“To err is human, to forgive divine,” but when it comes to maintaining operational security, neither is the policy of the U.S. military.

The need to protect OPSEC, as it’s called in Pentagon parlance, is drilled into everyone from the lowest grunt in boot camp to the highest four-star general on the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

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In his 2022 memoir, Razor 03: A Night Stalker’s Wars, Alan Mack, an Army special operations helicopter pilot in Afghanistan, recounts how the obsession with operational security made every phone call home a frustratingly bland exercise in self-censorship.

“Operational security software monitored our phone calls and emails,” Mack wrote. “Say the wrong words and a nasty OPSEC violation would hit the commander’s desk. It was not uncommon for a soldier to be sent home for unwittingly revealing sensitive or classified information.”

Pete Hegseth, a former Army major and the current defense secretary, out of ignorance or arrogance, broke every basic rule of OPSEC — not once but twice.

And even now, more than a month later, Hegseth insists he did nothing wrong when he shared real-time attack plans with two separate chat groups on the encrypted, but not secure, messaging app Signal.

From the start, Hegseth’s defense has been that the details he shared, which were provided to him through a classified email system by the top general overseeing strikes against the Houthis, did not amount to a full-blown war plan and, therefore, should not be considered classified.

“I said repeatedly, ‘No one’s texting war plans,’” Hegseth said in an appearance on Fox News. “You know why I said that? Because I’m in the bowels of the Pentagon every single day. … I look at war plans every single day. What was shared over Signal, then and now, however you characterize it, was informal, unclassified coordination for media coordination, other things. That’s what I’ve said from the beginning.”

That risible argument has been roundly dismissed by an army of retired combat pilots, senior military officers, and former defense officials, who, unlike active-duty troops, are free to call out Hegseth for fatuous statements.

“The information that was broadcast on Signal was classified,” retired Adm. William McRaven, the U.S. Special Operations commander who oversaw the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, said on CNN. “Now they weren’t war plans … well, war plans in a military context. But make no mistake about it, these were operational plans with operational details. They were classified.”

“Secretary Hegseth [said] when we were going to attack, where we we’re going to attack, and what we we’re going to attack within an hour or so prior to an attack,” Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA), the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, said in a separate appearance on CNN. “If Secretary Hegseth doesn’t think that that kind of information should be classified, then we’ve got a much, much bigger problem in that he doesn’t fundamentally understand a key aspect of his job.”

Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE), a retired Air Force one-star general and former signals intelligence officer, knows from his military specialty how vulnerable the Signal app is to hacking by foreign adversaries.

Bacon was aghast to learn that Hegseth, “the most senior of our senior leadership,” put operational details on a device that “I know that the Chinese and Russians are working overtime to collect everything on.”

“I wouldn’t tolerate it. I would hold them accountable, and I’d fire them,” Bacon said of anyone who would put “classified information on an unclassified application and to send it to people who are not cleared or in the need to know.”

“We would fire a second lieutenant for doing this,” he said.

Hegseth has responded to the Signalgate controversy with his standard playbook of defiance, denial, deflection, and dissembling, with President Donald Trump and the White House backing him up.

When the first Signal chat was revealed late last month, Hegseth blamed the journalist who was accidentally added to the group by national security adviser Mike Waltz, calling the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg a “highly discredited so-called journalist, who’s made a profession of peddling hoaxes.”

When the second chat was reported by the New York Times, one that included Hegseth’s brother and personal attorney, who both have some kind of Pentagon job, as well as his wife, who does not, a furious Hegseth smelled a rat and immediately launched a mole hunt to find the leaker.

Suspicion immediately fell on three Hegseth hires, who had been on the second chat group dubbed “Defense | Team Huddle” and were now serving as staffers in his office.

Very quickly, the trio of Hegseth’s former friends and long-time Trump supporters was fired without explanation.

Hegseth again went on the attack, never directly addressing why sensitive operational details were shared with his wife and others with no need to know, but instead directing his ire at “slash-and-burn Democrats” and “fake news” media “hoaxsters that peddle anonymous sources from leakers with axes to grind.”

