Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has summoned the military’s top officers — hundreds of generals and admirals — to a base in northern Virginia for a sudden meeting next week, according to two people familiar with the matter.
The directive did not offer a reason for the gathering Tuesday of senior commanders of the one-star rank or higher and their top advisers at the Marine Corps base in Quantico. The people, who described the move as unusual, were not authorized to publicly discuss the sensitive plans and spoke on condition of anonymity.
The Pentagon’s top spokesman, Sean Parnell, confirmed that Mr. Hegseth “will be addressing his senior military leaders early next week.”
Across the military, there are 800 generals and admirals of all ranks. Many command thousands of service members and are stationed across the world in more than a dozen countries and time zones.
The meeting, first reported by The Washington Post, comes on the heels of several unusual and unexplained actions that Mr. Hegseth has taken involving military leaders.
In May, Mr. Hegseth ordered that the military cut 20% of its four-star general officers, directed an additional 10% cut from all general and flag officers across the force, and told the National Guard to shed 20% of its top positions.
In February, Mr. Hegseth fired Adm. Lisa Franchetti, the Navy’s top officer, and Gen. James Slife, the Air Force’s second-highest officer, without explanation. He also relieved the military’s top lawyers.
Since then, Mr. Hegseth has fired other military leaders without saying why. Most recently, it was a general who led a military intelligence agency whose initial assessment of U.S. damage to Iranian nuclear sites in American strikes angered President Trump.
In an exclusive report in Tuesday’s editions of The Washington Times, however, a leading Republican lawmaker said the widely reported implication that Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, was dismissed over the Iran damage report was false.
Rep. Rick Crawford, chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, told fellow committee members that the senior intelligence official was dismissed last month for his handling of cases involving victims of the mysterious brain disorder known as Havana syndrome.
Mr. Hegseth fired Gen. Kruse on Aug. 22 for what the Pentagon said was an unspecified “loss of confidence.”
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