The Washington Post - 30.08.2019

A4 EZ SU THE WASHINGTON POST.FRIDAY, AUGUST 30 , 2019

BY DAN LAMOTHE AND GREG JAFFE

Former defense secretary Jim
Mattis has broken months of
silence with an indirect critique
of President Trump’s leadership
in a new book and interview. But
Mattis’s effort to distance himself
from the White House has
sparked new criticism of his
tenure at the Pentagon and the
way he has straddled his political
and military identities.
Even in retirement, Mattis has
sought to play the role of the
responsible, apolitical, respected
Marine. In an essay published
Wednesday in the Wall Street
Journal, Mattis obliquely at-
tacked Trump’s dismissive treat-
ment of U.S. allies, without men-
tioning the president by name.
“A lone, America cannot pro-
tect our people and our econo-
my,” Mattis wrote. “A leader must
display strategic acumen that
incorporates respect for those
nations that have stood with us
when trouble loomed.”
In an interview published
Thursday in the Atlantic, granted
in part to promote his book, “Call
Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead,”
Mattis defended his decision not
to directly air his grievances with
the president.
“You don’t endanger the coun-
try by attacking the elected com-
mander in chief,” he said. “I may
not like a commander in chief
one fricking bit, but our system
puts the commander in chief
there, and to further weaken him
when we’re up against real
threats — I mean, we could be at
war on the Korean peninsula.”
Mattis’s approach — in which
he vaguely describes his frustra-
tions with Trump and then says
he can’t criticize him — has
brought a hail of disapproval
from critics.
“I think he has one of two
paths: He can either remain
silent... or he can go out with
very active discussion about the
direction we should go and the
problems with the president of
the United States,” said Loren
DeJonge Schulman, who was as a
Defense Department official in
the Obama administration. “I
don’t think there is a middle
road.”
Schulman, who is now a fellow
at the bipartisan Center for a
New American Security, de-
scribed Mattis’s approach as “in-
credibly naive” and a reflection
of a “lack of political astuteness”
that she said was apparent dur-
ing his tenure as Pentagon chief.
Others argued that Mattis’s
silence amounts to a tacit en-
dorsement of the president and
his policies.
“Mattis saw his duty as pre-
venting the worst from happen-
ing” when he was defense secre-
tary, said retired Army Lt. Col.
Jason Dempsey, who has written
extensively about civil-military
relations. “But he also legiti-
mized the worst. He lent his

honor and integrity to the Trump administration. He didn’t just give the president Jim Mattis’s credibility. He gave Donald Trump the military’s credibility.” Mattis, who declined to comment, was the first former general to serve as secretary of defense since Gen. George Marshall was named secretary in 1950 and required a waiver from Congress to serve. He said that even after he was first approached by Vice President Pence about taking the role in November 2016, he did not think it would come to pass. “I doubted I was a viable candidate,” he wrote in the Jour- nal essay. Mattis’s background as a retired military officer moving into a political role complicated his tenure in the Pentagon and has raised the stakes for him in retirement. “I think Mattis is correct to be sensitive to the way his views would be linked to his status as a retired general officer, and not merely as a retired Cabinet official,” said Peter Feaver, who

served in the administration of George W. Bush and now teaches political science at Duke Univer- sity. “Is his first name General Mattis, or is his first name Secre- tary Mattis? Look at the way people refer to him, especially on cable TV. His military identity remains quite strong, even though he was in a political position.” Complicating Mattis’s situa- tion is the extraordinarily divi- sive, and at times toxic, political environment in the run-up to the 2020 election, made worse in many instances by Trump’s com- bative leadership style. “I don’t view it as unethical to write a book on general leadership principles, but he is setting himself up for a painful series of interviews... and a painful series of articles,” Feaver said of Mattis. Even among retired generals, Mattis occupies a special perch as a respected battlefield commander in Iraq and Afghanistan. In Washington, he is frequently praised for his intellect.

“I think Mattis in some ways is either made into a saint or the devil, and he is neither,” said Kathleen Hicks, the senior vice president for the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “He’s a human. He’s very capable, loyal and patriotic, and for all those reasons in some ways, people put upon him these burdens that aren’t realistic.” “It’s very hard for any of us to put ourselves in those shoes,” s he added. Hicks noted that Marine Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., the chair- man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a longtime friend of Mattis’s, also has said that he will not criticize the president, but that there is a fundamental difference between the two leaders at this point. Dunford is an active-duty Marine, and Mattis was serving as a politically appointed mem- ber of the Trump administration. “I think at heart he is that 40-year veteran Marine, and yet he took a political position,” Hicks said of Mattis. “I don’t

