Officials: Defense nominee chosen
Ex-deputy secretary president’s pick to replace Hagel
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama has settled on Ashton Carter to be the next defense secretary, senior administration officials said Tuesday, but he was not prepared to announce the move because the White House had not completed its vetting of him.
A former deputy defense secretary with a long history at the Pentagon — though no uniformed military service — Carter was on a short list of prospective defense secretaries from the moment that Chuck Hagel announced his resignation, under pressure, Nov. 24.
Obama spokesman Josh Earnest stopped short of confirming that the president had made a decision yet praised Carter effusively for serving “very, very ably” at the Pentagon previously and noted he had been easily confirmed by the Senate before.
“This is an indication that he fulfills some of the criteria that we’ve discussed in the past,” Earnest said. “He is somebody who definitely deserves and has demonstrated strong bipartisan support for his previous service in government.”
Administration officials said Obama could announce his nominee as early as this week. The officials insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the president’s decision-making process publicly.
Carter was out of town Tuesday and could not be reached for comment.
Carter, a physicist, was the No. 2 civilian official at the Pentagon and a candidate to succeed Leon Panetta when he stepped down as defense secretary last year.
Previously, Carter served as the Defense Department’s chief weapons buyer, tasked with scaling back or canceling outdated and inefficient weapons programs. He also was in charge of carrying out $500 billion in cuts that began in 2012 and will take more than a decade to complete.
While he never served in the military, he spent a lot of time with troops during his 2011-2013 stint as deputy defense secretary and has built relationships with an entire generation of military leaders during his years in the Pentagon.
Carter has degrees in physics and medieval history from Yale and a doctorate in theoretical physics from Oxford. He has spent the past two years in academia but is widely viewed as a competent manager and is expected to have little trouble in Senate confirmation hearings.
Several Republican congressional leaders were preparing statements Tuesday in praise of Carter, even before the White House had formally notified anyone that he had been selected.
“The assumption is that it’s him,” one congressional staff member said. “And he won’t have trouble getting confirmed.”
But in many ways, Carter was the last man left standing for the top Pentagon post, after a number of candidates withdrew from consideration. Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., asked not to be considered, and Michele Flournoy, a former Pentagon undersecretary, did the same, citing family concerns. Jeh Johnson, the secretary of homeland security, who also has been mentioned as a candidate, said he was happy in his present job.
Johnson, who was the Pentagon’s chief lawyer during Obama’s first administration and who spearheaded the repeal of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy concerning gays in the military, also is a contentious figure among Obama’s supporters on the left because he was one of the legal architects of the administration’s war policy.
In addition, analysts have said Republicans who are angry about Obama’s executive action on immigration could try to hold up a nominee to the top Homeland Security job until the issue is resolved to their liking.
Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma, a senior Republican on the Armed Services Committee, said he would support Carter’s nomination.
Meanwhile, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, another Armed Services Committee member, used a speech before Concerned Veterans of America to criticize the Obama administration for seeking a fourth defense secretary in six years.