Pete Hegseth’s office is located on the third floor of the Pentagon, in the E ring, room 3E880, facing the Potomac River with a scenic view of the monuments and the Capitol. He posted a video on 5 September showing a new bronze plaque being affixed to his door reading: “Pete Hegseth Secretary of War.”

His splendid new designation, not established by the Congress as required by law, was purely notional and performative, announced by Donald Trump in an executive order that carried no legal weight, but befitted Hegseth’s self-conceit as warrior-in-chief. He now had the title to go with the tattoos: the crusader cross; “Deus vult”, or “God wills it”, the crusader battle cry; the sniper rifle against the background of an American flag; and the cross and sword inspired by Matthew 10:34: “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.”

Three days earlier, on 2 September, he was reported to have given a verbal order for a drone strike against two unidentified men desperately hanging on to the smoking pieces of their shattered boat in the Caribbean after nine members of their crew had already been blasted. “Kill everybody,” was the order, according to the Washington Post on 28 November. It was the first of 21 strikes that the Pentagon states have so far killed 82 people who are said to have been “narco-terrorists”, though their identities are unknown. Hegseth denied knowledge of the second strike.

The day after, Donald Trump posted a video of the strike blowing up the small boat. Hegseth appeared on Fox News to promote the attack and show the video. “That was definitely not artificial intelligence. I watched it live,” he boasted.

Hegseth’s account was the first in a series of constantly shifting stories, accompanied by his refusal to provide senators and House members with information for months, followed by rounds of finger-pointing from Trump and Hegseth about who gave the order or knew about it, and accusations of scapegoating claiming Adm Frank M “Mitch” Bradley, in charge of special operations, was being set up to take the fall. Bradley would later say that he gave the order.

The question of whether Hegseth had committed a criminal act was immediately raised in response to the Post report in a statement issued on 29 November by the Former Jags Working Group, which “unanimously considers both the giving and the execution of these orders, if true, to constitute war crimes, murder, or both. Our group was established in February 2025 in response to SECDEF’s firing of the army and air force judge advocates general and his systematic dismantling of the military’s legal guardrails. Had those guardrails been in place, we are confident they would have prevented these crimes.”

Once the Former Jags Working Group published its statement, which included a detailed legal brief concluding that “anyone who issues or follows such orders can and should be prosecuted for war crimes, murder, or both”, the video released earlier, on 18 November, by six Democratic members of Congress, all former military or intelligence officers, which discussed the legal obligation of military service members to refuse unlawful orders, was thrown into high relief. Trump had accused them of “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!”, though he later claimed he was “not threatening death”.

Hegseth called them the “Seditious Six” and announced an FBI investigation targeting Senator Mark Kelly, a Democrat from Arizona, a former combat navy captain and astronaut. “So ‘Captain’ Kelly,” sneered Hegseth in a tweet, “not only did your sedition video intentionally undercut good order & discipline … but you can’t even display your uniform correctly. Your medals are out of order & rows reversed. When/if you are recalled to active duty, it’ll start with a uniform inspection.” With his derision, Hegseth launched himself into face-to-face combat with a genuine war hero, at least on X.

Four days later, the Post story appeared, cascading into a full-blown scandal with potentially severe legal consequences for all involved. When Hegseth was dubbed “secretary of war”, no mere “secretary of defense”, he was confident he was on the offensive at last – against “sedition” – but the boat strikes landed him in a quagmire that is the apotheosis of his “warrior ethos”.

In 2021, Maj Hegseth of the US national guard’s individual ready reserve was effectively drummed out of the service when officers identified him as an “insider threat” connected to extremist causes. He was branded for his tattoos, which he said “was unfair”. His resentment was raw. “Twenty years … and the military I loved, I fought for. I revered … spit me........

© The Guardian