Government Executive - Authors - Sara Sorcher

Benghazi May Not Ruin Hillary Clinton's Chances of Becoming President

Sara Sorcher, National Journal — Tue, 17 Jun 2014 09:37:36 -0400

If Hillary Clinton runs for president, the furor over the Benghazi attack will not ruin her chances of winning, 90 percent of National Journal's National Security Insiders said.

The former secretary of State is already girding against jabs from Republicans over her handling of the 2012 attack in Libya, insisting that the investigations are "even more of a reason to run" for president.

"Worst-case scenario, [Benghazi] becomes a nagging open wound," one Insider said, "but not big enough to derail her."

Multiple investigations of the attack, which killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans, found "no conspiracy to hide facts from the American people," one Insider said, "and no reason to believe the attack could have been thwarted once it emerged."

Republicans have begun to downplay Obamacare as a key element in their quiver of issues for the 2016 election, the Insider continued, "and they will eventually do the same with Benghazi. Its political salience is diminishing."

What's more, another Insider notes, Clinton "has already accepted her share of responsibility in speeches and her book. Beyond that, the GOP may continue to move right with the loss of Eric Cantor, placing Clinton in an even stronger position [on] national security issues versus a current potential GOP presidential candidate."

A slim 10 percent minority of Insiders said the Benghazi scandal will quash Clinton's chances if she decides to run. "An examination of her inattention to the business of administering the Department of State will be damaging," one said.

Separately, the release of five Taliban detainees for Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl will have no impact on the threat of terrorism against the U.S., 60 percent of the pool of national security experts said. "We flatter and embolden the notorious five by believing they alone can sway the battle so significantly," one Insider said. "They are 15 years older and may influence Taliban policies, but do so at own personal risk. The threat will exist with or without them involved."

"Those old guys are so last-decade," another Insider said. "The U.S. faces new terrorism threats quite apart from the Pushtun Taliban."

A vocal 39 percent minority said the swap will increase the threat of terrorism. "The Obama prisoner deal is a huge strategic win for the Taliban and a morale-builder for radical Islamic terrorists, and at a tactical level returns dangerous Taliban leaders to the battlefield," one Insider said.

A recent CBS News poll found that 49 percent of Americans thought the exchange would increase the threat of terrorism against the U.S. Forty percent, that poll found, said the swap would have no effect.

Insiders Support Bergdahl Swap—but Just Barely

Sara Sorcher, National Journal — Tue, 10 Jun 2014 09:21:38 -0400

A slim majority of National Journal's National Security Insiders said the Obama administration made the right decision to release five Taliban detainees from Guantanamo Bay in exchange for Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl.

"We have a moral commitment to bring home our soldiers," one Insider said. "Quibbling over the net benefit of the president's prisoner exchange when an American POW is brought home should be deeply offensive."

Some Insiders tempered their optimism. "Time will tell if it was the best decision. It was right to obtain the release of an American soldier, who in time should be held accountable for his actions," one Insider said. "The U.S. should develop action plans to prevent the five released detainees from ever rejoining the fight against the West."

The Obama administration, several Insiders speculated, may have "private understandings" with the Taliban that will lead to a bigger dialogue over stability in the region—and the Bergdahl swap may be a confidence-building measure.

"Lost in the Washington furor ... is the fact that a very important connection with the Taliban has been established," another Insider added. "The administration should ignore the uproar and keep the contact alive. The U.S. will, sooner rather than later, need to make a truly important deal or two with the Taliban, distasteful as that will be inside the Washington Beltway." As another Insider put it: "If it leads to regional stability in Afghanistan/Pakistan, it is worth it."

A vocal 48 percent minority opposed the prisoner exchange. "Now every group who has a prisoner they want freed knows precisely what they need to do to get their man out. The safety of all Americans—and especially members of our military—has just been diminished," one Insider said. "And I would like to know how many Americans died in connection with efforts to capture the five men who've just been freed. How do you explain the trade that was just made to their loved ones?"

Separately, all of the Insiders responding to the survey said Eric Shinseki's resignation as the head of the Veterans Affairs Department will not fix the problems in the massive VA health care system.

"The problems are of long-standing; they will succeed Shinseki," one Insider said. "As long as the Congress and the White House are willing to keep throwing money at the VA, and they have been for decades, there will be little incentive to create a more efficient system. More money does not mean better care; it means more bureaucrats and more process. The new secretary needs to get tough and stop asking for more."

Shinseki, another Insider said, is "clearly a sacrificial lamb—but someone needed to take the fall for the massive problems that have been exposed. It's not unfair to hold the Secretary accountable, but it's also unfair to suggest that he alone was the problem and that by replacing him the problem will be fixed." Put simply, as another Insider said, Shinseki was "the captain of the ship, and so had to go, but the problem is in the engine room."

It may be difficult to find someone to take the helm, another Insider noted. "It will be difficult to get a new secretary confirmed. Few will want the job, and even fewer are more qualified than Eric Shinseki."

1. Did the Obama administration make the right decision to release five Taliban detainees from Guantanamo Bay in exchange for Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl?
(66 votes)

Yes – 52%
No - 48%

Yes

"Good move to keep clearing Guantanamo person by person. Bergdahl is no prize, but we retrieve our own. Good riddance to the terrorists."

"Yes, but only if this is designed to facilitate more ambitious talks. If not, then we spent scarce leverage with the Taliban for too little."

"There was no other way to bring him home alive."

"The obligation to conduct a prisoner-of-war exchange was absolute. These men should have been classified as POWs from the start. They were not because the Bush administration wanted to torture them."

"This was a prisoner exchange, not a simple release of five detainees. Further, over the long term, how were we to dispose of these prisoners, particularly after the U.S. completes its combat role in Afghanistan? Better to get something for them than nothing."

"The United States is engaged in a war in Afghanistan. Exchanges of prisoners have long been a standard and accepted part of warfare."

"Yes, the USG must set a consistent practice of 'bring our troops home.' Our soldiers cannot expect less, regardless of the cost. If these five Taliban leaders break from Qatar, then we need to track them down, as should Qatar."

"Only by a hair. Decision would be more defensible if the administration had an Afghanistan strategy that envisioned continuing American involvement."

"The human impulse is clear, but when the U.S. shows it has a policy of negotiating for prisoners, we also create incentives for greater hostage-taking. Not knowing the precise deal, I cannot say whether this increased likelihood was worth it. But turning it into a political football as Republicans are doing in Congress is clearly wrong and against our national interest."

"This was a legitimate prisoner swap; we tend to forget that the Taliban was the government of a nation-state when the detainees were captured. President Obama made the right decision to secure the release of an American soldier."

"In principle, yes, but they have made themselves look foolish with a hero's welcome knowing full well that he is, at the least, a deserter. POTUS would do himself a favor by just keeping Susan Rice away from the Sunday talk shows."

"Prisoner swaps are not new; they happen in war. And it is important for service members to know that they will not be left to languish. The trick will be to ensure these guys don't go back to the fight. Also, the same standard should be applied to all civilians serving the country in war zones and risking their lives."

"To negotiate with terrorists invites kidnapping. To do so for someone who was AWOL, and to break the law in the process, is simply beyond comprehension."

"Snubbing Congress was an unforced error."

"It creates a strong impression around the world that the U.S. has conceded in its policy of not negotiating with terrorists. This political cost and that of allowing five senior terrorists to leave Qatari control a year from now are far greater than the benefit of returning Bergdahl. If later he is found to have deserted, the cost will seem even higher."

"He set a dangerous precedent and even incentive for terrorists to kidnap Americans who can be used as pawns or collateral for negotiations or prisoner swaps. One U.S. sergeant's freedom was not worth letting loose five top Taliban terrorists."

"This will put American civilians and military personnel deployed overseas at risk."

"This is an agreement that will only look worse over time."

"Unless there is a classified aspect to this case not made public, it appears as though this was not thought through from a strategic or political perspective."

"History will judge this as one of the most significant foreign policy failures of this administration."

"The sergeant was a deserter, and his desertion caused six U.S. troops to die trying to find him. Also, the Taliban released were top Taliban operatives who are the most dangerous and most likely to cause additional death and destruction, not only in the region, perhaps in our area as well."

"Bad decision, and rollout was even worse."

"It was an illegal act that set free known terrorists who are likely to resume jihad against America and its citizens."

"This exchange releases capable and motivated terrorists back into society."

"The deal would be hard to defend under any circumstances, but particularly for a deserter."

"Very bad deal, and plays into the hands of administration critics who question competence on security and foreign policy matters."

"Dumb move. Ignoring whether Bergdahl was a deserter, we just set up every U.S. soldier for kidnapping by al-Qaida or the Taliban. It is clearly part of the administration's rush to clear out of Afghanistan and clear the decks for the 2014/16 elections."

"One for one perhaps, but not these particular Taliban leaders and certainly not five of them."

"Of course it is good to get our man back, but this is a little bit like trading Babe Ruth to the Yankees. One team got the better end of the deal, and it wasn't us."

2. Will Eric Shinseki's resignation as the head of the Veterans Affairs Department fix the problems in the massive VA health care system?
(66 votes)

No - 100%
Yes - 0%

"President Obama had no choice but to hold Secretary Shinseki accountable for the VA's failures, but these failures run much deeper than Shinseki."

"Fixing the VA requires a dedicated, multiyear effort on the part of the administration and Congress. Just changing out the person at the top is like reshuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic."

"VA issues go well beyond current leadership. Mega-question is, can the VA ever provide expected medical services to veterans, or is a new approach needed?"

"But it won't hurt."

"The VA may be Obama's [Hurricane] Katrina."

"The VA offers expensive socialized medicine, funded and delivered by government. As with military depots and commissaries, the government should not conduct commercial-like activities that the private sector is more efficient and innovative at performing. VA budgets have exploded, even though the patient population has declined; throwing more money at the VA would be wasteful. The VA system should be privatized."

"The VA is an ironclad mature bureaucracy which should be stripped of deadwood."

"This is a massive systemic problem. The incentives are all wrong, there is no accountability. The veterans are prisoners of a bureaucratic system with no alternatives."

"Unless the VA command structure is given authority to actually manage its workforce, things will stay the same."

"He is an honorable man, but good intentions are not self-executing. Sloan Gibson will need to manage change at all levels and quickly."

"The VA is a heartless bureaucracy run amok. It will require sustained nonpartisan leadership over several years to enforce a real change in the VA's culture."

"Much of the problem with the VA stems from Congress's failure to impose some common sense limitations on Veteran's with the non-service connected medical issues."

"This is just another instance of head-rolling as a common but misplaced response to a problem."

"The VA is a notoriously hidebound bureaucracy. It won't change short of being dismantled--which it should be. It's an anachronism from WWII. Our vets should be folded into the civilian system, albeit with higher subsidies."

"The VA will take years to fix."

"No, the firing of an incompetent department head is a step toward fixing many long-standing problems in the VA Department, but legislative changes will also be needed."

"The VA has serious cultural issues in the workforce despite providing decent medical care. Customner service and integrity are lacking."

"He was the scalp the Dems on the Hill demanded, but Congress is part of the problem. It will take a coordinated, bipartisan effort. But the bigger question is what is required: 'fix' or reform?"

"This was not about the person, Shinseki, but a rotten bureaucracy and myriad other problems. The inclination will be to throw more money at this problem rather than addressing root causes. That will be a nice Band-Aid but will not fix the VA."

"No. The massive problems are deeply systemic and political. There are simply too many VA hospitals and mid- and high-level bureaucrats. On the former, Congress needs to BRAC the hospital and focus resources. I hope they bring in someone of stature to clean up the mess, but I don't know who would take it on."

"Necessary to change the conversation, not sufficient to affect change; bipartisan support to improve is a plus, and the next secretary has a platform to deal with the integrity and values challenges and to improve care."

"His resignation is only the beginning of a long process to modernize the VA. A lot depends on who Obama picks to replace him and whether or not Congress will play a helpful role in giving the VA the authorities it needs to reform."

National Journal's National Security Insiders Poll is a periodic survey of more than 100 defense and foreign policy experts. They include: Gordon Adams, Charles Allen, Michael Allen, Thad Allen, Graham Allison, James Bamford, David Barno, Milt Bearden, Peter Bergen, Samuel "Sandy" Berger, David Berteau, Stephen Biddle, Nancy Birdsall, Marion Blakey, Kit Bond, Stuart Bowen, Paula Broadwell, Mike Breen, Mark Brunner, Steven Bucci, Nicholas Burns, Dan Byman, James Jay Carafano, Phillip Carter, Wendy Chamberlin, Michael Chertoff, Frank Cilluffo, James Clad, Richard Clarke, Steve Clemons, Joseph Collins, William Courtney, Lorne Craner, Roger Cressey, Gregory Dahlberg, Robert Danin, Richard Danzig, Janine Davidson, Daniel Drezner, Mackenzie Eaglen, Paul Eaton, Andrew Exum, William Fallon, Eric Farnsworth, Jacques Gansler, Stephen Ganyard, Daniel Goure, Mark Green, Mike Green, Mark Gunzinger, Todd Harrison, John Hamre, Jim Harper, Marty Hauser, Michael Hayden, Michael Herson, Pete Hoekstra, Bruce Hoffman, Linda Hudson, Paul Hughes, Colin Kahl, Donald Kerrick, Rachel Kleinfeld, Lawrence Korb, David Kramer, Andrew Krepinevich, Charlie Kupchan, W. Patrick Lang, Cedric Leighton, Michael Leiter, James Lindsay, Justin Logan, Trent Lott, Peter Mansoor, Ronald Marks, Brian McCaffrey, Steven Metz, Franklin Miller, Michael Morell, Philip Mudd, John Nagl, Shuja Nawaz, Kevin Nealer, Michael Oates, Thomas Pickering, Paul Pillar, Larry Prior, Stephen Rademaker, Marc Raimondi, Celina Realuyo, Bruce Riedel, Barry Rhoads, Marc Rotenberg, Frank Ruggiero, Gary Samore, Kori Schake, Mark Schneider, John Scofield, Tammy Schultz, Stephen Sestanovich, Sarah Sewall, Matthew Sherman, Jennifer Sims, Suzanne Spaulding, James Stavridis, Constanze Stelzenmüller, Ted Stroup, Guy Swan, Frances Townsend, Mick Trainor, Richard Wilhelm, Tamara Wittes, Dov Zakheim, and Juan Zarate.

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Congress Knew the White House Had Considered a Prisoner Swap

Sara Sorcher, National Journal — Wed, 04 Jun 2014 09:35:17 -0400

Why didn't the White House notify Congress before swapping terrorist suspects for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl? Perhaps because President Obama knew he'd find resistance.

He already had once before, according to an aide to Mike Rogers, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. In 2011, the administration floated the possibility of exchanging prisoners for the American POW from the war in Afghanistan but then backed off after lawmakers from both parties raised questions about the impact of the swap on the safety of other U.S. personnel, among other issues.

So when Obama decided to swap five Taliban terrorist suspects being held at Guantanamo for the captive soldier, only a handful of lawmakers were told in advance—and then only in the barest detail.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was among that small group. The staff director for James Inhofe, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, also received a call shortly before Obama's press conference on Saturday to announce the exchange. "Basically, they were giving us notification to tune into the press conference," an Inhofe aide said, speaking under condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity about the timeline. "There were no details provided in that phone call."

The next day, Senate Armed Services received the official notification—a document explaining that the exchange had already taken place. That too contained few details, the aide said, and the committee is still chasing down the answers.

