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.
Page A4From§Eachthe wee small hours edition — 2 September 2026
Army secretary resigns after repeatedly warning White House about Hegseth.
As it ran on the front
Let's be clear about what actually happened here, because the coverage has gotten ahead of itself. Army Secretary Dan Driscoll is resigning. People resign from government jobs constantly — it is, statistically, one of the most common things a person can do with a government job, is eventually stop having it. To frame this as anything other than a personnel matter internal to the Department of the Army is, frankly, irresponsible.
Now, ABC News is reporting, using sources, that Driscoll 'frequently warned' the White House about Secretary Hegseth. I want to be careful with that word 'frequently' — frequently could mean twice. It could mean he mentioned it in passing at a barbecue. Do we have the transcripts? I don't have the transcripts in front of me, but I feel confident saying that even if we did, they would not show what people think they'd show, which is — okay, I don't actually know what they would show, I haven't seen them, nobody's seen them, that's rather the point of a warning that goes nowhere, isn't it.…
…(cont) The timing, I'll grant, is not ideal from a communications standpoint. You've got tit-for-tat strikes with Iran happening this same week, lawmakers reacting to the resignation in real time on camera, and a defense secretary who, by all reported accounts, was the subject of the warnings and is, as of this writing, still the defense secretary. I want to be very careful here because I am not saying Secretary Hegseth did anything. I'm saying a different guy, the guy who raised concerns about Secretary Hegseth, is the one now updating his LinkedIn. That's — actually, now that I've said it out loud, that is a strange way for a warning system to resolve. Normally the alarm doesn't get fired for going off.
Look, personnel decisions at this level are complicated, above my pay grade, decided by people with more information than either of us has. I will say this: if you're an Army secretary in 2026 taking notes on a colleague and considering whether to escalate them to the White House, this is, currently, the case study available to you on how that tends to go. I'm not saying don't do it. I'm saying read the whole file first.
“An Army secretary spends months telling the White House something's wrong at the top of the Pentagon, and the guy who ends up packing his desk is the one who kept sending the warnings. That's not a resignation, that's a removal with better paperwork. Whoever he was warning them about is still sitting in the chair he warned them about.”
“Secretary Driscoll's departure has nothing to do with any warnings, it's a routine transition, these things happen at the Pentagon all the time — sources say he 'frequently warned' the White House, which, okay, I didn't write that sentence, ABC did. Fine, it's not routine, it's the guy who kept flagging the problem who's now unemployed and the problem's still employed. That's just how personnel decisions work sometimes, I don't make the org chart.”
The receipts
U.S. forces struck Iran on Tuesday, the second series of attacks in three days. Meanwhile, lawmakers reacted to the resignation of U.S.
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.
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.