Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War (96 page)

When it comes to civil-military tensions, politicians and policy makers are equally culpable. Because the military is held in such high regard, political leaders and civilian appointees all too often succumb to the temptation to “put a uniform out there” to sell their decisions to the public, knowing that a military officer is far less likely to be criticized and questioned skeptically. Politicians, even in the White House, can’t have it both ways.

I was quite comfortable in my relationships with senior officers. They were, individually and collectively, the finest, brightest, most selfless and dedicated people of great integrity with whom I have ever been privileged to work. I hope to count many among them as friends for the rest of my life (even after this book). As is obvious, I shared the view that too many talked too much publicly, and I cautioned some and personally reprimanded a few. Still, I felt that service chiefs and other senior generals and admirals were candid with me, willing to disagree and argue their case forcefully, and yet quite disciplined in falling into line once I made a decision. Based on everything I know, senior military leaders rarely tried to “end-run” me with the press or Congress.

The challenge for any secretary, especially in wartime, is to strike the right balance between building team spirit and maintaining an open, close working relationship with the senior military while not getting too “buddy-buddy.” He must instill a culture of accountability. An effective secretary is not a congenial chairman of the board but rather a demanding, tough chief executive whose daily life is often filled with life-and-death decisions.

I always treated senior officers respectfully. I had ways of making my displeasure known—usually a deepening silence and grim expression—but I never shouted. I never belittled. I never intentionally embarrassed anyone. I always listened and often adjusted my opinions and decisions in response to the advice and counsel of senior officers. I valued the opinions and experience of the chiefs and the combatant commanders. Both Pete Pace and Mike Mullen were true partners in that I don’t think I ever made a consequential decision without consulting them first. But
I fired enough senior officers that everyone in the Defense Department knew there was a line not to be crossed.

I saw firsthand the age-old reality that the qualities important for military leadership and success in war are not the same as those required in peacetime. In war, boldness, adaptability, creativity, sometimes ignoring the rules, risk taking, and ruthlessness are essential for success. These are not characteristics that will get an officer very far in peacetime. Over the ten years of the Iraq and Afghan wars, too many officers were assigned to command positions because the stateside personnel system identified them as “next in line” rather than because they were selected as best qualified for the combat mission. And too many talented officers who achieved real battlefield success were rotated out of command in Iraq and Afghanistan too soon simply to keep the personnel system running smoothly. When we are in a fight, field commanders and the combatant commanders should be given the authority to relieve under-performers or keep good officers in command. In wartime, I believe the routine peacetime officer-assignment process should be set aside and senior field commanders should be empowered to choose their subordinate commanders. The failure to do this was, in my view, consistent with the peacetime mentality that pervaded the entire Defense Department, business-as-usual the order of the day among senior civilians and even among most generals and admirals, even as the troops were fighting and dying. I should not have allowed it.

R
UNNING THE
D
EFENSE
D
EPARTMENT

The Department of Defense is the largest, most complex organization on the planet: three million people, civilian and military, with a budget, the last year I was there, of over $700 billion. Nearly everyone there is a career professional, with considerable job security. Every major part of the organization—budget, acquisition programs, and policy—has a constituency both inside and outside the Pentagon. Local and state officials, members of Congress, lobbyists, industry, retired senior officers—everyone has an oar in the water, many of them pulling in different directions. So how does a secretary gain control, then establish and implement an agenda for change?

Above all, if a secretary actually intends to run the Pentagon—and make real changes—as opposed to presiding over it, he must be selective
in identifying his agenda, and both realistic and single-minded in developing strategies for achieving each specific goal. Exhortations to be more efficient or to achieve some broad goal are akin to shouting down a well. Very specific objectives, with tight deadlines and regular inperson reports to the secretary himself, provide the only way to get people focused and to ensure they are performing. The organization must understand that the secretary is personally invested in these issues and determined to drive the process to specific outcomes. This was what I did during the first two years with regard to MRAPs, ISR, medevac, wounded warrior care, and other changes to help those fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. As noted repeatedly, I also held regular videoconferences with our commanders in Baghdad and Kabul to closely monitor progress in the two wars, to ensure that their needs were being met by the Pentagon, and to keep them informed about the Washington battlespace. It was the same approach I took to the big cuts and caps I implemented in programs in the spring of 2009, and then in the efficiencies effort in 2010.

