ASPEN, Colo. — Former Defense Secretary Mark Esper, one of the Trump administration officials under constant security because of Iranian threats, said Wednesday that it was time for the Biden administration “to do better than just playing defense.”
U.S. intelligence and security officials say Iran is intent on revenge for the 2020 killing of Iranian Gen. Qassim Soleimani[3], which Trump ordered as president.
“To me, it’s personal as well,” Esper said at the Aspen Security Forum, an annual conference in Colorado that draws U.S. policymakers, journalists and others. “Because I’m in that group that’s on their hit list, and so like a few of my colleagues, I carry around a very robust 24/7 security protection detail that watches over me and several of us."
“It’s going on for years now … and we got to do better than just playing defense,” Esper said, citing an earlier, foiled plot against John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser. Esper said additional plots have been uncovered but did not elaborate.
“So this administration needs to do a far better job in terms of how we deal with this problem,” he said, adding that officials need to figure out how to go after those behind the plots.
National Security Council spokeswoman Adrienne Watson said Tuesday that the Biden administration considers “this a national and homeland security matter of the highest priority.”
Besides Esper, other high-level Trump administration officials who also receive protection following Soleimani’s assassination include retired Army Gen. Mark Milley, who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and retired Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie, who headed U.S. Central Command and was in charge of the Soleimani operation.
The Biden administration also has repeatedly extended 24/7 protection to former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and his top Iran aide, Brian Hook, due to credible threats on their lives from Iran.
Iran’s mission to the United Nations called the accusations “unsubstantiated and malicious.”
In a statement Tuesday, the mission said that while it sees Trump as a “criminal” who should be punished in court for ordering Soleimani’s assassination, “Iran has chosen the legal path to bring him to justice.”
BOSTON — Massachusetts Air National Guard member Jack Teixeira[1], who pleaded guilty in March to federal criminal charges for leaking highly classified military documents, will now face a military court-martial.
Teixeira admitted to illegally collecting[2] some of the nation’s most sensitive secrets and sharing them on the social media platform Discord. He is facing military charges of disobeying orders and obstructing justice.
The U.S. Air Force said in a statement Wednesday that he will be tried at Hanscom Air Force Base in Massachusetts but no date has been set. An attorney for Teixeira didn't immediately respond to a message seeking comment.
At a May hearing, military prosecutors said a court-martial is appropriate given that obeying orders is the “absolute core” of the military. But Teixeira’s lawyers argued that further action would amount to prosecuting him twice for the same offense.
Teixeira, who was part of the 102nd Intelligence Wing at Otis Air National Guard Base in Massachusetts, worked as a cyber transport systems specialist, essentially an information technology specialist responsible for military communications networks.
Teixeira was arrested just over a year ago in the most consequential national security leak in years.
He pleaded guilty[3] on March 4 to six counts of willful retention and transmission of national defense information under a deal with prosecutors that calls for him to serve at least 11 years in prison. He's scheduled to be sentenced in that case in September.
Authorities in the criminal case said Teixeira first typed out classified documents he accessed and then began sharing photographs of files that bore SECRET and TOP SECRET markings. The leak exposed to the world unvarnished secret assessments of Russia’s war in Ukraine, including information about troop movements in Ukraine and the provision of supplies and equipment to Ukrainian troops. Teixeira also admitted to posting information about a U.S. adversary’s plans to harm U.S. forces serving overseas.
The stunning security breach raised alarm over America’s ability to protect its most closely guarded secrets and forced President Joe Biden's administration to scramble to try to contain the diplomatic and military fallout. The leaks embarrassed the Pentagon, which tightened controls to safeguard classified information and disciplined members it found had intentionally failed to take required action about Teixeira’s suspicious behavior.
A House oversight committee alleges it has not received key investigative documents from the Defense Department about V-22 Osprey crashes and is threatening to take action if it doesn't receive the information by later this month.
The Pentagon has not provided a comprehensive list and all safety investigation reports of every class-A Osprey mishap from 1991 to the present, according to the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability.
The committee began probing mishaps and crashes involving the Osprey in the wake of an Air Force[1]CV-22[2] crash off the coast of Japan in November that killed eight airmen. During the monthslong investigation started in December, lawmakers claim the Pentagon has not been fully forthcoming with the requested information.
In a Tuesday letter addressed to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Reps. James Comer, R-Ky., and Glenn Grothman, R-Wis. -- the chairman of the oversight committee and the chairman of the subcommittee on National Security, the Border and Foreign Affairs, respectively -- said they have "encountered significant delays and hurdles" and may take more aggressive measures if they don't get a response soon.
"DoD must be transparent with Congress and the American people to show that the Osprey program is safe and that it will bring significant advantages to combat operations," the letter states[4]. "If DoD continues to fail to produce the requested documents by July 30, 2024, the committee will consider additional measures, including use of the compulsory process, to gain compliance and obtain this critical material."
The oversight committee's letter comes on the heels of the subcommittee on National Security, the Border and Foreign Affairs hearing last month about Osprey safety. Navy[5] and defense officials present provided little clarity or closure on the cause of recent deadly mishaps, leaving families of service members who lost loved ones in the aircraft with few answers.
Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, the Pentagon press secretary, told reporters Tuesday that the Defense Department has provided documents as well as officials for briefings and hearings, but will still work to give the committee the information being sought.
