The White House was forced to intervene to put an end to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s routine use of polygraph tests on his own staff.
According to The Washington Post, a top aide to the Defense chief complained to the White House that he could be subject to a lie detector as Hegseth’s campaign to stamp out the endless Pentagon media leaks raged.
In April, Hegseth’s Trump-loyalist advisor, Patrick Weaver, took offense to the suggestion that he should have to submit to testing being carried out on those close to the Defense secretary. An ally of President Donald Trump and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, Weaver’s complaint resulted in a phone call from the White House to Hegseth’s team telling them to knock it off.
The Defense secretary’s hunt for whistle-blowers ramped up in March right before the infamous Signal-gate leaks, in which top members of the Trump administration discussed plans to bomb Yemen on commercial messaging app Signal with a journalist in the thread.
According to sources speaking to The Washington Post, multiple polygraph tests were carried out over several weeks.
Members of the Joint Service Interagency Advisory Group, high-ranking military officials, and even staff at other agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, were all subject to polygraphs. Hegseth threatened to carry out more tests on other military staff.
The news about the White House’s intervention in the polygraph slinging comes on the heels of further reports of chaos at the Pentagon.
This week, reports emerged that senior department officials have been circulating letters calling for Hegseth’s removal.
“The American public knows this guy has no clue what he’s doing,” one staff member described the gist of the letter to the Daily Mail.
Gripes in the department relate to Hegseth’s deployment of the National Guard in California during Immigration and Customs Enforcement protests last month.
Staff are also reportedly annoyed by his installation of a makeup studio at Defense headquarters and his insistence on snapping workout pics alongside troops.
Polygraph tests involve tracking heart rate, blood pressure, respiration, and skin conductivity while subjects respond to questioning in an effort to detect deception. The American Psychological Association notes their use is controversial and that their efficacy may be “more myth than reality.” Their results are not admissible in courts.
The Pentagon, the White House, and Weaver declined to comment to the Post. The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House and Pentagon for comment.
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