Special Operations Chief Tells Pentagon To Shut It

Recently the Pentagon has been notorious for spilling the beans about Special Operations missions before they are executed. Finally, in a move that is long overdue, General Joseph Votel, the new Special Operations Commander, penned a letter expressing his concerns and essentially telling the pentagon to shut it.From The Washington Free Beacon

President Obama’s nominee to head U.S. Central Command recently penned a memo to Defense Secretary Ash Carter demanding that the Pentagon stop discussing the operations of elite American troops.Foreign Policy, which obtained an excerpt of the memo, reported that Gen. Joseph Votel, currently the chief of U.S. Special Operations Command, wrote the December 8 memo to express concern about the Obama administration’s exposure of special operations forces’ activities.

“I am concerned with increased public exposure of SOF activities and operations, and I assess that it is time to get our forces back into the shadows,” Votel wrote to Carter.While it remains unclear to what public comments Votel was referring, the memo was sent just days after the White House revealed that it was sending approximately 200 special operations forces to Iraq to combat ISIS.According to the defense official who provided the excerpt of the memo, Votel further wrote that publicizing the operations makes it more difficult for U.S. forces to conduct them. He also “requested the department support him with an approach to avoid public discussion of SOF activities,” the defense official said.At the start of December, Carter told lawmakers that the U.S. would deploy a “specialized expeditionary targeting force” to Iraq to fight ISIS. It followed an October announcement from the White House that a small number of special operations forces–less than 50–would be deployed to Syria to fight the terror group there.

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