The Pentagon will fire Joe Casper, chief of staff to the US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, amid the Signal data leak incident.
Politico reports this, citing a senior official from the US presidential administration.
According to the source, Casper will leave his post in the coming days. This comes against the backdrop of a high-profile scandal with the leak of confidential information from the Pentagon, which caused personnel reshuffles in the US Department of Defense. However, as the publication notes, Casper will receive a new position at the Pentagon.
In addition, several other officials were placed on leave — Hegsethʼs adviser Dan Caldwell, deputy chief of staff Darin Selnick and chief of staff to the deputy secretary of defense Colin Carroll. According to the newspaperʼs sources, Carroll and Selnick plan to sue over this.
That means Hegseth will be left without a chief of staff, deputy chief of staff, and senior adviser in his main office. This could affect his work, as Hegseth is still an inexperienced leader in the Pentagon and has lost many of his top advisers, the media noted.
“Everyone knew Pete Hegseth didn’t have the leadership qualities, background or experience to be Secretary of Defense. All we’ve seen since then is the firing of several American heroes for alleged disloyalty, the Signal oversight, the complete lack of transparency, and now the showing of the door to several political staffers. This only confirms that he doesn’t have what it takes to lead,” said Chris Meagher, who served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs in the Joe Biden administration.
What preceded
The Atlantic magazine CEO Jeffrey Goldberg said he was accidentally added to a chat on the Signal messenger, where the American operation against the Houthis was being discussed.
He was added to the chat by an account under the name Mike Waltz, the name of the US Presidentʼs national security adviser. According to Goldberg, the chat contained information about the targets, the weapons the US would use, and the sequence of attacks. Shortly after, direct attacks on Yemen took place.
Waltz later took responsibility for the incident and said that someone else was supposed to be added to the chat instead of the journalist, but the number was mistakenly added to someone elseʼs list. Trump considered firing Waltz for the Signal chat leak, but did not want to please his critics.
The head of the Pentagon, the directors of the US National Intelligence and CIA, as well as President Donald Trump, denied that military plans and classified information were discussed on the Signal messenger. Therefore, journalists at The Atlantic decided to publish this correspondence.
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