All while admitting that he believed the negative press was a result of leaks from his inner circle of political appointees.

“There were a series of serious leaks at the Pentagon … Panama Canal plans, Elon Musk’s visit, you name it, any number of things,” Hegseth told Fox News. “It led to some unfortunate places, people I have known for quite some time. But it’s not my job to protect them.”

These were not “woke generals” or deep state subversives; they were die-hard Trump and Hegseth backers who have vehemently denied leaking anything to anyone.

But Hegseth labeled the leakers “pushing and peddling things that try to sabotage the president’s agenda,” citing “sufficient evidence” from an internal investigation.

Two of the staffers reportedly are considering suing for wrongful termination.

Meanwhile, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt piled on to the smear campaign narrative, declaring, “This is what happens when the entire Pentagon is working against you and working against the monumental change that you are trying to implement.”

It was all too much for John Ullyot, a lifelong Republican, who had worked on Trump’s 2016 campaign and served in his previous administration in two communications posts.

In an opinion essay published in Politico, Ullyot, who insists he resigned and was not fired from his job as a Pentagon spokesman, labeled the 30 days after the Signalgate scandal broke as a “Month from Hell.”

“It’s been a month of total chaos at the Pentagon,” Ullyot wrote. “Even strong backers of the secretary like me must admit: The last month has been a full-blown meltdown at the Pentagon — and it’s becoming a real problem for the administration.”

While Ullyot insisted he left on good terms and expressed support for Hegseth, he noted several missteps and misjudgments, including Hegseth’s “nebulous disavowal” that “nobody was texting war plans,” which Ullyot called “a vague, Clinton-esque non-denial denial.”

Ullyot also appeared to confirm that Hegseth, without informing Trump, arranged for Elon Musk to be briefed on China, which the president nixed after he found out about it.

“From leaks of sensitive operational plans to mass firings, the dysfunction is now a major distraction for the president — who deserves better from his senior leadership,” Ullyot wrote. “It’s hard to see Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth remaining in his role for much longer.”

“What I want to see from the secretary is to just be honest,” Bacon said. “Admit you did wrong, take responsibility, and apologize, because that lets us know that you understand that was wrong. When he does not admit to it and tries to obfuscate, that further lowers his credibility.”

“Apparently, Secretary Hegseth cares more about his own arrogance than he does about fixing problems,” Smith (D-WA) said. “He’s got multiple staff members having been fired, multiple staff members saying that the department is dysfunctional. It seems fairly clear that he is not up to the task of managing the Pentagon.”

But Trump is showing no sign of being ready to dump Hegseth, despite the rumors circulating in Washington that he’s quietly exploring possible replacements.

“There’s no dysfunction … there is none,” Trump said on April 21. “Pete’s doing a great job. Just fake news. They just bring up stories. I guess it sounds like disgruntled employees.”

Vice President JD Vance insists he has “100% confidence” in Hegseth, as does, he says, “the president and his entire team.”

“It’s one of the most bizarre things about the Hegseth nomination,” Vance said. “From the very beginning, the media seemed to want to take it, and when they failed and it got confirmed, they decided they wanted to keep on that effort to destroy Pete Hegseth as a man, as the secretary of defense.”

HEGSETH ACKNOWLEDGES SHARING ‘UNCLASSIFIED’ INFO IN SIGNAL CHATS ‘THEN AND NOW’

“I don’t expect Trump to fire Pete Hegseth,” Smith admitted ruefully. “Pete Hegseth’s doing a great job for Donald Trump. He’s just jeopardizing the national security of the American people, which we all ought to be concerned about.”

“Hegseth has sadly proved himself to be a lightweight, and I don’t think he’s long for the job,” former Trump national security adviser John Bolton weighed in on CNN. “I think there’s going to be a decent interval here so that the administration doesn’t have to appear to be bowing to political pressure, but he’s used up his goodwill with the administration. He’s supposed to be defending Trump, not Trump defending him.”