There are a lot of
around the E-ring, the most prestigious sector of the Pentagon, where top defense officials enjoy the rare privilege of windows. But that’s about to change, a senior aide to Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told me.
“There’s a bow wave of names that are very close to being announced or (already)
,” said Tony DeMartino, a retired Army veteran who serves as deputy chief of staff to Mattis, giving his first and so far only media interview in the job.
Here are the numbers, as supplied by DeMartino. Including both nominees still being vetted and those publicly named or already confirmed, there is someone somewhere in the pipeline for 75 percent of available positions. If you just count people who have been officially named, nominated, or confirmed, he said, there are 19 people named (three of them Obama holdovers) out of 57 Senate-confirmable positions or 33 percent. (For comparison,
counts 17 named out of 53 positions; the
lists just 14).
Yes, DeMartino acknowledged, there have been delays and missteps, notably the very public withdrawals of three nominees:
, for Navy Secretary;
and
, both for Army Secretary. But, said DeMartino, the nomination team has learned from experience and is picking up the pace.
Yes, there are reports (including by
Breaking Defense) of
, but in fact they’re working together well, he said.
Yes, public counts of key positions filled lag previous administrations, but behind the scenes, he said, many candidates have been interviewed and approved by the White House. Those names-in-process include some of the Pentagon’s
(policy, personnel, comptroller, intelligence, & acquisition), he said, though he wouldn’t divulge which ones.
So, I asked, you’d say you were at a tipping point? Yes, DeMartino said.
At least one senior defense lawmaker was not impressed. “It’s not. And it’s inexcusable,” said
top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee. “(It’s) a symptom of a White House that still doesn’t know how to govern.”
The Critics
“The Defense Department is woefully understaffed in key positions,” Rep. Smith said. “It is a huge problem (for the annual
and
). There aren’t a lot of people to talk to, so it definitely has slowed down the process.”
“It’s not just the Defense Department, it’s all over the place. We’ve been trying to get something out of the Department of Homeland Security and basically nobody works there,” Smith added. “I’ve been trying to talk to
for about a month now.”
Smith is not the only skeptic. His Republican counterpart, HASC chairman
, has repeatedly lamented the slow pace, though we didn’t get any comment from him for this story. In the Senate, Armed Services chairman John McCain last month publicly derided the “
” of nominations. More recently, both Democrat Tim Kaine and Republican Lindsey Graham asked Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson about the vacancies during a
. Do they create problems for you in doing your job? Graham asked.
“It’s becoming difficult, yes,” Wilson answered. It’s worth noting that she’s the only service secretary so far confirmed because three nominees in a row for Army and Navy Secretary withdrew.
Even non-partisan industry groups are publicly raising concerns. “Gen. Mattis was confirmed on inauguration day. Here we are not quite six months later and we’re just now getting this DepSecDef into the Senate queue,” Dan Stohr, chief spokesman for the powerful
, said in an interview.
was named for Deputy Secretary of Defense March 16, but he was only formally forward to the Senate on June 7th, and his confirmation hearing is still to come.
For comparison, Deputy Secretary Bill Perry was on the job in the Clinton administration by March 5th, Paul Wolfowitz in the Bush administration by March 2nd, and Bill Lynn in the Obama administration by February 12th.
No undersecretary for policy — traditionally the No. 3 job in the Defense Department — has even been nominated. There’s no one named for the other undersecretary slot of vital concern to AIA, Acquisition, Technology, & Logistics. “ATL is another critical position for us, particularly since that position is
,” said Stohr.
True, the aerospace industry is luckier than, say, shipbuilders in that an Air Force Secretary has been confirmed, unlike the Navy and Army Secretaries, but that’s hardly sufficient. “Having SecAf is great but there’s a host of the next tier down positions to get the network of senior leadership that sits between SecDef and the careerists; they’re the ones who really on a day to day basis help drive policy,” Stohr said. “Right now you go straight from SecDef to the careerists, and that’s not the way the system’s designed to work.”
The vacancies will be highly visible at the upcoming
, Stohr added, traditionally the year’s major meet-and-greet for the global aerospace industry. “We don’t have the senior political appointees in place that we would expect to meet with at a show of this stature,” he said. Companies can still do business, of course, but the administration contingent may lack the clout to sway their foreign counterparts or the legal authorities to get things done.
It’ll affect budgets and procurement as well, Stohr said: “”When you talk about the appropriations bills going forward, the people who put those contract activities into place need direction, and the direction comes from the senior politicals.”
The Defense Department’s strict chain of command solves that problem, DeMartino argued. It’s the “next man up” rule, he said. Just as first officer of a warship steps up when the captain gets shot, career civil servants will step up and fill the vacant politically-appointed position above them, “performing-the-duties-of or acting-as” their absent superior to get things done.
“There are people in each of those stovepipe organizations doing the work,” DeMartino said. But as anyone who’s spent much time in the Pentagon knows, “actings” rarely feel they have the authority to do much beyond keeping things running as they are.
And they’re not Trump’s people, I pointed out, and nor Mattis’. Who conveys the administration agenda to career bureaucrats who often have agendas of their own? Secretary Mattis, DeMartino said: “He gives broad guidance and the career people will move out.”
I asked Stohr about this thesis. His response? “That’s true to a point — and I think we’ve reached that point.”
...
with double hangar for B-2