The Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee admitted at Pete Hegseth’s confirmation hearing he was an “unconventional” nominee, but he could still lead the Defence Department with the help of “exceptional subordinates” handling the Pentagon’s day-to-day affairs. “In short, I am confident that Mr. Hegseth, supported by a team of experienced top officials, will get the job done,” Senator Roger Wicker (Republican, Mississippi) said in January. Three months later, Hegseth has lost his handpicked chief of staff and fired three other aides in a bizarre front-office meltdown over suspected leaks. That’s on top of the mega-scandal over Hegseth’s use of Signal group chats to share sensitive details about imminent attacks by the US military on Houthi targets in Yemen. In short, things are not going well. Hegseth, however, insists it’s all part of his plan to shake up a complacent bureaucracy and bring back the “warrior ethos” like he promised to do. “Now, as you may have noticed, the media likes to call it chaos. We call it overdue,” Hegseth said in a speech at the US Army War College in Pennsylvania, referencing a Tuesday headline in The New York Times. Hegseth’s former chief of staff, Joe Kasper, left that position last week but is still with the Defence Department as a special government employee, a department official told HuffPost. “Secretary Hegseth is thankful for his continued leadership and work to advance the America First agenda,” the official said. Kasper has been unusually vocal for a government employee. In an interview with Drop Site news on Tuesday, Kasper said he had been falsely accused of drug use and that other Hegseth aides — the ones who were fired over allegedly leaking information to the media — tried to use reports of an official investigation to tarnish his standing with the secretary. “Here’s the thing that everybody knows about me: I don’t have a dealer. I don’t do drugs,” Kasper said. He also suggested he’d been accused of faking a drug test. “And I’m like, how the fuck do you do that when they sit there and they watch you?” Kaster even volunteered to be drug tested every day for 45 days if Drop Site would pay for the tests, which is a weird thing to say to a reporter. Dan Caldwell, a former senior adviser to Hegseth and one of the three who was marched out of the Pentagon on Friday, has also spoken out, forcefully denying in a Monday interview with Tucker Carlson that he had leaked any information to reporters. “We threatened a lot of established interests inside the building and outside,” Caldwell said, speaking in reference to their opposition to war with Iran and diversity, equity and inclusion policies in the military. What’s especially weird about the public knife fight among Hegseth’s former underlings is that they’re all people Hegseth himself brought into the building. Caldwell, for instance, worked with Hegseth at Concerned Veterans for America, the nonprofit organisation Hegseth led until stepping down in 2016 amid allegations of financial impropriety and alcohol-related misconduct. “You brought them in. You trusted them. You entrusted them with very important information on very sensitive matters that were life or death, and it turned out to be a clown show the entire time,” said Chris Meagher, who served as Pentagon spokesman for two years during the Joe Biden administration. In remarks this week, Hegseth has repeatedly praised Kasper while blaming new revelations about his use of Signal on his other former staffers, whom he said could face criminal prosecution for a number of different leaks. “Disgruntled former employees are peddling things to try to save their ass,” Hegseth said on Tuesday on Fox News, adding that an internal leak investigation led to some “unfortunate places, people I have known for quite some time, but it’s not my job to protect them.” Contrary to Caldwell’s claim that entrenched political actors are responsible for his ouster, multiple sources told Politico the dispute is pretty much what it looks like: a petty rivalry among Hegseth’s aides. Sources also described more erratic behavior by Kasper, such as him describing a bowel movement in a business meeting. “Can I just tell everyone around this table that I just took an enormous shit right before coming in here?” Kasper allegedly said, two sources told Politico. (The New York Times reported this week, in its story with the “chaos” headline, Kasper regaled participants in another meeting with a story about his experience at a strip club.) “It’s baffling these guys were in these positions in the first place, given the life-and-death issues that they’re taking on every day, and I think that that is a result of Pete Hegseth’s failed leadership,” Meagher said. It’s possible President Donald Trump will lose patience with all the drama emanating from his defence secretary, though Trump praised Hegseth on Monday. So far only one Republican in Congress has said he should resign. Several Republican senators refused to vote for him in the first place, citing his past erratic behavior. Senator Kevin Cramer (Republican, North Dakota) suggested on Wednesday that Hegseth could turn things around if he can build a team of experienced top officials — the same faint praise Hegseth’s Senate supporters offered at his confirmation hearing in January. “I’m confident that Pete Hegseth can still be — and will be — a great secretary of defense,” Cramer said on CNN. “He’s gonna need some help around him. I think one of the things he has lacked in the early days is some real expertise, institutional expertise, in the building, and that’s part of why he’s there, to bust up the club a bit.”