Until late last week, President Trump decided to fire the co-director's chairman, Charles Q. Brown Jr., to replace him with one of two very different candidates, according to two administration officials. It was.
One was General Michael E. Kurira, a hardworking Army four-star general who oversees one of the Pentagon's most mandatory missions, US military operations in the Middle East.
The other is Dan Kane, a lesser known three-star air force officer, who has been a fighter pilot, the best military contact to the CIA, and the air force nation that established regional airlines. There were unorthodox career paths that included security guards. Texas.
Trump and General Cain met for an hour at the White House on February 14th. The president largely decided on Thursday in a meeting with Secretary of Defense Pete Hegses.
And in a message on social media the following night, Trump said he was “a fighter plane with skilled pilots, national security experts, successful entrepreneurs and important ministries and special operational experience. “We announced that we are calling it.”
part of, part of He said the extraordinary purge of the pentagon, which has been attributed to intense deliberations over the past two weeks, was held strictly within a minority group of senior administrators, including Mr Hegses, Vice President J.D. Vance, Michael Waltz and National Security Advisor. , discusses internal discussions regarding the conditions of anonymity.
During Trump's first term, he initially seemed to seek close ties with senior military leaders, and he was frequently referred to as “my general.” It quickly gave way to frustration with them as he began to see them as dishonest.
The President's deep skepticism urged him to pass more obvious choices like General Brown, like General Brown, replacing General Cain and stealing general Cain from relative ambiguity. His choice, as those familiar with his ideas, was based in part on General Kane's lack of clear relations with the Biden administration, and was briefly made with the Iraqi general six years ago. Based on the encounter, Trump convinced him that he had that species. An attitude that can be seen as a president making an ideal military officer.
In recent years, Trump has publicly praised General Kane for what he told him for saying that the Islamic State could be defeated faster during his visit to Iraq.
Now, their rekindled relationships are not only national security challenges such as the war in Ukraine and the rising military threat from China, but also without General Kane's intentional non-political work It will also be tested by whether Trump can meet his expectations of loyalty. His best military advice to the commander.
Trump has stuck with the position of co-headed chairman since 2019 when he chose General Mark A. Millie, General Brown's predecessor. It was a decision that led the president to regret it.
The president saw General Milly as an ancestor and a traitor. General Milly publicly apologized for walking with Trump across Lafayette Square for a photo shoot after being exempt from peaceful protesters from George Floyd in May 2020. . He was accompanied by “your president,” so he ranked Trump as the general pledged allegiance to the Constitution, not him. Their relationship was never the same.
“Trump likes his general until he doesn't do that anymore,” said John R. Bolton, Trump's first term national security adviser.
It quickly spread out in place of General Brown, the decorated F-16 combat pilot who became the second African American to chair in October 2023 after Trump was elected for a second term. I did.
The possibility is almost certain after Hegseth was confirmed as Secretary of Defense last month. Hegses previously said that General Brown should be fired for what he called “awakening” to his military diversity, equity and inclusion programme. Hegseth also questioned whether the general was promoted because of his race despite his 40 years of service.
A few weeks ago, the search for a new chairman began seriously. Lt. Gen. Samuel J. Paparo Jr., the US military chief of the Indo-Pacific, was temporarily considered among several other first candidates.
However, the list of finalists was quickly reduced to General Kurilla and General Caine.
With paper and traditional thinking, General Kurira seemed to be lifting his legs. He met regularly with Trump and other national security aides to discuss military priorities in the Middle East. Additionally, General Kurira, whose tenure at Central Command is expected to close in the coming months, has expressed interest in the job, current and former military officials said. Ultimately, General Kurila looked too similar to the officer Trump had soured, aides said.
Meanwhile, General Kane retired at the end of December after finishing his final job in his military career in contact with the Pentagon CIA, joining Shield Capital, a company in Burlingame, California, to join Cybersecurity and I specialize in cybersecurity. artificial intelligence.
General Cain, 56, graduated from the Virginia Military Institute with a degree in economics in 1990, became an F-16 pilot, as his father had been, and protected Washington on September 11, 2001. He became the lead astronaut assigned to do so. Qaeda Hijackers slammed commercial jets into the Pentagon and the World Trade Center.
His career that followed took an extraordinary trajectory. He offered one opportunity to another, picking up valuable new skills at each stop, broadening his vast network of contacts. He was a White House Fellow in the Agriculture Department and a counterterrorism expert on the White House Homeland Security Council under President George W. Bush. He served on some very secret information and special operations missions. Some are unusual for several National Guard officers in the US and abroad.
As a part-time security guard, General Caine was the co-founder of Rise Airline and managed other private companies, according to his LinkedIn page and interviews with friends and former colleagues. In his CIA work, he was very interested in the intersection of technology and national security, and maintained a close tab to American companies that sold cutting-edge technology to Ukraine in the battle with Russia.
But it was the president's brief visit to Al-Assad Air Force Base in western Iraq in late December 2018 that put him on Trump's radar. During a briefing there, General Kane told the president that the Islamic state is not so harsh and could be defeated. Trump spoke in 2019, not the two years that senior advisors predicted.
And at a conservative political action conference last year, Trump said General Kane wore the great American hat while he met him in Iraq.
Details of these accounts have changed over time as Trump's story is frequently retold. But Bolton, who accompanied Trump on a trip to Iraq, said General Cain and another senior general had explained to the president about plans to defeat the last remains of the Islamic State in two or four weeks, not a week. I stated. And he never wore General Cain's hat. “No way,” Bolton said.
In a social media message, Trump also said General Kane's nickname, Razin, recalls Trump's obsession with former Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis' nickname, Mad Dog.
General Cain's nickname embodied something like a Hell Razor warrior straight from the central casting Trump was looking for in his top general, officials said. He added that the president fulfilled his fantasy vision of what the general would do.
In his post Friday, Trump once again praised General Kane's counter-terrorism skills. “During my first term, Rajn helped to completely eliminate the ISIS caliphate,” the president said. “It took place in record time, several weeks. Many so-called military 'geniuses' said it would take years to defeat ISIS. Meanwhile, General Cain said it could be done quickly, and he delivered. ”
Trump has revealed another reason for his unconventional choice. He said General Kane was taken over for promotion by President Joseph R. Biden Jr. In Trump's mind, the aide says that the perceived snub is a great supporter and evidence that General Cain has no concrete loyalty to his previous administration. For Trump, who views most senior executives as incompetent and politically correct, it also suggests that General Cain has a different mindset.
Friends and former colleagues, despite his nickname, are a highly concentrated but modest self-deterred officer, General Kane, is displeased with Trump's characterization of his role in defeating the Islamic state. They say it is. A friend who has known him for decades says he doesn't know what his political affiliation is and explains that the general has not spoken about politics. General Caine did not respond to an email requesting comment on Sunday.
But when the White House called out a few weeks ago as they were preparing to move from Washington to Dallas, General Kane's friends were called by Trump and his top aides, and finally says he didn't hesitate to accept the job. There is no obligation to the state.
This will probably be the most important question for General Cain as he prepares to return to active duty this week and prepares for what is expected to be a tough Senate confirmation hearing. I'll raise it. Tell Trump, or the president what he wants to hear?
“He's always been direct and open across ministries, and this is not a small feat,” said General Kenneth F. Mackenzie Jr., a former central commander who frequently dealt with General Kane in his CIA job, on Sunday. He spoke. “I never considered him a yes man.”
Sen. Jack Reid of Rhode Island, a senior Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, said in an interview Sunday he would push General Kane at a hearing about that central point.
Jonathan Swan, Maggie Harberman and Helen Cooper Reports of contributions.
