Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s staffers damaged a historic globe used by Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower during World War II when they tried to move it to his office at his request, three U.S. officials confirmed to NBC News.
The incident happened in February after Hegseth said he wanted the globe, mounted in a wooden frame, in his office, the officials said.
The Washington Post first reported the incident Thursday.
The globe was one of at least two that Eisenhower had, the officials said, and it was especially notable because it had green pen or marker notations where Eisenhower marked areas in Europe during World War II.
The historic American artifact is cataloged and kept by the U.S. Army Center of Military History (CMH) but displayed in the Pentagon. The globe was kept in a senior Army office in the Pentagon, the officials said.
Rather than wait for Army historians or CMH to move the globe, several staffers from Hegseth’s office tried to do so themselves, dropping it, creating a hole in the lower part of it and damaging another area, the officials said.
A Pentagon official acknowledged the incident but said the globe was a replica.
“An accident occurred while staff were transporting a replica of the Eisenhower globe as part of its relocation. Accidents happen, we are grateful no one was harmed, and the globe is being repaired,” the Pentagon official said.
NBC News has verified from the three officials and a photo that it was not a replica, but the original globe used by Eisenhower.
The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a further request for information about the globe.
Eisenhower was supreme commander of the Allied Expeditionary Forces during World War II, in ultimate charge of crucial decisions like the Normandy landings on June 6, 1944.
He gave final approval for the landings, part of Operation Overlord, which led to the liberation of Western Europe and the end of Adolph Hitler and Nazi Germany.
Eisenhower was elected as the 34th president in November 1952 and was sworn in the following January.
A company that moved a similar Eisenhower globe in Alabama in December 2022, Craters & Freighters, described what it took to safely transport the artifact when it was contracted to do so by CMH.
That globe was 4 feet high and had a diameter of around 40 inches, and the company said it created “precise packaging and crating designs” to keep it safe.