Hundreds of generals and admirals have been ordered to Virginia in the coming days, according to four defense officials who spoke to The Intercept on the condition of anonymity. The conclave of general and flag officers is unprecedented and alarming, the sources said.

The officials said that the military’s top brass were, on Wednesday, instructed to report to a Marine Corps base in Quantico, Virginia, on or around September 30 to meet with Secretary of War Pete Hegseth. Two sources believed that the timing was pegged to the potential government shutdown.

The officials were unsure of the exact reasons behind the extraordinary order. They speculated about the purpose, wondering if it might foretell a culling of general officers; a significant reorganization of the military command structure; a threat to eschew contact with the press; or a loyalty oath about putting Trump administration priorities above all else. One source, somewhat in jest, evoked the phrase “coup d’état,” later clarifying they meant a gutting of leaders who might question Trump’s policies.

“It is beyond highly irregular to have all the operational and command GOFOs tasked to fly to DC and also not tell any of them why.”

“It is beyond highly irregular to have all the operational and command GOFOs tasked to fly to DC and also not tell any of them why,” said one of the officials, using military shorthand for general and flag officers. “To say the military leadership is anxious would be an understatement.”

“The Secretary of War will be addressing his senior military leaders early next week,” chief Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell told The Intercept when asked about the fears expressed by the officials.

Most of the military’s top officers — those with the rank of brigadier general or above, or their naval equivalent — are required to attend, the officials said. They said that even top brass in conflict zones and forward areas are among those ordered to the meeting. One official told The Intercept that the order was “madness” and unlike any order in living memory “or probably ever.” Another said that calling home generals and admirals from front-line stations was “reckless” but in keeping with the Trump administration’s efforts to keep the top echelons of the officer corps on a tight leash.

[

Related

Unnamed Pentagon Officials Ridicule Hegseth’s Plan to Stop War Department Leaks](https://theintercept.com/2025/09/21/department-of-war-pentagon-press-frepete-hegseth/)

Recently, the War Department unveiled a new policy designed to restrict press freedom. Under new rules, the department said it would forbid reporters from gathering any information that had not been approved for release and would revoke press credentials from any journalists who did not obey. In a Friday post on X, Hegseth said that “the press is no longer allowed to roam the halls of a secure facility,” and that reporters would have to “wear a badge and follow the rules — or go home.”

Earlier this year, Hegseth ordered top Pentagon leadership to cut the number of four-star generals and admirals by at least 20 percent across the military; reduce the number of general officers in the National Guard by 20 percent; and trim the total number of general and flag officers across the armed forces as a whole by 10 percent. At the time, there were roughly 800 to 900 general and flag officers — those with the rank of one star or higher — across the entire military.

[

Related

Pentagon Official: Hegseth’s Campaign to Scrub DEI History Is a “Dumb” Distraction](https://theintercept.com/2025/02/12/pete-hegseth-military-trump-diversity/)

“First of all, you’ve got to fire the chairman of the joint chiefs,” Hegseth said during a November 2024 interview on the “Shawn Ryan Show,” referring to Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. “Any general that was involved, general, admiral, or whatever, that was involved in any of that DEI woke shit has got to go.”

After Hegseth was installed at the Pentagon, he made good on his threat. Brown, the United States’ highest-ranking military officer and a history-making Black fighter pilot, was fired in February, kicking off a monthslong purge that has remade the upper ranks of the military. The Trump administration has also fired Navy Vice Adm. Shoshana Chatfield, who held a senior position in NATO, was one of only a handful of female Navy three-star officers and the first woman to lead the Naval War College; Adm. Linda Fagan, the first woman to command the Coast Guard; Gen. Timothy Haugh, the head of the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command; the Navy’s top officer, Adm. Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to become Chief of Naval Operations; and James Slife, the Air Force’s vice chief of staff.

In July, Hegseth withdrew the nomination of Rear Adm. Michael “Buzz” Donnelly to lead the Navy’s Seventh Fleet in Japan — its largest overseas force — following reports in conservative media that seven years earlier he had allowed a drag performance to take place on the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan. Hegseth also decided not to promote Lt. Gen. Douglas Sims II, a senior Army officer who had led troops during five tours in Afghanistan and Iraq because Hegseth suspected, without evidence, that Sims had leaked sensitive information to the news media, according to reporting by the New York Times. After Sims was cleared of the allegations, Hegseth briefly agreed to promote him, only to backtrack in July because of fears that the three-star was too close to Gen. Mark Milley, a former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during Trump’s first term and under his successor President Joe Biden. Trump later accused Milley of disloyalty and suggested he ought to be killed.

In August, Hegseth fired Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse, the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, a few months after a preliminary DIA assessment found that Iran’s nuclear program had been set back only a few months by U.S. strikes, contradicting grandiose claims by Trump.

The Office of the Secretary of War would not say if it knew how many generals and admirals had been fired during Trump’s second term.

[

Related

Rand Paul Reveals Venezuela Boat Attack Was a Drone Strike](https://theintercept.com/2025/09/10/trump-venezuela-boat-attack-drone/)

After the Trump administration began attacking civilian boats in the Caribbean earlier this month, several government officials suggested to The Intercept that Rear Adm. Milton “Jamie” Sands III, head of Naval Special Warfare Command, had been fired by Hegseth late last month due to the admiral’s concerns about impending attacks on civilian vessels in international waters. Pentagon press secretary Kingsley Wilson pushed back on the officials’ claims. “No, that’s not accurate,” she replied by email. Sands did not respond to requests by The Intercept for an interview.

[

Related

Donald Trump Keeps Navy SEALs Above the Law](https://theintercept.com/2019/12/05/donald-trump-eddie-gallagher-navy-seals/)

Hegseth also fired the Air Force’s and Army’s top judge advocates general, known as JAGs, in February to avoid “roadblocks to orders that are given by a commander in chief.” The next month he commissioned his personal lawyer, Timothy Parlatore, as a Navy JAG and empowered him to help overhaul the JAG corps, reportedly pursuing changes that would encourage lawyers to approve more aggressive tactics and take a more lenient approach to those who violate the law of war. Parlatore’s prior claim to fame was successfully defending Eddie Gallagher, a Navy SEAL accused of first-degree murder in the death of a captured ISIS fighter as well as the attempted murder of civilians in Iraq. Distinguished former JAGs and members of Congress have repeatedly spoken out about Hegseth’s efforts to undermine the independence of military legal counsel and subvert military justice. In September, Hegseth began planning to transfer up to 600 JAG officers to temporary duty as immigration judges.

The order for the generals and admirals to assemble next week came as the White House budget office instructed federal agencies to prepare reduction-in-force plans for mass firings during a possible government shutdown as Congress faces a stalemate on negotiations with the government funding deadline approaching.

A memo from the Office of Management and Budget, first reported by Politico, indicates that agencies are directed to “use this opportunity to consider reduction in force (RIF) notices for all employees in programs, projects, or activities.”

OMB told agencies to identify programs, projects, and activities where discretionary funding will lapse on October 1 and no alternative funding source is available. In those cases, OMB directed agencies to begin drafting RIF plans that would go beyond standard furloughs and permanently eliminate jobs in programs not consistent with President Donald Trump’s priorities in the event of a shutdown.

An anonymous OMB official told Politico that military operations, along with Social Security, Medicare, veterans benefits, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Customs and Border Protection, and air traffic control would continue in the event of a shutdown.

The post Pete Hegseth Orders Top Military Leaders to Attend Mystery Meeting appeared first on The Intercept.

From The Intercept via this RSS feed