DAVE DAVIES, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. I'm Dave Davies. When President Donald Trump nominated Pete Hegseth secretary of defense, he said he liked Hegseth's central-casting looks and tough warrior mentality. In a speech at the U.S. Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia last week, Hegseth told an audience of junior officers and enlisted leaders they should be proud of the culture change he's brought to the military.
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PETE HEGSETH: The only focus, as you know, in your formations should be training, readiness, accountability, discipline and lethality. And when you pursue those things, you don't have to walk on eggshells. No more social engineering, no more weaponized IG policies. The complainers, the ideologues and the poor performers are no longer in the driver's seat. No more silly PowerPoint trainings or drag queen shows. No more diversity quotas, no more gender pronouns, no more identity months. Only the warrior ethos.
DAVIES: While Hegseth still champions the policies he came in with, our guest, veteran Pentagon reporter Greg Jaffe, says Hegseth's performance is generating increasing blowback from members of Congress, including some Republicans. Hegseth firing and sidelining of senior military officers and his lack of communication about those moves and the nearly 8-month-old war in Iran has left many on Capitol Hill unwilling to approve his budget requests or confirm his nominees for Pentagon posts.
Unbowed, Hegseth has announced new initiatives - among them, construction of a massive new military base in the United States and Project Meridian, a study of the future of warfare, with key roles for Elon Musk and Newt Gingrich. Greg Jaffe covers the Pentagon and the United States military for The New York Times. Before joining the Times, he spent 13 years at The Wall Street Journal and 15 years at The Washington Post. He's also the author of "The Fourth Star," a book about four Army generals who commanded U.S. troops in Iraq. We recorded our conversation yesterday.
Greg Jaffe, welcome back to FRESH AIR.
GREG JAFFE: Thanks for having me.
DAVIES: You know, you covered the Pentagon and the military for a long time. You've seen a lot of secretaries of defense. What were your early impressions of Pete Hegseth when he was nominated?
JAFFE: You know, my first big impression is that he's different in the sense that he's a culture warrior in a way that no other secretary of defense has. So he - you know, he comes to the Pentagon via Fox News, where he's, you know, a TV host on the weekend and is really steeped in sort of right-wing culture wars. And usually, secretaries of defense do everything they can to sort of protect the military from our sort of divisive politics and those culture wars. And Hegseth was really the first secretary of defense I've seen in my lifetime who invited that into the Pentagon and made it a central plank of his identity and leadership.
DAVIES: Right. Certainly a different approach. You know, it's interesting. Some secretaries of defense have had backgrounds in corporate America. Hegseth served in Iraq and Afghanistan in combat.
JAFFE: He did - in Iraq in combat. And in Afghanistan, it was primarily in a staff position. But in Iraq, you know, he had a fairly intense combat experience. He's in a place called Samarra, where there's a giant mosque bombing, which really kicks off the Iraqi civil war in 2005 and 2006. So it's an intense one-year deployment that I think leaves a real impact. It's something he carries with him. In fact, he writes in his book, "The War On Warriors," in 2024, before he comes into the Pentagon, that it was sort of the defining experience in his life. And he was almost sad to leave it because it was so intense.
And I do think the other thing he carries to the Pentagon beyond the sort of culture wars is a lot of the grievance and anger that soldiers felt - and troops generally felt - over losing the Iraq and Afghanistan war. Iraq was not a loss, but it's certainly a mixed outcome. Afghanistan feels a lot like a loss. And he brings a lot of that grievance and anger and desire to blame somebody for that loss into the Pentagon with him.
DAVIES: Does he make a case in that book that he and other soldiers were prevented from defeating the enemy by commanders who were afraid of whatever, being aggressive or because of rules on civilian casualties?
JAFFE: Yeah. So there's a variety of villains in his book. Among the biggest are the judge advocate generals, or JAGs, the lawyers, who he sees as shackling the military with these really restrictive rules of engagement that prevents them from being as lethal as they need to be on those battlefields and has them kind of being cautious and looking over their shoulders rather than prosecuting the war intensely.
But really, what he sees more broadly than even that is this attack on what he calls the warrior ethos or the warrior spirit. And so the JAGs are part of that. These cowardly feckless generals are part of that. Theses terrible politicians are part of that. And so, too, are all the kind of leftists and liberals who he sees as having infiltrated the United States military to bring women into combat, to allow transgender people to serve. And all of these things have sort of corrupted or undermined the warrior ethos, which in his view is I think why we're losing these wars.
