Citizen Cartwright

Pete Hegseth’s hearing, and the pressure campaign to get him confirmed

Republicans “warmed” to the combat veteran and former Fox News host at his Tuesday confirmation hearing for Defense secretary, Roll Call says.

 

“Admittedly, this nomination is unconventional,” said Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Roger Wicker, R-Miss. “The nominee is unconventional, just like that New York developer who rode down the escalator in 2015 to announce his candidacy for president. That may be what makes Mr. Hegseth an excellent choice.” 

 

Ranking member Jack Reed, D-R.I., said the totality of allegations against Hegseth, including excessive drinking, sexual assault and financial mismanagement of organizations he led, along with Hegseth’s own previous statements about the military, disqualified him from the job. 

Hegseth skirted specific allegations about his personal conduct, saying he’d been the victim of false allegations by anonymous sources, circulated by media organizations he said were determined to destroy him, reports The New York Times.

“I’m not a perfect person, but redemption is real.” he said. “I have failed in things in my life, and thankfully I’m redeemed by my lord and savior Jesus.”

He billed himself as a Washington outsider and change agent who, unlike Pentagon chiefs before him, wasn’t beholden to special interests or specific companies. He vowed to return a “warrior ethos” to DOD, root out wokeness and to reinstate, with pay and rank, troops who were discharged for refusing an order to take the coronavirus vaccine.

 

President-elect Trump told Republican senators in meetings last week that Hegseth’s confirmation is a priority for him, turning the process into a loyalty test, says The New Yorker.

The Trump team’s efforts to crush dissent range from public-media campaigns, paid for by billionaires, to targeting vulnerable senators in conservative states, to “more underhanded” tactics aimed at intimidating and discrediting potentially hostile witnesses, The New Yorker says.

Several Republican senators have said they’re waiting for the FBI’s background report on Hegseth to assess the conflicting claims about his behavior.

But according to multiple well-informed sources, the bureau failed to interview several potentially crucial witnesses, The New Yorker reports.

The FBI regards the president who appointed the nominee — in this case, Trump — as “the client” who determines the scope of the inquiry, The New Yorker says.

The FBI’s report on Hegseth may be irrelevant, in any case, because it appears that most senators will never get to see it, says The New Yorker. Wicker, who was briefed on the FBI investigation into Hegseth last Friday, doesn’t plan to share the bureau’s findings with any senator other than Reed, the top-ranking Democrat.

 

Committee member Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, who’d been seen as a key Republican skeptic of Hegseth’s nomination, said she’ll support him after his performance at Tuesday’s hearing.

Dan Balz: GOP shutdown showdown showed boundaries of Trump’s power

The events leading up to Friday’s late-night passage of a spending bill showed the “perils” of governing that President-elect Donald Trump and congressional Republicans are likely to face in the year ahead, even as they have control of all the branches of government, says Washington Post analyst Dan Balz.

 

“The drama of the past week highlighted problems for various players. For Trump, this was recognition that as much power as he has, there are limits to what governing-by-Truth-Social can accomplish in a legislative environment. No wonder Trump prefers executive action and recess appointments to the gritty business of holding his own party together,” Balz says.

 

“Trump can dictate and he can threaten, as he has been doing. His allies can warn Republican lawmakers in the House or the Senate that if they don’t toe the line, they will face primary challenges. But when 38 House Republicans reject his entreaties, as they did at one point in the negotiations over the legislation to keep the government open, that’s evidence that his power has boundaries.”

 

“Whether it’s levels of government spending or nominations for his Cabinet and other positions that require Senate confirmation, Trump and his party may control both chambers in the coming year but not with such commanding majorities that he can have his way willy nilly.

 

“Will this past week’s drama, for example, remind Republicans in the Senate that they represent a separate branch of government and therefore have the power to block a few of Trump’s most controversial nominees, even at the risk of displeasing him?”

 

“The newest player in all this was Elon Musk, the world’s wealthiest person and seeming a confidant of Trump who is using his association with the president-elect to the fullest. Musk helped kill the first bipartisan spending package with posts on his X social media platform, some with inaccurate claims about the legislation, that helped sink what Johnson thought was a carefully crafted agreement.

 

“Musk seems to enjoy flexing his muscles in the political arena, but with no experience in the legislative process.”

