Pentagon Whistleblower Wes Bryant: Impeach Hegseth. He’s a “Clear & Present Danger” to Democracy

AMY GOODMAN: The House is moving towards a vote this week on whether to impeach Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. The outgoing Republican Congressmember Thomas Massie of Kentucky introduced articles of impeachment against Hegseth on Monday for violating the Constitution and ignoring the will of Congress.

REP. THOMAS MASSIE: Wherefore, Secretary of Defense Peter Hegseth, by such conduct, has demonstrated that he will remain a threat to the Constitution if allowed to remain in office, and has acted in a manner grossly incompatible with his duties and the rule of law. Peter Brian Hegseth thus warrants impeachment and trial, removal from office and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust or profit under the United States.

AMY GOODMAN: Congressmember Massie introduced eight articles of impeachment against Hegseth, including violating the 1973 War Powers Resolution by continuing to attack Iran after Congress ordered the Trump administration to stop, illegally waging war against Yemen, ignoring laws designed to reduce civilian casualties, overseeing extrajudicial killings by bombing the boats of alleged drug traffickers in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, abducting President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela without congressional authorization, and suppressing the free speech rights of Democratic Senator Mark Kelly in retaliation for his participation in a video reminding troops not to obey illegal orders.

Only a few Republican defectors in the House would be needed for a simple majority to impeach, setting up a Senate trial that could remove Hegseth from office.

In anticipation of the potential impeachment vote, Defense Secretary Hegseth posted a video on social media last week defending his record. He was standing in front of a sign that said “Department of War.” This is some of what he said.

DEFENSE SECRETARY PETE HEGSETH: But why do the Democrats and the deep state radicals really hate us? Because we tore down their sacred cows, one by one and without apology. DEI is a Marxist ideology built to destroy us, so we crushed it. … Patriot extremism, it’s not a thing. Patriots are now in control. Being trans is a mental illness incompatible with military service. … Military bases should not be renamed in the name of understanding “white rage.” … Narcoterrorists should die, not be caught and released. … Sealing the border and mass deportations are military functions. And when we say that Iran will not have a nuclear weapon, we actually mean it. … We will stand. We will fight. And we will defend this republic from all enemies, foreign and domestic.

AMY GOODMAN: President Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio say they’re standing by Hegseth. Trump spoke to reporters Sunday.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: A lot of people agree. And Pete Hegseth, so he wins two wars. We won in Venezuela. We’ve taken out hundreds of billions of dollars. We won in 48 minutes. And we won in Iran. … So, when you say about Pete Hegseth, I mean, he’s guilty of two things: basically, winning two wars.

AMY GOODMAN: As we go to broadcast, Hegseth is holding a rare press briefing at the Pentagon, the first in something like half a year. He called the impeachment charges a farce and a stunt. The last time he addressed reporters was in May.

For more, we’re joined by retired Master Sergeant Wes J. Bryant, spent 20 years in the U.S. Air Force as a special operations targeting specialist. He also served as chief of civilian harm assessment at the Pentagon from ’24 to ’25. The office was dissolved after President Trump returned to the White House. Wes Bryant is joining us from Raleigh, North Carolina.

Wes, you’re speaking as Hegseth is speaking in Washington, D.C., defending himself. I first want to go to the office that you were chief of. What was it? The civilian harm. It was the — you were chief of civilian harm, the reduction unit at the Pentagon, which was shut down. Was that by Hegseth or Trump? And explain what that did and what these articles of impeachment mean.

WES BRYANT: Yeah. You know, yeah, I was a chief of civilian harm assessment at what was called the Civilian Protection Center of Excellence at the Pentagon, under a new construct that came up, ironically, under the first Trump administration initially, and then was codified into law under the Biden administration, what was called the Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Enterprise. And, of course, you know, Hegseth, that was one of the so-called woke programs that was attacked immediately, and he effectively dismantled and shut it down. And, of course, I was pushed out after whistleblowing about all of that.

And, you know, looking at the articles of impeachment — I mean, let’s just look at Hegseth’s spectacle on Thursday. I mean, that video, in and of itself, should be enough to impeach this man — his violent religious extremism, his emotional instability, his psychological volatility, you know, and during that couple-of-minute broadcast, he made direct overtures toward threatening the American people, namely what he calls, you know, his political enemies, the so-called radical Democrats, with use of military force. That, in and of itself, is enough.

