Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel is stepping down amid criticism of the president's national security team on a series of global issues, including the threat posed by the militant group known as ISIS.
Senior defense officials confirmed to NBC News Monday that Hagel was forced to resign.
The officials say the White House has lost confidence in Hagel to carry out his role at the Pentagon. According to one senior official, 'He wasn't up to the job.'
Hagel, the only Republican on the president's national security team and the first enlisted combat veteran to lead the Department of Defense, has served in the job since February 2013.
The news of Hagel's departure was first reported by the New York Times.
- Carrie Dann contributed
First published November 24 2014, 6:20 AM
Jim Miklaszewski
Jim Miklaszewski is the chief Pentagon correspondent for NBC News. On 9/11, he was the first at the scene to report that the Pentagon had been attacked and has since led the network's coverage of the war in Afghanistan.Since joining NBC in 1985, Miklaszewski was a White House correspondent during the Clinton and Bush administrations, covering President Clinton's transition from Little Rock, his many trips abroad including Moscow and the Middle East and his reelection. He was also an NBC floor reporter at the Democratic and Republican conventions in 1996 and 2000.In the Bush White House, Miklaszewski reported on the Gulf War with Iraq, summits with Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin and the Bush reelection campaign in 1992.Miklaszewski has logged considerable foreign experience with battlefront coverage of wars in Lebanon, El Salvador and the Falkland Islands. He also covered the United States air raid on Libya, and the 'tanker wars' in the Persian Gulf.
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