And then, on October 29, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth fired Lieutenant General Brett Sylvia, the Joint Staff’s J5. The Pentagon says he was removed for leaking classified information and failing polygraph tests. Two other Pentagon sources told CBS those accusations are false. What I am told, and what other analysts have heard from their own sources, is that Sylvia opposed the island plan. If that is right, the administration just fired the general whose job was to tell it which plans were bad, a week before it intends to carry out one of them. That is not leadership. That is shooting the smoke detector.
