Pentagon sources claim Marine Corps commandant Gen. Robert Neller allowed internal Defense Department memos to be leaked to the media last month in an attempt to obtain funding for hurricane-damaged military installations after some of his budget was redirected to security operations on the southern border.
A DoD official said that Neller allowed the memos to be sent to NBC News and the Los Angeles Times “Because he didn’t want the Marines and families at Camp Lejeune [in North Carolina] to get fucked.”
Neller denies that he leaked the memos or directed or encouraged anyone on his staff to do so.
Two anonymous Pentagon sources told Newsweek that Neller was responsible for the leak of two private memos he wrote to the secretary of the Navy requesting additional funding to meet “fiscal challenges without precedent,” including damage from Hurricanes Florence and Michael, unplanned southwest border operations, and “border security funding transfers.” Also on Neller’s list was the civilian pay raise President Trump agreed to in the deal to end the government shutdown in January.
“The inability to reprogram money and the lack of a supplemental for Hurricane Florence damage is negatively impacting Marine Corps readiness,” Neller wrote. He cited military exercises that had already been canceled to compensate and made a list of others he planned to stop if his funding request was denied.
Camp Lejeune was ravaged last fall by Hurricane Florence, and Neller says the Corps needs $3.5 billion to repair it.
“We’re 100% operational. We’re here doing our work, but the conditions we’re working under are just like when we were in Iraq or Afghanistan,” Col. Brian Wolford, chief of staff of II Marine Expeditionary Force, based at Camp Lejenue, told NBC News.
Democrats in Congress have used the leaked memos as ammunition for their argument that Trump’s planned shift of defense funds to pay for border wall construction would hurt military infrastructure and readiness.
Testifying before the House Armed Services Committee on March 26, Joint Chiefs chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford said he had discussed the memos with Neller and Navy secretary Richard V. Spencer. “I’d like to put that letter in full context,” Dunford said. “He listed a number of unanticipated bills that the Marine Corps was confronted with in this fiscal year, one of which was the southwest border.” He emphasized, “It wasn’t a letter about the southwest border and didn’t single out the southwest border deployment as being the issue. It identified that the southwest border was one of the unanticipated bills.”