Members of the House also were left in the dark. Rogers was notified "after the fact.... Whenever the swap happened, he was notified several hours later," his aide said. House Armed Services Committee Chairman Buck McKeon, too, was caught flat-footed by the announcement. "We got a call mid-week, around Wednesday, to the staff director saying, 'Something may happen, sometime soon, stay near your phone,' " a McKeon aide said. "But there was no indication of what that was, or even the general subject matter."

A few hours after Bergdahl was recovered, the staff director got another call explaining what happened. "What was supposed to be 30 days ahead, did not come until after the fact," the McKeon aide said.

Members of Congress always knew it was possible Obama would do this without offering any warning, lawmakers and aides note, citing the signing statement Obama attached to the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2014. It stated the president intended to act swiftly in negotiations with foreign countries about detainee transfers, implying that the 30-day notice requirement would be ignored.

"Given that notice, members of Congress should not be surprised that he acted as he did in the circumstances that existed," said Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, who plans to hold a classified briefing with administration members next Tuesday.

Further, some congressional leaders knew the administration had already thought through such a swap. They had been briefed by senior administration officials from the State and Defense departments as well as the CIA and National Security Council in late 2011 and early 2012 about a possible exchange for Bergdahl, according to a House intelligence committee aide. In those meetings, Ambassador Marc Grossman and Denis McDonough, who now serves as Obama's chief of staff, led the discussion.

Lawmakers pressed those officials for answers to questions about how an exchange might affect the timeline for pulling out of Afghanistan and whether the swap might encourage terrorist groups to attempt to snatch U.S. personnel.

After the second meeting between lawmakers and these senior administration officials, the White House decided against more briefings, saying the prospects of the exchange had diminished, according to the committee aide.

The White House might be acknowledging the damage it has done to already poor relations with Congress by going forward with an exchange without bringing those members of Congress back into the loop.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, said that Deputy National Security Adviser Tony Blinken called her Monday night to say he was sorry lawmakers were not notified sooner. "He apologized for it and said it was an oversight," Feinstein said.

Clara Ritger contributed to this article.

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Security Insiders: Defense Budget Cuts Put the Military on a Dangerous Course

Sara Sorcher, National Journal — Mon, 07 Apr 2014 09:51:36 -0400

The planned cuts to the Pentagon's budget put the U.S. military on a dangerous course with too few resources to fight, a majority of National Journal's National Security Insiders said.

"The threat is increasing as our defenses atrophy," one Insider said. "Nation-building at home is not a national security strategy."

The Pentagon's $496 billion budget request proposed a series of controversial cuts to meet the budget caps Congress imposed to reduce federal spending. Defense officials have warned even tougher choices will come with steeper reductions the following year, and National Journal's pool of national security experts are balking at some of the planned reductions.

"Cutting the Army drastically will jeopardize our ability to fight an unforeseen ground war," one Insider said.

Russia's incursion into formerly Ukrainian Crimea should be a wake-up call, several Insiders said, about unpredictable threats in the future. "The U.S. has to be prepared for all types of conflict," one Insider said, "even the Cold War kind that we thought had been consigned to the ash heap of history."

A significant 44 percent minority disagreed, saying the defense budget cuts put the military on an acceptable path with its changing mission after an era of war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The defense budget, one Insider said, will be "at unprecedentedly high peacetime levels, and, even with [Budget Control Act]-level funds, well above the Cold War defense budget average, in constant dollars. Totally acceptable."

Do the defense budget cuts put the U.S. military on an acceptable path with the changing mission after an era of war, or on a dangerous course with too few resources to fight?

(64 votes)

Dangerous course 56%
Acceptable path 44%

Dangerous course

"The Pentagon's plan accepts the right degree of risk, but sequestration poses real dangers for America and the world."

"The sequestration budget is harming our future strategic posture in many ways, which will end up skewing our future policy choices. There is linkage between the perception of America's military strength and the actions of belligerents. A strong special-ops force is relatively cheap and looks good for movie plots. But this won't scare or deter a Russia, China, Iran, or North Korea."

"The cuts mean that we cannot afford to maintain our deterrent in both the Middle East and East Asia. The budget did not even consider Europe. How can we expect to maintain stability in all three?"

"The DOD could sustain current capabilities—and perhaps even thrive—if Congress made significant cuts to the most wasteful spending items, like base infrastructure. But Congress's refusal to repeal sequestration means that the Pentagon will be forced to make mindless cuts that will leave us ill-prepared for future contingencies."

"The DOD budget is fiscally driven. The QDR is a bad joke. Perhaps [Russian President Vladimir] Putin will shake them out of their lethargy but likely not."

"Cuts in defense spending are dangerous as long as DOD must fund bloated personnel and physical infrastructure costs. If Congress allowed DOD to manage its resources efficiently, spending could be reduced."

"All of the defense cuts in place and planned are so limiting our military capability that Putin will likely conclude that we are not in any position to stop his efforts. There will be other potential aggressors throughout the world as we withdraw from our previous role of being the shining light on the hill for countries that want to see freedom and democracy."

"No matter the strategy, the money just isn't there like it once was, but these defense cuts (combined with other American disengagement) are truly destabilizing."

"The QDR and the budget don't match. One is full of grand objectives about global leadership and rebalancing while the other provides little resources with which to attain those objectives. There is a strategic imbalance between the two."

"Clearly dangerous—even so, we may have to live with it."

"Some retrenchment is in order, but there is no rhyme or reason to the wholesale cuts being made in defense spending today. The United States will rue the day it went down this path with so little strategic consideration."

"Four percent of GDP is an easily defensible spend given the U.S.'s role in the world, changing and growing global threats, NATO's unilateral disarmament, and our weak Asian allies. Anything less may be politically expedient but dangerous in the face of a growing peer threat such as China."

"The military is already there. This is not a future proposition but current consequence."

"We do this after every major conflict—have some kind of peace dividend that fouls up our capabilities. The Obama people combine this with a feeling of dismissive toward foreign policy and we are digging our next president a big hole from which to climb."

"The U.S. has global vital interests confronted by global threats; Putin provides a timely wake-up call."

"Sequestration cuts are creating a 'credibility gap' between America's leadership role and its ability to actually lead. This path is fraught with danger as allies question U.S. willingness to defend their interests and as adversaries take greater risk (and potentially miscalculate) in further their own interests."

Acceptable path

"The military downsizing path is acceptable with proper risk management. Unless Americans agree to provide additional resources, there is no alternative to cutting the defense budget. Some in the political class seem willing to cut defense disproportionately until their demands for deep domestic spending are met. That tactic is risky, and may become dangerous if the world situation continues to unwind."

"I'd like a third option. The path is potentially acceptable, but only if Congress approves key changes like slowing down the rate of increase in military pay and benefits as well as authorizing another round of base closures. If Congress balks, they are the ones responsible for moving toward a 'dangerous course.' "

"We should avoid further land-mass warfare and especially any hare brained "nation building."

"What fights do people have in mind?"

"The problem is not the level of resources, it's how those resources are being spent. If the Defense Department could get the changes it is pursuing in key areas— military compensation, [base closures], retiring legacy weapons, etc.—it could field a suitable force within the budget constraints Congress has agreed to."

"Hardware matters less immediately—unless air and naval assets are degraded to an extent that we cannot exert any presence at all. Statecraft matters more. The debate is too simplistic and too 'obvious'—playing to defense acquisition lobbies."

"If we put some of that money into fixing our other woefully broken and underfunded instruments of foreign policy strength: infrastructure at home so we do not look to foreign visitors like a broken country; diplomatic heft; and a radically reformed development apparatus."

"What we need to do is update our national strategy—what's our goal? Only then cam you figure out the right amount of resources required."

"It all depends on Congress. The budget proposal assumes Congress won't take its own nonstrategic hatchet to the whole thing, or put back in things that are not needed."

"Significant additional restructuring, consolidation, acquisition reform, and base closing are needed in order to bring defense spending into proportion with our other national priorities."

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U.S. Military: Sorry, Pakistan. You Won't Get Our Extra Equipment.

Sara Sorcher, National Journal — Thu, 27 Mar 2014 14:22:30 -0400

The U.S. military is denying what it calls "inaccurate media reports" that armored vehicles and extra military equipment leftover from the war in Afghanistan could be provided to neighboring Pakistan—after Kabul opposed the move described in the press.

"These reports are not correct," the military said in a statement Thursday. The U.S. military in Afghanistan "does not provide or intend to provide any such equipment, including MRAPs, from Afghanistan to Pakistan."

The military is trying to get rid of equipment it does not want or need—and would be expensive to transport home—as its draws down troops in Afghanistan. The Washington Post reported earlier this month that the Pentagon was considering giving Pakistan some of the $7 billion worth of excess military equipment, and that Islamabad was particularly interested in the Army's mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles, or MRAPs.

But the Afghan government had opposed this move. "Afghan security forces need this type of equipment and that as a strategic partner, the U.S. needs to consult with Afghanistan before making such a decision," a spokesman for Afghan President Hamid Karzai told Voice of America's Afghan service.

The U.S. is still waiting for Afghanistan to sign a security agreement that could allow a contingent of troops to remain in the country past the end of the year—the deadline for the end of formal combat operations. Since the future partnership between the two countries is in limbo until the agreement is signed, it's no surprise the U.S. is seeking to reassure Afghanistan's security forces of its support as it waits for a new Afghan president to be elected this spring.

"Our commitment to the Afghan people and the Afghan National Security Forces is unwavering," Gen. Joseph Dunford, who commands the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan, said in the statement. The U.S. military "remains committed to completing the transformation of the [Afghan National Security Forces] into a professional fighting force capable of meeting their security challenges."

The military statement also ran through a laundry list of equipment the U.S. has given Afghanistan's security forces. Over 12 years, the U.S. has provided $53 billion in equipment and support; 160 aircraft; 100,000 vehicles; 500,000 weapons; and 200,000 pieces of communications and night-vision equipment, with more still being delivered.

Whether Afghanistan's worries are eased or not, Pakistan is not likely to react well. The U.S. is counting on Pakistan to crack down on militants within its borders after this year. Islamabad, which has deployed some 150,000 soldiers along the border with Afghanistan, wanted the armored vehicles to better protect its troops from roadside bombs.

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A Tale of Two Budget Wish Lists

Sara Sorcher, Stacy Kaper, and Jordain Carney, National Journal — Thu, 20 Mar 2014 15:49:00 -0400

Nobody in Washington is happy with the defense budget cuts coming next year. But the Pentagon and members of Congress each have their own ideas about how to spend any extra cash.

The Pentagon is hoping to minimize the full impact of the budget cuts with some extra financial padding. It has requested a budget of $496 billion for next year—which meets the budget caps Congress imposed—but the Pentagon has also submitted a hefty wish list of programs it wants if Congress can find an extra $26 billion.

However, not all of lawmakers’ pet projects are in the Pentagon’s base budget or even its wish list. Members of Congress are decrying the Pentagon’s proposed cuts to defense programs that could cause them political pain in their districts—and they desperately want to get them funded.

National Journal has outlined some of the key priorities the Pentagon and Congress have in their dueling wish lists—and what they would cost.

Of course, this extra cash is fictional, at least for now. There’s no room in the budget, and Congress may not change the law to give the Pentagon more money to spend. If members insist the Pentagon must fund their priorities anyway, the Pentagon would have to instead slash other programs in the main budget it considers crucial.

What's in Congress's Wish List?

Lawmakers want to ...

Keep the A-10

The Pentagon wants to retire the A-10 aircraft fleet to make room in its budget for other aircraft, such as the F-35 fighter jet. This would save $3.7 billion over five years. (The Defense Department could potentially save another $500 million if a wing-replacement program is also canceled.) Sen. Kelly Ayotte, a New Hampshire Republican whose husband was an A-10 pilot, and senators whose states are home to the A-10s, such as Republicans Saxby Chambliss, Johnny Isakson of Georgia and John McCain of Arizona, have all raised objections. They argue the replacement won’t be ready immediately and that the aircraft, which excels at close air-support missions, have been important for saving lives in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Reverse cuts to military pay and benefits

The Pentagon has been trying to rein in its growing personnel costs for a decade, but it has made little progress with a resistant Congress, which views cuts to military troops’ pay and benefits politically unpalatable. The Pentagon is proposing a slew of reforms that would slash its health care benefits, cap or freeze pay raises, and reduce the housing allowance and commissary benefits—for a net savings of $11.9 billion over five years. But lawmakers led by House Armed Services Committee Chairman Buck McKeon, R-Calif., are again dragging their heels, arguing Congress should await the results of a commission it set up, which is slated to come out with comprehensive recommendations next year to overhaul the military retirement and compensation system.

Avoid base closures

The Pentagon is calling for another round of base closures to begin in 2017. The U.S. is reducing the size of its military force as it ends an era of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the Pentagon wants to get rid of infrastructure it no longer wants or needs. The move is expected to cost $6 billion initially but then save $2 billion each year afterward. But no lawmakers want to see a base close in their districts. Among those screaming bloody murder about how the closures would affect jobs and the local economy are Ayotte and fellow Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, along with Sens. Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy and Rep. Joe Courtney, all Connecticut Democrats.

Keep the LCS purchases intact

The Pentagon is scaling back its planned buy of Littoral Combat Ships from 52 ships down to 32. The controversial vessel is notorious for its historic delays and cost overruns, and the Pentagon has commissioned a force to determine whether it should build any more, modify them, or substitute another small surface combatant ship that might be better. Lawmakers like Reps. Bradley Byrne, R-Ala., and Reid Ribble, R-Wis., who represent regions where jobs are tied to the ships' building and contracts, are lobbying the White House directly not to cut the orders.

What’s in the Pentagon’s Wish List?

The Pentagon wants ...

Training

The Army wants an extra $1.8 billion to ramp up training in order to make sure troops are as prepared as possible for military operations.

Apache helicopters

The Army wants to buy 26 additional Apache helicopters, which have been used in the Afghanistan and Iraq conflicts. The cost to buy them would be $600 million.

Poseidon planes

The Pentagon is asking for $1.1 billion to buy eight P-8A Poseidon planes for the Navy. The maritime warfare aircraft can be used to hunt submarines, to gather intelligence, or—as they are currently doing—to try to find a missing plane.

Reaper drones

The Air Force wants 12 MQ-9 Reapers. These armed, unmanned aircraft are primarily used for intelligence gathering, but they are also designed for precision strikes. The additional planes would cost $200 million.

C-130 aircraft

The Air Force is asking for an additional $1.1 billion to buy 10 C-130 transport aircraft. The plane is frequently used for dropping troops and supplies into enemy territory.

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The Pentagon Has to Learn a New Language: English

Sara Sorcher, National Journal — Thu, 27 Feb 2014 13:34:00 -0500

If the Pentagon wants to solve its budget problems, it's going to have to solve its communication problem first.

For years, the Defense Department has been trying to explain to Congress why the sequester's military budget cuts are a threat to national security. But thus far, it hasn't gone well.

When they were fighting the 2013 cuts, Pentagon officials opted for colorful language, describing the upcoming cuts as "fiscal castration" or "a doomsday mechanism." But they would also illustrate their points with a slew of Pentagon buzzwords. Officials would insist, for instance, that the cuts would harm military "readiness," often without explaining exactly how they would degrade the military's ability to fight.

None of that persuaded Congress to spare the Pentagon from the sequester, but this week marks the start of another attempt. The Pentagon offered up a pared-down $496 billion budget proposal for next year, some $45 billion less than what it originally expected. It is facing hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of additional reductions in the coming years.

And as Defense officials fight for funding—to the tune of $115 billion above the caps Congress imposed over five years—they remain plagued by the communication failures of their past, but they're determined to find a more effective way forward.

Their first step: acknowledging their past approach failed.

