Defense pick faces questioning
WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump’s nominee for Defense secretary reassured lawmakers he would restore stability to a troubled Pentagon, if confirmed by the Senate, as he rejected criticism that his ties to a defense contractor where he formerly worked “smacks of corruption.”
Mark Esper, who has been serving as acting secretary since June, said Tuesday he would not adopt new restrictions on his dealings with Raytheon Co., where he served as chief lobbyist from 2010 to 2017.
In the sharpest exchange of an otherwise friendly confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-mass., a candidate for her party’s presidential nomination, pressed Esper to extend and broaden ethics restrictions on dealings with his former employer, which expire in November.
“No, senator, I will not,” Esper, a former Army officer, told Warren. “I went to war for this country ... . I think the presumption is that anyone who comes from business or the corporate world is corrupt.”
Warren, who has built her candidacy partly on a vow to take on corporate America, announced Tuesday her opposition to Esper, saying his refusal to commit to new restrictions on his dealings with Raytheon “smacks of corruption, plain and simple.”
Pentagon officials in the past have come from the defense industry, including Esper’s predecessor, former acting Secretary Patrick Shanahan, who was a top executive at Boeing. Esper has broader national security experience than Shanahan, having graduated from West Point, served in the Army, and worked as a congressional aide and in a previous civilian post at the Pentagon.
But it’s believed to be unprecedented for a nominee for Defense secretary to have been a Capitol Hill lobbyist for a defense company.
Republicans and other Democrats on the 27-member panel appeared largely supportive after Esper reassured them that he would be an independent voice in Trump’s foreign policy team. He emphasized areas where his views aligned more closely with Congress than with Trump, including on the importance of strengthening military alliances abroad.
Esper also cast himself as closer in temperament to former Defense Secretary James N. Mattis, who often sought to restrain Trump’s national security ideas, than Shanahan, who went along with the White House more readily and labored through several rocky Senate hearings.
“If confirmed, you will help oversee national security policy for a president whose temperament and management skills are challenging, and likely very different from your own,” said Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the panel’s top Democrat. “You must be willing and able to provide the president with your best policy advice even if the president disagrees with your counsel, and it runs contrary to his policy goals.”
Esper vowed to move quickly to fill numerous vacancies at the top of the Defense Department. At least 19 senior Pentagon civilian posts are open or filled by acting appointees, prompting Reed to say that the Defense Department “is adrift in a way I have not seen in my time on Capitol Hill.”
Esper acknowledged that. “I need to staff up the top tier of the Pentagon soonest,” he said.
His nomination, which could be confirmed by the full Senate this week, has been fast-tracked after Shanahan, Trump’s previous choice, withdrew following disclosures about a decade-old divorce. The department has not had a confirmed secretary since Mattis resigned in December.
Esper had been acting secretary of Defense since Shanahan withdrew his candidacy in June. Federal law prohibits nominees from permanently holding posts they are occupying in an acting capacity, so Esper stepped aside Monday when the White House sent his nomination to the Senate.
Esper was replaced temporarily as acting secretary by current Navy Secretary Richard V. Spencer, who will be the third person to hold the top job in an acting capacity in just two months. Spencer is likely to hold the job for only a few days until the Senate votes on Esper’s nomination.
Esper’s ties to Raytheon could prove the biggest hurdle he faces on his way to confirmation.
An ethics agreement signed by Esper in 2017, when he was confirmed as secretary of the Army, recuses him from decisions involving Raytheon. That agreement expires in November. After taking over as Pentagon chief last month, he also put in place procedures for ensuring that decisions affecting the company were directed to other Pentagon officials.
Noting that Esper is still due $1 million in deferred compensation from the company, Warren called on the Defense nominee to extend the recusal agreement through his tenure of secretary, not to seek waivers that would allow him to be involved in matters affecting Raytheon on a case-by-case basis, and not to accept employment with any defense contractor for at least four years after he leaves the Pentagon.