OSINT Insights and Washington Reflections

There's an element of fear now at the Pentagon. You don't want to raise your hand, say anything against policy or even question it . Pete Hegset is blocking some promotions at the Pentagon . Why? Why? And a summer surge for National Guard troops here in Washington, the current number is going to double . This is sources and methods from NPR. I'm Mary Louise Kelly it's Thursday, which means we're diving into the week's biggest national security stories with NPR reporters out and about covering them joining me today here in the studio. NPR Pentagon correspondent, Tom Bowman. Hello my friend. Hey, Mary Louise. And for her debut on sources and methods and pir's Kat Lansdorf my travel buddy. Stories I'm trying to think. Like Kiev , Amon, Jerusalem, Georgia, the country. Tabilisi, yeah, where are we going next? You tell me what's going on . For now, we are in the studio and I will timestamp this. It's about twenty five minutes past noon here in Washington . Tom just, down the street from where you and I and Kat are sitting, lawmakers are busy, among other things marking up the annual defense bill, annual being the key word. They do this every year, but this year they are using this as a tool question Defense Secretary Pete Hagseth about promotions or lack thereof because he has been blocking promotions . What's going on? Well, first of all, twenty four officers , their names have been withdrawn from the promotion list. sixty percent of them are black or female officers in the From all the services, Mary Louise, Navy Captains, Air Force, and Army Colonels, and two Marine One Star generals. So I reached out to Congressman Pat Ryan. He's a New York Democrat who did two combat tours in Iraq , and he's pushing an amendment and he got a full approval from the Armed Services Committee on a voice vote. And he's basically saying, listen, we want Secretary Hagsa to explain why each officer was withdrawn from these promotion lists within five days after this bill becomes law , and the Senate is also expected to take this up. But there's a real concern here. It's like, wait a minute . twenty four offices. And it's highly unusual for a defense secretary to reach down at that level, the colonel level and the Navy captain level and withdraw people from the list. And you have no explanation for this. As you go through their bios, Tom are there red flags? Is there anything you can see that might be the reason? Well, it's funny you mentioned that because I have the names of six of them. Okay , six of these officers. And get this, the hill is trying to get the names of the other eighteen officers. They didn't even know who these officers are . So they don't there's not like a list out there where you can okay it. So I'm one of these officers . They've commanded at various levels, worked in legislative affairs in Capitol Hill. It was in Afghanistan with a special operations unit, Legion of Merit, Defense Meritorious Service Medal . Another one, you know Iraq time in two thousand three and four, distinguished graduate, master's degree, worked with the joint chiefs of staff, and I'm looking at some more here . Again, Iraq time . Okay, so distinguished graduate combat veteran and there's no indication here and one more , there's an officer whose brother is also an officer and whose other brother is a senior officer in the military. So everyone's scratching their heads. And I talked to a friend of one of these officers , right ? And this friend told me he said , This officer is dumbfounded. He said, I've done thirty years in the military . You know, no blemish on my record. I don't know why my name was withdrawn from the list, right? And we should say, you know, Marley's Tom and I' beenve looking into this. In order to be blocked or delayed a promotion, which is pretty uncommon, you have to have there has to be a real reason, like an egregious, you know, something you've done, you're under investigation, that kind of thing. And as far as we can tell , none of these people who have been recently blocked or delayed promotion any kind of investigation to that. That's absolutely right. So we said lawmakers are asking questions about this. I know y'all are asking questions about this. What is the Pentagon say when you say why are these people not being promoted? Well, back in March when they pulled some of these offices from the list, I reached out to Sean Parnell. He's the Pentagon spokesman . And he said, quote, under Secretary Hagseth, military promotions are given to those who have earned them . Meritocracy which reigns in this department is a political and unbiased. But here's the thing we know about Secretary Hagseth. He has questioned officers in the past. Did this person get his job because of his race? Did this female officer get it because of her gender? We're done with this DEI thing, right? Yeah. So he's waging a war on woke. He is told exactly . He's told us over and over again, he's quote unquote anti woke and anti DEI it seems like he's, you know, using that mentality to think through these promotions . And you know, like Tom said, at least for the six that we know that have been taken off the list, they do have the merit, right? No question . So that response from Parnell doesn't