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>Biden Team not getting much traction at muh Pentagram.
In one recent meeting, retired Brig. Gen. Anthony Tata, who served as acting Pentagon policy chief until last week, frequently looked over at the general counsel representative as if to ask for permission to discuss a particular topic.
Meanwhile, every request for information the Biden team filed had to be reviewed by the general counsel’s office, and many were scrubbed of all useful information. Many requests were never answered, and the ones that did come back were thoroughly “sanitized.”
The Biden team had particularly poor visibility into the special operations and low-intensity conflict portfolio. While Trump political appointees in that office were allowed to meet with the transition, many of the career officials have been kept “at arm’s length,” said one defense official, calling the effort unprecedented.
“We have not been sidelined like this,” the person said.
The first transition official echoed those concerns, saying the team met with “some chief of staff who seemed very young and seemed quite new in his portfolio.” The person recalled asking detailed questions about changes the Trump administration made to the process of approving a mission — under former President Barack Obama, most missions had to be approved by the White House — but could not get clear answers.
The team is particularly concerned that they do not have sufficient visibility into what’s going on in Africa, whether it’s covert special operations missions across the continent or Trump’s withdrawal from Somalia.
The Biden team was also frustrated by the lack of cooperation around the upcoming budget request, a concern Biden himself cited in December and that a second transition official called “laughable.” In particular, the Biden team struggled to get details on the Trump administration’s efforts to siphon resources from military construction projects to the border wall, and funding for the Covid-19 response.
Mike McCord, the transition’s lead for Pentagon budget issues, was finally able to meet with representatives from the armed services to discuss the budget request last week, but the delay until days away from inauguration caused heartburn.
The Pentagon has also rebuffed the transition’s efforts to gain insight into a high-profile arms deal with the United Arab Emirates for the F-35, America’s most advanced fighter jet. This prevented the team from understanding key details about how sensitive information about the jet would be safeguarded, and what concerns have been raised by Israel, which also operates its own F-35s and initially objected to the deal.
Some Trump defense officials called the Biden team’s claims of obstructionism “overblown,” blaming their frustrations on the delay in certifying the election, reduced manning due to Covid-19 restrictions, and a larger-than-usual number of requests for information and interviews from the transition team.
“If anything, I think the incoming folks are overwhelming the department (political and careers alike) with requests,” said a second defense official.
As of Friday, the transition team had met with more than 400 Defense Department political appointees and over 180 career officials, said a third defense official, noting that the department has not “denied the [agency review] team anyone they’ve asked for.”
A fourth defense official who is departing with the Trump team and took part in some of the transition planning said he “saw no effort to conceal anything” from the Biden team.
But he said he believes that some of the appointees to top jobs in the waning months of the administration did not have the best interests of the institution in mind and were obsessed with political vendettas.
Trump, he said, “hired all the wrong people. And he paid a price for it. There wasn’t much we could do.”
And the acrimony has gone both ways. At the last minute, the Biden team denied Miller office space and resources for his transition out of the role, a courtesy typically provided to the outgoing team. POLITICO confirmed the move, which was first reported by Bloomberg.
The transition elected not to extend Miller that particular “perk” given his acting role and the reduced capacity in the Pentagon due to the pandemic, said another transition official, noting that retired Gen. Lloyd Austin, the nominee to be defense secretary, has also chosen to do all of his transition planning from home for those reasons.
One area where the Biden team said the department has been cooperative was in security surrounding the inauguration, primarily because the Pentagon’s role in the effort has been led by the military side.
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