Commentary: Big Tent Ideas

Disloyal Careerists Are Still Haunting The Pentagon’s Halls

(Wikimedia Commons/Public/David B. Gleason from Chicago, Illinois, CC BY SA 2.0)

I have served alongside government civilian employees for more than 40 years in varying capacities and watched too many good people in uniform and the civil service choose to not speak out instead of putting the mission first.

Mission first is the standard. What we saw from Pentagon employee Brandon Newsom is a good example — and he is not an isolated case.

Newsom, a 16-year Pentagon employee and Director of Business Operations in the Office of the Secretary of the Navy, was caught on hidden camera by James O’Keefe admitting he intended to stay in place precisely so he could “undo whatever’s been done” by the Trump administration once the political winds shifted.

“I have the influence… I can undo whatever’s been done,” he said. “When the election changes… I want to stay and stick it out so that when the time comes, I can undo whatever’s been done.”

He openly dismissed the president as a “textbook narcissist” and called U.S. policy toward Iran “completely stupid … driven on one man’s ego.” He even targeted the voluntary monthly prayer service held by Secretary Pete Hegseth and the policy that allows senior officials to be held accountable and removed.

This is not policy disagreement. This is calculated resistance by a career government employee who views the elected leadership of the United States as an inconvenience to be waited out and then reversed.

Newsom admitted he lacked formal authority but planned to use the influence of his position to slow-roll or reverse lawful directives. That is the textbook definition of the “disloyal government employee problem” that has plagued the Pentagon and the broader federal bureaucracy for years.

Acting Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao did the right thing by placing Newsom on administrative leave immediately. Accountability must follow. Suspension is the minimum. Removal should be the outcome.

Anyone who takes an oath to support and defend the Constitution, then plots to undermine the policies of the duly elected commander-in-chief because they personally dislike them, has no business drawing a taxpayer paycheck inside the Department of War.

I have seen this mindset before. Careerists who treat the Pentagon as their permanent fiefdom rather than an institution that serves the American people and the warfighters who put their lives on the line. They wrap their resistance in the language of “institutional knowledge” or “continuity,” but the reality is often personal ideology and self-preservation.

They stay, they slow-walk, they leak and they wait for the next administration that better matches their preferences. Meanwhile, readiness suffers, lethality is diluted and the troops pay the price.

Civilian control of the military is not optional. It is foundational. Government employees, whether uniformed or civilian, do not get a veto over the voters. They execute lawful orders or they leave. Period.

The idea that a GS-15 or SES can sit in the Pentagon for 16 years and openly scheme to reverse the policies of an elected administration is corrosive. It destroys trust, invites more of the same, and signals to our adversaries that America’s defense establishment is divided against itself.

Secretary Hegseth and the Trump administration have made clear they intend to restore warfighting focus, cut bureaucratic bloat, and hold people accountable. That mission cannot succeed if the building is still full of people who view those changes as temporary inconveniences to be undone the moment the political calendar turns.

Root them out. Use the tools already available, and strengthen them if necessary, to ensure loyalty to the Constitution and the chain of command, not to personal agendas or Beltway orthodoxy.

I spent more than three decades in uniform because I believed in the mission and the country. Most of the men and women still serving feel the same way. They deserve leaders and civilian counterparts who share that commitment, not careerists waiting for their chance to “undo” the will of the American people.

Fire them. Replace them with people who understand that service means executing the policies of the elected government, not subverting them.

Our national security depends on it.

Retired U.S. Air Force Colonel, 9/11 Pentagon Survivor, Author of “What You Can Do About It: Taking Real Action Against Corruption, Radicalism, and Moral Decay to Save America”, and Host of The Rob Maness Show.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.