At the White House recently, Defense Secretary Mark Esper, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, and a host of the nation’s top military brass crowded into the Cabinet Room of the West Wing for a national security meeting with President Trump in apparent disregard of social distancing protocols sacrosanct at the Pentagon for nearly two months.
None of the officials in a White House photograph of the meeting Saturday posted on Twitter are wearing masks, and the dimensions of the leather-topped Kittinger Company table appear to indicate a less than 6-foot spacing.
With members of the president’s and the vice president staffs in self-isolation after contracting the virus, and at least two senior members of the military also in isolation over possible exposure, the meeting of nearly all of the nation’s top civilian and military leaders in the Cabinet Room, which measures 23 feet wide by 39 feet, was arguably risky.
“The meeting at the White House appears to have adhered to social distancing recommendations, with the participants appropriately separated at the table,” a Defense Department spokesman told the Washington Examiner Monday.
Six weeks ago, Esper strode into a reconfigured Pentagon press room with chairs spaced at least 6 feet apart to talk about new distancing measures across the Pentagon and among senior military and civilian leadership.
“So this is the closest I’ve been to the chairman probably in two weeks, cause otherwise we — ” Esper began at a podium spaced at least 6 feet away from Milley.
“It won’t last long,” Milley interjected before laughter broke out.
At the March 24 press briefing, Esper said he was using video teleconferences to communicate with Milley, as well as practicing social distancing, wiping down services multiple times per day, and reducing in-person staff to a minimum.
Esper went further during a visit to the U.S. Northern Command last week, stressing the importance of wearing masks while indoors.
“So here, you know, in the open air, it’s not as essential. In a room, we’re wearing masks,” he said. “We flew out here today: Everybody on my team was wearing — and myself — we were wearing face coverings.”
The Pentagon told the Washington Examiner that senior defense officials exercise numerous precautions to lower the risk of transmitting the coronavirus.
“The Department has adopted a wide ranging number of risk mitigation measures. These include social distancing when necessary, wearing masks when social distancing is not possible, telecommuting, separating senior leaders, quarantining exposed persons, regular testing, and monitoring for symptoms,” the spokesman said in a statement.
“Other than on rare occasions — like a meeting with the commander-in-chief — where social distancing and other preventive measures like testing all participants are in place, that practice continues today,” the statement continued.
Except the military has already demonstrated that testing is not 100% reliable.
Absent from Saturday’s White House meeting was chief of the National Guard Bureau, Air Force Gen. Joseph Lengyel, who initially tested positive, but a second test Saturday was negative.
Chief Naval Officer Adm. Michael Gilday also stayed home out of caution over possible exposure.
“The CNO Adm. Gilday had contact with a COVID-positive family member and, although testing negative, will be quarantining this week,” a spokesman told the Washington Examiner Monday.
The Navy has been ravaged by “false negatives” and asymptomatic sailors in its experience with the sidelined Pacific carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt. The preponderance of false tests led the Navy to institute a policy of two consecutive negative tests before allowing sailors to reboard the Roosevelt.
A tight fit
A look at the 26-foot-long, 7-foot-wide Kittinger table where the senior military and civilian leadership gathered Saturday brings into question whether military leaders flouted their own social distancing guidelines to attend the White House meeting.
“The Cabinet Room was very small,” said Ray Bialkowski, owner of the Kittinger Company, which built the commissioned table in 1970 and restored it in 1997 and 2017. “If you look at the photographs when they’re in there, it’s not much bigger than what you’re seeing.”
Bialkowski was present in 2017 when a restored version of the table with 5 additional feet was carried into the Cabinet Room through the French doors that open from the Rose Garden.
Seated at the table Saturday were six people on one side and seven on the other, a roughly 4-foot separation based on the table’s dimensions given by Bialkowski.
“There’s no more options to make this table bigger,” he said. “The room is not a large room, as you can imagine.”
Maj. Eric Flanagan, spokesman for the Marine Corps, could not confirm if Marine Corps Commandant Gen. David Berger was seated a safe distance in the photograph.
“The commandant is conducting nearly all of his business via teleconferencing and phone calls,” Flanagan also told the Washington Examiner. “There is a very small amount of people who he holds in-person meetings with. When he does meet in person, as you saw at the White House this weekend, he maintains proper social distancing.”
Regardless of whether members of defense leadership followed their own social distance protocols while in the Cabinet Room, photographs on the White House grounds show the chairman of the Joint Chiefs and others standing in close proximity.
“We are working to mitigate risk by taking a number of reasonable actions while still maintaining our ability to conduct our national security missions,” a Pentagon spokesman told the Washington Examiner. “We all continue to learn and adapt to these challenging times.”
