Former Army Secretary Dan Driscoll is pulling back the curtain on his tumultuous time working under Pete Hegseth before he resigned in frustration last month.
Driscoll resigned in September after just 18 months in the role, and he has revealed that he and Hegseth had very different views on what a modern military looks like.
Tension between the two was widely reported throughout Driscoll’s year-and-a-half as army secretary, but insiders told Rolling Stone of one incident early on that seemed to trigger Hegseth. According to them, Driscoll had approached Hegseth with what he viewed as a “gift,” telling the defense secretary that they could use his close friendship with Vice President JD Vance to get things done at the Pentagon.
Two sources told the outlet that Hegseth “blew up at him” over that move, fuming that all contact with the White House needed to go through him.
The duo seemed to fail to see eye-to-eye on many issues from that point forward, with Hegseth’s passion for firings and blocking promotions—particularly of supposed DEI candidates—reported to have fueled the tension.
One former senior Army officer told Rolling Stone that Hegseth simply targeted naysayers, particularly those aiming for military modernization over PR opportunities.
“All the guys who had guts and were willing to speak the truth about where we needed to go and what we needed to do, they got rid of, right?” they said.
“Because they want people that are compliant and loyal, not people who think. They’re culture warriors. They care about culture. And it’s only their culture, which is compliance and loyalty above your duty.”
Driscoll was reportedly due for purging before his own resignation, and saw the firing of his pro-modernization ally Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George—who was set to retire in summer 2027—in April this year.
George told the outlet that despite just being down the hall from the secretary of defense, Hegseth fired him in a “15-second call,” and that he was “never really given a reason.”
A former Army official said: “I think [Driscoll] sacrificed any potential he had [for] a good working relationship with Pete to try to protect those guys, because it was the right thing to do for the Army.”
Driscoll told Rolling Stone: “Once he makes a decision, there’s nothing I can do about it. I don’t have to like it.”
Despite the rockiness of his 18 months as army secretary, he said it wasn’t all bad: “But I think it’s unfair to describe our relationship so flatly—that every interaction was bad, or that we disagreed on everything.
“If you polled us, we probably agreed on more than 50 percent of things. What’s been reported is all the things we disagree on.”
