The Bunker: Pentagon Press Persists

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NAVY ADMIRAL MYSTERIOUSLY WALKS THE PLANK

But reporters now outside the Pentagon still get the story

You could glean the feckless futility of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s banishment of the Pentagon press corps shortly after they left the building for refusing to sign his onerous restrictions (PDF) on their reporting. Amid U.S. war drums pounding all around Venezuela, the admiral in charge of U.S. Southern Command — who would oversee any such conflict — announced his retirement after less than a year into what is usually a prized three-year assignment.

Did he walk the plank, or was he pushed?

Hegseth fulsomely praised Admiral Alvin Holsey for his service in the kind of gushing language the defense secretary typically reserves for President Trump. “Admiral Holsey has exemplified the highest standards of naval leadership since his commissioning through the NROTC program at Morehouse College in 1988,” Hegseth said in a statement (check out the hundreds of comments there, highlighting the corrosion of civility on both sides). Holsey’s service “reflects a legacy of operational excellence and strategic vision.”

But while Hegseth may have announced the who, what, and where, he didn’t answer the most important question: Why? Why was Holsey prematurely leaving his command as the biggest military operation of his 37-year career unfolds? (Holsey’s own pro forma statement, which didn’t even say he wanted to spend more time with his family, didn’t help, either.)

For that, we had to rely on the intrepid reporters who had been covering such issues from inside the Pentagon until 24 hours before Hegseth forced them, and perhaps Holsey, out. “One current and one former U.S. official, both of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss personnel matters, said that Admiral Holsey had raised concerns about the mission and the attacks on the alleged drug boats,” the New York Times reported.

“Two people familiar with the matter said Hegseth had grown disenchanted with Holsey and wanted him to step aside,” the Washington Post added. “The scrutiny began about a month ago — around the time that the Trump administration began ordering deadly strikes on alleged drug boats off the coast of Venezuela.” At least 32 people have been killed by seven recent U.S. strikes on suspected drug-running boats. The first pair known to have survived will be returned to their home nations of Colombia and Ecuador, Trump said October 18, suggesting the U.S. has no desire to prosecute or incarcerate them — only to kill them.

Lawmakers fear the U.S. is once again sailing into uncharted waters. “Never before in my over 20 years on the committee can I recall seeing a combatant commander leave their post this early and amid such turmoil,” Representative Adam Smith of Washington, the senior Democrat on the armed services committee, said. “I have also never seen such a staggering lack of transparency on behalf of an administration and the department to meaningfully inform Congress on the use of lethal military force.”

And, take it from Bunker colleague Virginia Burger, a former Marine public affairs officer, the sudden lack of reporters inside the Pentagon will make those uncharted waters even rougher. “Restricting reporters’ abilities to do their job,” she says, “will only make it easier for mistakes to be made, money to be wasted, and corruption to flourish.”

A Trump trifecta.

COMMANDING CONFUSION

The Pentagon’s perpetual commotion machine

Troops march. Bombers fly. Warships sail. And, just as predictably, the organizational structure of the U.S. military is always in flux. Now The Bunker doesn’t mean to bore you with byzantine flow charts (PDF) filled with varying boxes (PDF) popping up and disappearing, depending on the day of the week, and connected by ever-shifting solid and dotted lines. But it’s to raise a fundamental question: Is the U.S. military too busy reorganizing itself to win wars?

The Department of Defense is a big organization, so it’s going to have lots of commands and so-called subordinate commands to keep things running. But it spends so much time reboxing, redrawing, and reconsidering how these units are arranged, and who reports to whom, that it can dizzify anyone trying to keep track of who’s in charge of what.

Over the past couple of weeks:

• The Air Force has scrapped plans to create a new major command dedicated to how the service buys weapons so that it can win any future war against China. The service announced its Integrated Capabilities Command last year as part of a scheme dedicated to — Buzzword Warning!—“reoptimizing for Great Power competition” (PDF). The proposal called for 24 organizational changes involving, among other things, nuclear weapons, personnel, and changing the name of the Air Force’s Air Education Training Command to the Airman Development Command.
  
  “We are out of time,” then-Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said in February 2024 as he detailed changes he said were driven by the Chinese threat. “The risk of conflict is here now and that risk will increase with time.” His successor agrees, but apparently prefers to replace a Biden administration initiative with his own. Current Air Force Secretary Troy Meink says his re-restructuring “will accelerate the delivery of combat power, improve efficiency, and shorten the decision timeline” (sounds a lot like Kendall’s notion). Meink’s recobbling will include a new Chief Modernization Officer, who, presumably, will oversee the reoptimizing under the existing Air Force Futures command.
  
• Meanwhile, the Army has shut down its own futures command after only seven years. It’s folding it, and the service’s just-deactivated 52-year-old Training and Doctrine Command, into the newly created Transformation and Training Command. It’s part of Hegseth’s Army Transformation Initiative (PDF), the one-time Army National Guard major’s push to put his imprint on the Pentagon.
  
• The Army’s top general announced October 14 the creation of a Western Hemisphere Command from the remnants of Army North Command, Army South Command, and Forces Command. It’s plainly a sop to President Trump’s increasing emphasis on sending U.S. troops into American cities, and nettlesome neighbors like Venezuela and Colombia, instead of overly focused fretting about foes like China.

The military maintains that such changes are designed to shrink its ranks. But taxpayers might ask why such reorganizations always seem to require standing up costly new commands to carry them out.

TESTING FAILURES?

Lawmakers sound alarm about overlooked oversight

The Pentagon continues to refuse to explain its massive cuts to its independent testing oversight office. That’s led a pair of lawmakers to warn that at least $74.5 billion worth of arms won’t get the scrutiny they warrant before their deployment. “We remain concerned these reckless decisions undermine readiness and will result in substantial waste of taxpayer dollars while putting servicemembers’ lives at risk,” Senator Elizabeth Warren, (D-MA) and Representative Donald Norcross (D-NJ), wrote Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in their October 15 letter (PDF).

Reports issued by the office of the Director of the Pentagon’s Operational Test and Evaluation (DOT&E) are vital to ensure that “voters and taxpayers have some visibility and insight into these decisions” to green-light weapons production, argues Greg Williams, director of the Center for Defense Information here at the Project On Government Oversight.

It’s striking that as Pentagon spending soars toward $1 trillion annually, it’s simultaneously cutting independent testing oversight. But it should come as no surprise. Along with ousting reporters and firing the military’s top lawyers, cutting the number of the weapons programs monitored by DOT&E (from 251 to 157, a 37% reduction) is part of a pattern. It’s in keeping with Hands-Off Hegseth’s nothing-to-see-here approach to his management of the world’s biggest bureaucracy.

WHAT WE’RE READING

Here’s what has caught The Bunker’s eye recently

→ “The Only Easy Day Was Yesterday”

A Pakistani weapons smuggler has been sentenced to 40 years in prison by a U.S. judge for his role in the 2024 drowning deaths of two Navy SEALs, Chief Special Warfare Operator Christopher Chambers and Special Warfare Operator 1st Class Nathan Gage Ingram, Drew F. Lawrence reported October 17 in Task & Purpose.

→ Final salute

Marine Colonel Doug Krugman explained in the October 16 Washington Post why he felt Trump’s disregard for the Constitution pushed him into retirement after 24 years in uniform.

→ “What could go wrong?”

The U.S. government’s top nuclear-weapons agency is furloughing nearly 80% of its staff because of the government shutdown, Politico’s Connor O’Brien and Meredith Lee Hill reported October 17.

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