Trump Sent a Political Ally to the Pentagon to Vet Officials' Loyalty

By Jack Detsch and Robbie Gramer, Foreign Policy

07 May 20

Officials fear the arrival of a former top aide to Vice President Mike Pence who could undercut Defense Secretary Mark Esper.

n another move aimed at consolidating control over policy and messaging, the Trump administration is sending a White House loyalist to serve in a key Defense Department policy role that officials are worried is aimed at weeding out civilians not loyal to the president, Foreign Policy has learned.

Michael Cutrone, who has been detailed as Vice President Mike Pence’s top national security aide for South Asia, is set to arrive at the Pentagon to serve in a behind-the-scenes role vetting Defense Department officials for loyalty to the president, according to two current administration officials.

Some officials fear that the arrival of Cutrone and other planned personnel moves at the Pentagon could undercut Defense Secretary Mark Esper as the White House has looked to put in place more defense officials loyal to the president, headlined by the reported pick of retired Army Brig. Gen. Anthony Tata as the agency’s top policy official, who caught President Donald Trump’s eye as a Fox News commentator.

“He is pushing to replace and remove civilians in OSD that are not aligned with the White House,” one current senior administration official told Foreign Policy of Cutrone’s plans to reshuffle officials in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. “Esper has no say in who the key people are going into senior positions.”

In the months since his impeachment trial in the Senate, Trump has purged officials considered independent and appointed political loyalists to a number of senior positions, ousting the U.S. government’s top oversight official, Glenn Fine, last month and nominating a permanent successor in his place for his day job at the Pentagon. Trump also fired the intelligence community’s top oversight official, Michael Atkinson, in April, who told lawmakers about the whistleblower complaint over the White House’s hold of military aid to Ukraine that launched an impeachment inquiry.

It was not immediately clear when Cutrone, who is leaving his career-track position as a CIA analyst to become a political appointee, will take on his new role as principal deputy assistant secretary for international security affairs. He replaces Dave Trulio, the former chief of staff for the Pentagon’s undersecretary for policy, who filled the job temporarily before leaving the department this year.

Officials say the new job would allow Cutrone to scrutinize Pentagon staffing without a public-facing side to his job. The Pentagon told Foreign Policy in a statement that it had “no personnel announcement with regard to that person or that position, and we don’t have any information about any other speculation” in the story.

A White House official told Foreign Policy that Cutrone was selected as a recognized national security professional to help lead the portfolio, which includes overseeing policy for NATO bloc nations, Africa, and the Middle East.

This latest personnel move has drawn concern from veteran Pentagon officials, who fear that the few remaining appointees in place empowered to push back on underdeveloped policy ideas will be removed from their posts or undermined, marking much tighter White House control than it had under former Defense Secretary James Mattis, who was close to many of the agency’s political appointees.

Kathryn Wheelbarger, a former Senate Armed Services Committee staffer for Sen. John McCain, permanently holds the role set for Cutrone but has been serving as an acting assistant secretary for international affairs for more than 18 months.

The White House official told Foreign Policy that the move would not impact Wheelbarger, who was sent forward this year as the Trump administration’s intended nominee for undersecretary of intelligence.

But the current senior administration official told Foreign Policy that Wheelbarger’s ties to McCain, a noted Trump critic, and Mattis were preventing the administration from putting her up for any confirmation. Politico reported in March that Wheelbarger’s nomination had been held up amid concerns from some Trump aides she was not sufficiently loyal to the president.

“She’s the only person holding down the fort, and she’s vulnerable. She has no top cover,” said Bilal Saab, who was until recently a senior advisor on Middle East issues at the Pentagon.

“Points of resistance to really bad policy ideas keep evaporating one after the other,” added Saab, now a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute.

Defense officials believe Cutrone is taking cues on staffing issues from Pence’s office, where he served for nearly three years. Other former colleagues who worked with Cutrone said he was not an ideologue and had carved out a reputation as an expert on Afghanistan and other South Asia issues. “In the Pence office, there wasn’t a fealty box to check,” said one person familiar with Cutrone, who has been detailed to the vice president’s office since 2017.

Most of the ranks of those officials are already appointees tapped by Trump. But in spite of that, there has been a more concerted focus by the Trump administration to remove appointees seen as close with former Defense Secretary Mattis, who pushed back on the president’s treatment of NATO allies, withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal, and abrupt exit from the counter-Islamic State mission in Syria, prompting the retired Marine Corps general to resign as Pentagon chief in December 2018.

“It’s becoming a bit of a purge,” said Jim Townsend, a former Pentagon policy official during the Obama administration. He said that as the administration stacks the Pentagon with a fresh wave of appointees who may not have as much defense policy experience, it can create friction between them and the civil service and military staffers. That, in turn, can throw sand in the gears of the policymaking process. “Some of these true believers … they might not know how to work with the bureaucracy, they might not know the issues as well, and they’re feeling the pressure from the bosses,” he said.

