Mark T. Esper - A Sacred Oath

To my wife and best friend, Leah, and our children,

Luke, Jack, and Kate.

And

To the West Point Class of 1986, with whom I swore

my first oath to the Constitution on July 1, 1982,

and for whom Courage Never Quits.

And

To the men and women of the U.S. Department of Defense,

who honor their sacred oaths each and every day,

and in whom our great nations safety, security,

and future is entrusted.

I, Mark Esper, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.

Mark T. Esper

Oath of Office as Secretary of Defense

The White House

Washington, D.C.

July 23, 2019

Cant you just shoot them? Just shoot them in the legs or something? he asked.

I couldnt believe the president of the United States just suggested the U.S. military shoot our fellow Americans in the streets of the nations capital. The moment was surreal, sitting in front of the Resolute desk, inside the Oval Office, with this idea weighing heavily in the air, and the president red faced and complaining loudly about the protests under way in Washington, D.C.

When I accepted the job as secretary of defense the previous year, I knew I would face tough issuesquestions of war and peace, for example. But never anything like this. The good newsthis wasnt a difficult decision. The bad newsI had to figure out a way to walk Trump back without creating the mess I was trying to avoid. This wasnt how I ever thought the first week of June 2020, or any week for that matter, would begin.

Monday, June 1, 2020, started like most others. I arrived early at the Pentagon after hitting the gym, did a quick review of the days intelligence, and then picked through my read-ahead book for the tab on my 8:00 A . M . meetingthe Secretarys Weekly Policy Review, or swipper as we called it. This meeting included the civilian and military leadership of the Department of Defense (DoD), from the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) and Joint Staff to the service secretaries and their uniformed chiefsthe four-star heads of the Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, and Space Force.

Before the pandemic, we gathered in the large Nunn-Lugar conference room opposite my office on the E-ring of the Pentagon and sat around the big wooden tablethe deputy secretary of defense to my right and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to my leftby rank, with aides and assistants lining the walls. The table could fit nearly two dozen people. In the era of COVID, however, we now met by secure video from our desks.

I initiated the swipper my first week in office. It would be that one meeting where we combined the important work of going through our organizational priorities, as a joint team of civilian and military leaders, with the more immediate matters of pending issues and current events. It would also help me close the civilian-military divide that had opened over time. About halfway through the June 1 swipper meeting, my secure phone rang a few times and then stopped.

One of my assistants in the front office must have picked it up, I thought. Moments later, I saw General Mark Milley drop off the screen, which was unusual for the Joint Chiefs chairman. My phone soon rang again, and I discovered exactly why he had vanished so abruptly. Milley was spun up; he had urgent news.

General Mark Milley is a barrel-chested soldier with dark bushy eyebrows who hails from the Boston area. A standout hockey player in school, he graduated from Princeton in 1980 and was commissioned as an armor officer. After forty years of Army service, he had multiple combat tours and a lifetime of experience under his belt. He carried a stern look on his face that belied a quick sense of humor, and he could fill a room with his booming voice, which often spoke in exclamation points and language not always made to be taken literally. The president, ever drawn to appearances, would often say he was straight out of central casting.

I turned the meeting over to my deputy and took the chairmans call. Milley was unusually animated now, and rightfully so. Minutes earlier the president had called him, he said, in a fury over what happened in the streets of D.C. the prior evening, when more than a thousand people gathered to protest the killing of George Floydas was happening around the country. Protesters marched through the streets and gathered in Lafayette Park, right across from the White House. Fires were lit, windows were smashed, and people were hurt as some in the crowd grew violent. The chaotic scenes played over and over on television and undoubtedly caught Trumps attention. The president thought his administration looked weak and wanted something done.

I asked General Milley to come up to my office. The fact that Trump called him was unusual, and Milleys quick summary was very troubling. I was anxious to sit with him and tease the conversation out, to understand exactly what the president said. The general arrived quickly. His demeanor was very serious, his face ashen. I wondered how many times in his years in the military he had ever looked this way.

The president is really angry, Milley said. He thinks its a disgrace what happened last night. He wants ten thousand troops deployed to stop the violence. I told him I had to speak with you.

Ten thousand troops, really, he said that? I asked.

Yes, sir, he responded with a serious but slightly wide-eyed look. Ten thousand.

I shook my head in disbelief. I knew some of the protesters had become violent and damage had occurredincluding to the historic Episcopal church directly across from the White House. Vandalism is never acceptable, but the perpetrators were a small minority in a much larger crowd. Law enforcement, as well as some D.C. National Guardsmen who were on duty to support them, suffered injuries; otherwise, they had things under control. Id received updates throughout the weekend, but there were no urgent calls for additional troops.

Where did the number ten thousand come from? I asked Milley. He didnt know. In any event, Milley and I both understood that deploying active-duty forces into the nations capital was a terrible idea, and if anything it would likely incite more violence. We also knew it was impossible to send this many in twelve hours. It took the most elite units in the U.S military a few hours to deploy, and they were our most ready forces.

Minutes later, a member of my staff came in to inform us the president called a snap meeting for 10:30 A . M . to discuss the protests. Milley and I were already scheduled to be at the White House at 11:00 A . M . for a call with the nations governors regarding the ongoing civil unrest. We looked at each other and grimaced, silently acknowledging that we were in for another interesting morning.

Milley and I trudged over to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue that morning for what turned out to be a very heated encounter with the president. It was loud, contentious, and unreal. We did manage to avoid a terrible outcomethe one that Trump wantedbut we were shaken, and it wasnt even noon yet.

As we briskly left the meeting and crossed the threshold into the outer office where the presidents schedulers sat, Milley put his thumb and forefinger tightly together, close to his face, leaned in, and whispered to me that he was this close to resigning on the spot. So was I.