Pete Hegseth

The pattern

The documentary record of the period contains an unusual repetition. On 1 January he told the President that no Greenland plan existed and listed the reasons one would be difficult, then commissioned it. On 4 January he presented the legal barriers to leaving NATO and the technical means of sabotaging allied aircraft, then executed the sabotage. On 3 February he set out four options for the nuclear vaults and recommended the one that changed nothing. On 7 February he called operations against the British mainland unadvisable in the strongest terms available to a Cabinet officer, and on 14 February he delivered the plan for them.

Each briefing was accurate. Each warning was accepted as information rather than as advice. The pattern is the central fact of his tenure and the reason the American record of the rupture reads as a sequence of accurately predicted disasters.

The purge

The exception is 17 January. When the Department's General Counsel, Comptroller, and three Judges Advocate General entered statutory non-compliance determinations that stopped the money moving, Hegseth removed all five and installed acting officials who cleared the holds the same evening.

This is the one occasion on which he did not describe an obstacle but eliminated it. Every legal objection raised inside the Department after that date was recorded as advice.

Assessment

"The operational blueprint is drafted, verified, and ready for execute orders if commanded. But the Joint Staff and Strategic Command must state for the record: executing Albion Anvil requires stripping our entire Indo-Pacific and Middle East posture bare, risks the destruction of the Atlantic Fleet, and carries a near-certain probability of crossing the strategic nuclear threshold."

Phases I and II were ordered two days later.

See also

• The Pentagon purge
• Operation Albion Anvil
• The Greenland directive