 

“Musk’s initial claims about how much can be cut from government were extravagant and likely unachievable, unless he and Ramaswamy recommend taking an ax to federal entitlement programs [such as Social Security and Medicare] and the defense budget.

“His first foray into dealing in real terms with the budget underscored that he remains a novice in this arena. As smart and entrepreneurial as he has been in developing electric vehicles or sending rockets into space, the business of government doesn’t conform to the business of business.”

Musk’s ‘secret’ conversations with Putin

The world’s richest man, who has “deep business ties” with U.S. military and intelligence agencies and a security clearance giving him access to certain classified information, "has been in regular contact with Russian President Vladimir Putin since late 2022,” The Wall Street Journal reports.

 

"The discussions, confirmed by several current and former U.S., European and Russian officials, touch on personal topics, business and geopolitical tensions,” the WSJ says.

 

Putin asked Musk to avoid activating his Starlink satellite internet service over Taiwan as a favor to Chinese leader Xi Jinping, according to two people who were briefed on the request.

 

"Knowledge of Musk’s Kremlin contacts appears to be a closely held secret in government,” the WSJ says. "The topic is highly sensitive, given Musk’s increasing involvement in the Trump campaign and the approaching U.S. presidential election.”

 

A person aware of the conversations says the government has a dilemma because it's so dependent on Musk's technologies. SpaceX launches national security satellites into orbit and is the company NASA depends on to transport astronauts to and from the International Space Station. 

“They don’t love it,” the person says, referring to the Musk-Putin contacts. But no alerts have been raised by the administration over possible security breaches by Musk, the person says.

 

After the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Musk at first made strong public statements of support for Ukraine and donated to it several hundred Starlink terminals. By July, about 15,000 terminals were providing free internet access to areas of Ukraine destroyed by the Russian attacks.

 

But Musk’s view appeared to change. In September, Ukrainian military operatives weren’t able to use Starlink terminals to guide sea drones to attack a Russian naval base in Crimea, which Russia has occupied since 2014. Ukraine tried to persuade Musk to activate the Starlink service in the area, but it didn’t happen, the WSJ has reported.

Musk's company extended restrictions on the use of Starlink in offensive operations by Ukraine. Musk said he made the move because Starlink is intended for civilian uses and he believed any Ukrainian attack on Crimea could spark a nuclear war.

 

Musk's moves coincided with public and private pressure from Russia, the WSJ says.

 

One current and one former intelligence source say Musk and Putin have continued to have contact since then and into this year as Musk began increasing his criticism of U.S. military aid to Ukraine and became involved in the Trump election campaign.

 

Through the first months of the year, Musk said he wouldn't back any presidential candidate, while at the same time holding private conversations discussing how he could get Trump elected. Musk publicly endorsed Trump in July and said he planned to commit as much as $45 million a month to a new super PAC. The effort included hiring canvassers in battleground states.

 

Trump has said he plans to make Musk the head of a “government efficiency commission.”

 

Musk didn’t respond to its requests for comment, the WSJ says. He's called criticism from some that he's become an apologist for Putin “absurd” and has said his companies “have done more to undermine Russia than anything.”

U.N. General Assembly approves ‘Pact for the Future’

The pact is a consensus pledge among the 193 nations of the General Assembly to do more on issues including sustainable development, climate change, artificial intelligence, elimination of nuclear weapons, and youth participation at the national and international levels.

 

The 42-page pact calls for 56 actions. For example, the pact obligates governments to form an impartial worldwide scientific panel on artificial intelligence and to start an international conversation about AI governance inside the UN.

 

And the pact commits world leaders to overhaul the 15-member Security Council, to make it more reflective of today’s world and “redress the historical injustice against Africa,” which has no permanent seat, and to address the under-representation of the Asia-Pacific region and Latin America, says the Associated Press.

 

The pact was negotiated over eighteen months, led by Germany and Namibia. 

 

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz says, “The road [to implementing the pact] is rocky. But was that ever any different?”

U.S. is behind militarily, according to a couple of guys in a position to know

I’ve been writing this blog, in one form or another, for 24 years. And as journalism has contracted, it’s become increasingly difficult to find high quality articles exploring ideas and trends. Here is one, in my opinion. If you come across others, please send them to me.

New technology is transforming the nature of warfare in Ukraine, Gaza and other conflicts, and America needs to up its game, write Mark Milley, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google, in the September/October issue of Foreign Affairs magazine.

