The White House has begun to search for a new defense secretary, NPR reported on Monday night, citing an anonymous US official.
NPR reported that the executive branch is seeking a new Pentagon chief after current Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth released strike plans against the Houthis in Yemen on the contested messaging app Signal for the second time in less than a month.
NPR reported that four senior advisers to Hegseth left the Department of Defense abruptly in the past few weeks, and that some of them were accused of leaking sensitive information.
All of the advisers who left released public statements that suggested infighting within the Department of Defense.
After the NPR story aired, the White House responded and called the report “fake news.”
“This @NPR story is total FAKE NEWS based on one anonymous source who clearly has no idea what they are talking about. As the President said this morning, he stands strongly behind @SecDef,” White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt wrote on X/Twitter.
Hegseth shares strike plans
This comes after the New York Times reported that Hegseth shared war plans in a separate Signal group chat that included his wife, brother, and personal lawyer.
Hegseth allegedly shared the same details of the attack that were revealed last month by The Atlantic magazine after its editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, was included in a separate chat on the Signal app by mistake, in an embarrassing incident involving all of President Donald Trump’s most senior national security officials.
NYT, citing four sources familiar with the message group, said that the second chat included details of the schedule of the air strikes.
The White House said that no classified information was shared in Signal chats.
Hegseth’s wife, Jennifer, a former Fox News producer, has also reportedly attended sensitive meetings with foreign military counterparts, the Wall Street Journal has separately reported.
Revelations of another use of Signal for classified information come as one of Hegseth’s leading advisers, Dan Caldwell, was escorted from the Pentagon last week after being identified during an investigation into leaks at the Department of Defense, a US official told Reuters.
Following Caldwell’s departure, less senior officials Darin Selnick, who recently became Hegseth’s deputy chief of staff, and Colin Carroll, who was chief of staff to Deputy Defense Secretary Steve Feinberg, were put on administrative leave, officials said.