"We aren't communicating. We were not able to communicate the impact of sequester last year," acting Deputy Defense Secretary Christine Fox told an audience Wednesday at the conservative American Enterprise Institute think tank. "Because we talked about readiness, and nobody knows what readiness is.... We go into Pentagon-speak, I get it."

Pentagon officials are already taking a new tack on their informational charm offensive: a little straight talk.

It's not just that Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel previewed his budget proposal a full week before the giant tome lands on lawmakers' desks on March 4. His deputies—Fox, his comptroller Robert Hale, and chief weapons buyer Frank Kendall—are all over Washington at industry conferences and think tanks explaining exactly what was cut in the budget, and what was spared, and why.

The Pentagon's budget, too, is finally spelling out exactly what will suffer if Congress does not give them extra money, after years of failing to plan for the worst. For example, the Army, which will shrink by some 40,000 troops in next year's request, could lose another 30,000 troops the following year if the military does not get more money. The Pentagon will have to retire an aircraft carrier; the entire KC-10 tanker fleet will be cut.

After years of vague warnings, the Pentagon's newfound transparency means members of Congress will finally be able to feel the political impact on their districts from defense cuts of this magnitude.

Still, it is not going to be easy to explain to Congress that the tradeoffs in the military's budget for next year are meant to preserve its core ability to fight—even if it means doing away with key programs lawmakers want. Or how the Pentagon is planning for the best, in case lawmakers decide to dole out more money and avert the worst-case scenario in future years. "If we tried harder, we couldn't have made this budget more complicated," Fox said. "There are actually multiple budgets embedded in this submission."

So officials, by their own admission, are adapting in how they talk about the budget pressures.

Fox brought up an NPR interview she did recently as an example. "I talked about having your teenager driving to Ohio in a snowstorm," she said. A parent naturally wants to make sure the teenager can drive, that the car works, and that there's a spare tire if it breaks down, Fox explained. She said she is open to testing out the department's message on focus groups of nonmilitary people.

The Pentagon's next challenge is to convince lawmakers that every pet priority they want to add in the "tightly crafted" budget package means something else officials believe is critical must be removed. Fox said Hagel asked her to put together a "tiger team" armed with facts and strong arguments to defend the budget request.

"We're going to do everything in our power to explain those tradeoffs, if they force us, as they have every year, to keep things we don't want to keep," Fox said. "There's not slop here. We have to take it out somewhere else."

Kendall, undersecretary of Defense for acquisition, technology, and logistics, is also becoming aware of how using loaded metaphors and scary language is not necessarily the best alternative to bland Pentagon-speak or acronym soup. Kendall said the department "cried wolf" about the devastation the sequester cuts would wreak before they took hold. "What we did in '13 was sort of the death of 1,000 cuts," he said.

This year, sequestration just got real. The Pentagon in previous years was able to blunt the full impact of the sequester by using funds left over from previous years; delaying potentially billions of dollars' worth of contracts; and taking advantage of changes in the law that gave the department more flexibility. There were few highly visible consequences to the cuts they warned against.

Lawmakers, with some new visual aids, are starting to read the tea leaves—and staking out their priorities. Republican Sen. Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire is campaigning for the A-10 aircraft the Air Force wants to retire, for instance, and Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut is seeking Pentagon commitments on the Pave Hawk combat-rescue helicopters.

Now that the cuts are starting to hit close to lawmakers' homes, the Pentagon could finally have a chance to undo them.

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Security Insiders: High Time for Congress to Cave on Closing Military Bases

Sara Sorcher, National Journal — Tue, 18 Feb 2014 10:56:00 -0500

It's high time for Congress to agree to the Pentagon's request to close military bases, a whopping 91 percent of National Journal's National Security Insiders said.

Lawmakers, even as they search for ways to cut spending, have rebuffed the Defense Department's requests to close military installations it no longer needs as the military downsizes after long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—to the dismay of the pool of national security experts. "Enough already," one Insider said.

"Congress rails about waste, until the Pentagon comes up with legitimate savings that require congressional statesmanship," another Insider said. "At which point, Congress goes silent."

The Pentagon wants to use the money on other crucial priorities as the defense budget shrinks, while lawmakers have objected to the upfront costs of closing bases. One Insider acknowledged base closings "often take time to show savings." Still, the Insider said, especially in this era of fiscal austerity, "every little bit helps in the out years."

Insiders say lawmakers' real concern is the political price they will pay for potential job losses in their districts. Even so, one Insider said, "bases should be located where there exists military necessity, not where there is political convenience." U.S. military bases, another Insider added, "are not intended to serve as economic pork to congressional districts. There are better ways to stimulate the economy than playing politics with our military basing."

By refusing the Pentagon's calls to close facilities, one Insider said, Congress is breaking faith with the troops. "It is unfair to take away retirement pay, and health care benefits that service members have earned over a career, while continuing to operate bases no longer needed and maintain weapon systems no longer needed because Congress refuses to act responsibly," one Insider said. "That is punishing the people who have sacrificed the most for the safety of our nation to protect reelection opportunities for members."

Several Insiders were upfront about the probability of Congress actually caving. "They won't," one Insider quipped.

A tiny 9 percent minority said Congress should not listen to the Pentagon's requests to close excess facilities—if only because it's their right. "As much as the Pentagon may like to ignore it when it disagrees, the Congress represents the people and has the power of the purse," one Insider said. "It's up to them to decide how assets should ultimately be allocated. It may seem illogical to the Pentagon. But no one elected them."

1. Should Congress agree to the Pentagon's requests to close bases?

(59 votes)

Yes 91%
No 9%

Yes

"More bloat in basing than ever before."

"But they won't."

"Excess capacity exists across all the military services. Congress and communities face either a slow decline at every base, with little hope for any economic relief anywhere, or selective closures that bolster needed bases and let other areas start on the road to recovery and life after closure."

"Congress wishes to retain surplus facilities as a form of 'pork' for their constituents."

"In 1966 Aaron Wildavsky wrote that the Armed Services Committee was 'a sort of real estate committee dealing with the regional economic consequences of the location of military facilities.' Little has changed, so I wouldn't bet on Congress doing the right thing here."

"Of course they should. National interest is not just the collection of parochial local interests."

"We badly need to shrink the Pentagon back office and infrastructure to free up resources for forces and hardware."

"The military budget has been slashed to pay for America's addiction to entitlement programs. It is time for local communities to pay the true price for this decision."

"Congress should undertake many needed and overdue efforts to pare Pentagon excess, but it wont."

"With the significant reductions in force structure, there will be excess capacity. We will not be able to spend billions maintaining unused facilities, and the service chiefs will increasingly highlight this disconnect."

"The new budget will cut force structure to maintain readiness and to avoid a hollow force; we no longer have the luxury of excess base infrastructure for pure political pork; the next BRAC is inevitable."

"There is excess capacity as the armed forces are downsized following the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. However, we must maintain enough capacity and capability to expand the force if needed. And we must maintain adequate training lands."

"In his recent memoir, Robert Gates called Congress's inability to pass legislation in the national interest an 'outrageous dereliction of duty.' Congress should stop treating defense like a jobs program. Closing unnecessary bases is an excellent way to save money without compromising U.S. military power."

"As much as the Pentagon may like to ignore it when it disagrees, the Congress represents the people and has the power of the purse. It's up to them to decide how assets should ultimately be allocated. It may seem illogical to the Pentagon. But no one elected them."

National Journal's National Security Insiders Poll is a periodic survey of more than 100 defense and foreign policy experts. They include: Gordon Adams, Charles Allen, Michael Allen, Thad Allen, Graham Allison, James Bamford, David Barno, Milt Bearden, Peter Bergen, Samuel "Sandy" Berger, David Berteau, Stephen Biddle, Nancy Birdsall, Marion Blakey, Kit Bond, Stuart Bowen, Paula Broadwell, Mike Breen, Mark Brunner, Steven Bucci, Nicholas Burns, Dan Byman, James Jay Carafano, Phillip Carter, Wendy Chamberlin, Michael Chertoff, Frank Cilluffo, James Clad, Richard Clarke, Steve Clemons, Joseph Collins, William Courtney, Lorne Craner, Roger Cressey, Gregory Dahlberg, Robert Danin, Richard Danzig, Daniel Drezner, Mackenzie Eaglen, Paul Eaton, Andrew Exum, William Fallon, Eric Farnsworth, Jacques Gansler, Stephen Ganyard, Daniel Goure, Mark Green, Mike Green, Mark Gunzinger, Todd Harrison, John Hamre, Jim Harper, Marty Hauser, Michael Hayden, Michael Herson, Pete Hoekstra, Bruce Hoffman, Linda Hudson, Paul Hughes, Colin Kahl, Donald Kerrick, Rachel Kleinfeld, Lawrence Korb, David Kramer, Andrew Krepinevich, Charlie Kupchan, W. Patrick Lang, Cedric Leighton, Michael Leiter, James Lindsay, Justin Logan, Trent Lott, Peter Mansoor, Ronald Marks, Brian McCaffrey, Steven Metz, Franklin Miller, Michael Morell, Philip Mudd, John Nagl, Shuja Nawaz, Kevin Nealer, Michael Oates, Thomas Pickering, Paul Pillar, Larry Prior, Stephen Rademaker, Marc Raimondi, Celina Realuyo, Bruce Riedel, Barry Rhoads, Marc Rotenberg, Frank Ruggiero, Gary Samore, Kori Schake, Mark Schneider, John Scofield, Tammy Schultz, Stephen Sestanovich, Sarah Sewall, Matthew Sherman, Jennifer Sims, Suzanne Spaulding, Constanze Stelzenmüller, Ted Stroup, Guy Swan, Frances Townsend, Mick Trainor, Richard Wilhelm, Tamara Wittes, Dov Zakheim, and Juan Zarate.

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Intelligence Leaders: Al-Qaida Is Not on Path to Defeat

Sara Sorcher, National Journal — Tue, 11 Feb 2014 12:40:00 -0500

Al-Qaida is not on the run, and after being hunted for two decades it is not on the path to defeat. That's the sobering message from two top intelligence leaders, National Intelligence Director James Clapper and Defense Intelligence Agency Director Michael Flynn during a Senate Armed Services committee hearing Tuesday.

Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., hearkened back to past comments from the Obama administration about the impending defeat, or at least decline, of the terrorist network. "People keep talking about [how] al-Qaida is on the run, on the path to defeat.... To me it's just the opposite of that," the committee's ranking member said. "Is al-Qaida on the run, and on the path to defeat?"

"No," Clapper replied."It is morphing and franchising itself, not only here but in other areas of the world."

"They are not," Flynn confirmed.

President Obama has indeed said that core al-Qaida leadership is on the run—and touted how the U.S., under his leadership, conducted an operation that killed Osama bin Laden in May 2011.

Obama has also acknowledged the threat grows more complicated as al-Qaida franchises take hold in Yemen, Somalia, Iraq, and other hot spots. "While we have put al-Qaida's core leadership on a path to defeat, the threat has evolved, as al-Qaida affiliates and other extremists take root in different parts of the world," Obama said in his State of the Union address.

In a recent hearing on global threats, Clapper told the Senate Intelligence Committee that America's ability to understand the terrorist threat has improved over the last decade, but that the network's dispersion makes extremists harder to detect. "I can't say that the threat is any less," Clapper told the Senate Intelligence Committee in late January.

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Don't Be Fooled: Military Benefits Are on the Chopping Block

Sara Sorcher, Stacy Kaper, and Jordain Carney, National Journal — Wed, 29 Jan 2014 13:29:30 -0500

Score one for the veterans groups who demanded Congress go back on its plan to cut $6 billion out of military pensions.

The cuts, passed as part of December's budget deal between Sen. Patty Murray and Rep. Paul Ryan, sent members into a tailspin. As veterans groups mobilized en masse against the cuts, lawmakers have been tripping over each other to put their names on proposals to repeal the cuts.

And the repeal crowd was handed a boost Tuesday from Pentagon officials, who told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the provision in the budget deal was not the ideal way to reform military compensation. "We won," Sen. Lindsey Graham said, triumphantly, after the hearing.

The Pentagon suggested that Congress, at the very least, modify the cuts to exempt existing retirees and current service members who were already promised certain benefits. That message, the South Carolina Republican said, will guarantee Congress fixes the issue.

But Graham, and those upset about the recent cuts to military benefits, should not get too excited yet. They've yet to pass anything to repeal the cuts—and they're struggling to compromise on a way to do it without adding to the deficit. And even if they win this round, they have not yet won the impending war with the Pentagon over broader compensation reform.

Pentagon officials prefer Congress address personnel costs entirely after February 2015, so that members do not further interfere or influence the work of a commission set to recommend ways to overhaul the military's compensation and retirement system that would grandfather retirees and those currently serving. Members of Congress, however, are under political pressure. They want to get these cuts repealed now, even though they cannot agree on how to do it, to avoid appearing insensitive to veterans.

"Congress is supposed to get a say in this," said Senate Armed Services ranking member James Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican. "This is a test to see who ends up being right on it."

The timing might seem like a relatively small detail. But the fact that there's so much momentum to reverse a relatively small cut now means a much larger battle over military compensation reform is looming on the horizon, when the commission report does eventually detail proposed reductions to what has historically proved a virtually off-limits part of the budget. In many ways, the $6 billion reduction in the budget deal became a de facto trial balloon. And Congress is, at least for now, shooting it down.

Members of Congress are caught in a tough place. Either they heed the calls from Pentagon leaders, including the usually-revered top uniformed generals, who say they urgently need compensation reform to keep the military ready and capable. Or they risk detonating a political land mine: Breaking faith with those who have served.

"If it were easy," said Republican Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, "it would have been done long ago."

Sen. Richard Blumenthal said he was "doubtful" overarching reform "will be as easy as it sounds, even by 2015."

"This system is mind-bogglingly complex," the Connecticut Democrat said, "and the political forces will be challenging, so retirement reform is very far away from being a done deal."

But Pentagon officials insist that reform must take place. Due to increases in pay and benefits during more than a decade of war, inflation-adjusted pay and benefit costs are 40 percent higher than in 2001—even though the active-duty force today is only slightly larger, according to testimony at Tuesday's hearing from Christine Fox, acting deputy Defense secretary. Defense health care costs alone have grown from less than $20 billion in 2001 to nearly $50 billion in 2013; payments for housing costs have also increased faster than inflation.

"Given today's fiscal realities... we are unlikely to see defense budgets rise substantially for some time," Fox said. "So if this department is going to maintain a future force that is properly sized, modern, and ready, we clearly cannot maintain the last decade's rate of military compensation growth."

Put simply, the department cannot afford it.

The uniformed military leadership agrees. "Demanding at this point that our compensation not only remain at its currently high relative level, but that it continue to rise faster than that for the average American, would be irresponsible," testified Navy four-star Adm. James Winnefeld, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, "and is simply not sustainable at a time when our entire budget is under such great pressure."

Devil's in the Details

The $6 billion reduction to military pensions does have political—and financial—repercussions.

This "backroom deal," retired Navy Vice Adm. Norbert Ryan, chief of the Military Officers Association of America, said in a recent interview, means a sergeant first class or master sergeant retiring this year, with 20 years of service, would lose $83,000 compared to what he would have earned by the time he reaches age 62. It's unfair, Ryan argues, especially because compensation for military personnel has remained about one-third of the defense budget since 1980. Compensation costs are going up, as they are for say, weapons systems, he says, but "they're not out of proportion."

Square that with the Pentagon's call for a slower growth rate for pay, and higher health care fees and co-pays for retirees, since DoD personnel costs (including civilians) make up about half the department's budget. Without serious reform, officials have said, the military risks being well compensated—but poorly trained and equipped, limited in its abilities to fight and project power abroad.

