Biden-era Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall III on Wednesday offered a bleak assessment of the Defense Department under Secretary Pete Hegseth.
“In a word, it’s dysfunctional,” Kendall, who wrote an opinion piece for The New York Times this week on the issue, told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins.
“This secretary ― and I’ve worked with and had a chance to work for maybe a dozen secretaries of defense — he’s doing active harm to the Department of Defense,” Kendall said. “It’s not passive. It’s active harm.”
Kendall said a “climate of fear” under Hegseth, as well as what he described as a witch hunt for “people who are supposedly woke,” has made people afraid to speak out and created a “very tough climate to work in.”
“It’s not good for the country,” he added.
Some active service members are now “questioning whether they should remain in the service or not, continue to serve their country because of the climate they’re working in,” Kendall said.
“We may have two and a half more years of this,” he warned. “That’s a long time. Four years of this type of management is incredibly debilitating and destructive.”