Was General Mark Milley Undermining His Own Country?
The most shocking revelation in Bob Woodward’s new book, Peril, is that General Mark Milley, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJSC) went rogue and contacted his counterpart in the Chinese Communist military and told him, if the United States planned any military action against China, that Milley would give him advance notice.
We believe that General Milley, like every American citizen, must be presumed innocent of such allegations until evidence is adduced in court to convict him or he admits to such culpability. But, if events in the book are accurate, and if the Secretary of Defense did not authorize this, General Milley should be fired immediately by the man who is President of the United States now, Joe Biden...It is a direct threat to the Constitutional tenet that the U.S. military is under civilian control.
Equally alarming is the report in the book that General Milley went to the National Military Command Center in the basement of the Pentagon and demanded that they inform him of any plans by the President to take action against any country and to not follow the President’s orders unless they informed the general first. The book reports that General Milley reminded them that he is in the chain-of-command regarding any such actions—something that is categorically false.
The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has no command authority.