Cutrone will be talking to deputy assistant secretaries, the key issue area managers for Pentagon policy, to vet for appointees not aligned with the White House, the senior administration official said.

Surprising many, Cutrone helped nix the appointment of Seth Jones, a well-respected former advisor to U.S. special operations forces in Afghanistan who was set to become the Pentagon’s top policy official to the war-torn country, by pointing attention to the think tank expert’s contributions to non-Trump-aligned political candidates, officials familiar with the matter say. Jones declined a request to comment for this story.

The sidelining of Jones comes as more appointees close to Trump have made headlines, including Lou Bremer, a former Navy SEAL about whom the White House filed notice of its formal intent to nominate as assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict—a role that has been left without a Senate-confirmed appointee for almost a year. Former officials said Owen West, the last full-time appointee to hold that role, his acting successor Mark Mitchell, and fired Undersecretary of Defense for Policy John Rood were part of a Mattis-aligned contingent that pushed back on “more extreme” White House policy positions.

Simone Ledeen, another political loyalist, also recently took over as deputy assistant secretary for Middle East affairs. Ledeen has served in positions at the Pentagon and Treasury Department in the past and as an executive at an international bank. Her father, Michael Leeden, is a prominent conservative foreign-policy thinker who advised the Pentagon and State Department during the George W. Bush administration.

It is not clear whether Cutrone or the White House has identified other civilians for potential cuts, as the president has stepped in to appoint more loyalists to the Pentagon after Rood departed in February after staunchly opposing many of Trump’s initiatives, including up-tempo strikes against Iranian targets and the withholding of U.S. military aid for Ukraine that eventually triggered an impeachment inquiry.

Even amid the coronavirus pandemic, the Pentagon has looked to keep the pace of nominations moving forward. On Thursday, the Senate Armed Services Committee will host Kenneth Braithwaite, Trump’s former ambassador to Norway and a personal friend of Esper, for a confirmation hearing to be the next Navy secretary. He will face questions from the Senate alongside James Anderson, tapped to be the Pentagon’s No. 2 policy official, and Gen. Charles Q. Brown, nominated to be Air Force chief of staff.

Along with announcing his intent to nominate Bremer on Monday, Trump also said the administration would tap Shon Manasco as undersecretary of the Air Force, Michele Pearce to be Army general counsel, and John Whitley to be the Pentagon’s director of cost assessment and program evaluation.

But with lawmakers already squeezed into a tight legislative calendar by the coronavirus pandemic, former officials are worried that the administration could be pushing through too many unseasoned bureaucrats into high-level Pentagon roles.

“The end of the administration is not when the seasoned, cool hands come in,” said Townsend, the former Pentagon official. “It’s when they’re cramming people in.”

ALSO SEE: New Model Shows Reducing Jail Population Will
Lower COVID-19 Death Toll for All of Us

America's Crowded Prisons Are About to Create a Coronavirus Crisis in Rural America

By Tana Ganeva, The Intercept

07 May 20

or the past several decades, rural America’s economic lifeline has been the construction and operation of prisons and immigrant detention centers, both public and for-profit. The 1980s saw the collapse of American manufacturing and a farm crisis that ripped through the countryside. Mass incarceration was well-timed to fill the gap, producing jobs where they were needed. 

But those lifelines have transformed into vectors for coronavirus, putting rural communities at risk of outbreaks. For many Americans, the plight of prisoners produces little sympathy. But in a twist on JFK — “Freedom is indivisible, and when one man is enslaved, all are not free” — those outside the prison walls are not immune from what goes on inside them. Those jobs that made the campuses so attractive to local communities are staffed by people who go in and out each day — and what they bring with them could make all the difference in communities where hospitals were already shutting down, a trend exacerbated by Covid-19. 

It’s next to impossible to social distance in jails and prisons. “Correctional facilities are overcrowded, often badly,” explained Aaron Littman, a UCLA School of Law professor who focuses on jail conditions. “It’s important to remember that when we say overcrowded, we mean dozens of people sleeping inches within each other’s faces. They’re using the same toilets. Most don’t have access to liquid hand soap. In short, they are ideal sites for incubating respiratory viruses.”

Guards and other jail staff have to share tight spaces and physically handle the prisoners — and then they go home at night. In some rural areas, there are not many other career choices beyond working in a jail or prison. The average national salary for a prison correctional officer is $47,013. 

In an essay titled “Building a Prison Economy in Rural America,” public policy researcher Tracy Huling points out that there are more prisoners than farmers in some swaths of the United States. She notes that in the 1990s, a new prison or jail sprung up in a rural area at a rate equivalent to every 15 days. So it’s not surprising that there have been outbreaks in areas that don’t otherwise have risk factors, such as crowded public transportation in densely populated urban centers. Marion County, Ohio, has 2,332 confirmed cases, in a population of 66,501. The Marion County prison is currently the top cluster site in the country by far, according to a New York Times analysis.  

