Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, whose tenure at the Pentagon has been anything but smooth, recently threatened his staffers with polygraph t
Alex Samuels at Daily Kos:
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, whose tenure at the Pentagon has been anything but smooth, recently threatened his staffers with polygraph tests in a frantic bid to stop leaks from inside his department. According to The Wall Street Journal, Hegseth lost it last month after The New York Times correctly reported that Elon Musk had been scheduled to attend a top-secret military briefing on U.S. plans for China. President Donald Trump ultimately barred Musk from the meeting, but the leak infuriated both Hegseth and Trump, setting off alarm bells across the Pentagon. Hegseth reportedly erupted, screaming at then-acting Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Christopher Gray: “I’ll hook you up to a fucking polygraph!” It wasn’t an isolated outburst. The Journal also reported Hegseth accused Joint Staff Director Doug Sims of leaking the Musk meeting and threatened to strap him into a lie detector, too. Neither man ended up taking one, but the threats alone speak volumes. The Times of London summed it up, writing Hegseth has created “an atmosphere of intimidation.” A Defense official told the paper, “The extraordinary thing is that lie detector tests are being threatened not to uncover potential anti-President Trump civil servants but to catch political appointees suspected of leaking classified or sensitive information.” There’s an irony here. Hegseth is obsessed with keeping tabs on his staff while openly screwing up his own job.
[...] It gets worse. On Thursday, it was reported that Hegseth set up an unsecured internet connection—known as a “dirty” line—in his office to bypass Pentagon security protocols and use Signal on his personal computer. Signal, of course, isn’t approved for classified communication, let alone military operations. “What I’ve seen with Hegseth—never in my life have I ever seen this,” one former Pentagon official told CNN.
Pete Hegseth: danger to national security.