{"id":17526,"date":"2025-04-28T22:14:10","date_gmt":"2025-04-28T22:14:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=17526"},"modified":"2025-04-28T22:14:12","modified_gmt":"2025-04-28T22:14:12","slug":"pentagon-leadership-vacuum-overwhelms-hegseths-office-its-a-free-for-all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=17526","title":{"rendered":"Pentagon leadership vacuum overwhelms Hegseth\u2019s office: \u2018It\u2019s a free-for-all\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>&#8220;The circle of top advisers in Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth\u2019s orbit has shrunk in recent days to little more than his wife, lawyer, and two lower-level officials \u2014 leaving the Pentagon\u2019s lead office without longtime expertise or clear direction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Hegseth\u2019s decision to fire three senior aides last week and reassign his chief of staff has blown a hole in his leadership team, severing essential lines of communication across the department and leading to fears about dangerous slip-ups such as weapons program delays.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2025\/04\/24\/hegseth-pentagon-leadership-vacuum-00308620\">https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2025\/04\/24\/hegseth-pentagon-leadership-vacuum-00308620<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;The circle of top advisers in Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth\u2019s orbit has shrunk in recent days to little more than his wife, lawyer, and two lower-level officials \u2014 leaving the Pentagon\u2019s lead office without longtime expertise or clear direction.<\/p>\n<p>Hegseth\u2019s decision to fire three senior aides last week and reassign his chief of staff has blown a hole in his leadership team, severing essential lines of communication across the department and leading to fears about dangerous slip-ups such as weapons program delays.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2025\/04\/24\/hegseth-pentagon-leadership-vacuum-00308620<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[455,1764,335],"class_list":["post-17526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-share","tag-department-of-defense","tag-leaders","tag-pentagon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17526"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17526\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17527,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17526\/revisions\/17527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}