DAVIES: Now, when Hegseth came into the job, he changed some rules at the Pentagon about media access. How did that affect your ability to cover him and the military?
JAFFE: You know, it certainly had an impact. I think one of the great things about covering the Pentagon and the military over the years was that we had pretty broad access to the building. You know, the classified spaces were all locked. All the office doors are locked. But we had the ability to sort of wander the hallways and talk to people and run into people. In some cases, the best things we could do were just wander down to the public affairs office.
You know, the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, the Marine Corps all have these big public affairs offices, as well as the Pentagon, you know, the office of the secretary of defense - or Secretary of War, as he likes to call himself. And so you could just have informal conversations with people about what was going on. You'd run into people in the hallways. You'd travel with the secretary of defense on overseas trips and get to know, you know, the person who was running the military and his staff, and all those things breda certain familiarity and understanding, and all of that is currently gone.
DAVIES: Now, in August, you and three of your colleagues at The New York Times wrote a story. The headline was "Hegseth's Purge Of Top Generals Leaves The Army Rudderless." Give us an example or two of some of these moves and their impact.
JAFFE: Yeah. So it's been very sweeping in the Army, and I think Hegseth has a particular grievance towards the Army. But, you know, we're at a moment right now where the country's at war in Iran. There's no chief of staff of the Army. The chief of staff is the four-star general in charge of the United States Army, largely in charge of training, equipping, preparing the Army to fight today's wars and the future wars. So that's a four-star general named Randy George. He was fired without cause or reason in April. And then the second person is Dan Driscoll. He left earlier this summer. He resigned after real tension with Hegseth that had carried on for months, largely due to Hegseth's intervention within the Army, pulling officers off of what are called promotion lists and firing officers like General George. Driscoll carried on until, I think, September 2, when he finally resigned.
But those are the two top - it's the top civilian and the top general running the United States Army, and we have nobody in either of those two positions. Then beneath that, you've had a series of three- and four-stars who have been pulled out of their positions, fired and, in a couple of cases, also not replaced. And so you have an Army with very, very thin senior leadership ranks. I think currently there are five four-star generals in the Army. Only a few years ago, the number was about 15.
DAVIES: Yeah. You know, I guess, you know, senior military commanders have learned over the years that you want to have a presence in Washington, and you want to treat, you know, politicians with care. Give us a sense of how past secretaries of defense have dealt with Congress. And what's different about Hegseth? Is it the number of times he talks to them? Is it a matter of him taking phone calls? Is it a matter of staff relations and meetings?
JAFFE: I think it's all three. So it's - staff certainly has been a point of contention. There's a guy named Bridge (ph) Colby, who's the undersecretary for policy. There's a feeling among the senators that he - he's supposed to sort of brief the senators on Pentagon policy, our strategy for fighting wars, our strategy for positioning troops around the world. They feel like he often comes to them unprepared or unwilling to share information. I think one place where they feel like they were misled is, you know, earlier in the year, we pulled some troops out of Poland and Eastern Europe. That happened about a week after Mr. Colby gave them a briefing in which he assured them that that wasn't going to happen. So they just felt really burned over that.
I think some of it is just the sort of - the dismissive attitude that the secretary brings. When he comes to the Hill, it tends to be very combative, and it's somewhat of a two-way street. I think the Democrats are really angry. They're frustrated with him, so they really lash into him, and he really lashes back. And so you have these very contentious, angry hearings.
DAVIES: They were very contentious hearings in part because of, you know, reporting of some stuff about Hegseth's personal conduct. There were accusations of sexual assault, heavy drinking, mishandling of two veterans organizations, two nonprofits that he was asked to leave from. That left a certain ring or a certain taste, didn't it?
JAFFE: I think he carries a lot of bitterness from those hearings. He feels like he wasn't treated fairly or was treated in a disrespectful manner. And I think he brings that chip on his shoulder every time he testifies before the Hill and anytime he talks to us in the media, which is increasingly rare. It's worth noting the last press briefing he had was May 5.
DAVIES: You know, you and your colleagues have written about a number of these senior commanders whose careers were ended by Hegseth. Are there clear ways in which we can see the American warfighting effort diminished or hampered by some of these command-level vacancies?
JAFFE: I think the biggest is in the Army. It's worth noting the scale of what's happened too. So he's fired or pulled off promotion lists about 80 general officers, somewhere between 80 and 85. So that's essentially firing or removing about 10% of those officers, so it's a big number. In terms of tracing the immediate impact, I think you see it most clearly in the Army.
