A successful campaign to get all 10 ex-US defense secretaries alive to sign a letter warning President Donald Trump not to involve the military in his complaints about election results occurred between New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day , said former ambassador and defense officer Eric Edelman.
“Efforts to involve the US armed forces in resolving electoral disputes would take us into dangerous, illegal and unconstitutional territory,” wrote the ex-secretaries in the letter, published as an opinion piece in the Washington Post.
Edelman drafted and orchestrated the letter in consultation with former Vice President Dick Cheney, himself a former defense secretary, along with the help of former State Department adviser Eliot Cohen.
Cheney told Edelman that he would sign the letter if he got other ex-secretaries to participate, Edelman told ABC News on Monday. Edelman contacted the Post and had all 10 secretaries add their names by Friday, he said.
The motivation and timing of the letter were varied, Edelman told ABC News.
“There is the dismissal of Esper right after the election, there is the installation of this cadre of political nominees around Miller (the acting secretary of defense), there is the race to leave Afghanistan,” said Edelman, also citing a reported attempt. why the Trump administration is expected to split the U.S. Cyber Command and National Security Agency last month, as well as Trump’s controversial connection with Georgia’s secretary of state on Saturday.
Edelman also said that comments made by former national security adviser Michael Flynn about the possibility of Trump invoking martial law to repeat the election in battlefield states have raised concerns.
In an interview with Newsmax in mid-December, Flynn detailed what he considered Trump’s military options. Although Flynn claimed that he was not advocating the exercise of these options and that constitutional processes should be followed, just a few weeks earlier, he tweeted a press release from an organization calling for “limited martial law” to hold a new election.
A former U.S. official who helped coordinate the letter said the two signatories who served during the Trump administration, Mark Esper and retired navy general Jim Mattis, had some reservations before adding their names to the article.
“I think Secretary Mattis for good reasons was a little reticent,” said the former employee. “It is understandable that he feels that, as a retiree, he is still covered by the (Uniform Code of Military Justice) and, you know, retired officers should not criticize the commander in chief, and they should not do that.”
The former officer told ABC News that he changed his mind after being persuaded by others involved in the project “that he needed to think about it not as’ former four-star Navy officer Jim Mattis’, but as’ ex-secretary of defense Mattis’. “
Esper, who was deposed by Trump after the presidential election, was concerned about his participation looking like personal retribution, but quickly decided to join the other former Pentagon chiefs, the official said.
Chuck Hagel, a former Republican senator who served as defense secretary to President Barack Obama, told ABC News on Monday that he deliberated before adding his name to the article to make sure he was not “getting more out of something than maybe it really exists. “
Hagel said he decided that Trump’s actions and rhetoric aimed at overturning the election results posed a significant risk.
“I’m not too concerned, but the fact is that we have a president who has acted in an erratic, irresponsible manner, and I think he has put our country in danger in many situations over the past four years,” he told ABC News.
Former Defense Secretary William Perry said in a tweet Sunday that “Each of us has taken an oath to support and defend the Constitution; that oath does not change according to the party’s designation.”
Robert Gates, secretary of defense for Presidents George W. Bush and Obama, signed without reservation when approached by Edelman, who served as undersecretary of defense for politics during Gates’ time at the Pentagon, according to a spokesman for the former secretary.
The letter concluded with an appeal to the Department of Defense to ensure a peaceful and smooth transfer of power.
“Acting defense secretary Christopher C. Miller and his subordinates – appointed politicians, officers and civil servants – are bound by oath, law and precedent to facilitate entry into office for the new government, and to do so wholeheartedly. “, letter said. “They must also refrain from any political action that would undermine the election results or hinder the success of the new team.”
Edelman said this section was a response that President-elect Joe Biden recently accused Pentagon political leaders of “obstruction”.
Miller rejected those claims in a statement last Monday.
“The Department of Defense conducted 164 interviews with more than 400 employees and provided more than 5,000 pages of documents – far more than initially requested by the Biden transition team. DOD’s efforts already outnumber those of recent administrations more than three weeks old. ahead and continue to schedule additional meetings for the remainder of the transition and respond to any and all requests for information within our reach, “said Miller.
Part of the language in the letter directly reflected the comments of current defense officials, including President of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, and Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy, who said, before and after the election, that the military should play does not take part in the treatment of electoral disputes.
“There is no role for the US military in determining the outcome of an American election,” McCarthy said in a December 22 statement.
This line was cited without attribution in Sunday’s article.
The other former secretaries who signed the letter are Ashton Carter, Leon Panetta, William Perry and Donald Rumsfeld.