Pentagon Chief Says Fired Navy Secretary’s Plan Was a Surprise

(Bloomberg) -- Defense Secretary Mark Esper said he was “flabbergasted” by Navy Secretary Richard Spencer’s efforts to make a private deal with the White House in the case of a Navy SEAL accused of war crimes in Iraq.

Esper told reporters Monday that he demanded Spencer’s resignation over the weekend after learning that the Navy secretary had approached White House officials seeking an arrangement to let Chief Petty Officer Edward Gallagher retire as a member of the elite force, as President Donald Trump had demanded, if Trump stayed out of the case.

Esper and General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, “were completely caught off guard by this information” and realized that it “undermined everything we’ve been discussing with the president,” Esper said. “It had broken the rules.”

Asked about Spencer’s dismissal, Trump told reporters Monday that “we’ve been thinking about that for a long time -- that didn’t just happen.” He said “I have to protect my war fighters.”

Esper learned that Spencer had proposed letting the Navy go through the process of disciplinary action against Gallagher while secretly guaranteeing he’d be allowed to retire afterward with his Trident pin, a symbol of his time as a SEAL. That was at odds with Spencer’s public position on the issue, Defense Department spokesman Jonathan Hoffman said on Sunday in an emailed statement.

Esper said a White House official had pulled him aside after an Oval Office meeting to tell him about Spencer’s proposal, which he had no knowledge of and left him “flabbergasted.”

“This dismissal is not about Eddie Gallagher,” he said. “It’s about Secretary Spencer in the chain of command.”

‘Order and Discipline’

In Spencer’s resignation letter, which was posted on Twitter, he said he no longer shares “the same understanding with the Commander in Chief who appointed me, in regards to the key principle of good order and discipline.”

“I cannot in good conscience obey an order that I believe violates the sacred oath I took,” Spencer said, adding that the president deserves a secretary “aligned with his vision.”

That comment echoed the resignation letter of James Mattis, Trump’s first defense chief, who wrote to the president in December that “you have the right to have a Secretary of Defense whose views are better aligned with yours.” Esper was sworn in as secretary in July.

In the lead-up to to Spencer’s ouster, Trump criticized the Navy’s handling of the case in a tweet on Thursday, and even promoted an appearance by Gallagher Sunday on Fox News. He granted clemency to Gallagher on Nov. 15. The SEAL had been acquitted of killing a prisoner in Afghanistan but was found guilty on another charge because he posed next to the prisoner’s corpse.

“I was not pleased with the way that Navy Seal Eddie Gallagher’s trial was handled by the Navy,” Trump said in a series of tweets after Spencer’s ouster was announced by the Pentagon. Trump confirmed that Kenneth Braithwaite, the U.S. ambassador to Norway since 2018, will be nominated as his replacement.

Spencer, 65, has served as Navy Secretary since August 2017. The former Marine worked on Wall Street for about 15 years, including time at investment bank Goldman Sachs.

--With assistance from Andrew Kostic and Justin Sink.

To contact the reporters on this story: Glen Carey in Washington at gcarey8@bloomberg.net;Ros Krasny in Washington at rkrasny1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Bill Faries at wfaries@bloomberg.net, Larry Liebert

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