You know, the Army is in a really tough moment right now. War is changing, particularly for troops on the ground. And you see it in places like Russia-and-Ukraine war. You see it in Iran, where large numbers of cheap drones have the ability to strike troops on the ground and cause large numbers of casualties to make it really hard for troops to even move. They sort of become frozen in place and dug in.
And the Army is behind and catching up. I think the two people he fired at the very top of the Army - Secretary Driscoll, the Army secretary, and Randy George - were pushing really hard to try to catch the Army up in that area. Another general who he fired - sort of a legendary commander named CT Donahue, who commanded the Army's Delta Force, its sort of elite counterterrorism unit, as well as played a key role in helping the Ukrainians fight back against the Russians - he was a real advocate for taking the lessons of the Ukraine war and using them to modernize the Army. He was also pushed out. So you see a lot of the momentum that the Army had towards adapting to this new kind of war being ushered out the door.
DAVIES: You know, CT Donahue is a particularly interesting case because one of the things that seemed to have undermined him with Hegseth was that he was in a very famous photograph when he was in Afghanistan as the U.S. force there was leaving. And he was literally the last guy, I think, to get on an aircraft to leave, by tradition - the general. And an Army photographer snapped a photo of him through night goggles, I guess. It's kind of a green-and-black image. He had nothing to do with it, but it kind of became viral. And he ended up being associated with what the Trump administration regarded as a national disgrace - the handling of the departure from Afghanistan. Is that what really poisoned his chances with this defense secretary?
JAFFE: I think that was the beginning of it. You know, so sort of Hegseth sees this photo, decides that Trump wants heads to roll for the 2021 withdrawal of Afghanistan, in which there's a suicide bombing that kills a large number of soldiers and Marines. And so he knows that Donahue's captured in that picture. And so at that time, Donahue had been selected - and he had initially approved Donahue to take over - U.S. European Command, which is the four-star command in Europe overseeing, you know, U.S. and NATO forces in Europe.
And so Hegseth gets it into his mind, decides to pull this back. His chief of staff at the time tries to talk Hegseth out of it and says, essentially, you know, General Donahue wasn't in charge of the gate where the suicide bombing happened. He wasn't responsible for the way the withdrawal was conducted. He was sent over there after things had already devolved to chaos to try to make the best out of a bad situation, to pull things in. And so punishing him for that is the wrong move. That's where it starts with Hegseth. I think it quickly moves beyond that.
And I think in some ways, he has a terrible relationship with the Hill. General Donahue, by virtue of being a four-star, has spent a decent amount of time up there testifying. He has good relationships with senators and House members, both Republican and Democrat. Some are veterans who he knows from service. And so I think that also rubs Hegseth the wrong way.
And the more those senators try to push Hegseth to change his mind, the way the chief of staff had done, to try to keep Donahue on, the more he comes to see Donahue as a threat to him, as a - sort of an alternate power center that he can't control. I don't think that's fair to Donahue, who understands the chain of command. But I think in Hegseth's mind, that's the way it works.
DAVIES: We need to take a break here. Let me reintroduce you. We are speaking with Greg Jaffe. He covers the Pentagon and the U.S. military for The New York Times. We'll be back in just a moment. This is FRESH AIR.
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DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR, and we're speaking with veteran Pentagon correspondent Greg Jaffe. He covers the U.S. military for The New York Times, and we're talking about the tenure of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.
You know, in Pete Hegseth's book "The War On Warriors," he writes that in almost every instance where he's observed poor leadership or people in positions they're not qualified for, it was a diversity or perceived diversity hire. Is that point of view reflected in the moves he has made to remove or block promotions of commanders in the military?
JAFFE: Yeah, absolutely. The removals and the blocking of promotions in particular have fallen heavily disproportionately on Black and women officers, about half of those pulled off promotion lists. And these promotion lists are formed - essentially, generals, in the case of the Army will use - or admirals in the case of the Navy - a panel, a promotion board will meet for a period of time, three or four days, and will sort through hundreds of resumes to decide who should be promoted to one-star and two-star rank. And so it's supposed to be an apolitical, nonpartisan process. And what Hegseth has done that no other secretary has done in the last 25 years that I've covered the military, if not longer, is reached in and pulled people off those promotion lists without any kind of stated reason. About half of those he's pulled off promotion lists, which is about 55 people, are Black or female officers. They represent a fraction of the total number of generals, so it's really fallen disproportionately hard on them.
