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A successful campaign for the 10 former U.S. Secretaries of Defense to sign a letter warning President Donald Trump not to involve the military in his grievances over the election results took place between New Years Eve and New Years Day. ‘An, said former ambassador and defense official Eric Edelman.
“Efforts to involve the US armed forces in the resolution of electoral disputes would take us into dangerous, illegal and unconstitutional territory,” the former secretaries wrote in the letter, which was published as an editorial by the Washington Post.
Edelman drafted and orchestrated the letter in consultation with former Vice President Dick Cheney, himself a former Defense Secretary, with assistance from former State Department adviser Eliot Cohen.
Cheney told Edelman he would sign the letter if he could involve other former secretaries, Edelman told ABC News on Monday. Edelman contacted the Post and asked the 10 secretaries to add their names by Friday, he said.
There were multiple motives and timing for sending the letter, Edelman told ABC News.
“There’s the dismissal of Esper right after the election, there’s the installation of this cadre of political appointees around (Acting Defense Secretary Chris) Miller over there, there’s the rush for the exit in Afghanistan, “said Edelman, also citing an attempt by the Trump administration to split US Cyber Command and the National Security Agency last month, as well as Trump’s controversial call with the secretary of Georgian state Saturday.
Edelman also said that former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn’s comments about the possibility of Trump invoking martial law to revive the election in battlefield states raised concerns.
In an interview with Newsmax in mid-December, Flynn detailed what he saw as Trump’s military options. While Flynn claimed he was not advocating the exercise of these options and that constitutional processes should be followed, a few weeks earlier he tweeted an organization’s press release calling for “limited martial law” to hold a new election.
A former U.S. official who helped coordinate the letter said the two signatories who served under the Trump administration, Mark Esper and retired Navy General Jim Mattis, had some reservations before adding their names to the ‘editorial.
“I think Secretary Mattis, for good reason, was a bit reluctant,” the former official said. “He feels like as a retiree he’s still covered by the (Uniform Code of Military Justice), and you know, retired officers shouldn’t be criticizing the commander-in-chief, and they’re not supposed to do it.”
The former official told ABC News he came after being persuaded by others involved in the project “that he should be thinking about this not as” a former four-star general officer in the Navy , Jim Mattis “, but in” former Secretary of Defense Mattis “.”
Esper, who was ousted by Trump after the presidential election, was concerned that his participation looked like personal retribution, but quickly decided to join the other former Pentagon leaders, the official said.
Chuck Hagel, a former Republican senator who served as defense secretary under President Barack Obama, told ABC News on Monday that he deliberated before adding his name to the editorial to be sure it wouldn’t ” do more of something than maybe. there really is. “
Hagel said he decided that Trump’s actions and rhetoric aimed at overturning the election results posed a sufficiently significant risk.
“I’m not too worried, but the point is we have a president who has acted erratically, irresponsibly, and I think I have put our country at risk in many situations over the past four years,” he said. he told ABC News.
Former Secretary of Defense William Perry said in a Tweeter Sunday that “Each of us has taken an oath to support and defend the Constitution; this oath does not change depending on the party’s designation.”
Robert Gates, secretary of defense to both Presidents George W. Bush and Obama, signed without reservation when approached by Edelman, who was Under Secretary of Defense for Policy during Gates’ stay in the Pentagon, according to a spokesperson for the former secretary. .
The letter ended with an appeal to the Department of Defense to ensure a peaceful and smooth transfer of power.
<< Le secrétaire à la Défense par intérim, Christopher C. Miller, et ses subordonnés - personnes nommées politiques, officiers et fonctionnaires - sont tous tenus par serment, loi et précédent pour faciliter l'entrée en fonction de la nouvelle administration, et de le faire de tout cœur >>, letter said. “They must also refrain from any political action that undermines the election results or hinders the success of the new team.”
Edelman said the section was in response to President-elect Joe Biden recently accusing Pentagon political leaders of “obstruction.”
Miller rebutted those claims in a statement last Monday.
“The Department of Defense conducted 164 interviews with more than 400 officials and provided over 5,000 pages of documents – far more than what was initially requested by Biden’s transition team.” DOD’s efforts already exceed those of recent administrations with more than three weeks to go and we continue to schedule additional meetings for the remainder of the transition and respond to any inquiries within our purview, ”Miller said.
Some of the terms in the letter directly reflected comments from current defense officials, including Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley and Secretary of the Army Ryan McCarthy, who each said, before and after the election, that the military should not play participate in the management of electoral conflicts.
“The US military has no role to play in determining the outcome of a US election,” McCarthy said in a Dec. 22 statement.
This line was quoted without attribution in Sunday’s editorial.
The other former secretaries who signed the letter are Ashton Carter, Leon Panetta, William Perry and Donald Rumsfeld.
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