The Insider

Defense Secretary Robert Gates made his entrance this morning at Camp Lejeune, NC, in a V-22 Osprey.

Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell tells us Gates flew in a V-22 from the Marine Corps air station in New River, NC, to the Marine base at Camp Lejeune, NC. It was Gates’ first flight in a V-22, Morrell said.

Gates has made several appearances of late in which he has explained his rationale behind a raft of cuts to major weapon systems -- and while the V-22 was not among those systems, the Osprey was the target of a rather prominent predecessor.

The Osprey program is famous for resisting termination during President George H. W. Bush’s administration, when then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney did all he could to end the program. Cheney did not prevail because the Marines’ allies on Capitol Hill kept the program alive. The Osprey program also weathered very tough times after two fatal V-22 mishaps occurred in 2000.

Time will tell whether any of the programs that Gates wants to curtail or kill will become his version of the Osprey. But in series of remarks this month, Gates has expressed optimism about his chances of winning support for his fiscal year 2010 budget recommendations.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates moved aggressively today to set the terms of the upcoming debate with Congress over the fiscal year 2010 Pentagon budget request – arguing that any significant changes to his recommendations for cutting and adjusting weapon system programs amount to harming troops and compromising national security. His spokesman, Geoff Morrell, just forwarded the following excerpts from Gates' remarks today to Marines at Camp Lejeune, NC, who are preparing to deploy to Afghanistan:

"This visit and spending some time with these Marines who are about to deploy simply reminds me of one of the basic themes of what I'm trying to do in FY10 budget. One dollar of pork in our budget is a dollar I can't spend to support these Marines. One dollar spent on capabilities we don't need is a dollar that I can't spend in getting ready for future threats. One dollar spent for equipment excess to our military requirements is a dollar that I can't use to help protect the American people. So I am hoping that the Congress will take a careful look at this budget and the change we are trying to make in no small part to provide the necessary support for these men and women who are about to go into combat."

Amid public professions of the excellent U.S.-Canadian security cooperation, Department of Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano this week said she is troubled by -- as she described it -- known or suspected terrorists crossing the border from Canada into the United States.

In an interview with CBC News, Napolitano described the situation at America's northern border like this:

"((Y))es, Canada is not Mexico. It doesn't have a drug war going on; it didn't have 6,000 homicides that were drug-related last year. Nonetheless, to the extent that terrorists have come into our country or suspected or known terrorists have entered our country across a border, it's been across the Canadian border. There are real issues there."

Since the April 20 interview, news reports have focused mostly on follow-up remarks she made suggesting those carrying out the September 11, 2001, attacks also had made their way to the United States from Canada. In a statement released after the interview, Napolitano said she knows this to be untrue.

But Napolitano's 9/11 connection comments aside, her remarks about the threat of terrorists traveling from Canada to the United States mirror a belief held by some in the military community.

As InsideDefense.com reported in February, officials at U.S. Northern Command's Joint Task Force-North believe Canadian immigration policies are creating a "favorable" environment for what the U.S. government deems to be potential terrorists seeking entry into the United States from the north.

The assessment was inadvertently posted on a JTF-North Web site earlier this year, and officials have since removed the document. (Our readers can view two Canada-related briefing slides extracted from it -- marked "for official use only/law-enforcement sensitive" -- here.)

U.S. security officials have declined to elaborate on the findings in the document. Tristan Landry, a spokesman for the Canadian Embassy in Washington, argued Canada presents no greater threat to U.S. security "than any other Western democracy."

The House Appropriations defense subcommittee will meet tomorrow morning to consider President Obama's $75.5 billion Pentagon supplemental spending request for the remainder of 2009. The request was sent to Congress on April 9.

A subcommittee spokesman told us that Chairman Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) will not issue a press release following the mark-up, opting to wait until the bill is reviewed by the full appropriations committee. Nor will Murtha meet with reporters, the spokesman said.

During a Senate floor speech this morning, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) attacked the Obama supplemental request and the administration's approach to defense spending.