DAVIES: And Pete Hegseth says his military is colorblind and merit-based. When you talk to, you know, sources in the military, what did they think of his record here?
JAFFE: I think there's a lot of alarm about it. I think this year, for the first time in more than a decade, not a single woman will be promoted to admiral rank in the Navy, so no one-star or two-star admirals will be women, and that's a massive change. In terms of what's happening and why it's happening, I think it's a product of the quote you read, which is certainly his mindset from "War On Warriors." I think the other thing that happened is part of the way they've screened out people - and they have a group of people inside the Pentagon. It's a very shadowy and nontransparent process, who when somebody is chosen to be promoted to one- or two-star rank, they will comb all their public statements, all their public appearances, looking for reasons to pull them off the list. So one of the reasons - there's a Black admiral who was promoted to three star who was the Navy's choice for a three star billet named Admiral Barnett, he had given a Black History Month speech. I think Hegseth viewed that as objectionable, something that admirals shouldn't be doing. You know, this was at the request of the Navy, at the request of a command.
I read the speech. There was, you know, nothing objectionable about it. He talked about his mentors, some of whom were Black and some of whom were white. He talked about the importance of seeing officers above him who looked like him and how, you know, that made him realize what was possible. He was pulled off the list because of that speech. And so what you had was a lot of Black and female officers, because they were disproportionately underrepresented within the general officer corps, the services had asked them, hey, get out and mentor people. Speak on panels about what it's like to be a women (ph) officer, take part in support groups for women or Black officers. You know, we want to retain these people. We want them to understand that there's a pathway. So those folks did it. And now each of those appearances - any appearance on a panel, any Black History Month speech - is being used as a reason to pull people off promotion list. And so I think that's what's going on.
DAVIES: Yeah. Has this practice of combing over past public comments and speeches and the like - is that a new thing under Hegseth?
JAFFE: Yeah. It's completely new. It's unlike anything I've seen. And it's not just speeches. It's also connections to officers that they don't like. So they particularly dislike the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, who is a four-star in the Army for eight years. And so you can imagine a lot of up-and-coming officers worked for him or under him. So if you have a connection to a guy like Mark Milley, you're pulled off of these promotion lists.
You know, one officer described it to me. I don't know if you remember. So when we topple the Iraqi government, there's this process called de-Baathification. Anyone who is a Baathist who worked for Saddam Hussein at any level was being fired, and there's a de-Baathification aspect to this. Like, anybody who has connections to ideas we don't like, policies we don't like, people we don't like, we're pulling them out, not recognizing that, you know, officers often don't have a vote. It's the civilians who set the policy. They follow orders. And in most cases, in virtually every case that I've run into, these people were following the policy at the time, as was their constitutional duty. But Hegseth either doesn't understand that or has decided it's not relevant.
DAVIES: OK. We need to take another break here. We are speaking with Greg Jaffe. He covers the Pentagon and the U.S. military for The New York Times. He'll be back to talk more after this short break. I'm Dave Davies, and this is FRESH AIR.
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DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Dave Davies. We're speaking with The New York Times Pentagon reporter Greg Jaffe about the controversial tenure of Pete Hegseth as secretary of defense in the Trump administration. While Hegseth proudly claims credit for a culture change in the military - one that rejects diversity programs and embraces a warrior ethic - members of Congress, including some Republicans, are increasingly critical of his leadership. Hegseth has fired or sidelined many senior leaders in the military, and his budget requests are now endangered by his fractious relationship with lawmakers. We recorded our conversation with Greg Jaffe yesterday.
Has Hegseth banned transgender people from serving in the military?
JAFFE: Yes. That's a Trump and Hegseth policy. And many of the transgender people who were forced out took voluntary separations. Essentially, they would give you twice your separation pay, which in some cases, if you'd been in for, you know, 15 years or so, was over $100,000, doubled if you left voluntarily. Some number of those - about 4,000 people - left voluntarily.
There are several hundred, if not more, that turned down the money and are going before separation boards. These are essentially three officers who sit on a board, and they have a lawyer who is representing them. And the services have a lawyer. And the board decides whether this person should be retained or not.
And those boards, which I've tried to cover - it's an incredibly secretive process. So in many cases, their family members or friends are not allowed to sit in the boards. I, as a reporter, can't observe these boards, which are sort of like mini court proceedings. In some cases, the transgender service members themselves have been prevented from attending their own board. So if you're a transgender woman, in some cases, you cannot attend your own hearing because to attend the hearing, you have to appear as a male. For many transgender women, that's no longer possible.
