As Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth struggles with internal dissension and questions about his handling of classified information, he joins a long line of Pentagon chiefs who had to fight for their positions. Looking back at their experiences may be instructive to both him and President Donald Trump in determining whether he survives the ordeal.
The secretary of defense is a relatively new position. Throughout U.S. history, the responsibilities were divided into two positions: secretary of war and secretary of the Navy. President Harry Truman merged them at the same time the United States was building its post-World War II national security apparatus. It was a period of such instability that the first two secretaries of defense were "asked for their resignations" — the Washington euphemism for being fired.
The first secretary of defense was James Forrestal, who was a fixture in Washington, D.C. He served in the administration of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Despite this lineage, Forrestal ran afoul of a young but influential Truman White House aide, Clark Clifford. Forrestal wanted the newly created National Security Council to be run out of the Defense Department. But Clifford successfully countered and had the NSC placed in the White House. The two also clashed over the recognition of Israel, which Truman ultimately supported over the objections of most of his national security team, including Forrestal. Forrestal was particularly vitriolic on the subject, at one point telling Clifford, "There are 30 million Arabs on one side and about 600,000 Jews on the other. Why don't you face up to the realities?" Forrestal's known anti-Israel proclivities also raised the ire of columnist Walter Winchell, who attacked Forrestal with damaging accusations about tax-related matters in his widely read column.
Forrestal's main problem was that he drove Truman crazy by being too indecisive. Truman once asked aide Robert Dennison, "Do you know who the secretary of defense is?" When Dennison dutifully replied that it was Forrestal, Truman shot back:
"You're wrong. I'm the secretary of defense. ... Jim calls me up several times a day asking me to make a decision on matters that are completely within his competence, but he passes them on to me."
Truman asked for Forrestal's resignation in March 1949, toward the end of his transition to his second term, but the story has a sad ending. Forrestal turned out to have mental health challenges and was hospitalized after his resignation, and he killed himself by jumping out of a hospital window. (This led to the arch joke that the Forrestal Building in Washington, which houses the Department of Energy, has windows that don't open in memory of its namesake.)
Forrestal's successor, Louis Johnson, had a different problem: Truman detested Johnson because he felt that the egotistical Johnson thought he should run everything. Johnson, a hyperambitious Democratic fundraiser, had helped push Forrestal out the door with an ugly whisper campaign. It also did not help that Johnson offended Cabinet members and White House staffers. Secretary of State Dean Acheson found Johnson's demand that only certain staffers at defense and state could talk to one another unmanageable, and Truman did not like Johnson's constant criticism of Truman's White House aides. Truman asked for Johnson's resignation in 1950, mainly because of disagreements over how to handle the Korean War.
After those two initial missteps, there was a period of stability with defense secretaries until the late 1960s. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara served under both Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, not an easy accomplishment, and actually survived in the job for seven years until he and Johnson could no longer work together because of the Vietnam War.
While McNamara was initially supportive of the war and dismissive of internal war skeptics, his position changed by 1967, angering Johnson. In response to a McNamara memo calling for a bombing halt, Johnson said, "You've never seen such a lot of s***." A McNamara argument that North Vietnam could not just be bombed into submission led to a three-hour harangue in which Johnson yelled at his defense chief. As a result of their disagreements, Johnson felt he "had no choice" but to replace McNamara.
Still, getting rid of the man running the war was not easy. Johnson came up with an alternative position for McNamara, as head of the World Bank, elbowing aside Treasury Secretary Henry Fowler, who had expected to get the job. (Fowler is supposed to have cried when he heard the news.)
Another secretary of defense who lost out as a result of a transition was James Schlesinger, who served in the role under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. Schlesinger initially survived Nixon's August 1974 resignation, but not for long. Ford outside adviser Bryce Harlow recalled that the Nixon appointees were causing "internal anarchy," and he recommended their removal. Schlesinger ended up being one of multiple victims of the early November 1974 staff shake-up that became known as "the Halloween Massacre."
Replacing Schlesinger at defense was Donald Rumsfeld, who would have his own travails in his second stint as defense secretary under President George W. Bush in the 2000s. Rumsfeld, who was the youngest-ever secretary of defense under Ford, became the oldest one under Bush. Rumsfeld became the face of the Iraq War, which made him increasingly unpopular in Bush's second term.
When Bush was making the transition to his second term after his 2004 reelection, Colin Powell, who was Rumsfeld's rival as secretary of state, agreed to resign but thought that Rumsfeld would be doing so as well. That didn't happen. Rumsfeld was increasingly under pressure because of the unpopularity of the Iraq War and the Abu Ghraib Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal. Bush's chief of staff Andrew Card twice recommended that Bush fire Rumsfeld before the 2006 midterm elections. Bush refused and suffered what he described as a "thumpin'," losing both houses of Congress. After that, Bush did ask for Rumsfeld's resignation, which was announced on Nov. 8, 2006, the day after the election. At that announcement, Bush said, "I know there's a lot of speculation on what the election means for the battle we're waging in Iraq. I recognize that many Americans voted last night to register their displeasure with the lack of progress being made there."
Thus far, the only secretary of defense to survive a significant period of embattlement was former President Joe Biden's. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, a former general, came under tremendous criticism in early 2024 when it was revealed that he was completely out of contact because of an undisclosed medical procedure and had left no continuity of operations plan. Although what Austin did was probably a fireable offense, he survived in large part because he served in the Biden administration, and Biden was notoriously reluctant to fire anybody (it also helped that the media let the matter drop relatively quickly).
The Austin situation was likely an anomaly. As history shows, when secretaries of defense come under the gun, they are usually not long for the job. Thus far, Trump continues to stand by Hegseth despite his problems, but that may not last forever.