WASHINGTON — Even before he disclosed secret battle plans for Yemen in a group chat, information that could have endangered American fighter pilots, it had been a rocky two months for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

华盛顿——国防部长皮特·海格塞斯在群聊中披露了对也门的秘密作战计划，这种信息有可能威胁美国战斗机飞行员的安全，然而甚至在此之前，海格塞斯近两个月的日子也一直不好过。

Hegseth, a former National Guard infantryman and Fox News weekend host, started his job at the Pentagon determined to out-Trump President Donald Trump, Defense Department officials and aides said.

海格塞斯曾是国民警卫队的一名步兵，担任过福克斯新闻周末节目的主持人，国防部的官员和助手们说，他一到五角大楼上任就决心要比特朗普总统还特朗普。

The president is skeptical about the value of NATO and European alliances, so the Pentagon under Hegseth considered plans in which the United States would give up its command role overseeing NATO troops. After Trump issued executive orders targeting transgender people, Hegseth ordered a ban on transgender troops.

由于特朗普对北约和欧洲盟友的价值持怀疑态度，海格塞斯领导下的五角大楼考虑让美国放弃其负责北约部队指挥权的计划。特朗普发布了针对跨性别者的行政命令后，海格塞斯下令将跨性别者从部队中去除。

Trump has embraced Elon Musk, the billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla. The Pentagon planned a sensitive briefing to give Musk a firsthand look at how the military would fight a war with China, a potentially valuable step for any businessperson with interests there.

特朗普热情接受了SpaceX和特斯拉的亿万富翁首席执行官埃隆·马斯克。五角大楼曾计划召开一个敏感的信息简报会，让马斯克掌握美军将如何与中国作战的第一手知识，这对任何在中国有利益的商人来说都具有潜在价值。

In all of those endeavors, Hegseth was pulled back, by congressional Republicans, the courts or even Trump.

海格塞斯的所有这些努力都被国会共和党人、法院，甚至特朗普本人拉了回来。

The president made clear last Friday that he had been caught by surprise by a report in The New York Times on the Pentagon’s briefing for Musk, who oversees an effort to shrink the government, but also denied that the meeting had been planned.

总统上周五明确表示，《纽约时报》关于五角大楼向马斯克汇报情况的报道让他感到意外。马斯克目前负责一个缩减政府规模的努力，他也否认有召开这种会议的计划。

“I don’t want to show that to anybody, but certainly you wouldn’t show it to a businessman who is helping us so much,” Trump said.

“我不想让任何人看到那些，肯定不会让一个给我们帮了大忙的商人看到，”特朗普说。

But Hegseth’s latest mistake could have led to catastrophic consequences.

但海格塞斯最近的错误本有可能带来灾难性的后果。

On Monday, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic magazine, Jeffrey Goldberg, wrote that he had been inadvertently included in an encrypted group chat in which Hegseth discussed plans for targeting the Houthi militia in Yemen two hours before U.S. troops launched attacks against the group.

周一，《大西洋》月刊主编杰弗里·戈德堡撰文称，他被误加到一个加密群聊组里，在美军对胡塞民兵发动袭击的两小时前，海格塞斯在群聊中讨论了打击也门胡塞民兵的计划。

The White House confirmed Goldberg’s account. But Hegseth later denied that he put war plans in the group chat, which apparently included other senior members of Trump’s national security team.

白宫证实了戈德堡的说法。但海格塞斯后来否认他把作战计划发布到群聊中，该群聊组显然包括特朗普国家安全团队的其他高级成员。

In disclosing the aircraft, targets and timing for hitting Houthi militia sites in Yemen on the commercial messaging app Signal, Hegseth risked the lives of American war fighters.

海格塞斯在商业聊天应用Signal上披露了打击也门胡塞武装地点的飞机、目标和时间，这威胁到了参加行动的美国士兵的生命安全。

Across the military Monday and Tuesday, current and retired troops and officers expressed dismay and anger in social media posts, secret chat groups and the hallways of the Pentagon.

周一和周二，美国各大军种的现役和退役士兵和军官在社交媒体帖子、秘密聊天群群组，以及五角大楼的走廊里表达了诧异和愤怒。

“My father was killed in action flying night-trail interdiction over the Ho Chi Minh Trail” after a North Vietnamese strike, said retired Maj. Gen. Paul D. Eaton, who served in the Iraq War. “And now, you have Hegseth. He has released information that could have directly led to the death of an American fighter pilot.”

“我父亲在胡志明小道上空执行夜间拦截飞行任务时阵亡，”曾在伊拉克战争中服役的退役少将保罗·伊顿说。“现在来了个海格塞斯。他泄露的信息有可能直接导致一名美国战斗机飞行员的死亡。”

海格塞斯在Signal群聊中透露了打击也门胡塞武装据点行动的飞机、目标和时间，《大西洋》月刊主编杰弗里·戈德堡也被误加到群聊组里。

It was unclear Tuesday whether anyone involved in the Signal group chat would lose their jobs. Republicans in Congress have been wary of running afoul of Trump. But Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., who chairs the Armed Services Committee, indicated Monday that there would be some kind of investigation.

周二，尚不清楚与Signal群聊有关的人中是否有人会丢掉工作。国会共和党人一直小心谨慎不与特朗普发生冲突。但参议院军事委员会主席、共和党参议员罗杰·威克尔周一表示，会对这件事展开某种形式的调查。

John Bolton, a national security adviser in the first Trump administration, said on social media that he doubted that “anyone will be held to account for events described by The Atlantic unless Donald Trump himself feels the heat.”