And so in those cases, those soldiers, officers, troops were essentially prevented from going into their own hearing that would decide their fate. And so it's a very secretive and, you know, honestly, at times, abusive process.
DAVIES: And the hearings almost unanimously choose to separate the service member in that case?
JAFFE: In most cases so far, that seems to be what's happening. There are a couple of exceptions, but yes. I've covered a couple of them in terms of interviewing the lawyer and the person going through them. And so you have some people with really exceptional records. But at the end of the day, it really comes down to this question of, you know, have you started to transition or have you transitioned? And in that case, I think the boards feel like they don't have much of a choice.
And even if they vote to retain, that's not the final decision. It then goes to the secretary of the Army, Navy, Air Force, who will decide ultimately whether to retain the person or not. So it's more of a symbolic gesture. But for the transgender soldiers, troops going through the process, I think it's important for them to be heard, to be seen, to have their record represented as it is rather than as Hegseth describes it.
Just one other thing. I mean, we're talking about 4,000 troops in a force of 2.4 million, so it's not a lot. I think what's remarkable about the ban, to me, is the way Hegseth frames it. In the past, when they've talked about - when we had previous transgender bans - the ban has been because they require hormone therapy or something of that nature, which makes them harder to deploy, or they require medical procedures that makes them nondeployable for a period. So you're having a discussion, a debate rooted in - at least on the surface - in medicine and fitness to serve medically and physically.
Hegseth has largely discarded those arguments. And the argument that he and Trump have made is that these people are living a lie. They're immoral. They're bad people. And we don't want them in the military because their immorality, their life, which is a lie, will somehow infect and hurt the other troops. I should note that the vast majority of soldiers who I've talked to, troops that I've talked to at all levels, do not see it that way.
DAVIES: And has that been under court challenge currently?
JAFFE: It is under court challenge. Yeah. Yeah. There are a couple of cases that are ongoing and have been ongoing essentially since the beginning of the Trump administration.
DAVIES: Secretary Hegseth has also ordered mandatory testosterone screening for male service members over 30, with optional hormone treatments if a service member tests low. What's going on here?
JAFFE: You know, I think some of this is messaging. I think, you know, as we talked about, Pete Hegseth is a product of right-wing media and the manosphere. And I think some of this is messaging to that kind of manosphere audience I guess he hopes will produce recruits who will join the military or to make the military appear kind of tougher, more macho. It's part of the sort of warrior ethos that he's described. I think what's concerning to me about it is the broader message he's trying to send. He's talked about the sort of military as the 1%.
DAVIES: And when you say the 1%, you mean what?
JAFFE: One percent of Americans serve. So during the Iraq and Afghanistan, that became a real rallying cry - about 1% of the eligible population served in Iraq and Afghanistan in those wars. And Hegseth - and I think this ties in with the high-T kind of mindset - he tells them all the time, you are the 1%. You shouldn't look like or think like the soft country that you're defending. He elevates the troops and then talks about the rest of the country with a - almost a kind of contempt.
And so I think that takes us to a really dangerous place where you create these kind of super warriors defending this country, and they view themselves as better or superior to the country they defend. That's how Hegseth often talks about the military. And I just think it's - one, it's not part of our tradition of service. It's antithetical to sort of what it means to serve in a democracy, and it's just a really dangerous path.
DAVIES: We need to take another break here. We are speaking with Greg Jaffe. He covers the Pentagon and the U.S. military for The New York Times. We'll be back in just a moment. This is FRESH AIR.
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DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR, and we're speaking with veteran Pentagon correspondent Greg Jaffe. He covers the U.S. military for The New York Times, did it before that at The Washington Post. We're talking about the controversies over the performance of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.
Well, this particular Secretary of Defense has had to deal with the war in Iran. From the beginning, you know, he has said this is not a fair fight. We are a tough, lethal military and has said, again, recently, you know, we've essentially already won, we've destroyed their navy, air force, defense systems, leadership, industrial capacity. Why hasn't that been convincing to Congress?
