STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
U.S. military has been taking fire from within.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has dismissed a stream of senior officers since the early days of the Trump administration. They include many officers who are women or Black and people of all backgrounds with deep combat experience. This week, the secretary of the Army resigned. He's an official appointed by President Trump who had defended many of the officers. Current military officers have been silent about all this, as their role requires. But former officers often express their point of view. And in a moment, we'll hear from Peter Chiarelli, who served almost 40 years.
INSKEEP: NPR's Quil Lawrence has been following all of this and has an assessment. Quil, good morning.
QUIL LAWRENCE, BYLINE: Good morning.
INSKEEP: What's driving all the departures?
LAWRENCE: Hegseth hasn't offered explanations publicly for any of these firings. He has said separately that he's ridding the military of DEI hires and woke. The Army's top civilian leader, Dan Driscoll, also appointed by President Trump, resigned this week. And this has been a long time coming. Driscoll's close with Vice President JD Vance. Both are Iraq vets. They met at Yale Law School. And that may be part of why he was so prominent in the first months of this administration. But when Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth accidentally leaked U.S. battle details to a journalist, Signalgate, there was speculation that Driscoll might replace him. And the tension has been building really ever since.
INSKEEP: OK. So there might've been this sort of personal tension. But was Driscoll also defending the uniformed services against Hegseth?
LAWRENCE: We know of a couple of cases where that went public. It may have been in many more cases. But Hegseth has sacked more than 10 generals. He's also been, quite unusually, reaching down into the promotion lists to effectively end the careers of people who had already been carefully vetted. Many of those people have been Black or female officers, or generals who were just - seemed to be tainted merely by serving with distinction under the Biden administration.
I've reached out to Driscoll. I haven't heard back from him. But at least in one congressional hearing, he went to bat for a general who'd been removed. And we know from a person close to Driscoll, who wasn't authorized to speak publicly, that Driscoll did have a final meeting with President Trump where he told him that Hegseth's arbitrary firings are making it harder to modernize the military because really good people are getting fired, and it's hollowing out the senior ranks. And he also told Trump that the U.S. is losing the Iran war, that the war is draining the U.S. stockpiles of missiles, and then Driscoll handed in his resignation.
INSKEEP: I'm glad you mentioned the war with Iran. What do all these personnel changes mean for ongoing operations?
LAWRENCE: Yeah. Like you say, this is happening while the country is at war. And besides Iran, the administration is marking a year now since it started simply blowing up boats that were coming from South America on the suspicion that they're carrying drugs, killing the sometimes unarmed people on board with no trial, no warning. Admiral Alvin Holsey was the head of SOUTHCOM, Southern Command, a year ago when these boat strikes began, and he resigned about two years before his term was up. Holsey was among a tiny number of Black flag officers. He's never spoken publicly about why he resigned.
But now the administration was saying that this year of boat strikes has reduced the amount of drugs entering the U.S. They haven't offered evidence to support that. But it's worth noting that these strikes started as part of a buildup that toppled Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro. That operation was almost too quick to even call it a war. But a number of senior former military officials have said they think that President Trump came away from that thinking that everything always goes to plan and wars and regime changes can be easy. And now the war in Iran is into its seventh month, and there's a lot of turmoil within the ranks of the U.S. military.
INSKEEP: NPR's Quil Lawrence. Thanks so much. Really appreciate it.
LAWRENCE: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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