Ex-US defence secretary takes on the Pentagon

Former US defence secretary Mark Esper who was “terminated” in a tweet by President Trump is now suing his old department for blocking key passages in a memoir about his volatile relationship with his ex-commander-in-chief. Esper, 57, was Pentagon chief from July 2019 to November 2020 and has written his own version of what it was like to serve under Trump, including during the violent civil unrest following the murder by a white police officer of African-American George Floyd in Minneapolis. The memoir called A Sacred Oath includes his recollection of private one-to-one conversations he had with Trump as well as discussions with the former president and officials during crisis national security meetings. Esper who was deeply engaged in high-level Trump administration debates on pulling US troops out of Afghanistan and acting against Iran and North Korea over their nuclear weapons programmes, denies that his book includes any classified material, or compromises national security. The issue that finally persuaded Trump to sack Esper just six days after losing the presidential election on November 3, 2020 was the defence secretary’s opposition to deploying active-service troops on the streets in Washington and elsewhere to counter rioters protesting over the fatal shooting of George Floyd. The dispute over his memoir is the most bitter legal issue involving a past cabinet member since the attempt by the Trump administration to stop John Bolton, ex-national security adviser, from publishing a book about his tempestuous relationship with the former president. In a statement, Esper said the objective with the book was to make public “a full and unvarnished accounting of our nation’s history, especially the more difficult periods”. His lawsuit, filed in the federal district court in Washington, says: “Significant text is being improperly withheld from publication in Secretary Esper’s manuscript under the guise of classification.” “I am more than disappointed the current administration is infringing on my First Amendment constitutional rights,” Esper said. The lawsuit says Esper was in charge at the Pentagon through “an unprecedented time of civil unrest, public health crises, growing threats abroad, Pentagon transformation and a White House seemingly bent on circumventing the constitution”. Esper submitted a draft of his memoir in May to the Pentagon department that handles security reviews of planned books to ensure there are no breaches of national security. In November he wrote an email to Lloyd Austin, his successor at the Pentagon, complaining that “multiple words, sentences and paragraphs from approximately 60 pages of the manuscript were redacted”. He had been asked not to quote Trump and others in meetings nor to describe conversations with the former president and “to not use certain verbs or nouns when describing historical events”. “Many items were already in the public domain, “ Esper said. “As with all such reviews, the department takes seriously its obligation to balance national security with an author’s narrative desire,” John Kirby, Pentagon press secretary, said. “Given that this matter is now under litigation, we will refrain from commenting further,” he said.