JAFFE: I think both to Congress and to the Iranians who also have a vote in this process, you know, largely, I think the Iranians are - they have a conventional navy. They have a conventional air force. They have a conventional army. But those things are largely irrelevant to how they wanted to defend themselves, particularly against an attack from us. You know, their primary strength is what the military calls asymmetric. In other words, it's not force on force. It's their ability to use missiles, drones and other precision weaponry to target our allies in the Middle East, to target our bases, to target oil infrastructure, to target ships and oil tankers transiting the Strait of Hormuz. That's the essence of their strength. And so all this damage that we've done, the people we've killed, the boats we've sunk, have not thus far prevented them from using those asymmetric tools to inflict real pain on us, our allies and the global economy.
And I think the other thing that's apparent in all of these wars - it's a lesson of Iraq and Afghanistan. It's a lesson that the Russians learned in Ukraine. When you're fighting for your survival, when the stakes are truly existential - and they are for the Iranian regime - you will endure a lot of pain, and you will subject the people under you to a lot of pain. And so I think that's what's happening here.
DAVIES: Right. You know, I learned only, I guess, a month or so ago that the Iranians' attack on the American base in Bahrain had prompted the Navy to move logistics support that that base provided to the Navy and its ships to a site hundreds of miles away, which is one of the things that contributed to the conditions on the USS Abraham Lincoln. So it's not like they haven't been able to inflict some damage on us, is it?
JAFFE: Yeah. No, and I think we should learn some real lessons, and this goes back to the discussion we were having earlier about drones and other sort of precision weaponry. The days of us being able to fight from large, fixed bases, you know, in a particular region, those are probably over. I mean, Iran is, at best, a middling power, and they've been able to inflict real damage on these bases. This is going to be a problem that's going to be with us for, you know, decades.
DAVIES: The difficulties that members of Congress find with Hegseth have affected his ability to get funding, right? And you note in one of your stories that the Pentagon will have to make do with a lot less than they expect to fight the war in Iran. Is the effect on military operations apparent there? Do we know what the impact will be?
JAFFE: So I don't think we know yet. And some of that money - so about 70 billion of that money is to fight the war in Iran. About 350 billion of that delta or difference is to sort of modernize and upgrade the military. So there are those two things going on. I think, you know, all the services are short money right now because of both the Iran deployment, the National Guard deployment in Washington, D.C. and around the country has left the Army a billion dollars short. And so everybody's running low on money. I think what it will mean near term is that you start cutting things like training hours, you know, ability to prepare for the next fight, readiness, how quickly you fix things, quality of life issues like making upgrades and repairs to bases. All those things go on hold so that you can keep current operations running. And I think that's what we're going to see.
Eventually, though, it does create a problem for your ability to prosecute the war. Whether we get to that point or not, I think it's unclear. I will note, in the past, during the early 2000s when there was a lot of disaffection with the Iraq war, Congress, at times, threatened to pull war funding or not to fund the war, but it was never willing to leave troops in the field in places like Iraq without everything they need to sort of defend themselves and survive. It will be interesting to see if there's enough anger about the Iran war, which is unpopular, that Congress will start pulling money or will allow the troops fighting that war to have less than the Pentagon says that they need.
DAVIES: You know, Pete Hegseth likes to work out with his troops. Some of his own workouts, I gather, are posted on social media at times, and he's publicly criticized senior officers for being out of shape, you know, part of his notion that the military has gone soft and lost its war fighting edge. Is there any empirical data about the physical condition of service members or training requirements that supports or contradicts Hegseth's view?
JAFFE: There's nothing that supports it. So Hegseth has in his mind that the military was last strong in 1990 or '91. And we can talk about why that date is important to him. I think he associates it with the victory in the Gulf War. It's also around the time where the positions in which women were allowed to serve was significantly broadened. So they're allowed to serve on combat ships, on aircraft carriers, as pilots and things like that. And so that, to him, becomes a moment where things started to go sideways and have continued to go sideways. So he presses the army on this and wants to know, have training standards been lowered and asks the Army to compare training standards for initial officer basic training for ranger school and a few other places to the 1990 standard. And the Army actually comes back and says, you know, the standard today is higher than it was in 1990. And I think Hegseth views that response as being disingenuous.
DAVIES: When Pete Hegseth made that speech at Quantico recently, he announced some new initiatives. One of them was the creation of Project Meridian. This is a plan to study the future of warfare, which would be led by Elon Musk, Palmer Luckey, who is a tech executive in his 30s, and former speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich. The work will be focused on discovering, developing and fielding weapons and systems that our children and grandchildren will need in their lifetimes - I'm reading this from his description - without any creative limitations or restrictions on any future battlefield from under the Earth to beyond the moon. This is a study to be completed in three months, right?