So who's right? Both sides are downplaying the metric that appears to really matter: the costs per person.

Compensation grew—yes, along with the rest of the defense budget—but the number of service members has remained roughly the same, meaning that from 2001 to 2012, the average cost of basic pay and benefits per active-duty service member grew from $54,000 to $109,000 a year, according to analysis by Todd Harrison of the nonpartisan Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. When you adjust for inflation, that's a whopping 56 percent increase, according to Harrison. If the costs keep growing at this rate—and the overall defense budget does not grow—these costs could gradually consume the entire defense budget by 2039.

High Stakes

For lawmakers, particularly those up for reelection this year, it's virtually impossible to support cuts in benefits for those who have served, says retired Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Arnold Punaro, a former staff director to the Senate Armed Services Committee. The issue is too complex to explain to the American public in a 30-second sound bite, or in a campaign ad, says Punaro, the chief executive of consulting firm The Punaro Group, even though the COLA cuts are minuscule compared to the reforms the military needs to confront in the future.

"The problem is the political cycle. If you are a congressman or a senator who is up for reelection, they"—the network of veterans groups—"use a bumper sticker against you," Punaro said. "The veterans groups are very powerful."

It's not just benefits that are hamstringing the Pentagon. Congress keeps putting restrictions on DoD to prevent it from making other reforms it wants. For instance, members are already working to prevent the Air Force from retiring the A-10 ground-attack aircraft to make room in the budget for newer planes. And Congress has rejected the Defense Department's request to reduce the number of bases it does not need.

The stakes are high: If the Pentagon is forced to downsize, it must make other sacrifices, with potentially more serious consequences for the military's ability to fight and equip its people. By refusing to cut compensation—and other political untouchables—the rest of the defense budget, from weapons programs to training for troops, will likely be slashed.

"If you can't go after infrastructure—your bases—and you can't go after force structure—the cost of your people—what that leaves is investment and operations," Eric Fanning, undersecretary of the Air Force, said in a recent interview. "So either you're not modernizing, buying the next generation of weapons, and/or not using them, not training. … We joke that there's not a caucus for readiness."

Even if the Pentagon cuts procurement and research and development accounts, budget-cutters "will have little choice but to cut the size of the force," Harrison said. "And if the cost-per-person continues to grow, they'll have to continue cutting people. So ultimately, we'll end up with a force too small to follow through on our global-security commitment."

Some members, like Senate Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich., understand this minefield. The Defense Department has made it clear, Levin said at the hearing, that it cannot meet the budget levels Congress has set without curtailing growth in the cost of military pay and benefits, and that failure to curb that growth "will necessarily result in drastic reductions to military force structure, readiness, and modernization accounts." Still, Levin opposes singling out the benefits of military retirees to reduce the deficit.

By the time the commission's work is over, however, Levin will have retired.

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Military Benefits Likely to Remain Sacred to Congress

Sara Sorcher, National Journal — Thu, 09 Jan 2014 08:53:11 -0500

For Washington lawmakers who measure the national debt in trillions, $6 billion is a pittance. But for many military veterans—and key lobbying groups—the $6 billion in pension cuts contained in December's budget compromise meant a broken promise.

And it's not a breach they're willing to let Washington forget.

In a Twitter town hall Tuesday night with the theme #KeepYourPromise, service members and their families expressed their outrage. Alia Reese, a military spouse, tweeted a picture of a little boy pressed to a computer screen. "This is how Daddy has read to him for over half his life," she wrote. "We have upheld our end now you do yours."

Military personnel issues have long been sacred on Capitol Hill, and many defense watchers—from Pentagon officials to lobbyists—were surprised when the final deal between Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., and Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., emerged including a provision decreasing the annual cost-of-living adjustment for working-age military retirees by 1 percent over the next decade.

Now it appears proponents of the cut may have claimed victory too soon. Backed by veteran outrage, military-advocacy groups have mobilized, and legislative proposals on Capitol Hill to reverse the pension cuts are gaining steam. More than a dozen proposals have been introduced, though there's disagreement on exactly how to replace the savings.

A bill by Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., for instance, wants to offset the cost by changing the tax code to prevent illegal immigrants from claiming a child tax credit, while Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., would like to find the money by closing some overseas corporate tax loopholes.

The growing backlash to the cut—some one in three lawmakers, according to The Hill, have sponsored or cosponsored different bills to repeal the cuts—is a strong signal that personnel issues are likely to remain virtually untouchable in the near future, even if it means sacrificing other important priorities for the military, such as training for combat operations and weapons programs.

The $6 billion cut, Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments' analyst Todd Harrison said, is a "drop in the bucket" compared to what we're spending on military compensation over the next 10 years. "Unfortunately, I think that the way Congress has responded to this small change in compensation—and now they're looking at repealing it—is a setback for making meaningful progress on this issue for the foreseeable future."

From 2001 to 2012, the average cost of pay and benefits per active-duty service member grew from $54,000 to $109,000, Harrison says—an increase of 56 percent adjusted for inflation. Yet veterans' service organizations, says Harrison, are proving "very effective at scaring members of Congress about touching this issue again. They're reinforcing the belief that this is a third-rail issue."

Pentagon officials have decried the rising costs of compensation, which threaten to usurp other key priorities in the budget during austere times, and have called for a slower growth rate for pay and higher health care fees and copays for retirees. The trajectory of costs for military personnel, says Eric Fanning, undersecretary of the Air Force, are "unsustainable" and increasingly eating into investment and operation accounts.

But the politics are complex. No one on Capitol Hill wants to be seen as breaking faith with military troops. The proposal does have some thorny consequences: For instance, a sergeant first class or master sergeant retiring this year with 20 years of service, says retired Navy Vice Adm. Norbert Ryan, chief of the Military Officers Association for America, will lose $83,000 from what they would have earned by the time they reach age 62.

The cuts in the budget deal, Ryan says, break faith with the volunteer troops who have already sacrificed so much—because they take effect retroactively. A commission tasked with recommending ways to reform the reform the military's compensation and retirement system, Ryan stresses, was asked to investigate reform efforts that would grandfather retirees and those currently serving.

This message resonates.

"It's not justifiable to have the military retirees take a significant reduction when others ... are not," says Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala. "We all know we've got to tighten our belts every year, but they shouldn't be asked to be the ones to take the primary reduction."

While Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., says he is in favor of reforming cost-of-living-adjustments, he's troubled that the deal simply gives a retroactive "penalty" to military retirees. "We didn't change the structure of our entitlement problem, we just took $6 billion out of the military retiree community through the COLA penalty," Graham says. And Senate Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich., appears to agree: "Entitlement reform was necessary, but it needs to be more comprehensive, not just picking out military."

However, if the Pentagon has to live within the budget caps that Congress has set, and it cannot reform areas such as compensation, it must make other sacrifices.

That means the military would likely be smaller and less prepared to fight, says Lawrence Korb, who was assistant secretary of Defense for manpower, reserve affairs, installations, and logistics in the Reagan administration. "Something's got to give," says Korb, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. "The costs of people are going up—so you can't have as many. Or you can't keep as many units as you want to see for readiness." If the cost per person continues to go up, even hacking into procurement and research accounts won't be enough, Harrison adds. "You will end up with a force too small to follow through on our global security commitments," Harrison says.

Virtually every item the department may consider cutting, Fanning notes, has a constituency on the Hill—from the growth of military benefits to bases in members' districts.

"If you can't go after infrastructure, your bases, and you can't go after force structure, the cost of your people, what that leaves is investment and operations," Fanning says. "So either you're not modernizing, buying the next generation of weapons, and/or not using them, not training."

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Security Insiders: It's Time to Reduce Military Health and Pension Benefits

Sara Sorcher, National Journal — Thu, 02 Jan 2014 07:19:52 -0500

The time has come: Military health and pension benefits, which have more than doubled in the past decade, should be reduced as the defense budget comes down, said a whopping 90 percent majority of National Journal's National Security Insiders.

Pentagon leaders have been calling for changes to curb the skyrocketing compensation costs, which threaten to usurp other key priorities in the defense budget during austere times—even training for combat operations and weapons procurement. But reform efforts have been complicated in part because military-personnel issues are a political landmine on Capitol Hill. In the budget deal clinched by Sen. Patty Murray and Rep. Paul Ryan, however, members did take a step to cut benefits to military retirees, albeit slightly, decreasing the annual cost-of-living adjustment for working-age military retirees by 1 percent, which would cut roughly $6 billion in spending over the next decade.

Some 52 percent of the pool of national security experts are open to slight cutbacks to military benefits. "We must control runaway personnel costs," one Insider said, "but we need to take care not to break faith with those who signed up to risk their lives for their country." The rate of growth, another Insider added, is what needs to be reduced. "Too often we call it a 'cut' when it's really a slowing of growth rates. We need to restore balance across defense-spending accounts so that we can train and equip the military as well as pay them."

Pay and benefits are not out of line with the amount of defense spending, which has also increased over the past decade of wars, one Insider said. "But they are now an entitlement for the future, which means they need to be brought under control. The retirement package needs to be rewritten, so the military members vest earlier, but draw a pension later, like the civil servants," the Insider said. "Pay increases should have a COLA and merit feature, making pay raises more appropriate and not across the board. And the retirees need to pay more for their generous health care benefits—an enrollment fee that is one-tenth of the civilian average is not a 'reward' for service, it is a deep inequity."

Thirty-eight percent of Insiders called for more significant cutbacks. "The compensation of military personnel has doubled over the past decade, but going forward, few will be risking their lives in conflict," one Insider said. "Health benefits for nondisabled retirees and spouses cost only one-tenth as much as similar benefits for civilian federal retirees. This gap is unjustified."

Policymakers, one Insider said, have had to "juice benefits to entice people to enlist in a military they've been misusing for decades. Defending the country doesn't require a military nearly this big, so benefits should be cut, as should end-strength."

Only 10 percent of Insiders said military health and pension benefits should be off-limits. "The size of the force should be reduced but not pay and benefits," one Insider said.

Separately, a wide 88 percent majority of Insiders said the Murray-Ryan budget deal was good for Defense. The deal, far short of a grand bargain to undo sequestration altogether, would partly pare back the across-the-board cuts facing the Pentagon over the next two years. The deal, one Insider said, is "better than nothing, and at least it tapers sequestration."

"They got it all: budget stability for the next two years, complete flexibility as to how to move the funds around and plan, and an $80 billion overseas contingency operations account nobody is talking about," one Insider said, "Such a deal! Happy Holidays, Pentagon!"

The agreement will relieve some short-term adjustment pressures that the Defense Department "brought onto itself by not doing more prior to this year to prepare for budget downturns," another Insider said. "Unlike DOD, for several years the defense industry has been streamlining operations, consolidating structures, and delayering management. Perhaps more than ever, industry is now cost-efficient relative to DOD's own costs."

But 12 percent of Insiders said the deal was not ideal—though the experts who commented actually said the Pentagon should be cut even more. "The cuts should be much deeper," one Insider said. "We need to begin directing resources back to the homeland to repair the crumbling infrastructure, improve health care, and begin attacking the numerous other problems within the country."

1. Should military health and pension benefits, which have more than doubled in the last decade, be reduced as the defense budget comes down?

(58 votes)

Yes, slightly 52%
Yes, significantly 38%
No 10%

YES, SLIGHTLY

"Congress has amply increased military pay and benefits over the past decade, in some cases, over the objections of Defense Department leaders. It is easy to say yes that benefits should be reduced, but what is needed is a new defense strategy that includes new force structure with a sufficient compensation package to attract and retain military personnel to execute that strategy."

"What really needs reducing is the rate of growth. Too often we call it a 'cut' when it's really a slowing of growth rates. We need to restore balance across defense-spending accounts so that we can train and equip the military as well as pay them."

"But not mine, of course."

"There are those who claim these are individual benefits rightly earned by the servicemember. True, but there are changes that must be made based on the changing demographics of America. For example, the 20-year retirement mark was conceived when American males generally lived only into their mid-60s. That is no longer the case—the budget simply cannot afford NOT to change!"

"Military personnel and health care costs are unsustainable. Although our service members should be well-compensated, the past 10 years have witnessed the creation of pay scales and benefits out of proportion even to the sacrifices required of a military career."

"As one who benefits from both, yes. But only if they serve as models for entitlement reform across the government. Cutting the military is easy—the real test of moral courage is to take on entitlements."

"I'm afraid like a lot of things in government, the costs are growing too much. While it hurts, all federal employees need to contribute to this effort to close the debt."

YES, SIGNIFICANTLY

"Such benefits need to be reduced government-wide, so of course they need to be reduced for the military, particularly if the military isn't going to be engaged in ground wars over the coming decade."

"For retirees who are working in full-time private-sector jobs, their employers should pay for their health care rather than take advantage of Tricare."

"The health and pension benefits provided to the U.S. military are not sustainable—Bob Gates said essentially the same thing before he stepped down as secretary of Defense."

"If personnel costs aren't cut—yes, the clawback should be gradual—they'll become the entire budget."

"Similar to civilian health care programs, our nation has to find a way to bend the military health care program cost curve downward."

"Probably as good a time as any to move away from a defined-benefits retirement and allow soldiers to invest in a 401K with higher monthly pay."

"The size of the force should be reduced but not pay and benefits."

"Actually, they have already been decreased in terms of what individual retirees get. Retirement pay is no longer computed based on the final monthly pay the retiree received while on active duty (unless you enlisted prior to September 1980). Instead, it is computed based on an average of the last three years of pay received. Military Retirement Pay is basically a promise to take care of our veterans in return for them taking care of us. It's also a means of deferred compensation, because military personnel willingly take themselves out of the private-sector competition for higher salaries. In order for its retirement system to be altered, the military would have to alter its promotion and retention systems. Those issues have not been addressed yet, … and we risk grave damage to National Security by having a lower-quality military personnel pool."

"No, not reduced—though increases can be reduced."

2. Is the budget deal clinched by Sen. Patty Murray and Rep. Paul Ryan good for Defense?

(58 votes)

Yes 88%
No 12%

YES

"If the budget provides military leaders the flexibility to make targeted cuts, then it is better for defense. Precise cuts should enable DOD to retain more muscle and reduce fat."

"The Ryan-Murray budget agreement provides some relief to the vise of sequestration, which is breaking major programs in Defense as well as in intelligence. The media have failed to recognize this in reporting."

"DOD needs to return to fiscally disciplined longer-term programming, with a future-years defense program that can be planned for and executed. This budget deal is a solid step in that direction and should permit a better FY15 budget proposal and real authorization and appropriations bills."

"The defense establishment has grown to be excessive in size and expense and should be smaller in light of the existing threats."

"At least it stops the rot and creates some predictability for the next two years."

"Fewer cuts. More flexibility. What's not to like?"

"At least DOD got back $20 billion it would have lost. That said, DOD will still take a $30 billion reduction in FY14."

"Yes, but bad for the rest of the budget and country as a whole."

"While the new budget is not good for the military; it is good for our overall security to be able to plan defense expenditures and not run a government based on continuing resolutions."

"Compared to the alternative. However, a more thoughtful and deliberate budgeting process tied to the realities of the national security environment might be helpful."

"More importantly, the budget deal is good for the nation, as it shows that moderate elements of both parties might be able to rein in their more extreme members."

"It will allow some leeway in cuts and serve as a public pound of flesh from the DOD. Now show some courage and get the rest of the budget under control."

"Yes, it was the best deal you could come up with under the circumstances. We are out of Afghanistan and Iraq. It's time to consider cutbacks appropriate to our needs."

"Any agreement across party lines and return to regular order is good for defense and government. Sets the table for defense to be more thoughtful about resetting and cutting the defense budget."

