Top Pentagon aide reportedly derails high-level meetings with 'bawdy' strip club tales
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth came into the Pentagon with little experience in government or management, and current and former officials say his leadership team is in shambles.
The Pentagon chief has been embroiled for over a month in scandal over his use of the non-secure Signal app to discuss military operations with a reporter, family members and others present, and sources told the New York Times that his three-month tenure has produced chaos that's unmatched in recent history.
"The discord, according to current and former defense officials, includes: screaming matches in his inner office among aides; a growing distrust of the thousands of military and civilian personnel who staff the building," the Times reported, "and bureaucratic logjams that have slowed down progress on some of President Donald Trump’s key priorities, such as an 'Iron Dome for America' missile-defense shield. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal business."
Hegseth has vowed to restore a a “warrior ethos” to the department, but current and former officials say his inner circle has focused on petty bureaucratic disputes rather than policy.
And staffers say his handpicked chief of staff Joe Kasper often derails meetings with what the Times described as "pointlessly bawdy" digressions.
"One meeting Mr. Kasper led this month, with a group that works with veterans that was offering its services to the Pentagon, devolved into a recounting of an evening Mr. Kasper and a representative of the group spent at a Washington strip club, said a person who took part in the session," the Times reported.
"Other officials said that Mr. Hegseth and Mr. Kasper had been unable to establish a process to ensure that basic, but essential, matters move swiftly through Mr. Hegseth’s office," the report added.
Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has added to the dysfunction by targeting as many of 200,000 job cuts from the departments civilian work force of 750,000, which Hegseth has said would impair some critical Pentagon functions, according to three current and former defense officials.
"Publicly, Mr. Hegseth has welcomed Mr. Musk and his team to the Pentagon and even promoted some of the savings that they have said they have found," the newspaper reported.
"In private, he and Mr. Musk’s team have sparred over cuts to civilians who work in military hospitals, shipyards, munitions factories and schools," the report added. "A senior official representing Mr. Musk’s effort in the Pentagon was recently replaced because Mr. Musk believed he wasn’t willing to make deep enough cuts, defense officials said."