Here are some key excerpts:

"Future wars will no longer be about who can mass the most people or field the best jets, ships, and tanks. Instead, they will be dominated by increasingly autonomous weapons systems and powerful algorithms,” Milley and Schmidt write.

"Unfortunately, this is a future for which the United States remains unprepared. Its troops are not fully ready to fight in an environment in which they rarely enjoy the element of surprise. Its jets, ships, and tanks are not equipped to defend against an onslaught of drones. The military has not yet embraced artificial intelligence. The Pentagon does not have nearly enough initiatives aimed at rectifying these failures— and its current efforts are moving too slowly. Meanwhile, the Russian military has fielded many AI-powered drones in Ukraine. And in April, China announced its largest military restructuring in almost a decade, with a new emphasis on building up technology-driven forces.

"If it wants to remain the preeminent global power, the United States will have to quickly shift course. The country needs to reform the structure of its armed forces. The U.S. military needs to reform its tactics and leadership development. It needs new ways to procure equipment. It needs to buy new types of gear. And it needs to better train soldiers to operate drones and use AI.”

"It has often been difficult for military planners to predict which innovations will shape future battles. But forecasts are easier to make today,” Milley and Schmidt say. 

"Drones are omnipresent, and robots are increasingly in use. The wars in Gaza and Ukraine have shown that artificial intelligence is already changing the way states fight. The next major conflict will likely see the wholesale integration of AI into every aspect of military planning and execution. AI systems could, for instance, simulate different tactical and operational approaches thousands of times, drastically shortening the period between preparation and execution. The Chinese military has already created an AI commander that has supreme authority in large-scale virtual war games. Although Beijing prohibits AI systems from making choices in live situations, it could take the lessons it learns from its many virtual simulations and feed them to human decision-makers. And China may eventually give AI models the authority to make choices, as might other states. Soldiers could sip coffee in their offices, monitoring screens far from the battlefield, as an AI system manages all kinds of robotic war machines. Ukraine has already sought to hand over as many dangerous frontline tasks as it can to robots to preserve scarce manpower.”

"The automation of war could prove essential to saving civilian lives,” say Milley and Schmidt. "Historically, wars were fought and won in open terrain where few people live. But as global urbanization draws more people into cities and nonstate actors pivot to urban guerrilla tactics, the decisive battlefields of the future will likely be densely populated areas. Such fighting is far more deadly and far more resource-intensive. It will therefore require even more robotic weapons. Militaries will have to deploy small, maneuverable robots (such as robot dogs) on streets and flood the sky with unmanned aerial vehicles to take control of urban positions. They will be guided by algorithms, which can process visual data and make split-second decisions. Israel has helped pioneer such technology, using the first true drone swarm in Gaza in 2021. Those individual drones bypassed Hamas’s defenses and communicated through an AI weapons system to make collective decisions about where they should go.”

"The use of unmanned weapons is essential for another reason: they are cheap,” write Milley and Schmidt.

"The affordability of these weapons will, of course, make offense much easier — in turn empowering frugal, nonstate actors. In 2016, Islamic State (ISIS) terrorists used cheap drones to counter U.S.-supported advances on the Syrian city of Raqqa and the Iraqi city of Mosul, dropping grenade-sized munitions from the sky and making it hard for the Syrian Democratic Forces to set up antisniper positions. Today, Iranian-backed insurgents are using drones to strike U.S. air bases in Iraq. And the Houthis, the military group that controls much of Yemen, are sending drones to strike ships in the Red Sea. Their attacks have tripled the cost of shipping from Asia to Europe. Other groups could soon get in on the action. Hezbollah and al Qaeda in the Middle East, for example, might engage in more regional attacks, as could Boko Haram in Nigeria and al Shabab elsewhere in Africa.

"No state is fully prepared for future wars," say Milley and Schmidt. "No country has begun producing the hardware it needs for robot weapons at scale, nor has any state created the software required to fully power automated weapons. But some countries are further along than others. And unfortunately, the United States’ adversaries are, in many ways, in the lead. Russia, having gained experience in Ukraine, has dramatically upped its drone production and now uses unmanned vehicles to great effect on the battlefield. China dominates the global commercial drone market: the Chinese company DJI controls an estimated 70 percent of global commercial drone production. And because of China’s authoritarian structure, the Chinese military has proved especially adroit at pushing through changes and adopting new concepts. One, termed “multidomain precision warfare,” entails the People’s Liberation Army’s use of advanced intelligence, reconnaissance, and other emerging technologies to coordinate firepower.”

