It was the beginning of April and the Army chief of staff, Gen. Randy George, had decided it was time for an in-person meeting with his boss, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
George was keen to speak with Hegseth after several issues in which the Pentagon chief directly influenced Army general officers’ careers, including an incident when Hegseth reached down and blocked four colonels from being promoted to one-star general officers.
For months, Hegseth seemed increasingly dissatisfied with the Army and its leadership, including George. It mystified those around the Army chief, sources told CNN, given the limited interaction George had with Hegseth during his tenure, and there was little to no communication before Hegseth intervened in the promotions.
That fit a pattern in which information was held tightly in Hegseth’s office and few outside its confines were read in on his plans for the Pentagon, according to the sources. Hegseth was deeply distrustful of many around him — some troops had to sign nondisclosure agreements to learn about operations, and polygraph tests had become commonplace.
George wanted to ease some of the tension with Hegseth. So on April 1, he requested the in-person meeting to discuss a slew of the defense secretary’s priorities — technology and improving equipment — and how the Army was working to meet them, a Pentagon, US and defense official told CNN.
He never had the meeting. The next day, he was fired.
This story is based on interviews with 15 current and former Pentagon officials and others familiar with the inner workings of the department under Hegseth.
Nearly from the beginning of his tenure, multiple sources said, Hegseth has been distrustful of officials around him — civilian and military alike — and suspicious about their loyalties.
Hegseth has fired more than two dozen senior officers, pushed out a Navy secretary he clashed with, and reportedly intervened in promotions across the military branches directly shaping leadership.
While the timing of George’s firing was abrupt and unexpected, occurring while Army Secretary Dan Driscoll was out of town and catching senior Army leaders off guard, the firing itself was not. It was the culmination of months of tension between Hegseth and senior Army staff, and George in particular.
Hegseth and other close Trump allies had been skeptical about George from the beginning, partially because George served as an aide to former Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin during the Biden years. The apolitical military assignment was one of several posts in a long career, which included commanding troops during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, that put George in a position to develop extensive relationships with lawmakers.
The firings and restricted access have been a cornerstone of Hegseth’s tenure, though sources told CNN it is not limited to the secretary’s office. The culture has permeated other offices in the Pentagon, creating a culture of infighting among some senior civilian leaders.
“Everything we did on a daily basis, we were calculating, ‘Is this going to keep the boss employed, or is this going to get him fired?’” a Pentagon official told CNN. “Every single day, every decision that we made, that was a planning factor. … It’s very unusual for that to be considered so heavily.”
Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a statement to CNN, “The anonymous sources cited by CNN are outsiders with a clear political agenda to smear the Department and undermine Secretary Hegseth’s leadership through partisan hit pieces.”
“Every successful organization goes through leadership changes, and we thank those who have departed for their service to the country,” he added. “Decisive steps were taken to align military leadership with the priorities of the President, the Secretary, and our warfighters.”
It’s an open secret throughout the Pentagon that survivability often depends on making as little noise as possible and avoiding drawing the attention of Hegseth and his office, multiple officials said.
“Sometimes leaders have to do bold things when they’re in charge, sometimes they have to put their neck out there, and the Army has been trying to promote leaders who are willing to do that,” the defense official said. “And if anything, this has put ice on that idea.”
George was in the middle of a meeting with his senior directors on the Army staff when he was interrupted and told that Hegseth was trying to get ahold of him, the Pentagon official said.
He stepped out and Hegseth delivered the news — a curt, direct call, according to the defense official, with little explanation. Just moments after Hegseth delivered the news, CBS News’ Jennifer Jacobs reported the ouster publicly.
Roughly 30 minutes later, George reconvened his staff. “People had seen the tweet,” the Pentagon official said. “It was awkward because everybody’s looking at him, like what is he going to say?”
George delivered the news matter-of-factly, the Pentagon official said: No emotions, no color. His attitude seemed nearly lighthearted, as if trying to make it less uncomfortable.
“The staff proceeded to, one by one, either go and give him a handshake or a hug,” the official recalled. “It was solemn — as if someone had died.”
By the next morning, George’s office had been emptied.
A tight grip on information
The turnover at the Pentagon has drawn attention from lawmakers, but George’s ouster in particular has drawn public concern from both sides of the aisle, with lawmakers praising him as an upstanding officer and voicing disappointment with his firing.
“There is no person that has more respect for Gen. (Randy) George and his 42 years of service, his Purple Heart, his wife Patty, their grandkids, their kids. I adore them,” Driscoll said during a House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee hearing last month after George’s ouster.
Hegseth, meanwhile, declined to tell lawmakers exactly why he’d fired George, but said it’s “very difficult to change the culture of a department that has been destroyed by the wrong perspectives with the same officers that were there.”
Hegseth’s comments reaffirm that George’s firing is “part of this undefinable culture war that Hegseth wants as his legacy,” the Pentagon official said.