think he ever became comfort- able with the reality that it is, in fact, a political position.” In his interview with the At- lantic, Mattis repeatedly under- scored what he said is his “duty” not to criticize Trump, but he also makes it clear he disap- proved of some of the president’s behavior. At one point, the article’s au- thor reads to Mattis a tweet in which Trump says he is not disturbed by North Korea’s launching “some small weapons” and then attacks former vice president Joe Biden as a “low IQ individual.” Mattis responded that “any Marine general or any other senior servant of the people of the United States” would find it “counterproductive and beneath the dignity of the presidency.” “Let me put it this way,” Mattis added. “I’ve written an entire book built on the principles of respecting your troops, respecting each other, respecting your allies. Isn’t it pretty obvious how I would feel a bout something like

that?” Mattis’s tortured response in interviews mirrors the struggles he faced as defense secretary, said Mara Karlin, the executive director of the Merrill Center for Strategic Studies at Johns Hop- kins University. As a senior administration official, Mattis avoided politics and “sought to focus on the merits and substance of issues the way a wonk or military officer would,” she said. Often, that m eant ignor- ing the wishes of the president or the political feasibility of his proposals, Karlin said. In some cases, Mattis’s approach put the military in a tougher position. She cited Mattis’s support for the deployment of U.S. troops to the southern border to stop what Trump described as a migrant invasion. “The military is taking actions that are inherently political,” s he said, “but its leadership is trying to turn a blind eye to that politicization.” [email protected] [email protected]

Mattis criticized as trying to take ‘middle road’ on Trump

JABIN BOTSFORD/THE WASHINGTON POST Then-Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, right, accompanies President Trump into a reception in the East Room of the White House on Oct. 2 5 for the commemoration of the 35th anniversary of the bombing of the U.S. Marine Corps barracks in Beirut. Mattis has written a book on leadership and has begun sitting for interviews to promote it.

BY MATT ZAPOTOSKY

An Ohio woman who authori-
ties say corresponded in prison
with Charleston, S.C., church
shooter Dylann Roof and plotted
mass violence pleaded guilty
Tuesday to a terrorism charge in
a case that a top federal prosecu-
tor said could serve as a model to
pursue white supremacists or
other domestic extremists.
Elizabeth Lecron, 24, pleaded
guilty in federal court in To ledo
to providing material support to
terrorists and transporting ex-
plosives in interstate commerce,
agreeing to spend 15 years in
federal prison and be subjected
to a lifetime of supervision by
federal authorities after she is
released.
Justin E. Herdman, the U.S.
attorney for the Northern Dis-
trict of Ohio, said he had never
used the terrorism charge out-
side of an international context
in his seven years as a national
security prosecutor, from 2006
to 2013. But in Lecron’s case, he
said, he was able to do so
because it involved explosives.
Herdman said he’s hopeful that
other prosecutors might consid-
er similar charges in domestic
extremism cases.
“We are dusting off our books,
cracking them open and looking
through it to find statutes that
can apply where we are con-
cerned about an ongoing threat
and disrupting a threat,” Herd-
man said.
Attorneys for Lecron did not

immediately respond to an email seeking comment. In part because of a recent massacre at a shopping center in El Paso that was racially moti- vated, the FBI and Justice De- partment have faced criticism for not addressing white su- premacy and other domestic extremism as aggressively as they do international terrorism. The FBI saw a major increase in tips in the wake of that and another mass shooting in Dayton, Ohio. Officials have sought to stress that they take all security threats seriously, while noting that the law gives them more authority t o go after international terrorist groups. Those who merely send resources to specifically designated international groups, such as the Islamic State, can face federal charges for providing material support to terrorists. But domestic groups cannot be designated as terrorist organizations to which providing resources would be a crime. Federal prosecutors can, how- ever, charge domestic extremists with providing material support to terrorists if they engage in specific plots — such as those that involve aircraft, explosives, chemical weapons or federal property. Federal prosecutors used the charge this year against five people living in a New Mexico compound, alleging that the group trained in its squalid quarters to kill FBI and military personnel. The indictment did not identify any particular terrorist organization the group allegedly sought to support. Herdman said the material support charge is valuable in part because it allows prosecutors to seek a lifetime of super- vised release, which can be im-