Let’s compare 2009 to 2010, where I have been accused of not being able to do math. Defense spending does increase from 2009 to 2010 by $14.9B but, according to President Obama’s letter to Speaker Pelosi on April 9th, there will be no more supplementals. That would mean DOD would have to fund all wartime operations to the tune of $100B dollars-plus. However, President Obama does fence off $130B for “Overseas Contingency Funds,” which could be used for getting out of Iraq and increased operations in Afghanistan. Even adding the entire $130B to defense spending, which is never the case with supplemental funding, the overall increase in defense spending for 2010 is $3.5B. If we estimate 2% inflation for cost growth of just the defense budget, defense spending actually decreases by $7.3B. Now add in the accelerated growth of the Army and Marine Corps -- a 65K and 22K increase respectively -- at a cost of approximately $13B to cover pay and health care costs and you start to see the beginnings of how our military modernization gets gutted. DOD has "must pays' -- personnel, operations and maintenance, ongoing wartime and contingencies operations. With a zero supplemental fund, the money to pay for these "must pays" will be taken from the base defense budget and the areas that are always hit are research and development and acquisition

At 4:30 p.m. today, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Vice President Joe Biden were scheduled to meet with President Obama in the Oval Office. No word on the agenda for the session, which was closed to the media.

Earlier today, Obama held his first official cabinet meeting. The president also spoke to CIA leaders and employees this afternoon.

Two key nominations were announced today by the White House. Michael Nacht is President Obama's nominee to be the Pentagon’s assistant secretary of defense for global strategic affairs. Robert Litt is the nominee to be the general counsel in the office of the director of national intelligence. Here are their bios, as released by the White House:

Michael Nacht, Nominee for Assistant Secretary of Defense (Global Strategic Affairs), Department of Defense
Michael Nacht is currently Professor of Public Policy and former Aaron Wildavsky Dean at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California - Berkeley. Nacht served a three-year term as a member of the U.S. Department of Defense Threat Reduction Advisory Committee, for which he chaired panels on counter terrorism and counter proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, reporting to the Deputy Secretary of Defense. He continues to consult for Sandia National Laboratories and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. From 1994-1997, Nacht was assistant director for Strategic and Eurasian Affairs at the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, leading its work on nuclear arms reduction negotiations with Russia and initiating nuclear arms control talks with China. He participated in five summit meetings with President Clinton - four with Russian President Boris Yeltsin and one with Chinese President Jiang Zemin. Nacht has testified before Congress on subjects ranging from arms control to the supply and demand for scientists in the workplace. Nacht earned his B.S. in aeronautics and astronautics at New York University and began his career working on missile aerodynamics for NASA before earning a Ph.D. in political science at Columbia University.

Robert S. Litt, Nominee for General Counsel, Office of the Director of National Intelligence
Robert S. Litt is a Partner at Arnold & Porter LLP, where he specializes in white collar criminal defense. Prior to joining the firm, Litt served for five years at the Department of Justice as Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General and as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Criminal Division. In these positions, his responsibilities included matters relating to national security, healthcare fraud, public corruption, computer crime and intellectual property. From 1978 to 1984, Litt served as an Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, including as Chief Appellate Attorney. Litt is a member of the governing Council of the Criminal Justice Section of the American Bar Association and is a member of the Advisory Committee to the ABA’s Standing Committee on Law and National Security. He clerked for the Honorable Edward Weinfeld in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York and the Honorable Potter Stewart on the U.S. Supreme Court. Litt holds an A.B. from Harvard College, a M.A. from Yale University and a J.D. from Yale Law School.

The Environmental Protection Agency today issued a proposal that finds greenhouse gas emissions pose a danger to the public's health and welfare. The document also says pollution that warms the planet poses U.S. national security risks.

Climate change impacts in certain regions of the world may exacerbate problems that raise humanitarian, trade and national security issues for the U.S. Climate change has been described as a potential threat multiplier regarding national security issues. This is because, as noted above, climate change can aggravate existing problems in certain regions of the world such as poverty, social tensions, general environmental degradation, and conflict over increasingly scarce water resources.

This echoes findings of a 2008 National Intelligence Assessment on Climate Change that determined a steady increase in Earth's temperature could trigger a range of global crisis that would impair U.S. military readiness by diverting key transportation assets and combat support forces.