Iran Press/America: The US Defense Secretary Mark Esper fired Navy Secretary Richard Spencer on Sunday over the controversial case of a Navy SEAL that has created high-level friction between the president and the Pentagon.
According to CNN, "Secretary of Defense Mark T. Esper has asked for the resignation of Secretary of the Navy Richard Spencer after losing trust and confidence in him regarding his lack of candor over conversations with the White House involving the handling of Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher," the US Defense Department said in a statement on Sunday.
Spencer had appeared to be seeking a way to resolve a standoff between the Pentagon and White House over Gallagher's case but competing narratives that emerged in the chaotic hours after Spencer's dismissal suggest the depth of the upheaval, disconnection, and discord that remains.
The US president, Donald Trump suggested on Twitter that Spencer's dismissal had to do with cost overruns and the way Gallagher had been treated by the Navy. The US Defense Secretary Mark Esper said he asked Spencer to resign because he had lost "trust and confidence in him regarding his lack of candor," according to a Pentagon spokesman.
The Navy and President Trump have been in a tug of war over Chief Petty Officer Edward Gallagher, the Navy SEAL at the center of a highly publicized war crimes case. The Navy prosecuted Chief Gallagher and wanted to expel him from the SEALs, but the president, as commander in chief, has repeatedly intervened in the sailor’s favor.
Chief Petty Officer Edward Gallagher
SEALs from the platoon that Chief Gallagher led during a deployment to Mosul, Iraq, in 2017 told military officials that they saw the chief fatally stab a wounded captive. Navy investigators said Chief Gallagher took out a handmade hunting knife and stabbed the captive, a teenager, several times in the neck and torso.
The chief was also accused of firing a sniper rifle at civilians, striking a girl wearing a flower-print hijab as she walked along a riverbank and an old man carrying a water jug. Several SEALs broke the group’s code of silence and testified against Chief Gallagher in a military trial.
ّّFinally Chief Petty Officer Edward Gallagher was acquitted of serious war crimes and convicted of a minor charge because he has the support of Trump against the Navy’s efforts to punish him. 205/211/219
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