A desire for different leaders at the Pentagon to lead the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) contributed to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel’s exit, the White House said Monday.
When Hagel was nominated two years ago, budget cuts were “at the top of the priority list,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest said, and the threat posed by ISIS “was not nearly as significant as it is now.”
{mosads}That has shifted, and Obama and Hagel jointly determined “that another secretary might be better suited” to meet the new set of challenges, Earnest said.
While Earnest said Hagel had “done an excellent job of managing these crises as they have cropped up,” the strains between the White House and Pentagon over its anti-ISIS policy appeared palatable.
The White House said Obama and Hagel had held “a number of conversations,” beginning more than a month ago. Earnest said the discussions covered “the president’s two remaining years in office, and the kinds of priorities that this administration, this country, would be facing when it comes to our foreign policy.”
“Over the course of the last month or so, the president and the secretary had a number of conversations and they determined that it would be best for the Pentagon to transition to new leadership,” he added.
Earnest acknowledged Obama’s talks with Hagel weren’t initiated by a signal from the Defense secretary that he wanted to move on. He also wouldn’t say that Obama had asked Hagel to stay — as Obama has with other senior administration officials.
“I’m not aware of sort of the twists and turns of the conversation that they’ve had over the last month,” Earnest said. “It’s fair to say that the two men arrived at the same conclusion together, that it was time for Secretary Hagel to submit his letter of resignation, which he did.”
Officials did push back at Sen. John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) suggestion that Hagel had told him that he was frustrated.
Earnest noted that McCain had been deeply critical of Hagel during his confirmation hearing, and suggested the Arizona senator had a record of doing whatever he could to criticize the president on foreign policy.
“Given his relationship with the administration, I think there might be reasons to view a read-out of the phone call from Sen. McCain to be something less than impartial,” Earnest said.