In implementing an agenda for change, the secretary cannot delegate the hard work to the deputy secretary, who simply doesn’t have the clout in the building, at the White House, or in Congress to push through changes on big issues. The secretary has to master the details and fully understand the issues and problems. The challenge is to maintain a high-level, broad perspective, understand enough details to make sensible and executable decisions, and then delegate responsibility for implementation. “Microknowledge” must not become micromanagement, but it sure helps keep people on their toes when they know that the secretary knows what the hell he’s talking about. If the secretary of defense doesn’t do all of this, he becomes a “kept” man at the Pentagon, enjoying all the accouterments of position and authority—the big plane, massive entourages, lots of ceremonies and speeches—but held hostage by the military services, the Pentagon bureaucracy, and his own staff, without the knowledge or influence to effectively lead the department in new directions, much less put the place on a war footing.

In every aspect of running the department, the senior civilians and political appointees are critically important. I have not given due credit in these pages to those civilians who played a key role in everything I did—and accomplished—as secretary. Career professionals and political appointees, men and women, worked countless hours to prepare me for meetings and helped shape decisions, then saw to their implementation.
I depended on these civilians to help me frame the agenda for change, to help me come up with specific strategies for accomplishing each initiative. Their insights, dedication, and skills are critical assets that any secretary of defense and the American public must always value. Because while the military trains and equips our forces, provides professional military advice to the civilian leadership, and, when necessary, fights our wars, it is the Defense civilians who make the entire giant enterprise work—or not. First on the list for pay and hiring freezes, furloughs, and firings when the budget is being cut, they are the enduring backbone of the department. I have often criticized the Pentagon bureaucracy in these pages, but given the right leadership and clear direction, these public servants can move mountains. Anyone who wants to reform the Pentagon had better remember that these civilians are essential to success. They were for mine.

C
ONGRESS

I was always schizophrenic about Congress. In the abstract, I saw it as a critical check on the executive branch and guarantor of our freedom. For that reason, I had long been a strong advocate of effective congressional oversight. As secretary, I consistently tried to be respectful of the role of Congress and responsive to its requests and views. I urged my civilian and military subordinates to behave similarly. Early in my tenure as secretary, I told cadets and midshipmen at the military academies that as officers, they would need to remind their subordinates that Congress was one of two pillars of our freedom (the other being the press), a coequal branch of government that under the Constitution “raises armies and provides for navies.” Many senators and congressmen were longtime supporters of men and women in uniform, and we had an obligation to be “honest and true” in reporting to them. In my first senior staff meeting as secretary, I said I wanted a strong, respectful, and positive relationship with Congress. I also knew that the Founding Fathers had created a system of government designed primarily for the preservation of liberty, not for efficient or agile government.

On a day-to-day basis, I believe, in that last regard, that the Founders succeeded beyond their wildest aspirations. Congress is best viewed from a distance—the farther the better—because up close it is truly ugly. And nearly every day I was secretary, I was dealing with Congress up close.

As I wrote earlier, I have less reason to complain about Congress than just about anyone who has served in the executive branch. Over four and a half years, the Armed Services and Appropriations Committees—as well as the congressional leadership and others—almost always treated me with respect and civility. The exceptions I can count on the fingers of one hand. But it seemed like every day, in nearly every way, we were in conflict that went well beyond the expected, healthy friction between two coequal branches of government.