make sense. Okay , so we're talking here about officers who are not being promoted either, being blocked or maybe delayed . The term they use is withdrawn . It's not removed. If it's removed, then you're kind of done. If it's withdrawn , you can still get back on the list. That's the term they use. What about I mean, set this against there are also people who have just been flat out fired forced out. I mean famously C. Q Brown, the chairman of the joint chiefs that was early in Trump's second term. More recently cat , Randy George , who was Army Chief of Staff, he was forced out in April. I want to hear about that, but I want y'all to listen to some of the questions that people on the hill are asking. This is an exchange we found from April , Marilyn Strickland, Congresswoman, Democrat of Washington. So my question, Secretary, is this what specific national security risk, mission risk, or leadership concern did General George present that justified removing him in the middle of a conflict or was he removed because he challenged some decisions being made As I stated earlier, out of respect to these officers, I don't discuss the nature of the removal, but I would ask an earnest question of you, where does General George fall in the operational chain of command? So I'm asking you, why did you fire him? Don't change it operational moment. Where does General George fall into ? No, it's a simple question around the house service. Leadership concern. What did he present that justified removing him in the middle of a conflict? Do you know where General George serves and the operational chain of command. So Maam, you're asking my question one more time, sir. Don't try to flip . Okay, so you can hear in that exchange they're going back and forth over whether the Army Chief of Staff is in the operational chain of command, which he's not Tom, but the question why fire him was never answered? Well, here's one thing I do know that General George tried to reach Secretary Hagseth and basically said you should not remove these two black officers, these two female officers from the list. He never got that meeting with Secretary Hagset and he was fired. But here's the thing. I think this is kind of the last straw with the members of Capitol Hill because he is Randy George was highly respected. He was turning the army around. He was getting rid of obsolete weapon systems. He was making a real push for drones, which were sort of the wave of the present. And again, highly respected. He was well regarded. And again, I think this is one of the reasons why you see Congress man Pat Ryan and others basically say, listen, we want answers to why these people were removed. And Randy George was pushed out, you know, like Tom said, it was right after Peg Seth took, I think it was four different officers off of this promotion list . Two of whom were black, two of whom were women . And George spoke up against that, we're told. And you know, he was just one in a long line of people that have been fired or pushed out by Hagseth since Hags came into office. We're compiling a list of that. We have a list of about twenty high ranking officials at this point. And many of them are black or women. Many of them are also white men, but they are white men who have had kind of differences with Hagseth over time, who have disagreed with him, who maybe don't agree with this anti woke, you know, anti DEI nature that Hagseth is pushing in the military. Yes, Congressman Ryan said, what do you think's going on here? And he said, I think there are layered reasons for all this. He said, part of it is Hagseth wants total loyalty and anyone questioning him like Randy George, General George did over these pulling these folks off the promotional lists. He said anyone with a sliver of independence gets acts. And he said clearly, if you look at the stats, there's a racial and gender element here as well. Okay, a few things. One , I just before it disappears into the mists of the podcast, transcripts, I just want to note drones as the wave of the present. That is something that I've had that pretty good. A great turn of phrase, which we will come back to . But two follow up questions. One , how do we know that General George was standing up for people he didn't want thrown off this list? I know that for a fact. How? Talking to sources at the Pentagon. Okay Who are telling you that was that was his opinion that he was voicing in that. Right. Okay. And I think also General George was kind of dumbfounded for getting fired. He was like, wait a minute. I'm turning the army around. Is there any appeals process here or can Pete, Hagseth or any defense secretary for that matter block people's promotions for whatever reason they want? Do they have to explain it? Well again, as Kat was saying you can pull someone off the list if there's an act of investigation if there's clear element of wrongdoing, but yeah, he can do it, right ? And as also, as we know, the officers serve at the pleasure of the president . Right. So the hexet or anyone can go to the president and say, Hey, this guy's got to go. I guess it's just to zoom out a little bit. This obviously matters hugely to the people in question. Do we know, is there a way to measure what effect it may or may not be having