"The cuts should be much deeper. We need to begin directing resources back to the homeland to repair the crumbling infrastructure, improve health care, and begin attacking the numerous other problems within the country."

"The effort to achieve a federal-budget agreement takes from the one element of the U.S. government that performs the best. Beware of the return of the Bonus Marchers from the 1930s."

"It's an improvement over the sequester for Beltway Bandits, but the increased military spending will permit policymakers to do marginally more dumb things with the U.S. military."

National Journal's National Security Insiders Poll is a periodic survey of more than 100 defense and foreign policy experts. They include: Gordon Adams, Charles Allen, Thad Allen, James Bamford, David Barno, Milt Bearden, Peter Bergen, Samuel "Sandy" Berger, David Berteau, Stephen Biddle, Nancy Birdsall, Marion Blakey, Kit Bond, Stuart Bowen, Paula Broadwell, Mike Breen, Mark Brunner, Steven Bucci, Nicholas Burns, Dan Byman, James Jay Carafano, Phillip Carter, Wendy Chamberlin, Michael Chertoff, Frank Cilluffo, James Clad, Richard Clarke, Steve Clemons, Joseph Collins, William Courtney, Lorne Craner, Roger Cressey, Gregory Dahlberg, Robert Danin, Richard Danzig, Daniel Drezner, Mackenzie Eaglen, Paul Eaton, Andrew Exum, William Fallon, Eric Farnsworth, Jacques Gansler, Stephen Ganyard, Daniel Goure, Mark Green, Mike Green, Mark Gunzinger, John Hamre, Jim Harper, Michael Hayden, Michael Herson, Pete Hoekstra, Bruce Hoffman, Linda Hudson, Paul Hughes, Colin Kahl, Donald Kerrick, Rachel Kleinfeld, Lawrence Korb, David Kramer, Andrew Krepinevich, Charlie Kupchan, W. Patrick Lang, Cedric Leighton, James Lindsay, Justin Logan, Trent Lott, Peter Mansoor, Ronald Marks, Brian McCaffrey, Steven Metz, Franklin Miller, Philip Mudd, John Nagl, Shuja Nawaz, Kevin Nealer, Michael Oates, Thomas Pickering, Paul Pillar, Larry Prior, Stephen Rademaker, Marc Raimondi, Celina Realuyo, Bruce Riedel, Barry Rhoads, Marc Rotenberg, Frank Ruggiero, Kori Schake, Mark Schneider, John Scofield, Tammy Schultz, Stephen Sestanovich, Sarah Sewall, Matthew Sherman, Jennifer Sims, Constanze Stelzenmüller, Frances Townsend, Mick Trainor, Suzanne Spaulding, Ted Stroup, Richard Wilhelm, Tamara Wittes, Dov Zakheim, and Juan Zarate.

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Counterterrorism Chief Names Top Security Threat for 2014

Sara Sorcher, National Journal — Thu, 19 Dec 2013 17:14:23 -0500

Next year's single greatest terrorist threat will come from Syria.

That's the word from National Counterterrorism Center Director Matthew Olsen, who said extremists are taking advantage of the chaos created by the Syrian civil war to create a threat to U.S. security.

A hodgepodge of rebel groups are battling strongman Bashar al-Assad's forces in Syria, including groups linked to al-Qaida. "As the conflict in Syria rages on, we are concerned about the flow of fighters to the country and the likelihood that they will pose a threat when they return from Syria to their home countries," Olsen said.

Dealing with this threat, Olsen said, "will be the primary focus of our counterterrorism efforts in 2014."

Olsen's comments come as Washington grows increasingly concerned that radical, Qaida-linked groups have made territorial gains in the country. Thousands of foreign fighters have traveled to Syria, where some have joined with these groups and received training and weapons, Olsen said, noting that hundreds of these individuals are from Western countries, including some from the United States.

Fragmented groups within Syria present not just a counterterrorism challenge but a diplomatic one: Washington is in an increasingly tough position, as the moderate and secular groups it has supported so far continue to lose ground to religious fighters and Assad's forces.

This week, Secretary of State John Kerry said the Obama administration is willing to meet with Islamist fighters not affiliated with terrorist groups in a bid to reach a diplomatic solution to end the fighting—outreach already scorned by some concerned members on Capitol Hill. The main target of this outreach is the Islamic Front, a new coalition of Islamist militias that excludes the key Qaida-linked groups in the country.

Last week, the U.S. suspended delivery of nonlethal aid to the rebels in northern Syria after the Islamic Front seized rebel-held warehouses and headquarters where supplies were stored. The U.S. envoy to Syria, Robert Ford, has said the group refused to sit down with the administration without giving any explanation.

The United Nations will hold a peace conference starting Jan. 22.

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Budget Agreement Eases Pentagon's Sequester Pain

Sara Sorcher and Stacy Kaper, National Journal — Wed, 11 Dec 2013 09:01:08 -0500

The two-year budget agreement is a positive development for defense watchers -- mitigating about half the sequester cuts expected to gouge the defense budget in fiscal year 2014.

The agreement, announced Tuesday night by Senate Budget Committee Chairwoman Patty Murray, D-Wash., and House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., would provide $63 billion in sequester relief over two years, split evenly between defense and nondefense programs. By some simple math, that leaves some $31.5 billion in sequester relief for defense over the two-year period.

The Pentagon was facing a roughly $52 billion cut from its $527 billion request in fiscal year 2014. Now, the budget agreement says defense discretionary spending would be set at $520.5 billion that year. That figure presumably includes the Department of Energy's nuclear-weapons programs, meaning the department will likely be working with closer to a half-trillion-dollars in funding in fiscal 2014 -- and, to do so, it has front-loaded most of the newfound sequester relief.

"This is a positive outcome for the military and in particular, for the defense industry," Lexington Institute Chief Operating Officer Loren Thompson told National Journal, "because it means the president's request for the Pentagon would only be cut by about 5 percent, where the caps would have put it $52 billion lower. What the sequester relief does is, in effect, reduce the cut to the Pentagon's base budget in half."

While the agreement doesn't stave off sequestration's impact on defense completely, Senate Armed Services Committee member Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said "it softens it." He confirmed that the sequester relief is "much more" in the first year of the two-year deal.

The implication of this uneven distribution in sequester relief means that fiscal year 2015 will see less extra money to play around with from this deal.

Thompson, however, cautions, "We shouldn't assume any of these agreements mean much beyond the year in which they are passed -- the 2014 number is the one that really matters. Who knows what will happen beyond the election?"

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Security Insiders: Next NSA Chief Should Be a Civilian

Sara Sorcher, National Journal — Tue, 19 Nov 2013 10:07:42 -0500

Two-thirds of National Journal's National Security Insiders support replacing the head of the National Security Agency with a civilian when Army Gen. Keith Alexander retires.

As the agency remains under the spotlight since media outlets have reported on its widespread surveillance programs disclosed by Edward Snowden, the White House is reportedly putting together a list of civilians to replace the embattled director—who also heads the U.S. Cyber Command—and is expected to retire in the spring.

"The NSA's job has evolved enormously since the agency's creation decades ago. Its role within the civilian intelligence community, and civilian society more generally, is now much greater," one Insider said. "A civilian NSA director could better lead the NSA in today's environment." Since the agency was created in 1952, a military officer has been at the helm, and Insiders said the move could improve issues with transparency, especially with Congress. "The NSA has become an agency deeply involved with civilian intelligence-gathering. It is no longer simply a collector," one Insider said. "Thus it needs civilian oversight and leadership and congressional approval of that leadership."

Several Insiders specified that their preference has nothing to do with Alexander. "General Alexander is a national asset," one Insider said. "But too much power is concentrated in his hands. Having a civilian head of NSA is less important than having someone other than the commander of Cyber Command in charge of NSA." Replacing him, another Insider said, is "a politically and policy useful choice at this time, but the president should NOT lock him or his successors into this in perpetuity."

Others took veiled swipes at the current chief and his staff for failing to prevent the leaks that led to the current controversies. "The NSA's cavalier attitude toward internal security to prevent a Snowden incident is inexcusable," one Insider said. "It's a gross failure, and it's on his watch."

One-third of Insiders said it would be a bad idea to fill the NSA post with a civilian. "The problems at NSA do not derive from its military leadership, and it would be a phony fix to suggest that civilian leadership is the solution," one Insider said. "The president and his senior team need to take responsibility for what went on there five years into his administration, and they shouldn't be allowed to try to shift blame onto the military."

The White House could legally replace Alexander, but it should be clear-eyed about the agency's true purpose as a military intelligence agency under the Defense Department, one Insider said. "I have been a part of the NSA and its subordinate units for many years.... Although it has a substantial civilian workforce, it must have a military leader so that its primary mission—to support the specialized intelligence needs of military commanders in combat—is not forgotten," the Insider said. "The NSA is officially designated a Combat Support Agency. Military control is essential if it is to fulfill its role as a Combat Support Agency."

Alexander is doing an excellent job under a lot of pressure, another Insider added. "People do not realize how thoroughly NSA activities are subject to oversight by the Department of Justice, outside specialists, and especially the U.S. Congress."

Separately, Insiders are split 50-50 on whether to keep prosecution of sexual-assault cases within the military's chain of command. Some members of Congress and victim-advocacy organizations would support radically reforming the military justice system by stripping the chain of command's ability to decide whether to prosecute sexual assault cases in the military—a move the Pentagon would oppose.

"Sexual assault is a criminal offense," said one Insider in support of transferring the cases to an independent military justice system. "Judgments made about possible criminal actions and prosecution should be made by law-enforcement and judicial professionals, as in civilian life. The chain of command is important, but not more so than impartial justice." This issue is too important to be left "in the system," another Insider said. "Male influence still dominates the military. Prejudices linger."

Yet the other half of Insiders disagreed, insisting commanders must remain in charge of this matter. "Sexual assaults are crimes like any other crimes. As a former commander, I know how important all criminal cases are, including sexual-assault cases," one Insider said. "There should be no exception to how they are handled under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which gives commanders a unique and important role in dispensing justice and investigating crimes within their command authorities. If a commander fails to discharge his/her duties in a fair, impartial, and thorough manner, then that commander should be replaced, not the military-justice system, which has an excellent track record in dispensing justice. If anything, current and prospective commanders should receive thorough training in how to handle sexual-assault cases. Most will discharge their duties properly, with fairness to both parties, and that is what justice should be all about."

Others said the military should have some more time to reform. The military needs to have "one additional chance to see whether the chain of command can handle prosecution," an Insider said, "and if they fall short of acceptable prosecutorial outcomes, they lose the role they have now. But the larger issue is not prosecuting sexual assault—it's making progress preventing assault."

But some Insiders were more certain in their opposition to the proposed congressional changes. "This is a prime example," one Insider said, "of how destructive good intentions can be."

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How the Military's 'Bro' Culture Turns Women Into Targets

Sara Sorcher, National Journal — Mon, 09 Sep 2013 10:20:29 -0400

Kayla Williams, an Arabic linguist, was the only woman with a group of about 20 troops posted to Iraq's Sinjar Mountain in 2003, and she was almost one of the boys. To kill time while off-duty, the men pretended to hump everything in sight, including the Humvee, during their relatively unsupervised patrol. They put their testicles on one another's faces in a practice called "tea bagging." Their behavior was ridiculous but common among bros deployed in dangerous, remote locations. Sometimes, the men included Williams when they threw pebbles at each other, aiming for holes near the crotches of their pants. "[They started] throwing rocks at my boobs when they were throwing rocks at each other," Williams recalls. "Is that sexual harassment, or are they treating me like one of them? Is it exclusive or inclusive? I can't answer that. It's complicated." But she didn't let it bother her too much.

Then one night, while monitoring the outpost on the side of a mountain, Williams went to relieve a guard on duty. He grabbed her hand. "He had pulled out his penis and was trying to put my hand on his cock," Williams says. She wasn't quite worried she'd be raped—the junior enlisted Army soldier, then 26 years old, was carrying a gun within earshot of others who would hear her if she screamed—but the guard was frighteningly aggressive. After trying to get her to sleep with him, or at least give him a blow job, he gave up and left.

Still, Williams was angry. When she told men in her unit about the incident, they said she'd joined a man's military and asked what she expected to happen. "It definitely made me feel guys who were sexually harassing me, who were violating the rules, who were doing the wrong thing—that guys felt they were more important as soldiers because they were men." Williams, now a Truman National Security Project fellow and the author of Love My Rifle More Than You, didn't want to be a victim, so she stopped joking around and came off as unfriendly, she says. It was a lonely decision with potentially steep costs. "It's hard to be in a combat zone when I'm expected to rely on these guys for my life, but [I] no longer felt I could trust them to not sexually assault me if I let my guard down."

The military's sexual-assault epidemic is well-known—and it is not confined to high-profile cases like the sex-abuse educator discovered running a small-time prostitution ring at Fort Hood, Texas; the Army sergeant charged with secretly videotaping female cadets in West Point bathrooms; or the 33 instructors ensnared in a sex scandal involving twice as many students at Lackland Air Force base, also in Texas. Those scandals fueled the congressional and media frenzy over the 3,374 reported sexual assaults in the military last year. The Pentagon estimates that sexual assaults actually occur far more frequently—and that 26,000 troops were victims of unwanted sexual contact (6.1 percent of the military's women and 1.2 percent of its men) last year alone. Fewer than 1 percent of adults in the civilian world experienced something comparable, according to data in the most recent National Crime Victimization Survey.

Less understood is why the military's culture of abuse has been so hard to combat—let alone eradicate. Other civilian crimes (such as violent assaults or theft) occur at far lower rates in the military, but rampant sexual abuse among the troops persists. The reasons are diffuse and, because of fundamental military values, hard to change. They include a stark gender imbalance (roughly seven men for every woman), blurry lines between professional and personal lives, intense bonding that can foster lascivious rituals, and a hierarchical command structure that can inadvertently enable assaults. The military, of course, is not peopled by rapists. Yet despite the Pentagon's apparently sincere efforts to change the culture, it is proving almost impossible to alter the standards of acceptable behavior, especially in situations where young people have little supervision—leaving intact an environment that can allow those who would assault someone to take things too far. This is the story of why.

A Man's World

Pentagon brass appear to comprehend the problem. In a May interview with USA Today, the director of the Defense Department's Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office, Maj. Gen. Gary Patton, described how sexism and sexual harassment in the military helps create a "permissive environment" where assaults can occur. Women who reported a hostile working environment were six times likelier to say they experienced rape in a survey of female veterans conducted by the University of Iowa Social Science Research Center in 2003; and those who said their ranking officers or supervisors allowed (or made) sexually demeaning comments or gestures were up to four times as likely to cite rape.

That's why officials are trying to modernize the fight against sexual assault, which has persisted through many pledges to reform since the 1991 Navy Tailhook scandal, in which 83 women and seven men were assaulted at a Las Vegas aviators' conference. Back then, "prevention" often meant instructing troops to stay safe by locking doors and windows; now trainers tell them how to identify and disrupt a potential assault. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel in May said commanders would be accountable if they fail to foster a climate that prevents assault, cares for victims, and reduces stigma associated with reporting. This month, Hagel ordered that assault victims get legal representation throughout the judicial process; that the department's inspector general audit closed investigations; and that senior officials within the chain of command receive follow-up reports on assaults and responses. Hagel has also ordered inspections of military facilities to remove sexually explicit and degrading material. Yet attitudes in the military, where those who complain of misconduct are often seen as nuisances and worse, are not very pliable.