"We have worked very hard to accommodate the House Oversight Committee's requests. We've provided more than 3,500 pages of documents," Ryder said. "All that to say, we will continue to work with the committee to accommodate that request."
The oversight committee's letter mentions that "Osprey-related crashes have killed more than 60 service members since 1992," the most recent being the Air Force's Nov. 29 crash off the southern coast of Japan.
Following that crash, the services that fly the Osprey -- the Air Force, Marine Corps[6] and Navy -- all grounded their variants of the tilt-rotor aircraft. That stand-down was lifted in March, but the cause behind the crash was not disclosed.
Last month, Military.com reported[7] that Air Force Special Operations Command is analyzing its use of the aircraft and could change the size of its CV-22 pilot and aircrew fleets, and some could be trained to fly other aircraft in the future.
Republicans are vowing to rid the military of "woke left-wing Democrats" in their newly approved platform that lays out their governing vision should they win in November's elections.
Delegates at the Republican National Convention formally adopted the 2024 party platform during the first session of the confab Monday afternoon in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
The 16-page document – the first formal GOP platform since a 2016 one that ran 66 pages and included an entire chapter on military and foreign policy – fully synchronizes the party with its presidential nominee, former President Donald Trump. The 2024 road map is light on detailed plans for the armed forces[1], but includes a paragraph on how Republicans hope to "modernize the military."
"Republicans will ensure our military is the most modern, lethal and powerful force in the world," the document says on its last page[3]. "We will invest in cutting-edge research and advanced technologies, including an Iron Dome Missile Defense Shield, support our troops with higher pay, and get woke left-wing Democrats fired as soon as possible."
Republicans have bemoaned what they describe as a "woke" military since President Joe Biden took office and have been vowing to eradicate wokeness in the military[4] for years. Republicans use the term to describe what they see as the creep of progressive and Democratic ideology into public institutions in recent years, and it has been applied to a wide array of federal government policies, from the now-defunct COVID-19 vaccine mandate to preparations for climate change.
When it comes to the military, “woke” is often applied to efforts to make the military more welcoming to historically marginalized groups such as minorities, women and LGBTQ+ people.
While the rhetoric in the GOP platform echoes calls that Republican lawmakers have made for years, experts on civil-military relations said it was alarming for an official party platform to advocate for what could amount to a political purge.
"The Republican base has convinced themselves that this is a big problem, and they just don't have any evidence to show that it is a big problem," said Peter Feaver, a civil-military relations expert at Duke University who was a White House adviser to former President George W. Bush. "So, for it to be elevated all the way to the platform, that's a sign that somebody who hadn't really thought deeply about national security had access to the platform, or at least hadn't thought deeply about the actual composition of the American military."
The platform does not specify exactly who could be fired. Political appointees, such as the defense secretary and service secretaries, change every administration, so switching them out would be normal. But efforts to target civil servants -- which Trump has vowed to do broadly across the federal government[5] -- or uniformed military personnel could be both counterproductive and logistically unfeasible, Feaver said.
"What would be the grounds for getting rid of them? It's not a violation of the [Uniform Code of Military Justice] to be left wing," he said. "This would be doing the exact thing they claim is the problem with woke. That is to say, this would be injecting a political rather than a merit-based standard."
Pentagon officials and military officers have sought to push back on that narrative, arguing that recruiting is hurting because of factors including a strong job market and a low percentage of young Americans even being eligible to enlist. If wokeness is a factor in the recruiting slump or public trust in the military, officials add, it's because of politicians pushing a false narrative.
"We are a ready Army[8], not a 'woke' Army," Army Secretary Christine Wormuth told reporters last year[9]. "What I'm trying to talk about now is how that drip, drip, drip of criticism about a woke military is having some counterproductive effects on recruiting."
Diversity and inclusion efforts, many of which predate the Biden administration, are crucial to attracting a younger, more socially conscious generation, military officials add.
"What I will tell you is when people join our military, they want to look around and see somebody who looks like them. They want to be part of a team [and] feel like they're included," Gen. C.Q. Brown, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Defense One[10] in 2023 when he was chief of staff of the Air Force[11]. "They don't want to join something that they feel like you're put as an outcast."
But the Republican criticism has persisted.
Similar to the GOP platform, Project 2025, a conservative think tank blueprint for a future Republican administration, proposes to "eliminate politicization, reestablish trust and accountability and restore faith to the force" in part by "eliminat[ing] Marxist indoctrination and divisive critical race theory programs and abolish newly established diversity, equity, and inclusion offices and staff."
Project 2025 also calls for instructing military officers to "understand their primary duty to be ensuring the readiness of the armed forces, not pursuing a social engineering agenda."
Trump has tried to distance himself[12] from Project 2025. But the plan was written by people who served in his first administration and hope to serve in a second, including former acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller, who wrote the section about the Defense Department.
While Trump tries to disavow Project 2025, the GOP platform was personally approved by him, the chairs of the Republican National Committee's platform committee -- Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., and Rep. Michael Waltz, R-Fla. -- said Monday.
"Most of all, we will strengthen our depleted military and make it strong again," Waltz, a Green Beret veteran, said on stage at the convention Monday as delegates approved the platform.
