WASHINGTON, April 1 -- A broker for US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth attempted to make a big investment in major defence companies in the weeks leading up to the US-Israeli attack on Iran, the Financial Times (FT) reported on Monday, citing three people familiar with the matter. Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said on X the story was "entirely false and fabricated" and demanded a retraction. The FT report said Hegseth's broker at Morgan Stanley contacted BlackRock in February, about making a multimillion-dollar investment in the asset manager's Defense Industrials Active ETF, shortly before the US launched military action against Tehran. According to the FT report, the investment discussed by Hegseth's broker did not ultimately go ah...