on morale, on operational readiness or performance? There's no question it's having an effect on morale. People I talk with who are in the military or in the retired community say there's an element of fear now at the Pentagon. You don't want to raise your head, raise your hand, say anything against the policy or heck or even question it. So I think it has a problem with morale. And also Congressman Ryan said, this could have an effect on recruiting as well. If I'm a black officer, I just graduated from West Point, do I want to spend my whole career here if someone's just going to grab me out of the blue and say, You're done and not give me a reason for that or female at West Point or the Naval Academy? And also what's really troubling is some of these officials at the Pentagon are going through the social media posts of officers. And one officer I know put on social media basically the US should do more to help our Afghan allies . He was fired over that . We're gonna take a break. When we come back, more National Guard troops are headed to DC as we approach the nation's two hundred fiftieth anniversary. That's ahead on sources and methods from NPR . We're back. If you forgot that the National Guard is still deployed in some U. S. cities, we wouldn't blame you, but Kat and Tom, the three of us see the troops constantly here in Washington. I passed a couple groups of them as I was leaving NPR headquarters and driving home last night. They're all patrolling on the National Mall, they're out on our streets, and they are in other cities too Memphis , New Orleans. You have done a lot of reporting on this in Memphis, for example . Why is the National Guard still patrolling U. S. cities? Yeah, so I mean the, deployments here in DC and Memphis in New Orleans, like you mentioned, are kind of these quieter deployments than we saw a lot of last year. You know, there were these big deployments that were very splashy L. A. That was this time last year, exactly a year ago. Yeah, we're like one year anniversary . Exactly. And that was two thousand National Guard troops and the Marines deployed to the streets of Los Angeles. I'm sure you remember that. There was a threat to deploy, you know, President Trump threatened to deploy the National Guard to Portland, Chicago . But those were deployments that were against the governor's wishes. You know, the governor controls the National Guard in each state. And in California, in Oregon, in Illinois, those governors did not want their National Guard deployed . And President Trump did want to deploy them. So he federalized the National Guard, took control of them and it's very very, unprecedented. That does not normally happen in America. Whereas New Orleans, for example, Republican governor. Exactly. Got it. Exactly. So in New Orleans and Memphis, those are Republican governors who raised their hands and said, Hey, we'll take the help of the National Guard . And also here in DC, you know, because of the unique nature of the city, Trump controls the National Guard here as president. So he can deploy the National Guard to the streets here . So that's why we have these deployments. And these deployments in here in DC, Memphis, New Orleans have all been in order to quote unquote, fight crime, which is an interesting thing because troops have no arresting powers in these places . But they are doing these high visibility patrols like you talked about. I mean me, you know, Tom , we all see them all the time , right? I see them on my street in my neighborhood. Yeah, almost every day. How if the mission is fighting crime , are they fighting crime? Like is this working? Is it effective? What do we know ? I mean, that is a hard metric to measure, right? Especially because, you know, all of these deployments haven't lasted a year yet. We don't really have the year on year data . But also in every single one of these cities, DC included, crime was already trending down . So crime is continuing to trend down. Crime is better, you know, in DC now than it was last year, but you know, it's hard to say if it's because of the National Guard presence exactly. There has been at least one study that has come out about this . This was by the Nissan Center. It's a nonpartisan think tank here in DC. They recently came out with a report just the other week looking specifically at this DC deployment, trying to figure out just that. And researchers took publicly available crime and policing data for the city. They adjusted it to specifically look at the National Guard deployment . And what they found is that the deployment itself has had very little to no effect on violent crime in the city . They did find that the presidents of the Guard produced one notable improvement about twenty a four percent reduction in opportunistic crimes like petty theft, vehicle break ins, that kind of thing. I talked to an author of the study, Richard Haan, and here's what he had to say about it. You know, I think on balance, the National Guard's deployment is not a failure. You know, I think there's success in what they've done , but I guess the point that we try to make is, you know, compared to what? You know, basically he made the point that you could get the same or even better or much better results for much less simply