Army Secretary Dan Driscoll resigned early last week at one of the busiest moments for the service since the height of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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Army secretary who repeatedly warned White House about Hegseth resigns amid Iran strikes.
As it ran on the front
I had this written down somewhere, hold on. Here — 'Army secretary frequently warned White House about Hegseth: Sources.' Frequently. I keep coming back to that word, frequently, because my notebook doesn't have a number next to it, just frequently, and I don't like working without a number, never have.
So I go out to the garage, because I do my best thinking out there, and the car's got that fan belt squeal again — my wife says I should just get it looked at, and she's right, she usually is — and I'm standing there with the toolbox open, thinking: how many times is frequently? Twice? A dozen? I've got a toolbox with forty-one items in it, near as I can count, I actually did count once, on a slow Sunday, and I know exactly how many wrenches I own. Somebody in this administration knows how many times the Army secretary sent up a warning. Was that number written down anywhere? Did anyone read it when it came in?…
…(cont) Here's what else I've got in the notebook. Same week — same week, not a month later, not a year later — the Army secretary resigns. Dan Driscoll. And the story explaining the resignation runs the same day as a story about tit-for-tat strikes with Iran, lawmakers reacting to the timing of the resignation itself. So I've got three pages here, and I keep laying them side by side on the porch rail like they're playing cards, because that's what I do out there evenings, lay things out, see what fits.
Page one: frequent warnings, no number attached. Page two: resignation, no clean explanation attached, just 'here's why now.' Page three: lawmakers reacting to the resignation in the middle of a strike cycle, like it's one more incoming round.
I drove down to the corner store for cigars — I only smoke the cheap ones, my wife hates the smell, doesn't stop me — and the guy behind the counter asked what I was working on, and I told him I didn't know yet, I just had three pages that didn't sit right next to each other. He said maybe they don't have to sit right. Maybe. I wrote that down too.
What I keep circling back to, standing out there by the car with the belt still squealing, is the word frequently. Not urgently. Not repeatedly, which would at least give me a rhythm to picture. Frequently. It's a word you use when you don't want to commit to a count, and it's the word the sources gave the reporter, not a number, and I don't know if that's because nobody counted or because somebody didn't want it counted.
So here's what's sitting in my glovebox with the registration and the ice scraper — the timeline. Warnings, frequent, unnumbered. Resignation, same week as the strikes. Statement from lawmakers reacting to the resignation, filed the same day as strike coverage.
Oh — excuse me, one more thing, before you head out. If the warnings were frequent enough to get sourced to multiple reporters, was there ever a point where somebody wrote the actual number down?
“A guy who spent months flagging problems with the Defense Secretary doesn't quit the week everything's calm — he quits the week it isn't, and the timing is the whole story the White House isn't telling. 'Frequently warned' with no number attached is exactly how you bury a pattern in plain sight.”
“Personnel changes happen, secretaries move on, and reading a resignation as a resignation from the truth is exactly the kind of conspiracy thinking that — well, given the timeline here, maybe not entirely baseless. Let's just say the department stands by the process.”
The receipts
U.S. Army Secretary Dan Driscoll submitted his resignation Monday after months of friction with Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. CBS News' Eleanor Watson has more.
U.S. forces struck Iran on Tuesday, the second series of attacks in three days. Meanwhile, lawmakers reacted to the resignation of U.S.
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.