portant in preventing mass violence from being committed by those who have shown a propen- sity for it. Police first received a tip in the summer of 2018 about Le- cron’s boyfriend, Vincent Arm- strong, who pleaded guilty this month to conspiring to transport or receive an explosive. Investigators soon began explor- ing troubling social media posts from Lecron. Lecron seemed to broadly idolize mass murderers, posting online about them frequently and, with Armstrong, visiting Columbine High School, where 12 students and a teacher were killed in 1999. When investigators searched the home she and Armstrong shared last August, they found an AK-47, a shotgun, multiple handguns and ammunition, as well as end caps, which can be used to make pipe bombs, authorities have said. They con- nected Lecron with a confiden- tial informant and undercover FBI agents, to whom she talked about committing “upscale mass murder” at a To ledo bar or bombing a pipeline. At the informant’s suggestion, she bought explosive powder and hundreds of screws, accord- ing to an affidavit in the case. And all the while, she was corre- sponding with Roof and at- tempting to send him Nazi liter- ature, prosecutors said. Herdman said Lecron had an “either overbroad or nonexis- tent” i deological motivation. The material-support charge has its limits f or domestic terrorism, he said. It cannot be used, for example, if only firearms are being employed in such a plot. [email protected]

Ohio woman guilty of terror charge

BY ROBERT BARNES

All 53 Republicans in the Sen- ate urged the Supreme Court on Thursday not to be “cowed” by a brief from a handful of Democrat- ic senators that warned that the court risks its reputation for im- partiality if it continues to hear a gun case that the Democrats consider moot. In a letter to the court’s clerk, the Republicans said the brief filed by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and four other Democrats “openly threatened this court with political retribution if it failed to dismiss the petition as moot.” The justices “must not be cowed by the threats of opportu- nistic politicians,” said the letter, drafted by Senate Majority Lead- er Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). Whitehouse had told the court in a brief filed this month that because New York had changed the law in question, there was no longer the kind of live contro- versy that must be present for the court’s consideration. To hear the case anyway, he suggested, would reveal a bias. “The Supreme Court is not well. And the people know it,” Whitehouse wrote in the brief. “Perhaps the Court can heal itself before the public demands it be ‘restructured in order to reduce the influence of politics.’ ” The phrase is from a poll question with which a majority of Ameri- cans agreed. Whitehouse said the brief was meant to caution the court about the public’s perception of the in- stitution. “The response to our brief from Republicans and the partisan do-

nor interests driving the court’s polarization shows exactly why it’s time to speak out,” he said in a statement Thursday. “They want us to shut up about their capture of the court; we will not.” The partisan bickering has ele- vated what began as a somewhat obscure case about a law unique to New York City. The Supreme Court earlier this year said it would hear New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. City of New York in the term that begins in October. It concerns restrictions on how gun owners with residential permits may transport their weapons. The rules were so strict that they forbade taking an unloaded weapon to a firing range outside the city or to a permit-holder’s second home within the state. But after the court accepted the case, the city surrendered. It re- scinded the regulations that the gun groups and owners had ob- jected to, and the state legislature passed a law prohibiting their reinstatement. New York said the changes ren- der the case moot, something the court is scheduled to consider Oct. 1. The letter from the Senate Re- publicans says they are not taking a position on whether the case should be dropped or on the un- derlying question about Second Amendment protections. But it said those issues should be decid- ed “as the law dictates, without regard to the identity of the par- ties or the politics of the moment.” The letter notes that some Democrats in Congress and some of the party’s presidential candi- dates have said they would consider increasing the number of

seats on the Supreme Court to dilute its conservative majority. “The Democrats’ amicus brief demonstrates that their court- packing plans are more than mere pandering,” t he Republican letter states. “They are a direct, immediate threat to the inde- pendence of the judiciary and the rights of all Americans.” Whitehouse was joined in the brief by Sens. Mazie Hirono (Ha- waii), Richard Blumenthal (Conn.), Richard J. Durbin (Ill.) and Kirsten Gillibrand (N.Y.). He said in an earlier interview that it was not Democrats who had po- liticized the court. In 2016, Senate Republicans refused to hold a vote on Judge Merrick Garland, President Ba- rack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee to fill the seat of Justice Antonin Scalia, who died that February. And when it appeared that Hillary Clinton would win the presidency and be in position to name the justice who could swing the court to the left, Sen. Te d Cruz (R-Tex.) floated the idea that a Republican Senate might continue to ignore the opening on the court and leave it at eight members. Instead, when President Trump was elected, McConnell got rid of the filibuster to ease the confirmation of Neil M. Gorsuch to fill Scalia’s seat and Brett M. Kavanaugh to replace Justice An- thony M. Kennedy, who retired in 2018. In the letter, Republicans say the number of justices will remain at nine: “While we remain members of this body, the Demo- crats’ threat to ‘restructure’ the court is an empty one.” [email protected]

Republicans tell high court not to be

‘cowed’ by Democrats on gun case Dylann Roof confidante plotted mass violence; case could be a road map

The Washington Post - 30.08.2019

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