JAFFE: Yeah. Yeah. I think it's largely going to be a paper. And, you know, there are three interesting people. Palmer Luckey, the third one, is the driving force behind a company called Anduril, which has done some terrific stuff for the military, particularly in building autonomous systems and sparking that kind of industry. And so we'll see what they produce. It's not a bad idea. I guess I'd be surprised if it produces real change.
The one thing I've learned covering the Pentagon is that having a good idea is not enough. You really need to understand how to push it through the bureaucracy and reform the bureaucracy to turn that idea into something tangible. And I think Hegseth has been making a really good effort to try to understand where the bureaucracy is moving too slowly, where it's failing the military. And I think, you know, all of that is commendable, but the devil's in the details. It's a big, complicated, messy building.
DAVIES: You know, one of the criticisms has been that these are very political people. You know, Newt Gingrich, of course, was speaker of the House. And Musk and Palmer Luckey are active Republican donors and fundraisers. Is that a concern?
JAFFE: Yeah. So they're the three at the top of it. Then it's a much larger panel around them of about 20 people who are also part of this work. I think at the top, you'd like to have it be more bipartisan, maybe. I think there's some concern, too, that, you know, Luckey and Musk - their fortunes, their companies are tied in many ways to the Pentagon. And so, you know, will they steer the study to benefit their corporations or future projects that their corporations are working on? - is a concern. So I think all those concerns are fair. At the end of the day, though, as you know, it's three months, and it's a paper. And we'll - I think we'll have to see what they produce.
DAVIES: Another proposal is for a new military base. There are plenty of military bases around the United States already. What would be different about this one?
JAFFE: I have a hard time seeing Congress ponying up the money for this base without a real study to show that it's necessary. And I have a hard time seeing Hegseth making the case to the new Congress, which - I think, you know, based on the way the midterms are going right now, there's a decent chance that either the House or Senate will be controlled by the Democrats. I just have a hard time seeing this become reality. But, you know, I could be wrong.
DAVIES: Well, this kind of answers one of the questions I was going to ask you, which is, do any of these plans seem to have been carefully vetted by, you know, commanders and military experts?
JAFFE: You know, I think one of the things that at least I think is an intriguing or a good idea is this Autonomous Warfare Command that Hegseth has talked about. I think it's been hard for the services to find the money, the budget, the sort of brainpower, decision space to focus on this and maintain their own legacy systems - you know, the tanks, the planes, the ships that have been kind of essentially the core part of our military for - going back to almost the Reagan years.
And so the creation of an autonomous weapons command to think about these kind of weapons of the future full-time and to have its own kind of budget and powers and authorities - I think that's generally considered, you know, a good or at least a very intriguing idea.
DAVIES: Right. Right. I mean, 'cause drone warfare has played a big role in Ukraine and is constantly changing. So there's a lot of innovation to keep track of.
JAFFE: Yeah. Yeah. I think it's potentially really revolutionizing the way we fight, and I think there's a general consensus everywhere that we're behind.
DAVIES: We need to take another break here. We are speaking with Greg Jaffe. He covers the Pentagon and the U.S. military for The New York Times. We'll be back in just a moment. This is FRESH AIR.
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DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR, and we're speaking with veteran Pentagon correspondent Greg Jaffe. He covers the U.S. military for The New York Times - did it before that at The Washington Post. We're talking about the controversies over the performance of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.
You know, civilian control of the military has been a firm principle since the founding of the Republicans - since, you know, General George Washington gave up the presidency. Could we have a military that would weigh in when there's a terrible political controversy - when there's another attack on the Capitol?
JAFFE: I don't know. I mean, that's a really good question. I mean, on the one hand, I think what we're seeing is civilian control of the military. I mean, the military does not like these purges. They do not like the way Hegseth is pulling people off promotion lists, being the - a classic sort of example. And there hasn't been sort of widespread rebellion. I think people have largely left quietly.
You look at Randy George, the Army chief of staff who was fired. You look at Lisa Franchetti, the chief of naval operations who was fired, or CQ Brown, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. None of them have come out publicly and said much, or really anything, about Hegseth. And I think it's because their inclination is to protect their institutions. They don't want their institutions to be seen as political or partisan. And so they don't want to criticize Hegseth even if they're really disturbed by what he's doing because it will just worsen a situation that they see already happening, which is this sort of imposition of ideology on the military.