In the Bush administration, the fights with Congress were mostly over Iraq troop levels, timetables and deadlines, and war budgets. As I turned my focus to budget and program matters under President Obama, I was more or less continuously outraged by the parochial self-interest of all but a very few members of Congress. Any defense facility or contract in their district or state, no matter how superfluous or wasteful, was sacrosanct.

I suppose I should have known better going in, but I was constantly amazed and infuriated at the hypocrisy of those who most stridently attacked the Defense Department for being inefficient and wasteful but would fight tooth and nail to prevent any reduction in defense activities in their home state or district no matter how inefficient or wasteful. However, behavior that was simply frustrating to me in 2009–10 will seriously impair our national security in the years ahead as the defense budget shrinks: failure to cut or close unneeded programs and facilities will drain precious dollars from the troops and our war-fighting capabilities.

A second source of frustration, as you might suspect, was the failure of Congress to do its most basic job: appropriate money. I prepared five budgets for Congress from 2007 to 2011, and
not once
was a defense appropriations bill enacted before the start of the new fiscal year. The impact of this, and the associated “continuing resolutions”—which kept the funding level at the previous year’s appropriations and did not allow for starting any new program—was dramatically disruptive of sensible and efficient management of the department. This was an outrageous dereliction of duty.

I was exceptionally offended by the constant adversarial, inquisitionlike treatment of executive branch officials by too many members of Congress across the political spectrum—a kangaroo-court environment in hearings, especially when the press and television cameras were present.
Sharp questioning of witnesses should be expected and is entirely appropriate. But rude, insulting, belittling, bullying, and all too often highly personal attacks by members of Congress violated nearly every norm of civil behavior as they postured and acted as judge, jury, and executioner. It was as though most members were in a permanent state of outrage or suffered from some sort of mental duress that warranted confinement or at least treatment for anger management. I had to put up with less of this Queeg-like behavior than almost anyone, but I was infuriated by the harsh treatment of my subordinates, both civilian and military. The temptation to stand up, slam the briefing book shut, and quit on the spot recurred often. All too frequently, sitting at that witness table, the exit lines were on the tip of my tongue:
I may be the secretary of defense, but I am also an American citizen, and there is no son of a bitch in the world who can talk to me like that. I quit. Find somebody else
. It was, I am confident, a widely shared fantasy throughout the executive branch. And it was always enjoyable to listen to three former senators—Obama, Biden, and Clinton—trash-talking Congress.

Uncivil, incompetent in fulfilling basic constitutional responsibilities (such as timely appropriations), micromanagerial, parochial, hypocritical, egotistical, thin-skinned, often putting self (and reelection) before country—this was my view of the majority of the United States Congress.

It required an extraordinary effort on the part of Robert Rangel to keep me from erupting in a hearing but also to do the necessary courtesy calls, outreach, and day-to-day schmoozing with members. Robert had been a staff member of the House Armed Services Committee for years, including serving as its staff director, and so he had a longer and different perspective than I did—fortunately. He was better able to set aside (or ignore) members’ behavior—he was used to it—and kept focused on our fundamental dependence on members’ goodwill and legislative actions. With his wise and restraining hand, the clenched teeth behind my smile when on the Hill remained well hidden. It was just another battlefield in my wars.

What Rangel knew, and persuaded me to heed, was that a secretary of defense faces a steep uphill battle to be successful if he or she does not have a strong, nonpartisan relationship with Congress and respect among the members. From slow-rolling (or opposing) confirmation of Defense nominees, to conducting intrusive and time-consuming investigations,
imposing legislative restrictions, opposing budget proposals, holding protracted hearings, and much more, Congress can truly make a secretary’s life miserable. And so for four and a half years, I dutifully marched to the Hill to meet with the leadership, the party caucuses, committee leaders, and individual members. I behaved myself in hearings, letting my respectful demeanor implicitly draw the contrast with the boorishness of the members. Future secretaries would do well to remember Rangel’s guidance, despite the outrageousness of their situation.