The White House has ordered Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to stop using polygraph tests on Pentagon staff suspected of leaking classified information.
The directive came after Patrick Weaver, a top Hegseth adviser, pushed back against the use of lie detectors in the internal probe.
Weaver warned senior officials he might be forced to take a polygraph himself. That triggered a call to Hegseth—ordering him to shut the program down.
The move marks a rare public intervention from the West Wing into Pentagon operations.
Weaver previously served in the Trump administration during the president’s first term, holding posts on the National Security Council and at DHS.
The investigation was launched in March after sensitive military communications were leaked from inside the Office of the Secretary of Defense.
Hegseth’s then–chief of staff, Joe Kasper, issued a memo demanding immediate action.
“Recent unauthorized disclosures of national security information involving sensitive communications… demand immediate and thorough investigation,” Kasper wrote in a March 21 directive.
He authorized the use of polygraphs to identify those responsible, per Fox News.
The leaks reportedly involved encrypted Signal app conversations between Hegseth and other top Trump administration officials.
Those chats included discussions about U.S. military strikes on Houthi targets