The Pentagon’s top official for personnel who left his job on Friday said his decision to resign had nothing to do with a bruising confirmation hearing with Sen. John McCain this year.
Brad Carson, speaking Monday at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said he left his job as the undersecretary of personnel and readiness because much of his work on the Force of the Future initiative was already done, including implementation plans for the first two set of reforms, integrating women into combat and an in-progress working group to allow transgender troops to serve openly.
“I told the secretary who had my back on this … that I was tired, the work was done,” Carson said.
“So it made a lot of sense for me and the organization to leave. It really wasn’t driven by the politics,” he later added.
During a hearing in February, McCain blasted the Force of the Future plan envisioned by Defense Secretary Ash Carter and constructed by Carson as “an outrageous waste of time.”
“This initiative has been an outrageous waste of official time and resources during a period of severe fiscal constraints. It illustrates the worst aspects of a bloated and inefficient defense organization,” McCain said.
But Carson emphasized that the exchange wasn’t the reason he announced that he would resign just two weeks later.
The former Pentagon official also defended the solvency of the Force of the Future reforms on Capitol Hill, saying that no one is moving to repeal the reforms already made, such as expanded maternity leave or childcare hours.
“There’s acrimony against the administration from certain people, there’s acrimony against the department … you become the person who gets targeted for that,” he said. “But no, in no way do I think the politics of this are in a bad way.”
Some have suggested that Carter left Carson out to dry, pitching him the Force of the Future program then not having his back when it faced backlash on Capitol Hill. But Carson had nothing but kind words for the defense secretary on Monday, saying that his “legacy will live on for years if not decades to come.”
