World

Hagseth fears Trump may fire him – WSJ

US Secretary of Defense Pete Hagel is wary of being fired after a series of scandals involving leaks of sensitive information from the Pentagon.

This was reported by the Wall Street Journal, which cited its own sources, Komersant ukrainskyi reports.

According to the newspaper, President Donald Trump spoke with Hagans by phone and expressed his support for him. However, despite this, the defense secretary is increasingly concerned about how Trump perceives the situation with the scandals amid the leaks. In particular, he is afraid of being fired.

In an effort to garner support outside the Pentagon, Hagel spent hours on the phone and was late for several meetings during his first visit to the Asia-Pacific region.

The WSJ also describes how the Pentagon chief is threatening other defense officials with polygraphs, a story that was also previously reported by the New York Times.

All because of a leak that the Pentagon plans to hold a secret briefing on China, which will be attended by Elon Musk.

“I’m going to hook you up to a goddamn lie detector!” Hagesse shouted at the then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Christopher Grady.

In this way, the Secretary of Defense demanded proof that it was not Grady who leaked the briefing.

In the end, Grady failed a lie detector test, and Hagseth later accused several other people of leaking, including Joint Chiefs of Staff Director Doug Sims, whom he also threatened with a polygraph.

Pentagon leak scandals
In late March, the Atlantic reported that its journalist Jeffrey Goldberg was accidentally added to a chat with members of the US president’s team on the Signal messenger.

The journalist witnessed a discussion of strikes on Yemeni Houthi positions, which is sensitive information that is prohibited from being discussed through unsecured channels, including Signal.

Later it became known that there was more than one such chat room – the other included Hughes’s wife, his brother, and a lawyer with whom Hughes also shared information about the US operation against the Houthis.

Against this backdrop, Hagel’s chief of staff, Joe Kasper, and three other Pentagon officials were fired. The latter stated that anonymous officials of the ministry “tarnished their reputation with baseless accusations”. According to them, they were not told what they were accused of and whether there was any investigation at all.

In addition to the Signal scandal, the media also learned that Elon Musk was to attend a Defense Department briefing to discuss classified information in the event of a US war with China, although he is not authorized to see such plans.

This allegedly angered Trump, and the Pentagon initiated an internal investigation with polygraph examinations after Musk claimed that officials in the department were “leaking false information with malicious intent” about his relationship with the military.