But it’s the secrecy and suspicion that is having the biggest impact on Pentagon decision-making.
As has been the case during much of his tenure, Hegseth kept key military planners at arm’s length in the lead-up to the war with Iran, meaning some members of the joint staff — the military’s nerve center for planning and advising the president and secretary of defense — had little visibility into the Trump administration’s strategic thinking, multiple sources said.
That presented challenges for military planners who were abruptly tasked with handling the logistics of moving US assets into the region, including the USS Gerald R. Ford carrier strike group, which was operating off the coast of Venezuela.
It is also the kind of ad hoc decision-making encouraged by Hegseth and the administration’s political leadership that has continued to present challenges for US commanders, sources said.
“A year-plus later, there is a lack of clear internal processes within the Pentagon … caused by mass paranoia,” the Pentagon official said of Hegseth’s tenure. “Everything is a case-by-case basis because there’s no delegation, there’s no trust. And if there’s no delegation or trust, policy decisions can’t be made.”
Since the war’s start, Hegseth and his team have been primarily focused on painting the conflict as an overwhelming success, including in press briefings, where he’s criticized news outlets for coverage he describes as “incredibly unpatriotic.”
Hegseth has also prioritized the production of “war videos” for the White House as it defends Trump’s decision to launch the conflict, another source said, echoing efforts by the Department of Homeland Security, which has aggressively pushed videos of immigration enforcement to project a view of efficient success.
But as the economic realities of Iran’s move to close the Strait of Hormuz have become clear, and with Trump increasingly frustrated by reports contradicting Hegseth’s comments about Tehran’s remaining military capability, the defense secretary has once again turned his attention to investigating leaks.
Taking a cue from Hegseth, US Central Command has repeatedly questioned deployed service members for leaks and attempted to use powers typically reserved for classification to scare troops from sharing any information, even if unclassified, according to one of the sources.
“They act like we are the enemy,” the source said.
Hegseth and tensions with the military service chiefs
One of the most prominent examples of infighting throughout Hegseth’s tenure has been with Driscoll, often due to the close relationship Driscoll has had with Vice President JD Vance. CNN has reported that Hegseth has viewed Driscoll’s relationship with the White House as an effort to go around him, an insecurity that boiled over in a previously reported disagreement last year in which Driscoll sought to get Vance and Trump to the Pentagon.
Driscoll and Vance were classmates at Yale Law School and have remained close friends. The young Army secretary has also formed his own relationship with the president, which was apparent when he was tapped by Trump to help persuade Ukraine to return to the negotiating table for talks with Russia.
Still, the Pentagon official said the writing was on the wall for Driscoll and Hegseth “from the very beginning.”
“He just has this deep-seeded distrust of the Army,” the official said.
Months before Hegseth removed George, he removed the widely respected Army vice chief of staff, Gen. James Mingus, and replaced him with his own senior military aide, Gen. Chris LaNeve. By positioning LaNeve as the vice chief of staff, it was clear the intent was for him to eventually replace George, the sources said — a theory that came to fruition when George was fired, leaving LaNeve to take over as the acting chief of staff.
Just weeks after George’s forced retirement, officials inside the Pentagon were shocked when Navy Secretary John Phelan was also abruptly fired. CNN reported that Phelan was still seeking to confirm his firing was legitimate with the White House when the Pentagon spokesman wrote on X that Phelan would depart his role “effective immediately.”
Some officials in the Defense Department mused it was surprising Phelan was removed before Driscoll.
But multiple sources told CNN the relationship between Phelan and Hegseth had similarly soured over the last several months for a number of reasons, ranging from frustration by Hegseth that Phelan wasn’t moving quickly enough on the administration’s priorities, to suspicion of Phelan’s close relationship with Trump.
One source familiar with the discussions surrounding Phelan’s firing told CNN that it was because of a growing list of “deficiencies” found with his approach to the job — largely that he was too slow moving forward on key efforts like shipbuilding and that he discouraged direct communication between senior Navy and Marine Corps officers and Hegseth’s office.
The same source familiar said Hung Cao, a Navy veteran who is now acting secretary of the Navy, was cut out of decision-making by his boss as undersecretary of the Navy. Cao knew Hegseth before the two joined the Trump administration.
Nearly a day after his ouster, Trump praised Phelan as a “longtime friend, and very successful businessman, who did an outstanding job.”
Trump has similarly continued to praise Hegseth, even as sources inside and outside the Pentagon have speculated over the last year that the president would soon move on to a new defense secretary.
In his public appearances, Hegseth often speaks directly to camera, and by extension, to Trump in a way the president likes, sources have told CNN. The president has thus far not shown a willingness to break with his defense secretary despite the drama simmering across the river.
“Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, central casting,” Trump said at a recent Cabinet hearing as Hegseth sat to his left. “He loves war.”
