Biden-era Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall III on Wednesday offered a bleak assessment of the Defense Department under Secretary Pete Hegseth.<\/p>\n
“In a word, it’s dysfunctional,” Kendall, who wrote an opinion piece for The New York Times<\/a> this week on the issue, told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins.<\/p>\n “This secretary \u2015 and I’ve worked with and had a chance to work for maybe a dozen secretaries of defense \u2014 he’s doing active harm to the Department of Defense,” Kendall said. “It’s not passive. It’s active harm.”<\/p>\n Kendall said a “climate of fear” under Hegseth, as well as what he described as a witch hunt for “people who are supposedly woke,” has made people afraid to speak out and created a “very tough climate to work in.”<\/p>\n “It’s not good for the country,” he added.<\/p>\n Some active service members are now “questioning whether they should remain in the service or not, continue to serve their country because of the climate they’re working in,” Kendall said.<\/p>\n “We may have two and a half more years of this,” he warned. “That’s a long time. Four years of this type of management is incredibly debilitating and destructive.”<\/p>\n Watch here:<\/p>\n Like this article? Keep independent journalism alive. Support HuffPost<\/a>.<\/p>\n Related…<\/p>\n