Air Force Tech. Sgt. Jennifer Smith, popular among the fighters she worked for, was on track for success. When a young female pilot training at Luke Air Force Base received the call sign "Grassy" because another student revealed she never shaved her private areas, Smith shrugged it off. When pilots screened pornography in front of the crew to amp up for flying missions in Iraq, she shrugged it off. When they sang ditties from the Vietnam War era that had lyrics about mutilating and raping women, she shrugged it off. (To the tune of Willy Wonka's "Candy Man": "Who can take a cheese grater, / Strap it to his arm? / Ram it in her pussy, / And make vagina parmesan? … The S&M man cause he makes it with pain, / And makes the hurt feel good.") The attitude of the older male pilots, Smith recalls, was, "If you're going to run with the men"—especially when men are the bosses—"you'd better learn how to deal with it."

When Smith went to find equipment from a storage area for a flying exercise at Shaw Air Force Base in 2008, she found porn instead. When she asked commanders to remove it, pilots started calling her a "bitch," even though her complaint was supposed to be anonymous and unofficial. After that, Smith deployed to Iraq. There, a service member threw her against a wall and tried to rape her when she was working an overnight shift. At first, Smith didn't come forward because, she says, she was discouraged that her seniors had failed to eliminate the porn stash. Meanwhile, she lost her tolerance for sexual jokes. "I would say, 'That's really inappropriate,' and that didn't go over well. That's like questioning their authority." Fed up, she filed a formal report after she'd returned stateside, disclosing both the porn and her assault. Because she "snitched," her coworkers "dropped me like a hot potato," she said.

The military is full of traditions that linger from its all-male days, and these prompt some women to complain that they are treated as second-class citizens—bolstered by actual job inequality: Women are still barred from front-line combat (at least until 2016) and are outnumbered in the officer corps. They make up only 15 percent of 1.4 million active-duty service members; only 16 percent of officers are women. Of the military's 38 four-star generals or admirals, just one is a woman.

Women's lower status means that their male colleagues sometimes see them as less trustworthy in a "he-said, she-said" scenario, according to psychologist Stephanie Sacks, author of an essay in a 2005 Washington Coalition of Sexual Assault Programs publication on military culture and sexual-assault victims. If a woman is assaulted, wrote Sacks, who also trains military troops in sexual-assault prevention, many men believe "it is at least a little bit her fault because she didn't really belong [in the military] to begin with…. The line goes that if you are going to voluntarily put yourself in the company of large groups of men, especially who are on a deployment and so not having easy access to consensual sex, what do you expect?" If a woman complains, Sacks says, men may feel women are diverting the mission's focus with secondary issues.

Williams, who found out the hard way that she wasn't really one of the boys, says this describes her experience. Yes, she was easygoing and joked around, but the men somehow thought they could turn their explicit jokes into reality. While Williams was lucky to have escaped an assault, many others were not, and the attitudes displayed by her peers after the incident help show why so many assaults go unreported in the military. When Williams was considering complaining, they asked her, "Why would you ruin a man's career just because you can't take it?" She inferred that because she was a woman and not allowed in combat, she was effectively a "second-class citizen": "My career was seen by my peers as being less important."

More worrisome, many servicemen aren't inclined to believe women's complaints in the first place. According to a Corps survey in September 2012, Marines listed being falsely accused of sexual assault as a top concern about opening combat positions to women. A broad swath of research in the civilian world shows that the rate of false reporting is very low, around 2 to 8 percent, as is the case with other felonies. But of 3,374 reported incidents in 2012, military prosecutors won only 238 convictions. A big reason, says former Air Force JAG officer David Frakt, is that "in these he-said, she-said situations, there's no witness, no other physical evidence to corroborate the claims. When the standard is beyond a reasonable doubt, and you have an accused who has a long record of positive military service, no prior history, there's a very high chance of acquittal in that situation."

Acquittal, of course, is not the same thing as innocence, Frakt notes. Yet the military's judicial system can fail victims even before a case gets to trial. Senior commanders, who have convening authority, make the decision about whether to refer a case to a court-martial, where the allegation must be proved beyond a reasonable doubt to earn a conviction. If a commander does not want to move the case forward, he or she can take no action; unilaterally mandate an administrative response (such as a reprimand or counseling) to correct the accused's behavior; or preside over a nonjudicial punishment hearing in which the commander is the "sole decider of facts and punishment," according to Frakt. Punishment options in this case are rather limited—no jail time, no bad conduct discharge, and no criminal convictions.

With so few courts-martial resulting in sexual-assault convictions, troops may be disinclined to believe there's a real problem—an environment that would-be perpetrators can exploit to carry out assaults. So the Pentagon is working to combat this perception. "Between 92 to 98 percent of the time, a victim is telling us the truth. Those are pretty good odds," Nathan Galbreath, a senior official in the Pentagon's Sexual Assault and Prevention Office, says. "We're also trying to educate folks on the difference between a false report and a report where there's insufficient evidence." Last year, commanders could not take action in 509 cases because of "evidentiary problems." Another 1,028 were either outside the department's legal authority or officials thought the accusations "unfounded"—false or baseless. A baseless report usually is presumed truthful but does not meet the formal standards of the crime. It doesn't mean the perpetrator is innocent.

The military is a highly regulated organization, and that is part of the problem. It has rules to cover everything from lipstick shades to suitable golf buddies. These guidelines make it nearly impossible to frame a discussion about consensual sex versus assault, argues Bruce Fleming, a professor at the Naval Academy, where everything from hand-holding to intercourse is outlawed for all four years. "The military is basically a no-sex zone." All bases are intended to be sex-free. Oral sex and adultery are crimes. Public displays of affection in uniform are banned. Officers cannot date, sleep with, or even spend too much time with enlisted troops. The same goes for superiors and inferiors within those ranks. The military's unsuccessful strategy has been to "forbid and punish" everything sexual to try to stop assaults, when instead, Fleming says, it should be "targeting the specific deviant behavior that really matters."

Blanket regulations against everything sexual can create the perception that sexual assault is somehow a lesser crime. Training to be an Arabic cryptologist for the Navy at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, Calif., Tia Christopher, then 19 years old, invited a fellow service member (a pastor's son who had taken her on a Bible study date) to stop by her room—breaking the rules. "It went from, 'Hey, what are you doing, stop!' to him hitting my head on the cinder-block wall behind my bed." Two women were drinking next door and heard the struggle. But because the military offers no amnesty for "collateral misconduct," they at first refused to support Christopher's allegation, fearing they'd be punished for drinking. (They were.)

Semper Fidelis

In the military's closed society, there's a pervasive belief that "you know who can be trusted and who can't," Sacks tells National Journal. Anyone you know so well in your unit couldn't possibly attack someone else, the thinking goes.

This enhanced loyalty is vital in combat, but it's counterproductive when it comes to believing that someone has been assaulted. The victim who reports an incident becomes the "squeaky wheel"—the troublemaker, especially if performance starts to suffer as he or she processes the trauma, Sacks says. People think rapists are ugly and can't get sex another way, says Chris Kilmartin, a psychology professor at the Air Force Academy. They're not. "They tend to be more handsome, charming, and have more consensual sex than non-rapists, and [are] very good at cultivating the appearance of being a nice guy. So when there's an assault taking place, people who know this guy say, 'He's such a nice guy, there's no way he can do it.' " Afterward, of course, civilians assaulted in the workplace can look for another job if they want; troops are locked in for years.

Knowing they have to stay in an environment where the group may side with the perpetrator can discourage victims from reporting the attack. Christopher heard stories about women who lost their careers and friends by divulging the incident, so she bleached her sheets and tried to forget that her assault took place. But because her attacker started stalking her at the chow hall and en route to class, she finally came forward. When her commander in charge of the Navy detachment at the language-training base belittled her rape report, she started having panic attacks, lost 30 pounds, and began failing classes where she'd previously scored A's. Even other women turned against her. "This girl, she was Puerto Rican"—like the attacker—"called me a 'racist bitch.' " Victimized men may face even higher hurdles. "It's hard to imagine how could a man, especially a strong, tough man with a weapon, be sexually assaulted. So if they are, it brings up questions about their masculinity," Sacks says. "Do you want somebody on your team who is a victim, somebody who couldn't fight back?"

Assailants in the military who go unchecked in an environment skeptical of assaults can find more victims. Christopher later found the same woman who insulted her crying in a stairwell. "She said, 'I'm so sorry. He raped me.' "

Because of the long odds for a conviction and the high cost (in stigma) attached to reporting, the Pentagon worries that victims are disinclined to file complaints. New programs allow "restricted reporting" so victims can get health care without pressing charges or naming their attackers, but these options can reinforce the belief that sexual-assault victims are weak, need special treatment, or made it all up to milk the system. "The victim is immediately identified as a victim," says Frakt. Fellow troops may see the person receiving "all kinds of perks," including getting off work, obtaining counseling, and taking convalescent leave. "In an environment like the military, which treasures toughness and sort of dealing with your own problems, all of these services may feed a perception these people ... [are] not cut out for the military way of life." Already, male soldiers often see pregnancy as a tactic women use to escape a war zone. They may now believe that restricted reports are a "guilt-free" way for women to escape an unpleasant deployment, Frakt says. "Maybe they don't like their commander, supervisor."

What's more, would-be sexual predators have many opportunities in a culture where everyone is a direct superior or subordinate. A trainee, according to Protect Our Defenders President Nancy Parrish, is told that superiors are essentially "your preacher, your boss, your father figure, your God." If the superior orders, say, an unusual after-hours office visit, trainees go. Otherwise, they can be written up for failing to follow orders. Sexual-assault victims are usually lower-ranking. At Lackland Air Force base, where every recruit goes for basic training, 24 instructors were convicted recently of misconduct with trainees, according to reports. In August, the Pentagon removed 60 recruiters, drill instructors, and sexual-assault counselors from duty after finding violations related to alcohol, child abuse, and sexual assault. Another problem is the difficulty in screening for predatory behavior: Until a person is in a position of authority, it's hard to tell who will abuse it.

Because higher-ranking service-members are responsible for what happens on their watch, they have an incentive to ignore accusations against their subordinates or even to attack victims' credibility, Parrish says. "So the retaliation begins: charging them with collateral misconduct, beginning to write them up for a series of so-called misbehaviors, or sending them to psych wards to be misdiagnosed with errant medical diagnoses such as personality disorder." Those procedures can even lead to discharge. According to the Pentagon report, 62 percent of victims who filed complaints said they were retaliated against professionally, socially, or administratively. Commanders can also make judicial decisions, as when a three-star general overturned the aggravated-assault conviction of Lt. Col. James Wilkerson, whom a jury of military officers sentenced in November to detention and dismissal from the military.

That case fueled a push on Capitol Hill for an independent military judiciary to handle sexual-assault cases, but the Pentagon still believes commanders are best equipped to deal with the problem. Frakt notes they can dole out administrative punishments like fines or demotions when a court-martial conviction isn't likely. "They recognize it's probably less [punishment] than the person deserves, but it's not going to be in the hands of a jury. People work very hard to do the right thing." Yet victims often interpret these moves as just a slap on the wrist for their attacker. Delilah Rumburg, who leads the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Rape and the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, says the biggest complaint she hears from female victims is "not so much they failed to get a conviction" but that the military system did not allow for a fair process.

Hollow Force

When Christopher left the military, "I was like, 'I'm going to go to fucking Oprah.' " Four days later, she watched on television as the Twin Towers fell on Sept. 11, 2001. "Walmart started selling flag T-shirts. You hadn't really seen a lot of patriotism in a long time. I thought to myself, 'There's no way I can talk about this. No one's going to want to hear what happened to me when there's this fervor going around.' I was silent for many years."

Now that the military is no longer on a war footing, victims like Christopher and advocacy groups hope they will have a chance to reshape the military's structure and focus on combating the enemy within. The onslaught of media reports on sex scandals has fueled momentum among lawmakers on Capitol Hill and senior officials in the Pentagon.

Despite this can-do attitude, no quick fix is available. Policymakers can install victim-assistance programs, but until there's less stigma attached to reporting sexual crimes, they will go underused. Commanders can promise to take assault cases seriously, but until the conviction rate rises, victims will see their superiors as ineffective or untrustworthy. The military can oust abusers, but in a system where commanders ultimately make all the decisions, it won't get consistent results. The Pentagon can mandate prevention training and the press can sensationalize abuse scandals, but when troops see all this as a witch hunt rather than a true problem, they will foster a culture that allows true assailants to operate relatively freely.

And defense leaders themselves may be out of touch with behaviors that evolve on the front. When Kayla Williams lived on an Iraqi mountainside among all those men, she and her fellow soldiers slept in a pen circumscribed by barbed wire to prevent incursions. Despite the many military regulations, they created their own culture from norms they thought were acceptable. It was powered by sexually explicit jokes and exposed genitalia.

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The Sequester Will Lift, Not Cut, Defense Costs

Sara Sorcher, National Journal — Tue, 30 Jul 2013 10:24:57 -0400

In retrospect, Bob Stevens was overselling. Last summer, to help motivate lawmakers to undo the sequester, Lockheed Martin’s then-CEO warned that the impending cuts might force him to lay off 10,000 of the defense giant’s 120,000 employees. That never happened. But Lockheed, which reported $39 billion in net sales last year from government contracts, supports a giant ecosystem of subcontractors that provide parts and technology for Pentagon programs. How would the budget cuts affect them?

Mapping that ecosystem would be virtually impossible (just last year, for instance, the Defense Department committed $360 billion on 14 million contracts), so National Journal decided to look at one program as a proxy: the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the country’s costliest weapon system. Like almost everything else in the defense budget, its contracts are subject to sequestration’s looming across-the-board cuts. The U.S. is already buying 409 fewer planes than the 2,852 originally planned and has delayed the production of an additional 179.

But even this program is too unwieldy for a systematic investigation. Lockheed, the lead contractor, makes the aircraft’s nose and wing, but Northrop Grumman makes the fuselage, BAE Systems builds the tail section, and Pratt & Whitney constructs the engines. Altogether, 32,500 people across 46 states work on the program. There are 1,400 companies directly supplying the four major contractors. Of those, 600 are considered small businesses.

So, to narrow the focus further, I traced a single set of components down the supply chain. Lockheed’s F-35 gets its engine from Pratt & Whitney, which uses metal bearings from New Hampshire Ball Bearings, which buys super-tough metal from a specialty steel mill in Pennsylvania—a Russian nesting doll of national security. Ball Aerospace, which supplies Lockheed with the plane’s antennae, and Faustson Tool, which makes the antennae housing, also gave perspective.

In the end, Lockheed can make fewer fighters and Pratt can make fewer engines than initially planned; they’re big companies with lots of revenue streams, and they’ll be fine. But the sequester will rattle smaller companies already toughening metals, crafting parts, and writing software for planes that won’t be ready for years. Some of these suppliers, analysts predict, will leave the defense industry or go out of business, imperiling the weapons they build. “With sequestration, what looks like modest cuts at the top of the system, down at the supplier level looks like the difference between life and death,” says Loren Thompson, chief operating officer of the Lexington Institute think tank and also a consultant to Lockheed. “It could be the difference between making and losing money for a small enterprise located far from the capital.”

Even for those that survive, the cutbacks will likely change the way they build their budgets, forcing them to reduce risk by raising costs—at taxpayer expense. Unexpected reductions will strain already-thin margins. If a company has prepared for more business, for instance, it may have invested in machines, buildings, staff, and even parking lots. Less volume means charging higher prices to defray those costs. It’s like a shared apartment: If one of three roommates moves out, the others still have to pay the same rent. They may need higher salaries to afford it.

The risk is not just monetary: These hard-to-trace supplier disruptions are an “insidious problem,” says Aerospace Industries Association President and CEO Marion Blakey, a problem that could eventually imperil the defense industrial base and its ability to meet the demand for weapons that national security experts say America needs. “None of us know when all of a sudden the slight tremors we’re feeling under our feet will prove to be a much bigger shift in … the ability of the industry to deliver,” she says.

