Official: Navy Secretary Fired Over Handling Of SEAL War Crimes Case
CABRERA: Breaking news in the controversial case of Navy SEAL Edward Gallagher, a senior defense official telling CNN, Navy secretary Richard V. Spencer has been fired for going outside his chain of command and proposing a secret agreement with the White House. According to this official, Spencer proposed a review of Gallagher's case with a secret guarantee that Gallagher would be allowed to keep his status as a Navy SEAL. A quick reminder, Gallagher was convicted of opposing with a body of an ISIS detainee. President Trump reinstated his rank after he was demoted as punishment. CNN Pentagon reporter, Ryan Browne is following this for us. And Ryan the official says Spencer was fired for circumventing his own chain of command. What more can you tell us?</s>RYAN BROWNE, CNN PENTAGON REPORTER: Well, Ana, we're hearing three kind of very different stories about exactly why the secretary of the Navy, Richard Spencer was fired from his job. Now, the Pentagon issuing a statement saying that the secretary of defense, Mark Esper, had found out that Spencer had conducted these secret talks supposedly with the White House about the fate of Eddy Gallagher who was due to face a review board about whether he would keep his status as a Navy SEAL. Now, according to the Pentagon, Spencer had made a secret deal with the White House and that he intended to keep Gallagher in the Navy SEALs to allow the review to go forward. Now, we're hearing two very different stories. One from President Trump who says Spencer was fired in a tweet, said that Spencer was fired because of how he handled the Gallagher case overall. And because of cost overruns in with regard to Navy contracting. And we got a letter from Spencer himself. He says he was fired because of his refusal to follow an order that he thought would violate good order and discipline that was unethical, that is likely referring to the Gallagher case here. And President Trump clearly stated desire to keep Gallagher in the Navy SEAL. So it's very unusual to have such three kind of conflicting stories about a senior member of the Pentagon, the Navy secretary. Of course Spencer has been one of the longest serving members of the Trump administration. He joined very early on in 2017. He's a former marine. He's actually served as a brief time as acting secretary of defense. There hasn't been much controversy surrounding his time in post. But this Gallagher case which has been prominent on "Fox News," which has been prominent in President Trump's twitter feed has seemed to call his downfall.</s>CABRERA: And on that note we're going to talk about the President's latest tweets on this. Ryan Browne, thank you for your reporting. President Trump is responding to the navy secretary's firing, and he's also naming his replacement. Let's get straight to CNN's Jeremy Diamond at the White House. And Jeremy, the President's tweets don't exactly line up with the reason the Department of Defense gave for Secretary Spencer's firing. What do you learning?</s>JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: That's right. As Ryan just laid out, there are three different versions of this story out there right now, three different versions why Richard Spencer was forced to resign in the wake of this Eddy Gallagher controversy. Let's read what the President is saying. He says, I was not pleased with the way that Navy SEAL Eddy Gallagher's trial was handled by the Navy. He was treated very badly. But despite this was completely exonerated on all major charges. He says, I then restored Eddy Gallagher's rank. Likewise, large cost overruns from past administration's contracting procedures were not addressed to my satisfaction. Therefore, secretary of the Navy Richard Spencer's services have terminated by secretary of defense, Mark Esper. He then goes on, to thank Richard Spencer for his service and he says he plans to nominate the ambassador to Norway, Ken Braithwaite who is a retired rear -- retired admiral of the Navy. The President calls him a man of great achievement and success. Now, what's also notable in to President's tweets here is that he says that Eddy Gallagher will indeed retain his trident pin, which signals his membership as a Navy SEAL. That is notable because that is what defense officials had been raising concerns about. In fact, the Defense Department says that Richard Spencer was fired because he tried to work out an arrangement with the White House going around Mark Esper to allow exactly this to happen, to allow Eddy Gallagher, to retire while maintaining his membership in the Navy SEALs. So this is really quite remarkable circumstance that we're seeing particularly because the President is ultimately getting the exact outcome that he wanted despite all of those concerns and even in the wake of the firing of in the Navy secretary.</s>CABRERA: Jeremy Diamond at the White House for us, thank you. I want to get a military voice in here now. Joining us is retired U.S. army lieutenant general Mark Hertling. General, what's your reaction to all this?</s>LT. GEN. MARK HERTLING (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Confusion, Ana, complete confusion.</s>CABRERA: Me too.</s>HERTLING: There's so many stories involved with this. I think Ryan and Jeremy just brought up the different aspects of this. In reading the resignation letter or the termination letter if you will of Secretary Spencer, there was a whole lot more to this than what's being reported right now. You know, it's certainly understandable that Secretary Spencer went to the President behind the Secretary Esper, the defense secretary's back as he, Secretary Esper and General Milley were petitioning the President to back off of this case and let it go through the administrative processes of determining whether or not Chief Gallagher should retain his pin. That's understandable. You don't go to your boss's boss and petition without letting your boss know. So if that all happened, that's true. I can understand Esper being pissed. But the other piece of this is for the last three days there has been reporting, good reporting, about the fact that Secretary Spencer is prepared to resign, prepared to offer his letter of resignation because he's defending the Navy SEALs, the command of the Navy SEALs. And he understand what Admiral Collin Green, the commander of the SEALs is going through in this situation in terms of an administrative elimination of Eddy Gallagher's trident pin. This is so extremely confusing. It's just another night in Trump world. And it's unfortunately bad for the civil-military relations and an understanding of what command authority has to do within the military.</s>CABRERA: Without trying to figure out all those pieces who knew what, why, and what was going on exactly just answer this question. What kind of an impact can an abrupt shake-up like this have on the stability, on the readiness, and even just the morale on the rank and file?</s>HERTLING: Well, all indicators. And I'm not a sailor so I don't know this for sure. But I've heard that Secretary Spencer's reputation was extremely good as a secretary of the Navy. He was well-liked and well-admired by those in that service. So that will cause a shakeup. The actual act of this back and forth between the secretary of defense, the President, and the secretary of the Navy, and you have to understand also the fact that Secretary Spencer cited good order and discipline within the service was what he vowed to defend, and he's saying in his letter, I can't agree with the way the President is handling these things. So one has to question the fact of what good order and discipline is he talking about, and it's certainly a result of these pardons and the interference in a command authority relationship within the SEAL and other communities. So there's that. There's also just the shakeup of the civil-military relationship between Secretary Spencer, Admiral Green, others within the Navy who supported at the higher ranks this action that has been denigrated on the likes of "Fox News" with various correspondents there, attacking the secretary of the navy, attacking the commander, in fact, that occurred this morning where Admiral Gallagher actually attacked as a guy wearing the uniform in violation of the military uniform code of military justice, he attacked in public his superior officers.</s>CABRERA: Yes.</s>HERTLING: So this is. I mean, this is another part of crazy town that we're just starting to see that will have deleterious effects on the military in my view. Certainly not catastrophic, but certainly some questioning of civil-military relationship and command and control within the force.</s>CABRERA: Lieutenant General Mark Hertling, always good to have your perspective. Thank you.</s>HERTLING: Thank you, Ana.</s>CABRERA: A new report alleges U.S. Intelligence agencies briefed lawmakers that Russia is behind a year's long effort to wrongfully frame Ukraine for the 2016 U.S. election meddling. So just how deep does Russia's disinformation campaign go?