through more focus policing. Yeah. You said for much less . How much are these deployments cost ? And are we paying we being US taxpayers? Yes. Let's look at the DC one specifically because that's the kind of easiest place to find the data for the money . Here in DC , it's about six hundred dollars a day per troop. Okay , per member of the National Guard. Those are numbers from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. They put out an estimate last year looking into this. So six hundred dollars a day per member of the National Guard, right now we have about three thousand five National Guard here. That's six hundred more than we had last week, by the way . So if you multiply six hundred by three thousand five hundred , that's about two point two million dollars a day. I'm so glad you're doing that math. Yeah, right. I did that math on the calculator before I came into the studio. I just want to be very clear. If I could just quickly add there's a political element here, of course, that all of these National Guard troops are coming from Republican led states. Yes, if you look at the stats. And they're going to Democratic run cities. So part of this is President Trump and others saying, listen, the Democrats , you know, they can't run their cities. It's crime ridden. We have to send the guard in to help them. That's a big part of this as well. Yes, actually here in DC what you're talking about is that here in DC we have the DC National Guard which are on the streets, but then there's, I think, thirteen other states who have sent their National Guard here. So we have troops from Florida, Georgia, West Virginia, Tennessee, all kinds of all of those are Republican . And Kent and I have talked about this. A lot of these guard people are coming to DC , they tend to be police officers, prison guards, state police. So some of these states as they increase the numbers , may have to juggle their own police forces or their prison guard forces to make it work when these guys are heading to DC or other cities. Kat, you said there's six hundred more National Guard in DC this week than there were last week. That's what ramping up to the two fiftieth anniversary celebrations. Yeah, so federal officials here announced a couple weeks of ago that there was going to be a quote unquote summer surge of law enforcement into the city . And that includes an additional twenty five hundred National Guard troops. So there were already about twenty five hundred here before that annou ncement and now they've started sending more and more. We're going to be up to five thousand National Guard troops here this summer . It's unclear when exactly that summer surge is going to end. That summer surge also comes with other federal law enforcement, including a doubling of HSI officers, which is a branch of Ice . So that's worth keeping an eye on as well . But yeah, so we'll have five thousand National Guard troops here, which if you do the math on that, is more than three million dollars a day than this will be costing. So you just anticipated my next question, which is when does the summer surge do they do they go home when it's back to school days in September? And I guess I mean, what I'm really wondering about here is just we're now in DC. People don't really batten anymore. We're so used to seeing this constant presence of uniformed troops on American streets. What questions is that raising among people you talk to, either of you, either who are serving or out and about just in terms of normalizing a uniform presence on American streets. Yeah, I mean, I think that's certainly the big one of the concerns here. And I should note Mary Louise, they are armed. They're not just uniform ed. They're also armed with a handgun. Yeah, you see it strapped to their thighs as they walk around often. Exactly. And yeah, that is many of the constitutional scholars that I've talked to over the last ten months that I've been watching this stuff have said that that is one of the big concerns here is what does it mean when we normalize the idea that armed uniformed troops are on city streets in America in non emergency situations. What does that mean? And certainly here in DC, I mean, there is a pushback here in DC. I'm sure you've seen there's signs that people hang up on street corners and stuff that say troops go home. You're not welcome here , this kind of stuff. So there is pushback . But I watch every day as troops walk through the park while we're all sitting there reading our books and hanging out on a nice sunny day. And people don't bat an eye anymore. And it does kind of feel a little bit like the frog in the boiling pot of water, right? This number of troops here in DC, we started with eight hundred , which I don't know if you even remember that, you know, we started with eight hundred back in August of last year , it slowly ticked up over time to now we're at three thousand five hundred . We'll be at five thousand this summer . And it's unclear if that number is going to tick back down or if it's going to keep ticking up. What we're told is this will continue right through the inaugural what two years from now ? More than two years ago this is going to be in place through the twenty eighth eight thousand twenty nine through that inaugural . Who's saying that? Pentagon . The Pentagon officials, yeah. Yeah, we'ven't been officially announced yet , but we've been hearing that the plan is to keep troops here in DC through Trump's entire term. But you're right. You're raises the question of, you know, it makes a place like DC or Memphis look like, you know, an autocratic government. You have these troops walking around, which is something you just never see in this country. No one to other countries where you see that quite often, right? And sure. That's something that I think about a lot when I see that here in DC is this just isn't the America that I recognize. Time for another quick break. When we come back, a drone rescue in the Middle East. Plus OSENT open source intelligence. That's ahead on sources and methods from NPR. We are back with Tom Bowman and Kat Lansdorf, okay ? Iran, where there is a ceasefire, a nominal ceasefire because the US and Iran keep firing at each other this week. Tom, what's going on? Well, President Trump is getting very frustrated. He wants Iran to come to the table or they are at the table. He wants a deal now . But a deal is elusive for him. And I think one of the big problems with looking at it is but just sorry, just ceasefire that's ridiculous. Have a ceasefire. Of course not. I mean, they're shooting each other. Targets. They took out apache helicopter. An Iranian drone ran into it, and these guys dropped into water the and were rescued by this seaborne drone , which is remarkable . But here's the thing. What does Iran want? Iran wants the blockade to be lifted. They want some serious money, billions of dollars and they're frozen , unfrozen. They want their assets to be unfrozen, they want billions of dollars. Trump is reluctant to do that until they start showing, you know, an interest in coming up with a nuclear deal, but that's going to take months , many months, if not longer. The Obama nuclear deal took about two years. Okay , I just want to focus on this video that I couldn't stop watching . We mentioned the Apache helicopter, U. S. Apache helicopter shot down, the two people in it are fine. This is the good news . They are fine because they were rescued by a sea drone . If people haven't seen what this thing looks like, you got to go look at it. I recommend you guys. It looks like a right. It looks like it's twenty four feet. So it looks like a twenty four foot sailboat without the sail. And it's called twenty four foot speedboat, basically. Right. And it can go a thousand nautical miles and take a thousand pounds on board . This company in Austin, Texas has made three hundred of these things, right? So yeah, these drone Shah drone hits the Apache helicopter. Those guys were lucky to be alive. They drop into the water. They're bobbing in the water for a couple of hours. And here comes this course here pulls up next to it. And I'm trying to get some information about this. It's like, well, did the guys know it was coming? Exactly. Yeah, like what it looks like kind of like surfacing next to them, right? And this thing can go forty miles an hour too. It can go really fast. So they would have their radios on and obviously a transponder so you know where they are. But I'm just, I was talking to one of the company executives today or a spokesperson and said , does this thing like pull up and say hello, I'm from a friendly country and I said is there food on board? Is it kind of like a grub hub that when you hop on, do you get water and snacks and everything? And they say, well, a lot of this is classified. We can't get into it . But this thing picks them up, takes them back to a warship. They got to board the warship and then all of a sudden this helicopter takes them away . I'm told they're in stable condition, some minor injuries , and one thing is for certain they'll never buy another beer. They will be dining out on this story for the rest of their lives. I so want to talk to them about just what was going through their head as this thing pulled up along my side do we get in or do we like what is happening? Oh, I am friendly. Please get a board. I mean, this is the first time that something like this has ever been done by the US military too. So there's also an extremely novel thing, right? It was by it's carried out by this Task Force fifty nine, which is the Navy's first unmanned and artificial intelligence task force. It was created back in twenty twenty one . They're stationed in Bahrain, I believe . And the U. S. began deploying it in the Middle East back in March when this war began. You know, it's all in line with the Pentagon's pl ans to expand this use of drones. And this is certainly an expansion of the use of drones. The wave of the present as we think. Exactly. We are . All right, on that note, let me steer us toward O SYNT source intelligence, the not so secret yet telling details that we stumble across in our reporting . Bowman kicks off . Well, we're talking about officers. And now I learned from the Army Human Resources Command. Back in may twenty sixth, they put out this note saying, quote, The Army is short captains through colonels and separation rates have increased over time. Headquarters of the Army, exit surveys and commanders state company grade officers are frustrated by