Consider the companies in this story as a microcosm of the giant supply chain. Other businesses supplying the F-35—or more-vulnerable defense programs—are facing similar challenges. Once the Pentagon officially implements sequester cuts, contracting life will become even worse.

Security Insiders: Thad Allen Should Replace Napolitano as DHS Secretary

Sara Sorcher, National Journal — Tue, 23 Jul 2013 09:27:18 -0400

Thad Allen, a retired Coast Guard admiral widely praised for his handling of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, should replace Janet Napolitano as Homeland Security Secretary when she retires in September, a plurality of National Journal's National Security Insiders say.

Nearly 40 percent chose Allen over several other names commonly floated as possible replacements for Napolitano. "The next Secretary must reassure those who demand stronger border security in return for immigration reform, and implement reform, a the Herculean management challenge," one Insider said. "On both counts Allen is best. Further, he now has experience in the private sector; it will be critical to smooth and efficient implementation of reform." Allen, former commandant of the Coast Guard, is now an executive vice president at Booz Allen Hamilton. (Disclosure: Allen is a National Journal Insider but was not included in this poll.)

"Thad Allen would bring a degree of competence to DHS that it sorely needs," one Insider said. Another said Allen has "all the right qualifications, far better than anyone else on this list.

"Question is, does he have enough energy at this point in his career to put in the hours, and to put up with the worst bureaucratic mess in Washington?"

Twenty-eight percent of Insiders had other suggestions, including Wilson Center CEO Jane Harman, the former California congresswoman who was House Intelligence Committee ranking Democrat. Harman, one Insider said, "has demonstrated she knows how to manage, she knows Washington, and she understands the demands of homeland defense and how to balance them with civil liberties." Two Insiders wrote in Rand Beers, a Homeland Security undersecretary for National Protection and Programs. "Beers is currently No. 3 in DHS and a superb choice for a smooth transition and a knowledgeable player."

Ray Kelly, the New York City police commissioner who has developed a national reputation since 9/11, earned 18 percent of the vote, followed by Jane Holl Lute, who until recently served as Napolitano's No. 2 and left the department to work on international Internet issues, with 13 percent. Only 2 percent of Insiders voted for Transportation Security Administration Administrator John Pistole, and no one voted for Craig Fugate, Federal Emergency Management Agency administrator.

Separately, the White House acknowledges a "zero option" of leaving no U.S. troops in Afghanistan past the 2014 deadline to end combat operations is on the table, even though no decisions have been made. Two-thirds of Insiders would not support that option.

"Because the Karzai government is so weak, if NATO forces wholly pull out, the Afghan security forces will likely take power in a coup," one Insider said. "Lacking political experience in a fractious land where central authority has long been weak, the security forces will be unable to shape a political consensus to end the fighting. Risks of terrorist safe havens in Afghanistan -- America's main reason for intervening -- would escalate."

Another Insider said the option is unsound both as a policy and as a negotiating gambit. "Simply floating the idea reveals yet again that after more than a dozen years of our Afghan adventure, we still have no understanding of how to deal with Afghans."

One-third of Insiders would support leaving no follow-on force. The troops, one Insider said, "will not be enough to make a difference on security; they will not be able to make a military silk purse out of the Afghani military, and they will be targets."

"Time to end America's longest war -- completely!" another Insider added.

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Who Will Be the Next Homeland Security Secretary?

Sara Sorcher, National Journal — Fri, 12 Jul 2013 16:28:49 -0400

News that Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is stepping down to become president of the University of California system sent Washington policy wonks into a frenzy of speculation about who would take her place this fall.

While White House press secretary Jay Carney said he had no names to offer, given Napolitano will stay in her job until early September, that did not stop the guesswork. Here are some of the names floated by Capitol Hill sources who work on security issues:

Retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, widely praised for his handling of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita;
Wilson Center CEO Jane Harman, the former California congresswoman who was House Intelligence Committee ranking Democrat;
Jane Holl Lute, who until recently served as Napolitano’s No. 2 and left the department to work on international Internet issues;
Joe Lieberman, the recently retired independent (and hawkish) senator from Connecticut who chaired the Senate’s Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee;
Sen. Susan Collins, a Republican senator from Maine, a former ranking member of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs; and
Ray Kelly, the New York City police commissioner who has developed a national reputation since 9/11. Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer publicly pushed for Kelly on Friday.

Defense-watchers off the Hill also weighed in: A former administration official who preferred to remain anonymous speculates that Mike Leiter, former director of the National Counterterrorism Center who is now a senior official at Palantir Technologies, or Transportation Security Administration Administrator John Pistole may be tapped.

National Journal earlier reported that possible successors to Napolitano, should she step down in a second Obama administration, could also include Bill Bratton, an internationally renowned law-enforcement expert who has run the police departments in New York, Boston, and Los Angeles; or Clark Ervin, the department’s former inspector general who runs the homeland-security project at the Aspen Institute.

Rebecca Kaplan contributed.

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Congress Ineffectively Oversees National Security, Insiders Say

Sara Sorcher, National Journal — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 09:38:14 -0400

Three-quarters of National Journal's National Security Insiders said Congress ineffectively oversees the executive branch's national security programs.

"Congress has for years been a lapdog to the executive branch and does not exercise much meaningful oversight over national security programs," one Insider said. There is too much to oversee, and Congress has no real expertise, another added. "Politicization means that there is no agreement on what 'oversight' means." Some blamed partisan politics for the problem. "It is not possible to provide adequate oversight when viewing national security through tinted, extremely partisan views. National security suffers when not approached in a bipartisan view."

One-quarter of Insiders disagreed, saying Congress is effective at checking the executive branch on security issues, at least to some degree. "Congressional committees dealing with national security have mostly dedicated members and strong staffs, and committees have stronger bipartisan traditions than do those in other areas," one Insider said. "A weakness, however, is that the Congress abets populist politics by managing one scandal at a time and obsessing on protection of spending in members' districts and states." Another Insider pointed out that lawmakers' control is limited. "I believe that some do as well as they can, considering the executive branch controls the keys to the information vaults."

Does Congress play an effective oversight role over the executive branch's national security programs?

(50 votes)

No 74%
Yes 26%

"Too many members of Congress are intimidated by national security. The rapid turnover in recent years has diminished the bench of members with the experience and confidence to engage with the executive branch on these issues."

"Congress could play an effective role with its constitutional appropriations authority but rarely uses the power it has at

its disposal."

"Congress has lost its way in real oversight. Their role now is narrow and reactive. Not only do they fail to offer solutions, they don't even try to define the problem well."

"In my experience, they are easily bulldozed by skilled briefers."

"In my job, we visit the Hill. We literally had a congressman tell the class that congressmen don't have time for national security and it's not important. The fact that Congress hasn't declared war, its most sacred duty, since 1942 [when it declared war on Bulgaria, Hungary, and Romania] should tell us something."

"It used to. It is now that body that engages in random acts of after-sight, and partisan at that. It complains more than it oversees."

"As with almost every other aspect of public policy, severe partisanship overcomes the work of Congress."

"Under the previous administration, but no longer."

"The initial abdication came during the Gulf of Tonkin. Only worse since. Cowardice over taking responsibility for potential disasters sustains the status quo."

"But it rarely has. The Constitution sets up a natural conflict, and that has never really done much for 'oversight.' It has [been] worsened, however, by the declining quality of Hill staff. The old adage was, there were two types on the Hill—those who want to do something and those who want to play games. The games-players—often frustrated former program staffers—head to the Hill to inflict their often ill-informed opinions."

"You must be joking. They are entirely (politically) rational in

their near-total negligence of their constitutional obligations. Why

take risks?"

Yes

"On national security, the Congress ought to be more dispassionate

and exercise prudent, long-term risk management."

"It depends on the meaning of 'effective,' doesn't it? It also depends on the committee. Overall, probably good enough to usually satisfy minimal constitutional requirements, but frequently bureaucratic, burdensome, and overly political."

"But, thankfully, we have a two-party system to ensure there is

genuine oversight."

National Security Insiders: Gordon Adams, Charles Allen, Thad Allen, James Bamford, David Barno, Milt Bearden, Peter Bergen, Samuel "Sandy" Berger, David Berteau, Stephen Biddle, Nancy Birdsall, Marion Blakey, Kit Bond, Stuart Bowen, Paula Broadwell, Mike Breen, Mark Brunner, Steven Bucci, Nicholas Burns, Dan Byman, James Jay Carafano, Phillip Carter, Wendy Chamberlin, Michael Chertoff, Frank Cilluffo, James Clad, Richard Clarke, Steve Clemons, Joseph Collins, William Courtney, Lorne Craner, Roger Cressey, Gregory Dahlberg, Robert Danin, Richard Danzig, Daniel Drezner, Mackenzie Eaglen, Paul Eaton, Andrew Exum, William Fallon, Eric Farnsworth, Jacques Gansler, Stephen Ganyard, Daniel Goure, Mike Green, Mark Gunzinger, Jim Harper, Michael Hayden, Michael Herson, Pete Hoekstra, Bruce Hoffman, Paul Hughes, Colin Kahl, Donald Kerrick, Rachel Kleinfeld, Lawrence Korb, David Kramer, Andrew Krepinevich, Charlie Kupchan, W. Patrick Lang, Cedric Leighton, James Lindsay, Justin Logan, Trent Lott, Peter Mansoor, Ronald Marks, Brian McCaffrey, Steven Metz, Franklin Miller, Philip Mudd, John Nagl, Shuja Nawaz, Kevin Nealer, Michael Oates, Thomas Pickering, Paul Pillar, Stephen Rademaker, Marc Raimondi, Celina Realuyo, Bruce Riedel, Barry Rhoads, Marc Rotenberg, Kori Schake, Mark Schneider, John Scofield, Tammy Schultz, Stephen Sestanovich, Sarah Sewall, Matthew Sherman, Jennifer Sims, Constanze Stelzenmüller, Frances Townsend, Mick Trainor, Suzanne Spaulding, Ted Stroup, Tamara Wittes, Dov Zakheim, and Juan Zarate.

(Image via Mesut Dogan/Shutterstock.com)

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The FBI's Approach to the Boston Bombings

Sara Sorcher, National Journal — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 15:37:43 -0400

All day, cable news networks streamed live details from in Watertown, Mass., where police have locked down the area as it continues its door-to-door manhunt for the Boston Marathon bombing suspect still on the run. The FBI has a massive job to do. It must defuse the tense situation and free residents who are hiding in their homes; gather forensic evidence and witness statements; determine if there’s an international connection; and ideally bring the suspect alive to an American courtroom.

First, some background: Hours after the FBI released to the public images of the suspects who may be responsible for the deaths of three people and injuries of 170 others at the Boston Marathon finish line, the two men allegedly on Thursday night tried to rob a convenience store near the MIT campus. They also carjacked a car, from which they lobbed explosives at police in a shout-out into Watertown. Amid the violence, one suspect, identified as Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, died. His younger brother, the second suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, escaped.

Their motivation remains unclear. “You’d expect these guys to get out of town, have some money, have a plan,” said Jeff Lanza, retired FBI special agent. Since they were caught robbing a 7-Eleven store with no apparent plan to flee Boston, the bombings may not be related to some larger plot or network, Lanza said. “A larger plot would have been a flat-out suicide bomb, or [the larger organization] would have tried to get those people out after the attack. There’s clearly no effort to do that.” Still, news reports claim Tamerlan’s YouTube channel contains lectures from the radical Australian Muslim preacher Sheikh Feiz Mohammed and videos in Russian from preacher Abdel al-Hamid al-Juhani, who Fox News claims was influential with radical jihadists in Chechnya and the Russian Caucuses.

With many open questions, the FBI was working to piece together this puzzle. How are they going to do it?National Journal looks at the various stages of the ongoing investigation.

IDENTIFYING THE SUSPECTS

After Monday’s deadly bombings, agents culled through images and videos from the jam-packed Boston Marathon until they found images of suspect No.1 appearing to drop a package at one of the bombing sites. The FBI then likely performed “link analysis,” Lanza said, to determine if he had a co-conspirator, delving through the frames to see if there was another person—a process that eventually led them to the second suspect who was close behind. Before those images were released publicly, the FBI likely ran through their databases to determine if they had any leads to identify them on their own. Without such information, the FBI released the relatively clear photos to the masses, where people like Eric Mercado, who went to high school with suspect No. 2 Dzhokhar, was able to recognize his floppy hair and backwards hat and “had an idea it was him.”

GATHERING EVIDENCE

There’s a good chance that the suspects' home was booby-trapped. Bomb squads would need to scope out locations before agents could enter, likely why Massachusetts state police announced a “controlled explosion” on Norfolk Street in Cambridge, likely where the brothers had been living together. Once they have access, agents will begin a detailed investigation into the suspects' backgrounds. They will analyze every communication—from computers to e-mail to Word documents and cell phones—and talk to roommates, neighbors and family members. They will glean information from travel records and banking statements and their social media platforms. This is important for the development of an eventual prosecution, but also to find people to encourage the suspect to surrender. “If the suspect is barricaded in a house, it’s appropriate to contact the family to see if there’s a way to reason with him,” said Jeff Horblit, chief of investigative firm Northeast Intelligence Group, who is also a former FBI agent and New York prosecutor. Agents will build a web of everyone the suspects interacted with; then, they will determine which people were completely innocent, which may be witnesses and which were potential accomplices.

SCOURING THE CRIME SCENE

Agents are collecting clues from Boston’s various crime scenes, including the lid from the pressure cooker that was used as a bomb, which will almost certainly have fingerprints, said Frances Townsend, former Homeland Security Adviser to George W. Bush. “People don’t appreciate the painstaking process—because they don’t see it—of putting together tiny, tiny bits of information so they can step back and see the picture it builds,” Townsend said. “We still have this very active manhunt but as the story unfolds we’re learning more and more about these suspects.”

There are also other crimes scenes now, including the vehicle of the MIT campus police officer who was found inside with multiple gunshot wounds on Thursday night. The Mercedes owner who was the carjacking victim was with the suspects for roughly a half hour before he was released uninjured-- and according to news reports, the suspects told him they were behind the Boston blasts. “If that’s the case that person is now an incredibly important eyewitness… That’s an admission by the suspects; that’s admissible in a criminal trial," Horblit said.

DETERMINING AN OVERSEAS CONNECTION

The evidence will lead the FBI to determine whether there’s a connection to a group or individual overseas. The brothers are from a Russian region near Chechnya, but they have been in the United States for about a decade. Dzhokhar attended Cambridge Rindge and Latin School in Cambridge, and may have attended the University of Massachusetts (Dartmouth), which says it is in the process of a controlled evacuation “in response to information that the person being sought in connection with the Boston Marathon bombing is a registered student.”

With all this time in the United States, Horblit said, “it’s premature to conclude [their national origin] has any relevance." While the possibility of a full investigation overseas is likely on hold, the agency does, however, most likely want to speak with parents and relatives of the suspects. While some are local -- the suspects’ uncle in Maryland apologized to their victims, called them "losers" but proclaimed the idea that Islam would play a part was "fraud"-- some are overseas. The suspects’ father told the Associated Press from the southern Russian republic of Dagestan they were “set up.”

Face-to-face meetings would be preferable, experts said. While the FBI is capable of sending agents from the U.S., it also has officers in most countries throughout the world stationed at American embassies who could likely conduct these interviews. However, Townsend said, “if it requires an interview with an agent knowledgeable about the details of the investigation, they will put an agent on the plane to do that." More aggressive legal action, like a search, however, cannot be conducted without a request to the country itself-- and would likely be carried out by the host nation's law enforcement. “An agent may be present when that happens for the chain of evidence."

