The officers who spoke to MS NOW said they remained unnamed because they feared the Pentagon could target their pensions and because they believed it was not their place to play politics or enter public debate.

Two fired officers have spoken publicly about Hegseth’s “Pentagon purge”: Nancy Lacore, who is running for Congress as a Democrat in South Carolina, and Charles Q Brown, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who recently wrote an op-ed in Foreign Affairs on the military’s relationship with democracy.

Hegseth also faced sharp questioning on Capitol Hill Tuesday, where senators on the Senate Appropriations Committee grilled him about the Iran war and his request for $67 billion in additional funding for a conflict that has already cost $37.5 billion.

The senators called him a “failure” and accused him of “gross negligence,” while protesters heckled him and told him he had “blood on his hands.”

In a previous appearance before the Senate Armed Forces Committee in late April, Hegseth was asked by Rhode Island Democratic Sen. Jack Reed why Gen. George had been fired.

Hegseth thanked George for his service but said he could not discuss the reason for the dismissal because it was customary not to do so out of respect for the general’s record.

He said President Donald Trump had tasked him with “challenging the culture” of the department, which he said was difficult to do with members of the “old guard” in place.

Asked about his purge of women and people of color, Hegseth denied that prejudice played any role and said, “The only metric is merit.”