"When it comes to AI, the United States still has the highest quality systems and spends the most on them. Yet China and Russia are swiftly gaining ground. Washington has the resources to keep outspending them, but even if it maintains this lead, it could struggle to overcome the bureaucratic and industrial obstacles to deploying its inventions on the battlefield. As a result, the U.S. military risks fighting a war in which its first-rate training and superior conventional weaponry will be rendered less than effective. U.S. troops, for example, have not been fully prepared to operate on a battlefield where their every move can be spotted and where they can be rapidly targeted by the drones hovering overhead. This inexperience would be especially dangerous on open battlefields like those in Ukraine, as well as other eastern European countries or in the wide expanses of the Arctic. The U.S. military would also be especially vulnerable in urban battlefields, where enemies can more easily sever U.S. communications lines and where many American weapons are less useful.”

"In the worst-case scenario, AI warfare could endanger humanity,” write Milley and Schmidt. "To avoid becoming obsolete, the American military needs to make major reforms. It can start by shaking up its processes for acquiring software and weapons. Its current purchasing process is too bureaucratic, risk-averse, and slow to adapt to the rapidly developing threats of the future. For example, it relies on ten-year procurement cycles, which can lock it into particular systems and contracts long after the underlying technology has evolved. It should, instead, ink shorter deals whenever possible."

The United States "must also change the military’s organizational structures and training systems. It should make its complex, hierarchical chain of command more flexible and give greater autonomy to small, highly mobile units. These units should have leaders trained and empowered to make crucial combat decisions. Such units will be more nimble—a critical advantage given the fast pace of AI-powered war. They are also less likely to be paralyzed if adversaries disrupt their communications lines to headquarters. These units must be connected with new platforms, such as drones, so they can be as effective as possible. (Autonomous systems can also help improve training.) U.S. special forces are a possible template for how these units could operate.”

"War is nasty, brutish, and often much too long,” Milley and Schmidt say. "It is an illusion to think that technology will change the underlying human nature of conflict. But the character of war is changing both rapidly and fundamentally. The United States must change and adapt, as well, and American officials must do so faster than their country’s adversaries. Washington won’t get it exactly right — but it must get it less wrong than its enemies."

One dog barking

At the Associated Press, much ado about West Point

by John Dineen

It's not hard these days to find examples of curious journalism decisions, but it's still worth asking in each case, why?

The Associated Press informed us last week that the U.S. Military Academy at West Point had created a stir with revisions to its mission statement, prompting accusations of “going woke” — and more.

The academy’s famous motto, “Duty, honor, country,” first incorporated into a mission statement revision in 1998, was dropped from this latest version. The motto itself, carved in granite over the entrances to buildings on campus, remains unchanged.

The revised statement — there have been nine such revisions in the past century, according to academy spokesperson Col. Terence Kelley — reads, “To build, educate, train, and inspire the Corps of Cadets to be commissioned leaders of character committed to the Army Values and ready for a lifetime of service to the Army and Nation.”

In response to the change, Rachel Campos-Duffy, co-host of the Fox network’s “Fox & Friends Weekend,” wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that West Point has gone “full globalist” and is “Purposely tanking recruitment of young Americans patriots  to make room for the illegal mercenaries.”

Conservative radio host Jeff Kuhner tweeted, “West Point is going woke. We’re watching the slow death of our country.”

West Point Superintendent Lt. Gen. Steve Gilland said in a statement, “Duty, Honor, Country is foundational to the United States Military Academy’s culture and will always remain our motto.”

“It defines who we are as an institution and as graduates of West Point,” he said. “These three hallowed words are the hallmark of the cadet experience and bind the Long Gray Line together across our great history.”

The article notes that the mission statement “is updated periodically, usually with little fanfare,” then recounts the fevered criticism. The story doesn’t analyze the changes in the mission statement through the lens of previous statements; I’m guessing the AP wouldn’t find that particularly compelling for a general-interest audience. Nor does the story explore the motivations behind the outcry.