And so I think what we're seeing right now over the last two years is a military culture that's really strong that does not want to be pulled into these partisan culture-war, ideological fights. And they are resisting with every fiber of their being to that happening. I think the longer-term worry is, as you start to see the military with more and more of these people who get these jobs because of their willingness to take part in the culture war, that you lose what has made our military really special.
And honestly, you - I think one story we did earlier this year where you see that start to break down is the chief of naval operations. So Hegseth fires Lisa Franchetti, who's the first woman chief of naval operations, and replaces her with a guy named Daryl Caudle. You know, before Hegseth is even confirmed, Admiral Caudle, through his staff - who can tell that Franchetti is probably going to be fired 'cause Hegseth has written negatively about her in his book - he's reaching out to Hegseth, kind of campaigning for a job.
When Hegseth fires Franchetti, Caudle has someone on his staff reach out to senior people on Hegseth's staff and, you know, express kind of solidarity with Hegseth's anti-woke campaign. And Caudle, who's not the Navy's choice for this job - he's not among the top three people the Navy thinks is most competent to lead the Navy - is selected for this position, I think at least in part because he's seen as an ideological ally. And so when you have those things happen, you erode this sort of culture of nonpartisanship.
DAVIES: You know, when Hegseth was nominated, there was a lot of reporting, particularly from The New Yorker, that raised questions about his personal behavior in the past - heavy drinking, alleged sexual assault, managing two veterans organizations so poorly he was kicked out of them. Have any of these personal issues surfaced in his time at the Defense Department that you know of?
JAFFE: I mean, there's certainly a lot of chaos in his inner circle, or had been, particularly during the first year - a lot of kind of infighting and bickering that seemed to become public. In terms of the bad behavior - drinking, womanizing, things of that nature - we haven't seen that this time around.
And it's notable that Jen Hegseth, Pete Hegseth's wife, has a very prominent role in the Pentagon. She advises him. Not paid, not official, but she advises him. She travels with him. There was some early controversy that she was in some classified meetings without a clearance. She's part of when Hegseth text the Yemen war plans and the exact timing of the attack on Yemen - the transmitting of classified information - over Signal, which included a reporter from The Atlantic by accident. She's in one of the Signal groups that he sends it to. And there's - not clear to me why she would need to know that, nor that she has a security clearance that would allow her to know that. But for whatever reason, she seems to be playing a large role in the Pentagon.
It's interesting to note, you know, I think after his marriage to her, it's when he goes down this pathway of becoming far more religious. And I do think, you know, you can never look into someone's heart and see whether they are sincere or not. But I do feel like at some point during this period, which is the kind of 2017, 2018 period, he hits a kind of bottom and, I think, views his sort of spiritual awakening as saving him and changing his life. He often says the two most important people in his life are what he calls the two Js - Jen and Jesus. And so I do think there's a real sort of spiritual awakening that he views as having saved him.
DAVIES: There's been some talk of articles of impeachment if the Democrats take the House or the Senate. Do you think that's likely?
JAFFE: I think it's certainly possible. So Thomas Massie, a Republican who had sort of broken with President Trump and the MAGA movement, tried to introduce articles of impeachment last month. And Speaker Johnson recessed the House rather than have that vote in the House. And I think he - well, it's unclear exactly why he recessed the House. But I think it's a large worry that there were the - enough votes in the current Republican-controlled House to impeach Hegseth. And so I think if the Democrats take the House, I would not be surprised if that wasn't one of the things they tried to do.
DAVIES: Well, Greg Jaffe, thank you so much for speaking with us.
JAFFE: Yeah. Absolutely. Happy to do it.
DAVIES: Greg Jaffe covers the Pentagon and the U.S. military for The New York Times. We recorded our conversation yesterday. On tomorrow's show, we hear from White House correspondent April Ryan. She spent decades pressing presidents for answers, most of that time for American urban radio networks. We'll talk about access, power, race and what happened when asking questions put her in the president's crosshairs. I hope you can join us.
To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram - @nprfreshair. FRESH AIR's executive producer is Sam Briger. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham, with additional engineering support today from Charlie Kaier. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Roberta Shorrock, Ann Marie Baldonado, Lauren Krenzel, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Nyakundi, Anna Bauman and Nico Gonzalez-Wisler. Our digital media producer is Molly Seavy-Nesper. Therese Madden directed today's show.
For Terry Gross and Tonya Mosley, I'm Dave Davies.
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