Politico: Biden team being obstructed by Pentagon

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Really quite shocking’: Inside the ugly transition at the Pentagon
The effort to obstruct the Biden team is unprecedented in modern presidential transitions and will hobble the new administration on key national security matters.

Members of the National Guard salute as they stand near the U.S. Capitol while the National Anthem is sung during the inauguration of U.S. President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris. Tensions between the Pentagon and the Biden agency landing team emerged almost the moment the General Services Administration authorized the transition to begin. | Stephanie Keith/Getty Images

By LARA SELIGMAN and BRYAN BENDER 01/20/2021 01:00 PM EST

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The Pentagon blocked members of President Joe Biden’s incoming administration from gaining access to critical information about current operations, including the troop drawdown in Afghanistan, upcoming special operations missions in Africa and the Covid-19 vaccine distribution program, according to new details provided by transition and defense officials.

The effort to obstruct the Biden team, led by senior White House appointees at the Pentagon, is unprecedented in modern presidential transitions and will hobble the new administration on key national security matters as it takes over positions in the Defense Department on Wednesday, the officials said.

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But across the department, even when the transition team did meet with DoD officials, both civilian and military, they were often tight-lipped, as if they were given explicit guidance about what they could and could not talk about. Those suspicions were confirmed when the first transition official bumped into a “very high-ranking” military official a week after their meeting, and the officer apologized for his clipped answers. “We were alone, and he told me ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t able to tell you more, but I was given very strict instructions,’” the transition official said. In another interview with a combatant commander, the Biden team asked detailed questions about pressing national security matters, and received “very vanilla answers.”

Some of this reticence may have been due to the fact that in nearly every transition meeting, “minders” from the Defense Department General Counsel’s office were present and frequently cut off the civilian Pentagon officials, citing “predecisional operational matters.” Inauguration Day in Washington President Donald Trump gestures Wednesday as he boards Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House. | Alex Brandon/AP Photo In one recent meeting, retired Brig. Gen. Anthony Tata, who served as acting Pentagon policy chief until last week, frequently looked over at the general counsel representative as if to ask for permission to discuss a particular topic. Meanwhile, every request for information the Biden team filed had to be reviewed by the general counsel’s office, and many were scrubbed of all useful information. Many requests were never answered, and the ones that did come back were thoroughly “sanitized.”

The Biden team had particularly poor visibility into the special operations and low-intensity conflict portfolio. While Trump political appointees in that office were allowed to meet with the transition, many of the career officials have been kept “at arm’s length,” said one defense official, calling the effort unprecedented.

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