To the editor: No matter whether or not the 2017 sexual encounter by which Pete Hegseth doesn’t deny being concerned was consensual or an assault, the police report helps the conclusion that he can be an unacceptable safety threat as Protection secretary. (“A fateful night in Monterey: Drinking, conservative banter, sexual assault allegations involving Pete Hegseth,” Nov. 22)
At the very least one third-party witness described him being drunk to the purpose of public spectacle. He doesn’t deny partaking in a sexual relationship that prompted him to request a nondisclosure settlement from the girl concerned, indicating that he believed her story represented a risk to his private {and professional} popularity.
The identical 12 months the encounter occurred, Hegseth divorced his second spouse whereas engaged in an extramarital affair with the girl who would change into his third spouse.
This type of habits clearly exposes him to potential blackmail. He can’t be trusted with the nation’s most necessary secrets and techniques or with choices that have an effect on the nation’s safety on the highest ranges.
John Miller, Irvine
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To the editor: Within the Nineteen Eighties, I served because the commanding officer of the Navy ROTC unit at UC Berkeley. Again then, girls had been prohibited from serving in fight, a coverage to which our present Protection secretary nominee want to return now.
At some point, an assistant secretary of the Navy got here to talk. One vivid feminine scholar requested, “Why is it that the Navy is not going to assign girls to jobs that may contain fight?” Our VIP customer answered, “It’s as a result of girls don’t need to combat and die.”
“Do males?” she requested in response.
With these two phrases, the girl, who would later serve honorably as an officer aboard a ship, stated all that wanted to be stated to make clear the difficulty.
I gazed at her. She checked out me. The assistant secretary glanced at me. I confronted the secretary and shrugged my shoulders as if to say, “Nicely, do they?”
I needed to commend the coed proper then and there. I tilted my head in her course and nodded within the affirmative, however simply barely, as if to say, “Nicely accomplished.”
Stephen Sloane, Lomita