In fact, why write this story at all? Crackpot posts on Twitter are a given, and sometimes unfortunately so are stories based on them. Did the reporter call Campos-Duffy to ask her reasoning? Or did they just find the tweet and others like it and start writing?

I’ve read the mission statement several times, and I’m still struggling to read “a lifetime of service to the Army and Nation” as “make room for the illegal mercenaries.”

Over the course of my career in journalism, newsrooms have struggled with the transition from information gatekeepers to … something else, something still loosely defined. Too often, that something else is information pandering: like a loud noise in a quiet room, or a fender-bender on the side of the road, something that gets you to turn your head and look, if only for a second, before moving on. It may only be a single click or tap, but you won’t get that time back, and you won’t be any wiser.

One dog barking is an occasional column by my husband, John Dineen. He is a former senior congressional staffer and media executive and founder of briefing.center, a news and information service.

Results of Biden, Xi talks

The presidents of the United States and China spent four hours in talks at a mansion outside San Francisco on Wednesday, agreeing to resume communications between their militaries, cooperate on choking off fentanyl production and begin a dialogue on the risks of artificial intelligence.

 

Biden told reporters afterward that the talks were “some of the most constructive and productive conversations we’ve had.”

 

Xi’s meeting with Biden "was an unmitigated success, according to the Chinese version of events, as state media made an about-face so abrupt it caused whiplash on social media," reports The Washington Post.

 

Zoe Liu, a fellow for China studies at the Council for Foreign Relations, says the meeting is a positive incremental step.

“These agreements will not change the structural challenges in the bilateral relations, but it paves the way for more detailed working-level discussions, which is more important,” she says.

 

Biden and his top aides had spent months negotiating with top Chinese officials over the summit, hoping that face-to-face communication would prevent tensions between the two world powers from erupting, notes The Wall Street Journal. Xi too had an incentive to meet as he grapples with economic turbulence at home and seeks to stop the exodus of foreign capital.

But U.S. officials say the real success of the summit is less concrete: a rare opportunity for direct diplomacy with the authoritarian leader of the world’s second-largest economy.

The agreements reached Wednesday, though incremental, and the more positive tone contrast with the meetings of recent years and give Washington and Beijing more time to steady ties that have been on a downward pitch for years, says the WSJ.

 

In another potential sign of warmer feelings, Xi signaled later Wednesday that China would send new pandas to the United States after the three at the Smithsonian National Zoo in Washington were returned earlier this month. In a speech, he said he wanted to “deepen the friendly ties between our two peoples.” Xi also said he'd learned that Americans — especially children — were “really reluctant” to say goodbye to the animals. 

 

Truly. NBC4 Washington described Nov. 8 as “a day thousands of visitors to the National Zoo have been dreading for months, or possibly years. The zoo's famed giant pandas have left D.C.”

 

The pandas left D.C. at a time when, according to The Associated Press, there's been a larger trend of China pulling back its pandas from multiple western nations' zoos as their agreements expired, amid diplomatic tensions.

 

Here is the White House's readout [summary] of the Biden-Xi meeting.

AP series on the tension between gun rights and other rights

"In a country shadowed by the threat of mass shootings and neighborhood violence, courts have embraced an increasingly absolute reading of the right to guns. That raises difficult questions about how to protect the full range of freedoms Americans cherish," says The Associated Press.

"With nearly 400 million guns in civilian hands [U.S. population: 336 million], the violence they enable feels to many like a threat to their right to worship in peace, go to school and be safe at home,” AP says. "To many others, an unfettered right to own and carry guns is essential to protecting those liberties."

AP examined the rising tensions between those beliefs — and the struggle for answers:

 

— Churches: There’s increasing friction between the right to worship and the right to own guns. In a recent survey of protestant pastors, 62 percent said their duties now include making plans for responding to an active shooter in their chapels and grounds.

 

— Soldiers and veterans: Every year, thousands of U.S. soldiers and veterans, many haunted by trauma sustained in the line of duty, take their own lives, the vast majority using a gun. Families and experts say it’s likely many of those men and women still would be alive if not for their access to guns.

 

— Victims of domestic abuse: The Supreme Court is preparing to step into the issue of a victim’s right to safety vs. an abuser’s right to guns, weighing whether people deemed to be a threat can be forced to relinquish their firearms if they haven't yet been convicted of a crime.