曾在特朗普的上届政府担任国家安全顾问的约翰·博尔顿在社交媒体上表示，他怀疑“除非唐纳德·特朗普本人感受到压力，否则不会有人对《大西洋》所描述的事件负责。”

In his article, Goldberg said he was added to the chat by Michael Waltz, Trump’s current national security adviser.

戈德堡在文章中写道，把他加入群聊的是特朗普的现任国家安全顾问迈克尔·沃尔兹。

On Tuesday, Trump defended Waltz. “Michael Waltz has learned a lesson, and he’s a good man,” Trump said in an interview on NBC.

周二，特朗普为沃尔兹辩白。“迈克尔·沃尔兹已吸取了教训，他是个好人，”特朗普在接受NBC采访时说。

The president added that Goldberg’s presence in the group chat had “no impact at all” and that the Houthi attacks were “perfectly successful.”

总统还说，戈德堡出现在群聊中“完全没有影响”，打击胡塞武装的行动“完美成功”。

To be sure, some of Hegseth’s stumbles have been part of the learning process of a high-profile job leading a department with an $850-billion-a-year budget.

可以肯定的是，海格塞斯的一些失误是在一份备受瞩目的工作中边学边干的一部分，他领导的是一个年度预算高达8500亿美元的部门。

“Secretary Hegseth is trying to figure out where the president’s headed, and to run there ahead of him,” said Kori Schake, a national security expert at the American Enterprise Institute. But, she added, “he’s doing performative activities. He’s not yet demonstrated that he’s running the department.”

“海格塞斯正在试图弄清楚总统想往哪里去，并抢在他之前赶到那里，”美国企业研究所的国家安全专家科莉·沙克说。但她还说，“他是在做一些表演活动。他还没有证明自己是在管理这个部门。”

Peter Feaver, a political science professor at Duke University who has studied the military for decades, said the Signal chat disclosure “raises serious questions about how a new accountability standard might apply: How would he handle a situation like this if it involved one of his subordinates?”

研究军方数十年的杜克大学政治学教授彼得·费弗表示，Signal群聊泄密一事“给可能如何适用新的问责标准带来了一个严肃的问题：如果所涉及的人是他的下属之一，他将如何处理这种情况？”

Hegseth’s stumbles started soon after he was sworn in to lead the Pentagon on Jan. 25.

海格塞斯今年1月25日宣誓就任五角大楼负责人后不久就开始出现失误。

In his debut on the world stage in mid-February, he told NATO and Ukrainian ministers that a return to Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders, before Russia’s first invasion, was “an unrealistic objective” and ruled out NATO membership for Ukraine. A few hours later, Trump backed him up while announcing a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin to begin peace negotiations.

今年2月中旬，他首次在世界舞台上亮相时曾告诉北约各国和乌克兰的部长们，让乌克兰回到2014年俄罗斯首次入侵之前的边界是“不切实际的目标”，还排除了乌克兰加入北约的可能性。几小时后，特朗普在宣布与俄罗斯总统普京通电话开始和平谈判时支持了他的观点。

Facing blowback the next day from European allies and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Hegseth denied that either he or Trump had sold out Ukraine. “There is no betrayal there,” Hegseth said.

第二天，在欧洲盟友和乌克兰总统泽连斯基的强烈反击面前，海格塞斯否认自己或特朗普出卖了乌克兰。“没有背叛，”海格塞斯说。

That was not how even Republican supporters of Hegseth saw it. “He made a rookie mistake in Brussels,” Wicker said about the secretary’s comment on Ukraine’s borders.

但就连支持海格塞斯的共和党人也不那么看。“他在布鲁塞尔犯了一个菜鸟错误，”威克尔谈到国防部长有关乌克兰边界的言论时说。

今年2月中旬，海格塞斯在布鲁塞尔对北约成员国和乌克兰的部长们说，恢复乌克兰 2014年前的边界是“不切实际的目标”，并排除了乌克兰加入北约的可能性，这让他在世界舞台上首次亮相时出错。

“I don’t know who wrote the speech — it is the kind of thing Tucker Carlson could have written, and Carlson is a fool,” Wicker said, referring to the conservative media personality and former Fox News host.

“我不知道讲话稿是谁写的。塔克·卡尔森是有可能写这种东西的人，卡尔森是个傻瓜，”威克尔说，他指的是保守派媒体名人、福克斯新闻前主持人。

Hegseth sought to recover later in the week, saying he had simply been trying to “introduce realism into the expectations of our NATO allies.” How much territory Ukraine may cede to Russia would be decided in talks between Trump and the presidents of the warring countries, he said.

海格塞斯在那周后晚些时候试图挽回，称他只不过是试图“让我们北约盟友的期望变得更接近现实”。他说，乌克兰可能割让给俄罗斯多少领土将在特朗普与交战国总统的谈判中决定。

Last week, Hegseth again got crosswise with Wicker over reports that the Trump administration was planning to withdraw from NATO’s military command and reduce the number of troops deployed overseas in addition to other changes to the military’s combatant commands.

上周有报道称，特朗普政府正打算退出北约军事指挥部，减少部署在海外的军队数量，此外还将对军队的作战指挥系统进行其他调整。这些报道又一次让海格塞斯与威克尔意见相左。

Wicker and Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala., who chairs the House Armed Services Committee, said in a statement that they were concerned about reports that the Defense Department might be planning changes “absent coordination with the White House and Congress.”

威克尔和众议院军事委员会主席、阿拉巴马州共和党众议员迈克·罗杰斯在一份声明中表示，那些报道让他们担心，国防部也许正在“没有与白宫和国会协调”的情况下制定改变现状的计划。

海格塞斯和妻子詹妮弗·劳切出席在华沙举行的军事仪式。海格塞斯在今年2月晚些时候的那次活动中试图收回他之前发表的有关乌克兰的言论。