The US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth brought his wife, a former Fox News producer, to two meetings with foreign military colleagues where they discussed confidential information.
This is reported by The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), citing sources.
One such meeting was a high-level discussion at the Pentagon on March 6 between Hegseth and UK Defense Secretary John Healy.
It came at a sensitive time — a day after the US reported it was halting intelligence sharing with Ukraine. The meeting, sources said, discussed the US’s reasoning for the decision, as well as future military cooperation between the countries.
The defense secretary can invite anyone to meet with foreign counterparts, but the list of attendees is usually carefully limited. Participants are typically expected to have security clearance, given the sensitive nature of the discussions. Hegsethʼs wife — Jennifer Hegseth — is not a Defense Department employee.
Hegsethʼs wife was also present at a meeting in February at NATO headquarters in Brussels, where representatives of defense agencies from Alliance member countries discussed their support for Ukraine.
Some foreign participants in the meetings did not know who Jennifer Hegset was, while others were surprised by her presence but continued their work without raising any objections.
- Hegseth and several other US national security officials found themselves at the center of a scandal after The Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg said he was accidentally invited to a chat room where the attack on the Houthis was being discussed.
- Shortly thereafter, Der Spiegel journalists discovered that the personal data of several participants in that chat — Hegseth, White House National Security Advisor Michael Waltz, and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard — could be found in the public domain.
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