But then, let’s look at the articles of impeachment, which lay out all of the various violations, constitutionally, against standing U.S. law, against U.S. military law and policy, and against international law and U.N. Charter, for all of these illegal wars that he’s waged, Venezuela, invading Venezuela, abducting a head of state, invading — a mass bombing campaign in Yemen, a mass bombing campaign in Iran. And then we have his attacks against the press and free speech, his use, increasing use, of the military domestically against the American people, and further threats to use the military under the Insurrection Act.

So, you know, Hegseth truly presents a clear and present danger to this democracy, to America, to the free world. Under Hegseth, you know, the U.S. military has been hijacked, and America has become, has portrayed itself to the world as a far-right dictatorship bent on global domination, and Hegseth and his wielding of the U.S. military with free rein from Donald Trump is really the primary enforcer of that.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Wes Bryant, I wanted to ask you about one of the — one of the points that Massie mentions in his impeachment resolution is also the targeted killings or the so-called boat strikes of alleged drug traffickers in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific. Could you respond to that in particular, given the fact that it’s not just Hegseth, but there had to be a lot of people down the military chain who followed orders in these — attacking people that there’s no evidence, number one, that they were actually drug trafficking or, two, that they should be executed even if they were drug trafficking?

WES BRYANT: Right, exactly. This is just incredibly shameful. These so-called narcoterrorism strikes have been shown to be, you know, by both current and former military lawyers and other government lawyers, State Department, for example, to be completely illegal, out of accordance with U.S. law and especially with international law. That’s whether they are civilians or whether they are drug traffickers. The term “narcoterrorism” actually doesn’t even fit doctrinally within the U.S. military’s own term, own definition of “terrorism.”

So, when, you know, people ask me, as an expert in civilian harm, as an expert in strike operations, that spent 20 years in the U.S. military carrying these operations out — when people ask me, “Does the U.S. military intentionally target civilians?” I would have previously said “no.” But now I’ll say “absolutely,” because we have targeted on order of over a couple — over 200 civilians in these so-called narcoterrorism strikes. These are clear and blatant war crimes.

And again, as you mentioned, Hegseth is not only to blame. You know, I stated a year ago, when I first whistleblew about the dismantling of civilian harm protections and everything else, all the other threats Hegseth presented, that I believed our senior military commanders — Bradley, Cooper, General Caine — would be the shield against the unlawful and unethical use of the U.S. military. We’ve seen the exact opposite. Hegseth’s pushed out everyone who may have dissented, and everyone who remains is either in line or weak and complicit. And yes, these senior combatant commanders, these senior military lawyers, and even down to some of the operational level, need to be held accountable for these crimes.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And can you also elaborate on Hegseth’s lethality doctrine, his Christian nationalist views, and why you see him as fundamentally unfit?

WES BRYANT: Right. You know, internally, Hegseth’s ideology is one of a Christian nationalism, actually a white Christian nationalism, that’s rooted in this — in misogyny, in a racial and religious supremacy, and rooted in dehumanization. It’s really — it’s a perverted version of Christianity, that is to pure Christianity what the Sharia of ISIS and the Taliban is to Islam. There’s truly no difference here.

And so, what he’s trying to do is infuse this ideology within the U.S. military, and then it also feeds his very ethos, you know, his so-called revival of the warrior ethos, and then his lethality doctrine, which is truly based on dehumanization, and it ignorantly reduces the U.S. military’s mission to just lethality and killing. You combine this with his fixation on hypermasculinity, which, frankly, is reminiscent of the Aryan movement of the Third Reich, what Hitler’s Nazi Germany called the “new German man,” and now you have this amalgamation of worldview and outlook combined with an application into the operational use of the U.S. military that becomes just an outlook of killing and destruction, and a reveling in and glorification of war.

Then you have his disdain, you know, his blatant, overt disdain, for rules of engagement, Geneva Conventions, the laws of war. And now you combine all of this together, and along with weak and complicit military command, and it’s no wonder that we have atrocities being carried out, that we have all of these illegal wars and operations being carried out.

AMY GOODMAN: Retired Master Sergeant Wes Bryant, could you — you listed some of the people going up the chain of command, but it’s hard to not see Hegseth really as a surrogate for taking on Trump. When you look at these articles of impeachment — violating the War Powers Resolution, ignoring laws that minimize civilian casualties, these extrajudicial killings in the Caribbean and the Pacific — ultimately, this is President Trump who’s ordering this, and he’s carrying out his orders, isn’t he?