“When I read about institutions like in Ohio that are able to test a lot of people, of the positive, most are asymptomatic,” Cheshire County jail superintendent Richard Van Wickler said. “My god, how do you possibly protect other inmates and staff?”

Last week, PBS reported that of federal prisoners who had been tested, 70 percent were found to have the coronavirus. A breakdown of New York Times data tracking Covid-19 cluster sites on April 26 revealed that out of 100 top cluster sites, 35 were tied to correctional facilities. In comparison, 28 percent of infections were linked to nursing homes. Those numbers are astounding when you consider that nursing home residents are at much higher risk of serious infection because of their age, while incarcerated people and prison staff vary in age. Seven of the top 10 cluster sites are linked to American prisons or jails. As the Marshall Project reported, so-called prison towns like Palestine, Texas, where correctional facilities are a community’s primary employer, have already seen an explosion of cases. An ACLU report released last week estimates that 100,000 more people will die because of America’s crowded jails. “The United States’ unique obsession with incarceration has become our Achilles heel when it comes to combating the spread of COVID-19,” the ACLU concluded. 

When politicians like New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo hail the heroism of America’s “essential workers”— be they doctors, police officers, EMTs, grocery workers, or bus drivers— prison and jail staff go unmentioned. It’s a strange lapse, but perhaps an unsurprising one, given that the solution — large scale decarceration — remains politically difficult. 

Citing concerns about Covid-19 spread, U.S. Attorney General William Barr issued a memo instructing federal prisons to release incarcerated people who are at risk and who have no history of violence after a 14-day quarantine on March 26. But even carrying out that limited mandate has proven difficult due to overcrowding. In some cases, prisoners being quarantined because they were set for release were in proximity to prisoners who were in quarantine because they were sick. 

Governors, too, announced plans to release some prisoners, which prompted President Donald Trump to lash out and threaten to find ways to stop state executives from doing so. “Some states are letting people out of prison, some people are getting out that are very serious criminals in some states, and I don’t like that, I don’t like it,” he said in a press conference. “We don’t like it, the people don’t like it, and we’re looking to see if I have the right to stop it in some cases.” 

Van Wickler, the Cheshire County jail superintendent, wishes that weren’t the case. “You need to review your population and determine who really needs to be in jail. Who’s a danger. You don’t want nonviolent people in jail. And review who has COPD, asthma, is pregnant, has heart disease, you see what to do to release these people and figure out alternative sanctions like electronic surveillance.”

Infections in meatpacking plants have also received plenty of attention, perhaps due to worries about food supply. But as of May 4, there were seven prisons in the Times’s top 10 cluster sites and three food processing plants. A meatpacking plant is the biggest employer in some rural places, but you’d be hard-pressed to find any community, urban or rural, without a jail or a prison. And prisoners and jail staff are more vulnerable to contracting the disease than meatpacking plant workers. “Unlike a meatpacking plant, where in theory, a diligent worker can opt out of coming to work if they’re sick, that’s not an option for people who are incarcerated,” Littman, the UCLA law professor, said. “Once the infection is inside, its spread is unavoidable. And it’s rapid spread.” 

“Another reason jails and prisons are primary sites is that the quality of access to medical care is limited at the best of times and has gotten even worse now that resources are stretched thin. Staff, including medical staff, getting sick. Officers escorting people to medical appointments are getting sick,” Littman said. Nursing home staff have medical training that can help keep themselves and their wards safer; guards and prison cooks don’t.

“We focus too much on viruses going into the prison. But prison is an incubator,” said Dr. Peter L. Scharf, a public health expert at the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center New Orleans. “The guards go in and out. Social distancing for correctional officers is a non-starter. They have to directly supervise the inmates. There’s the issue of correctional officers bringing it into prison or bringing it home from the prison and possibly infecting their families and others.”

Meanwhile, dozens of incarcerated people The Intercept spoke with are terrified. They watched guards come in with masks before they themselves were issued the protective gear. They were given conflicting information about the Barr memo, including the falsehood that they were safer in prison. And they have major concerns about prisons’ ability to keep them, and members of the community, safe. 

“You have to understand that Coleman Prison Complex is the largest in the nation,” a woman at a federal prison in Florida wrote to The Intercept, referring to the low-security women’s prison, where there was an outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease in January. 

“We have nearly 6,000 inmates. … Coleman sits in [Sumter] County, Florida and is next door neighbors with The Villages, a large wealthy retirement community,” she wrote.

“Its residents make [Sumter] County the county with the ‘oldest’ citizens in the State of Florida. C-19 cases have already begun appearing in The Villages. We will overwhelm the hospitals within days. And if it comes down to a ventilator being needed by an inmate or a retired CEO who is the golfing buddy of the doctor who do you think will get it?” 

Even for the golfing buddy, the odds aren’t great. Roughly 80 percent of people who go on ventilators for coronavirus don’t come off alive.