robert hale

The Los Angeles Times earns your readership this morning by running a great piece digging into differing cost estimates between the White House and the Pentagon over how much a troop increase in Afghanistan will cost. The White House says it wants a thorough accounting; the Pentagon appears to be worried that such a thing [...]

Defense Secretary Bob Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, are before the Senate Armed Services Committee to defend their defense budget in the face of GOP criticism over its program cuts. (Comptroller Robert Hale is in there too.) Their opening statements are careful attempts at disarming that criticism. [...]

Congratulations to Michele Flournoy, whom the Senate just confirmed as the new undersecretary of defense for policy; Jeh Charles Johnson, whom the Senate just confirmed as Pentagon general counsel; and Robert Hale, whom the Senate just confirmed as Pentagon comptroller. All of these newly-minted senior Pentagon officials testified together in a joint confirmation hearing on [...]

A trusted defense source emails me a report from the subscription-only Inside The Pentagon newsletter that seems to herald the first defense-budget chicanery of the Obama administration. The piece, by Christopher J. Castelli, is about how the services are starting to think that the forthcoming Fiscal Year 2010 defense budget, Obama’s first, is going to [...]

Kate’s last post about Eric Holder brings up something that struck me kind of funny, as Bruce Springsteen would say.
Notwithstanding Holder’s language about whether we’ve been at war since before 9/11, Kate tells me she hasn’t heard Holder use the phrase “war on terror” or “war on terrorism” in his hearing. Neither did Hillary Rodham [...]

While I don’t want to step on my colleagues’ coverage of Eric Holder’s hearings, I’m at the Dirksen building for the joint confirmation hearings of Detp. of Defense subcabinet officials-designate Bill Lynn (deputy secretary), Robert Hale (comptroller), Michele Flournoy (undersecretary for policy), and Jeh Charles Johnson (general counsel).
The hearing is just being gaveled in as [...]