JFCOM Chief Speaks

Army Gen. Ray Odierno, the head of the soon-to-be-disestablished U.S. Joint Forces Command, issued a statement this afternoon regarding the impact of the Obama administration's decision:

On Jan. 6, the President approved the disestablishment of USJFCOM on a date determined by the Secretary of Defense, and directed that action to be reflected in the 2010 Unified Command Plan.

Earlier that day, the Secretary of Defense announced while details are still being refined, a number of USJFCOM missions will be retained in the Norfolk/Suffolk, Va. area and that 'roughly 50 percent of the capabilities under JFCOM will be kept and assigned to other organizations.'

We continue to work closely with the Pentagon, the Virginia delegation and the governor's office in our detailed planning effort.  The input and involvement of the Virginia delegation and the governor's office have been very valuable to me, and we will continue to work together towards a final plan in the near future.

U.S. Joint Forces Command has an exceptionally skilled and capable work force that will continue to make contributions to the joint warfighter. We will do everything we can to assist the work force going forward.

Inside the Pentagon reported in November that officials serving on the command's transition team had been sworn to silence:

The Defense Department has barred staffers serving on the command's transition planning team from sharing information, first through non-disclosure agreements and then through a standard guidance memo.

DOD issued non-disclosure agreements that were signed by the 15 JFCOM employees serving on the transition planning team, but subsequently withdrew those agreements and replaced them with standard guidance in a memo, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Legislative Affairs Elizabeth King told Rep. Randy Forbes (R-VA) in an Oct. 21 letter.

"The agreement was patterned after non-disclosures designed to protect classified or highly sensitive information," King writes. "As such, it was determined to be inappropriate for the intended use of the command's transition planning team. Thus, the agreement has been withdrawn and replaced with standard guidance that is applicable for the pre-decisional planning necessary for the disestablishment of JFCOM."