a lack of stability, negative impacts of army life on their family, and lack of enjoyment or fulfillment . So that's a serious thing here . And I'm told the Army, one of the things they're doing is trying to, you know, provide more stability for the captains in particular. There's something called the Captain's Career Course that once you finish that you go back to your previous unit to have that kind of stability. But I'm also told that in the higher ranks, one of the problems is Secretary Hagseth has stopped fellowships at places like the Kennedy School at Harvard , John Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies at Brookings Institution. Basically saying they're woke, you know, has nothing to do with your military career. And a lot of officers use these fellowships as a time to either have a family or spend more time with their family, especially if they have young kids. So I think that's one of the reasons you're seeing people voting with their feet. Got it, cat . Well, something I've been thinking about a lot lately, quite honestly , I just was in Lebanon last month reporting there. And something I've been thinking about a lot lately as we're talking about this shaky ceasefire between the U. S. and Iran is the also shaky ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah. And they were also shooting at each other. Absolutely. And you know, I was there last month and I went all the way down south as far as I could possibly go . And I was standing on a hill top in southern Lebanon looking out actually, I was up there with a spokesperson for Hezbollah and we were looking out over the hills at what is now Israeli occupied territory. We could see an Israeli flag flapping in the breez e. And I was asking this Hezbollah spokesperson, you know what happens now? Like, look at that Israeli flag, are you going to, you know, let that stay here ? And he said, we will do whatever it takes to get our land back. If that means it's through negotiations then we can take that. But if we need to fight for our land back, we'll fight for our land back. I'm paraphrasing here, but he essentially said that. And you know, that keeps going through my head because I think it's an example of just how many fronts there are in this war right now . And also just, you know, it's not just about the U. S. and Iran, right? This is kind of opened at Pandora's box in the Middle East. And it's really hard to put that back in the box once it's been opened. I'm going to have that image in my head as I think about this and the headlines coming out of Lebanon now, that flag flying and you up on a hill and thinking, where does this go? Yep . Okay, well I'm going to take you to a very different place. This unusual gathering I attended the other day. It was in the Senate Mansfield room, which is this beautiful old school panel ed room inside the Capitol , very close to the Senate Chamber . And the reason I was there was for a reception honoring Cindy McCain , Cindy McCain, who is stepping down as head of the World Food Program , also of course the widow of John McCain, longtime Arizona Republican . And when I said it was an unusual gathering, it was not big. There were maybe a hundred people there during that time that I was there, of whom a significant portion were sitting U. S. senators coming and going from the chamber like twenty or more . Totally bipartisan and they all stood one by one and paid tribute to Cindy McCain . It was very striking . You see both parties raising a glass . Democrats and Republicans, as we know, do not agree on much these days, but they were united in saying thank you. And Mrs. McCain, you didn't have to do this . You know, your family has already given so much to this country . You did not have to spend your golden years getting on a plane to Gaza or Afghanistan or Somalia or many of the places that I have interviewed her from when she's out and about trying to help desperately poor people get enough to eat . And it was touching . Her young grandson got up at some point during the remarks and stood next to her at her side and held her hand . And it all just felt maybe it was the setting with the paneling and afternoon light, but it felt like this flashback to a time in Washington when elected politicians from both parties could go debate all kinds of things and disagree on everything it's possible to disagree about on the Senate floor, but could come together and be gracious and pay tribute to someone who has served their country and and I for one found myself missing that time . All right , we've been speaking with NPR Pentagon correspondent, Tom Bowman and also making her debut and Pierre's Cat Wanstorf. Please come back. Brilliant . Thanks so much for having me. Thanks welcome. And before we go, we know you have specific tastes. That is why you're here. So whether you want the latest in politics, deep dive investigative reporting, maybe what's new in pop culture, whatever you want, we got a newslet ter for it. It's NPR journalism tailored to your interests right in your inbox. You can check out the full lineup at npr dot org slash newsletters. That's it for today's episode. Thanks for listening. I'm Mary Louise Kelly and we are back next week with another episode of Sources and Methods from NPR