 

— Schools: Amid a record number of mass killings this year and a surge in youth deaths by firearms, how can parents and children feel safe?

 

— People who’ve lost loved ones in mass shootings: How do they reconcile the pursuit of happiness with what they’ve lost?

McCarthy’s impeachment inquiry into Biden

The House speaker’s announcement on Tuesday appears to be an effort to deal with a brewing rebellion among ultraconservative critics who've accused him of not taking a hard enough line on spending, by complying with their demands to more aggressively pursue the president, says a New York Times article by longtime congressional reporter Carl Hulse and others. 

 

After months of digging, Republicans have found no proof of financial wrongdoing or corruption by Biden and his family, though they say they have enough information to warrant more investigation, the Times says.

 

McCarthy scheduled his announcement after Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla. a frequent critic of the speaker, gave word on Monday night that he’d be giving a speech on the House floor attacking McCarthy and making the case for his ouster. Minutes after McCarthy spoke on Tuesday, Gaetz did that, saying the speaker had reneged on promises he'd made to right-wing lawmakers in return for their votes during his prolonged effort to win the speakership.

 

Far-right Republicans are pledging to withhold their votes for any temporary spending bill that continues funding at current levels and a Pentagon spending bill that usually gets bipartisan support.

 

The White House calls the impeachment inquiry “extreme politics at its worst.”

 

Here is a look at what happens next, from The Associated Press.

Honoring Ian Fishback

The anti-torture whistleblower during the U.S. occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq was laid to rest Tuesday with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery.

 

Fishback, 42, died of cardiac arrest nearly two years ago while in court-mandated mental health care in Michigan. 

 

"Fishback was a dissident-in-uniform who ultimately set aside a sparkling military career to become a philosopher before entering a dizzying mental health spiral," says The New York Times. 

 

The presiding Army chaplain, Maj. Joanna Forbes, highlighted the manner in which Fishback applied the values he embraced as a West Point graduate and as a military officer to protect those who ended up in the Army’s battlefield grasp. 

 

“Ian fought with honor, integrity and courage for his nation and his fellow soldiers, too,” said Forbes. “And with those same values he also stood up for some viewed only as enemies but, he knew, were people who had the right to just treatment and dignity. I have buried many heroes. But none like Ian Fishback.”

 

Marc Garlasco, a former Human Rights Watch investigator who helped bring the abuses to light, said Fishback ranked among the most courageous veterans of the United States’ long and ultimately failed occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq — a young officer who put moral duties and his oath to the Constitution above other concerns.

“Ian’s strong moral courage was all he had after his chain of command told him to stay quiet,” Garlasco said. “Ian was the only one to stand up and say, ‘No, America shouldn’t torture people.’”

 

In 2006, Fishback was recognized as one of Time magazine’s 100 influential people of the year. But after two deployments to Iraq with the Special Forces, he told family and friends he felt shunned and sometimes threatened by some soldiers, commanders and peers, who treated him as a turncoat.

 

Fishback pursued a new career in academics, first as a philosophy instructor at West Point and later, after departing the Army at the rank of major, as a doctoral student at the University of Michigan. There he studied just-war theory, a genre of philosophy that examines the behavior of combatants. But he didn't rebound from the painful isolation of whistle-blowing, an experience his family says compounded an escalating mental illness, never firmly diagnosed, and that plunged him into periods of paranoia and delusion.

 

His treatment, beginning soon after the University of Michigan awarded him a doctorate in 2021, pushed Fishback into the news late that year. This time he was a profile of tragedy — the fatal casualty of what his family and supporters described as a seemingly unresponsive VA, which denied him care as he was shuffled through civilian hospitals and group homes, growing ever more confused and frail while receiving antipsychotic medication against his will, according to medical records.

 

The details of his involuntary care and apparent state and federal inaction during what became an enfeeblement so profound that it turned lethal are under review by the state of Michigan and the inspector general of the Department of Veterans Affairs. 

 

Early this year, after The New York Times Magazine published an investigation into Fishback’s decline and death, Denis McDonough, the VA secretary, conceded in a speech to the American Legion that the department had “failed” to fulfill its responsibilities to the former officer. “We all have to be there for veterans when it matters most, especially in times of crisis,” McDonough said. “We didn’t carefully coordinate our response to his needs across federal, state and county systems.”