CAPTURING AND QUESTIONING THE SUSPECT

The most accurate sense of the brothers’ motivations will likely come from Dzhokhar himself when he’s taken into custody. “There is nothing these authorities want more than to take this young man alive,” Horblit said. “From an investigative standpoint, personal standpoint, moral standpoint.” But the suspect has a say in this. If he decides to shoot at officers, he is more likely to be killed. Even if the suspect is killed before he can be captured and brought to trial, Townsend said, “there’s an awful lot of forensic data [to create a case."

"They’ll put this together with or without him," she added.

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Who Is Lisa Monaco, the White House's Counterterrorism Adviser?

Sara Sorcher, National Journal — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 14:56:24 -0400

After two explosions rocked the Boston Marathon on Monday, President Obama huddled with some of his closest advisers. In the Oval Office was Chief of Staff Denis McDonough and FBI Director Robert Mueller, who sat with his chin in his hands and a white binder in his lap. Across from the engraved wooden desk to the president’s left was a relative newcomer, homeland-security and counterterrorism adviser Lisa Monaco. She held a capped pen to her face as if deep in thought. The streets of her hometown had burst into chaos, a grim reminder that Monaco’s job is a big one: advising the president on how to best protect his country.

Monaco, who replaced John Brennan after he was confirmed as CIA director, took her new job counseling the president on counterterrorism policy and coordinating the executive branch’s homeland-security activities just one month ago. She’s now charged with keeping the president updated about the bombings that killed at least three people and injured more than 100 others at the finish line of the world's oldest annual marathon, a Boston institution since 1897.

The explosions, which the Obama administration calls an act of terror, hit close to home for Monaco, who was raised in Newton, Mass. and attended the Winsor School, an all-girls prep school, before attending Harvard University. With Americans clamoring for answers, Obama insisted Tuesday that “we still do not know who did this or why” and pledged to hold those responsible.

Obama’s response, partly, is Monaco’s responsibility. And both components—investigating the incident and eventually prosecuting the culprit—speak to her history at the Justice Department and FBI. While she’s a relative newcomer to this particular role, Monaco is no stranger to stressful, high-profile jobs: As assistant attorney general for national security, she oversaw Justice’s national security division since 2011 after moving up the ranks there. She and Mueller have worked closely together before: The University of Chicago Law School graduate was his former counsel and chief of staff. She initially joined the FBI on detail from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia.

At the FBI, Philip Mudd sat with Monaco through virtually every staff meeting and threat briefing since they first met in 2005. Mudd, who met Monaco while working in the same hallway when he came from the CIA to serve as the bureau’s then-new National Security Branch deputy director, said Monaco’s background in law enforcement and prosecution is starkly different then Brennan’s, who hailed from a foreign intelligence and CIA background. This makes Monaco an excellent official to manage a domestic crisis like Boston, Mudd said.

“She sat on both sides of Pennsylvania Avenue,” Mudd said, giving her both an understanding of how the FBI will investigate this case and how the Justice Department might prosecute it.

Frances Townsend, former homeland-security adviser to President George W. Bush who worked with Monaco at various points in their careers, agreed. “She is literally tailor-made to coordinate this sort of an event.” Monaco was a federal prosecutor for six years until 2007, handling high-profile cases including the prosecution of former Enron executives. She also served as Attorney General Janet Reno’s counsel from 1998 to 2001, handling national security, law enforcement, budget, and oversight issues. Monaco’s experience, Townsend said, helps her know the right questions to ask the investigators, and then how to give the president advice about the ongoing investigation’s strengths and vulnerabilities.

On Tuesday, Obama said it remains unclear whether the Boston attack was carried out by a foreign or domestic terrorist group or a malevolent individual. As the FBI investigates the case, Monaco will liaise between her former boss and her new one. “Because of her personal relationship of trust with the FBI director, he’s going to be able to talk with her in a more informal way—when he might not to someone he doesn’t know so well,” Townsend said. “That’s all to the benefit of the president when the president is trying to evaluate.” While Obama will receive formal briefings, likely from both the FBI and intelligence agencies, “he can also factor in the additional nuance that someone like Lisa can bring to this because of her relationships in the law-enforcement community. That’s a huge advantage.”

Center for a New American Security senior fellow Phillip Carter, who formerly led detainee policy at the Pentagon, worked with Monaco when she was a high-ranking Justice Department official responsible for a swath of national security issues in 2009. “Lisa’s a cool, deliberate person who really has the persona of a federal prosecutor," he said. "In most discussions [she] would typically ask ‘What’s the evidence?’ or ‘Where do the facts point us?’ and then make decisions based on a cool, dispassionate weighting of that in a way a prosecutor would. She’s also very tough; there’s no compunction at all about pursuing tougher options in the counterterrorism world on her part. She really understood the need to be aggressive and the different tools at her disposal, whether it’s the use of prosecution, military, and intelligence tools.” As Monaco handles the Boston case, Carter said, she will bring her cool-headed approach. “I can imagine her counseling the need to find out the facts first before making any decisions or taking any significant action,” Carter said.

Monaco will also likely coordinate the domestic agencies working the case. While the FBI typically takes the lead in these matters, Carter said, the White House will work very closely with state and local agencies, and the Department of Homeland Security, and also “across the Rubicon with the intelligence community” and others, Carter said. “I can see Lisa doing an extraordinary job of bringing all these players together to gather facts and make decisions.” Monaco’s personal relationship with Mueller and the FBI leadership, Townsend added, gives her the ability to cut though the bureaucracy in a way an outsider may not be able to.

Success in this type of role comes down to the nexus of Monaco’s experience with her personality. “You’ve got to keep cool,” Mudd says, “and that’s hard to do if you don’t have the experience she has.” The U.S. has been dealing with these homeland-security issues for 12 years since the 9/11 attacks, Mudd notes, but “the number of people who have senior executive experience at multiple agencies [like Monaco] is relatively rare.”

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Behind Rand Paul's Filibuster of John Brennan

Sara Sorcher — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 09:25:21 -0500

Sen. Rand Paul is at it again: Angry about the Obama administration’s claim there may be situations when it might be appropriate to kill U.S. citizens on American soil in certain situations, the Kentucky Republican took to the Senate floor for nearly 13 hours, from Wednesday at 11:47 a.m. until almost 1:00 a.m. Thursday, to delay the nomination of John Brennan to become CIA director. The Senate could vote on Brennan’s nomination as early as Thursday.

For weeks, Paul has demanded answers about whether the Obama administration’s targeted killing program could apply within this country before he would allow a vote on Brennan’s nomination. In a letter this week, Attorney General Eric Holder insisted the U.S. government has not carried out drone strikes in this country and has no intention of doing so — and would prefer to rely on law-enforcement authorities to pursue terrorists at home.

However, Holder added it is possible “to imagine an extraordinary circumstance in which it would be necessary and appropriate under the Constitution and applicable laws of the United States for the President to authorize the military to use lethal force within the territory of the United States”. This could include a catastrophic attack in the nature of Pearl Harbor or the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. For his part, Brennan, currently Obama’s counterterrorism adviser, told Paul in a letter he would have no “power” to authorize lethal operations in this country since the CIA would never conduct them.

None of this satisfied Paul, who was joined in his filibuster by colleagues including Sens. Mike Lee, R-Utah; Ted Cruz, R-Texas; John Barrasso, R-Wyoming; Jerry Moran, R-Kansas; Marco Rubio, R-Fla.; Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga.; Pat Toomey, R-Pa.; and even a Democrat — Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky. “Are we so afraid of terrorists that we are willing to throw away our rights and our freedoms?” Paul said, after promising to “speak as long as it takes, until the alarm is sounded from coast to coast that our Constitution is important, that your rights to trial by jury are precious, that no American should be killed by a drone on American soil without first being charged with a crime, without first being found to be guilty by a court.”

The last verbal filibuster on the Senate floor was conducted in 2010 by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., in opposition to tax legislation. Paul's filibuster was long, but still quite a ways from the Senate record: In 1957, Sen. Strom Thurmond, R-S.C., spoke for 24 hours, 18 minutes in opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1957.

Senators’ concerns about deployment of armed drones at home were apparent earlier Wednesday during a Judiciary Committee hearing. Cruz asked Holder if a drone could kill a terrorist suspect who may be involved in plots but is “sitting quietly at a café” in the United States. Holder said, “No.”

"We would use our normal law-enforcement authorities in order to resolve situations along those lines and then use the normal things that you do when you try to decide if cops can shoot somebody," Holder said.

Even so, Cruz said he is planning to introduce legislation to make clear the U.S. government cannot kill one of its citizens on American soil absent an imminent threat.

Fellow Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina came out in defense of the military acting against an imminent terrorist threat at home. “Wouldn't that be kind of crazy to exempt the homeland, the biggest prize for the terrorists, to say for some reason the military can't defend America here in an appropriate circumstance?” Graham asked at the hearing. If a hijacked plane is headed towards the Capitol or White House, Graham said in the hearing, the military may need to launch Patriot missile batteries — and Holder agreed the military may need to act.

“Let's go back in time: What would we all give to have those Patriot missile batteries available on September the 10th, 2001, in New York and Washington?” Graham said. “It would have meant that we would have lost a planeload of American citizens, but we'd save thousands more. That's the world in which we live.”

This article appeared in the Thursday, March 7, 2013 edition of National Journal Daily.

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National Security Insiders: Sequestration is Going to Happen

Sara Sorcher, National Journal — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 11:20:19 -0500

Sequestration is now the most likely scenario, according to 78 percent of National Journal's National Security Insiders, who are not optimistic that Congress and the White House will reach a deal to reduce the deficit by the March 1 deadline.

"Since neither side is able to put the national interest above their own political interests, automatic cuts will do their jobs for them," one Insider said.

President Obama last week called on Congress to pass a smaller package of spending cuts and tax reforms to delay sequestration a few more months past March 1, to avoid the $85 billion in across-the-board cuts divided between defense and nondefense discretionary accounts "until Congress finds a way to replace these cuts with a smarter solution." Republicans, however, quickly rebuffed that plan.

"If Republicans cannot get a new deal involving entitlement cuts but no added tax revenue, they prefer accepting sequestration cuts to defense programs as the price of getting some cuts to civil programs. If Democrats cannot get a deal involving more tax revenue but without entitlement cuts, they prefer accepting sequestration cuts to civil programs as the price of getting some defense cuts," one Insider said. "And neither side thinks it can get a new deal that is acceptable to it." With President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, still butting heads over the best plan, one Insider said it is "hard to see how this cast of characters can square the circle."

"Congress is similar to a defiant toddler; sometimes you've got to let them put their hand on the hot stove in order for them to learn a lesson," one Insider said.

A 22 percent faction was more optimistic that sequestration would be avoided. "In fine D.C. tradition, we will stumble forward until the moment of disaster and come forward with a suboptimal compromise," one Insider said. "It is what we do so well here."

Separately, 84 percent of Insiders said that the White House can use force preemptively if the U.S. uncovers credible evidence of a major cyberattack from abroad. The New York Times reported on the secret legal review that gives President Obama the broad power to launch such a strike if a cyberattack is imminent. "The president should be able to use force to defend the United States regardless of the nature of the threat," one Insider said. Another added: "A cyberattack that targets infrastructure could be as debilitating as a bomb."

The president's use of force is legitimate especially if the cyberattack adversely affects major portions of the nation's critical infrastructure, one Insider said. "Cyberspace must be regarded as a domain of warfare, just like we view air, sea, land, and space now. If a cyberattack results in loss of life or negatively impacts the economy, the president can legitimately use force in his response in order to neutralize the threat posed by the cyberattack."

The question here is what constitutes an attack and what is force in cyberspace, cautioned another Insider who agrees that the president should preempt a cyberattack. "Exploitation or attack via the Internet is different from a kinetic strike. The law of war and the resolution of other legal issues regarding cyberoperations are in their infancy. The standard for credible evidence will include a very broad range of factors that create great flexibility until the legal framework matures."

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Vast majority of national security insiders want Defense, CIA nominees confirmed

Sara Sorcher, National Journal — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 09:44:00 -0500

Washington is abuzz with speculation about whether defense hawks’ opposition will derail the confirmation of former Sen. Chuck Hagel as Defense secretary. The Nebraska Republican is under fire for his reluctance to consider military action against Iran and his past disparaging remarks against the “Jewish lobby.” But 82 percent of National Journal’s National Security Insiders support his confirmation.

“Senator Hagel showed political courage in breaking with his political party on the Iraq war after it began to be mismanaged. He helped Americans better grasp the risks of this conflict, and history has shown he was right,” one Insider said. “As chair of the Atlantic Council, the senator has vigorously supported NATO, building confidence among U.S. allies and among Americans who are skeptical of isolationism. [He] will be a centrist and admirably independent-minded voice at the helm of the Defense Department.”

Another Insider, though, lamented that Hagel’s “great sin” is “having learned something from the Iraq disaster and admitted it.”

“There are lots of foreign policy dissidents in the GOP, but few speak up for fear of the neocons,” the Insider said. “Hagel’s survival would represent glasnost on the right. The Senate should act like grown-ups and tell those smearing Hagel to sit down and shut up.”

Hagel, President Obama’s top choice for the position, is pro-Israel and “sensibly cautious” about Iran, another Insider said. “The extremities of the Israeli lobby have picked the wrong target and risk serious blowback.”

However, 18 percent of the Insiders polled oppose his confirmation. “While his service as an enlisted man in Vietnam was, by all accounts, exceptional, there are significant deficiencies in his understanding of the big strategic picture that would cause me concern,” one Insider said. “He was wrong about the Iraq surge and his failure to vote for sanctions against the Iranian Revolutionary Guard calls into question his higher-level judgments.”

Hagel’s appointment would send the message that Washington is reluctant to use force to back up its diplomacy with Tehran, another Insider said. “Only an Iran that believes the U.S. is willing to use force will be willing to compromise. The paradox is that a Hagel appointment could ultimately increase the chances that the U.S. or Israel will feel compelled to use military force against Iran’s nuclear program.”

Separately, an overwhelming 87 percent of Insiders wanted to see John Brennan, Obama's chief counterterrorism adviser, confirmed as CIA director -- a sign that his prospects for confirmation may be higher than they were four years ago, when he withdrew his name from consideration amid controversy over his past service in the George W. Bush administration.

“There is no one better qualified and with a closer relationship with the president. If the agency wants a leader who has juice with the West Wing, John’s the perfect choice,” one Insider said. Brennan, over his three-decade career, has displayed skills in intelligence analysis and operations -- and earned the president's trust, another Insider said. “Brennan has shown sensitivity to the risks of drone attacks.”

But a 13 percent faction strongly opposes his confirmation. “Torture, rendition, warrantless wiretapping, kill lists,” one Insider said. “All without a shred of oversight. Should I go on?”

“Brennan has been the administration’s architect and most enthusiastic supporter of the Obama doctrine: Encircle the world with drones and target anyone, including Americans, placed on a secret CIA kill list (and justified by secret laws),” another Insider said. “With Brennan at the CIA, the policy will no doubt expand. Instead, the CIA needs someone who can return the agency to its original purpose -- recruit spies, gather intelligence, and analyze it without political influence.”

Some Insiders who said Hagel and Brennan should be confirmed, however, were not altogether pleased with the possibility of their accessions. “These are disappointing choices. The president … has chosen badly,” an Insider said, “but he deserves to have the people he wants to have in these positions.”

Click here for more on the results of National Journal's Insider poll.

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