TV News LIES

The Pentagon’s watchdog found that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth put U.S. personnel and their mission at risk when he used the Signal messaging app to convey sensitive information about a military strike against Yemen’s Houthi militants, two people familiar with the findings said Wednesday.

Hegseth, however, has the ability to declassify material and the report did not find he did so improperly, according to one of the people familiar with the findings who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the information. That person also said the report concluded that Hegseth violated Pentagon policy by using his personal device for official business and it recommended better training for all Pentagon officials.

The initial findings ramp up the pressure on the former Fox News Channel host after lawmakers had called for the independent inquiry into his use of the commercially available app. Lawmakers also just opened investigations into a news report that a follow-up strike on an alleged drug-smuggling boat in the Caribbean Sea in September killed survivors after Hegseth issued a verbal order to “kill everybody.”

Hegseth declined to sit for an interview with the Pentagon’s inspector general but provided a written statement, that person said. The defense secretary asserted that he was permitted to declassify information as he saw fit and only communicated details he thought would not endanger the mission.

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Pete Hegseth, the US defense secretary, told soldiers under his command in Iraq to ignore legal advice about when they were permitted to kill enemy combatants under their rules of engagement.

The anecdote is contained in a book Hegseth wrote last year in which he also repeatedly railed against the constraints placed on “American warfighters” by the laws of war and the Geneva conventions.

Hegseth is currently under scrutiny for a 2 September attack on a boat purportedly carrying drugs in the Caribbean, where survivors of a first strike on the vessel were reportedly killed in a second strike following a verbal order from Hegseth to “kill everybody”.

Hegseth has denied giving the order and retained the support of Donald Trump. The US president said Hegseth told him “he did not say that, and I believe him, 100%”. But some US senators have raised the possibility that the US war secretary committed a war crime.

In the book, The War on Warriors, Hegseth relates a story about a legal briefing at the beginning of his service in Iraq, in which he told the men under his command to ignore guidance from a military judge advocate general’s (JAG) attorney’s guidance about the rules of engagement in the conflict.

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The Pentagon on Tuesday scapegoated a navy admiral for the extrajudicial double-tap strike that killed survivors of a 2 September attack on an alleged drug boat and vowed to continue operations, even as lawmakers investigate whether the attack constituted a war crime.

At a Pentagon briefing on Tuesday, Kingsley Wilson, the Pentagon press secretary said that the decision to re-strike the “narco terrorist vessel” was made by Adm Frank M Bradley, “operating under clear and long standing authorities to ensure the boat was destroyed and the threat to the United States was eliminated”. Wilson added that Pete Hegseth, the Pentagon secretary, “stands behind Admiral Bradley, 100%”.

Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, on Monday explicitly named Bradley as the officer who “directed the engagement”, distancing Hegseth from accountability despite a Washington Post report that he ordered the deaths of everyone on the boat.

Wilson dismissed critical reporting of the incident as “fake news”.

During a cabinet meeting alongside Donald Trump on Tuesday, Hegseth said: “We’ve only just begun striking narco boats and putting narco terrorists at the bottom of the ocean.” He defended Bradley, who is set to provide a classified briefing to lawmakers overseeing the military on Thursday, saying Trump “always has our back” and that “we always have the back of our commanders who are making decisions in difficult situations”.

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There is an increasing apprehension among service members that they may be asked to carry out an illegal order, amid reports Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered troops to “kill everybody” in a boat strike in September.

The concerns, reflected in an uptick in calls to the Orders Project — which provides free legal advice to military personnel — come from the likes of staff officers involved in planning the strikes on supposed drug-carrying boats and those in charge of designating those on the vessels as a threat in order to carry out such attacks.

Even as a reported Justice Department classified memo from this summer preemptively argued that U.S. troops involved in the strikes would not be in legal jeopardy, service members appear far more concerned than usual that the U.S. military may be opening them up to legal harm, according to Frank Rosenblatt, president of the National Institute of Military Justice, which runs the Orders Project.

“They have questions, because this didn’t come up before. This was never an issue throughout both administrations of the global war on terror in Iraq or Afghanistan. No one ever came down and said, ‘You’re immunized for any potential crimes you commit,’” Rosenblatt told The Hill of the increase in calls to his organization. Established in 2020, he said such “activity was generally very low until three months ago.”

“I think most people knew they did their jobs faithfully and didn’t do things that are beyond the pale, like executing civilians, that they would be OK and wouldn’t be prosecuted. So now to have this immunity as part of the discussion really tends to chill people and make them ask, ‘What the heck’s going on? What is it that I might be asked to do?’” he added.

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The US navy knew of potentially dangerous levels of airborne plutonium in San Francisco for almost a year before it alerted city officials after it carried out testing that detected radioactive material in November last year, public health advocates allege.

The plutonium levels exceeded the federal action threshold at the navy’s highly contaminated, 866-acre Hunters Point Naval Shipyard. It was detected in an area adjacent to a residential neighborhood filled with condos, and which includes a public park.

The city is planning to redevelop Hunters Point with up to 10,000 housing units and new waterfront commercial districts. The property was used as a staging ground for nuclear weapons testing, and the discovery marks the latest in a series of controversies and cover-ups of dangerous, radioactive material at the site.

The navy is trying to avoid spending several billion dollars to do a proper clean up, said Jeff Ruch, senior counsel with the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility nonprofit, which is involved in litigation at the site.

“It’s been one thing after another after another,” Ruch said. “What else is in the closet? We don’t know and we’re not going to search the closet to find out.”

The navy did not respond to a request for comment from the Guardian.

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One of the two National Guard members shot in what authorities described as a "targeted" ambush near the White House has died, President Donald Trump announced on Thursday.

"Sarah Beckstrom of West Virginia, one of the guardsmen that we’re talking about, highly respected, young, magnificent person, started service in June of 2023, outstanding in every way. She’s just passed away," Trump said in a Thanksgiving call to service members from Palm Beach, Florida.

"She's just passed away. She's no longer with us," Trump continued. "She's looking down at us right now. Her parents are with her."

Andrew Wolfe, the other National Guard member who was shot near the White House, remained in critical condition, is "fighting for his life" and was in "very bad shape," according to the president.

The troops were part of a "high-visibility patrol,” about two blocks from the White House, when the shooting occurred, authorities said. The suspect was identified as Rahmanullah Lakanwal, 29, an Afghan national from Washington state.

The suspect’s motive has not been determined. He was shot by a nearby National Guard member and remained hospitalized in "serious condition" as of Thursday," according to authorities and Trump.

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