Pete Hegseth’s aides punched a hole in a globe used by General Dwight D. Eisenhower during World War II after trying to lug the relic into the defense secretary’s office.
His moving crew lost control of the 30-inch floor globe in early February, sending it crashing onto its base and tearing a gash several inches wide near Antarctica, according to the Washington Post.
The Army confirmed the damage, saying the fall also knocked the sphere off the metal frame it spins on. The globe never made it to Hegseth’s office.
Hegseth’s staff had requested the artifact, which a plaque dates to the 1930s, because of its wartime pedigree, sources told the outlet.
Historic pieces are normally moved around the Pentagon by trained curators, and the Army office that keeps the globe had planned to call in experts from the US Army Center of Military History to pack it safely and document the transfer.
But those historians were furloughed during a partial government shutdown triggered by a congressional standoff over the Trump administration’s immigration policy.
Rather than wait, Hegseth’s team sent in its own crew, and one source said impatience appeared to have played a part.
However, the government shutdown ended on the same day the globe was wrecked. It is unclear whether Hegseth personally ordered the move or whether another senior official in his office gave the green light.
The aides of defense secretary Pete Hegseth punched a hole in a globe used by General Dwight D. Eisenhower during World War II after trying to lug the relic into his office
The crew lost control of the 30-inch floor globe, seen here with General Eisenhower, sending it crashing onto its base and tearing a gash several inches wide
The globe is thought to have been used by Eisenhower, pictured here with then-vice president Richard Nixon, when he led the Army’s War Plans Division during World War II
Pentagon officials refused to let The Post photograph or inspect the damaged globe, but the paper obtained images showing the hole and specks of debris littering the carpet below.
The bungled move quickly became fodder for jokes in the Pentagon’s corridors, with some officials saying it captured Hegseth’s brashness and his fondness for World War II nostalgia.
Hegseth, a former National Guard officer who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, now calls himself secretary of war after carrying out Trump’s order last year to revive the department’s pre-1947 name, a switch Congress has never approved.
A card displayed beside the globe says it is thought to have been used by Eisenhower in 1942, when he led the Army’s War Plans Division and then its Operations Division.
The Army’s other Eisenhower globe sits in the office of the Army chief of staff and still bears pen marks left by Eisenhower and General Omar Bradley, officials said.
The botched move comes as Hegseth faces mounting fire over his handling of the war with Iran, which began just weeks after the globe moving incident.
Hegseth declared this spring that regime change had already happened in Iran, but the Islamic Republic is still standing, with the Revolutionary Guards tightening their grip at the expense of civilian and clerical institutions.