WES BRYANT: Absolutely. You know, Hegseth should be the first domino. Trump should absolutely be impeached and removed and indicted, just as Hegseth should, just as many of our senior military leaders should at this point. But, you know, I think the reality here is that Hegseth is the first and most realistic target, so we need to pursue removing him. And, you know, frankly, if Congress doesn’t have the will or the backbone collectively, the American people must absolutely demand Hegseth’s removal. And, you know, I, for one, would be more than willing to lead that charge. And then let’s go after Trump and the rest of the administration following.

AMY GOODMAN: And the not minimizing civilian casualties — the unit actually that you were chief of, the civilian harm assessment at the Pentagon, you did that for a year. Are we talking about both in the case of Iran, Iranians, like the children in Minab, when the U.S. — it looks overwhelmingly that the evidence is the U.S. bombed the girls’ school in southern Iran; the Pentagon hasn’t come out with a report on this, though they said they were going to — but also U.S. troops and civilians in the area of the Gulf when they waged war on Iran, all of these bases where Americans were wounded? But start with the Iranians and what this unit for civilian harm assessment was that was shut down in the Pentagon.

WES BRYANT: Yeah, you know, the Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Enterprise consisted of a few hundred individuals, spread across the Pentagon and the combatant commands, that were there to do exactly this. You know, if they had been emplaced at the Central Command, for example, if those personnel had been overseeing the strike planning for every single target set in Iran, I promise that a strike as egregious of a failure as Minab would not have happened.

And then you have the detractions, the devolutions of operational practice and standards in general, where, you know, even aside from my unit that existed, the Civilian Harm Enterprise, the U.S. military has been violating standing doctrine and practices in targeting and civilian harm mitigation that even existed over the course of the past 20, 30 years. You know, you combine this with Hegseth’s deemphasis on the protection of civilian, his glorification of and reveling in war and violence, his direction — his directives to carry out mass bombing campaigns, and what I believe is his directives that he’s making, you know, over secured lines or in secured areas to the commanders themselves, so that they’re unrecorded, to actually have a higher tolerance for civilian casualties. We’ve got this incredible spike in civilian casualties, not just Minab in Iran. It’s upwards of 3,000-plus potential civilians killed, along with, you know, massive destruction of civilian infrastructure, even targeting of cultural heritage sites, hospitals, schools — more than just Minab — police and fire entities, vital energy infrastructure. So, it’s incredible, what we’re seeing, this devolution of the U.S. military under Hegseth.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Wes Bryant, I’m wondering: During the period of the Biden administration, did you encounter in your — in that unit particularly glaring attacks that affected civilians that may not have gotten much attention?

WES BRYANT: No, you know, I wouldn’t say so. Most of the — you know, we’ve had, obviously, civilian harm incidents in the past. Look at the withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, where the U.S. struck an aid worker and children, his family. You know, that was one of the catalysts to kickstart the Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Enterprise. You have — going back before that, you have some instances in the fights against ISIS in Mosul, Raqqa. You have the 2015 very tragic strike against a MSF hospital, a Doctors Without Borders hospital, in Afghanistan.

And, you know, what we were doing under the Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Enterprise, and collectively, as a joint force, at all the combatant commands, was doing a really hard look back up through the Biden administration of what the U.S. did right during the “war on terror,” and all of the various failures and how we could improve those. And we had some pretty fantastic momentum, and that was all at full stop under this Hegseth regime.

And we’ve devolved even past that. You know, we’ve gone back decades, frankly, in our application of precision, in our ability and, really, willingness to safeguard the innocent and carry out the war with humanity and honor, and to have accountability and transparency when failures happen. We see no transparency and the opposite of accountability from the Hegseth regime. I mean, he truly operates like a fascist military dictator — you know, totalitarian control and extremist nationalism and a hypermilitarism.

AMY GOODMAN: Retired Master Sergeant Wes Bryant spent 20 years in the Air Force, was chief of civilian harm assessment at the Pentagon from 2024 to ’25. We’ll link to your new article in Zeteo headlined “I Worked at the Pentagon. Congress Must Impeach and Remove Pete Hegseth Now.”

Coming up, we speak to Palestinian journalist Abed Abu Shehadeh. He was just released from five days in Israeli detention for his reporting related to the Israeli elections and the role of Palestinian parties. Stay with us.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: “Tama,” “Greed,” by the Palestinian oud musician Huda Asfour, performing in our Democracy Now! studio.

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