Gibson came to Washington to oversee Mattis's attempt to cut waste from the Pentagon budget by identifying savings that would lessen the ballooning impact of the Trump administration's $670 billion defense spending proposal.
Armed with an impressive resume, Gibson was tasked with reforming Pentagon procedures in buying and developing weapons and in managing logistics and supply, technology systems, community services, human resources, and health care.
As the senior Pentagon official with whom I spoke says, the toes that Gibson stepped on belonged to Patrick Shanahan, the deputy secretary of defense and a former vice president and general manager of Boeing Missile Defense Systems, a major Pentagon contractor.
"The minute Gibson was fired, McCain would have had Mattis, Shanahan, and Gibson on the carpet in his office, asking them what the hell they were doing," a senior congressional staffer who monitors Pentagon personnel issues notes.
The skirmishing got so bad that when Ricardel said she wanted to be the Pentagon's undersecretary for policy, Mattis killed the idea, with Ricardel sidelined as the undersecretary of commerce for export administration.
"It's the ultimate irony," the senior Pentagon official says.
That Jay Gibson has been caught in the Mattis-Ricardel crossfire is an open secret at the Pentagon, where key officials speculate that Ricardel's promotion of Shanahan has less to do with his commitment to Pentagon budget reform than to the fact that the two were close colleagues at Boeing, where Ricardel served for nine years as vice president of strategic missile and defense systems.
Armed with an impressive resume, Gibson was tasked with reforming Pentagon procedures in buying and developing weapons and in managing logistics and supply, technology systems, community services, human resources, and health care.
As the senior Pentagon official with whom I spoke says, the toes that Gibson stepped on belonged to Patrick Shanahan, the deputy secretary of defense and a former vice president and general manager of Boeing Missile Defense Systems, a major Pentagon contractor.
"The minute Gibson was fired, McCain would have had Mattis, Shanahan, and Gibson on the carpet in his office, asking them what the hell they were doing," a senior congressional staffer who monitors Pentagon personnel issues notes.
The skirmishing got so bad that when Ricardel said she wanted to be the Pentagon's undersecretary for policy, Mattis killed the idea, with Ricardel sidelined as the undersecretary of commerce for export administration.
"It's the ultimate irony," the senior Pentagon official says.
That Jay Gibson has been caught in the Mattis-Ricardel crossfire is an open secret at the Pentagon, where key officials speculate that Ricardel's promotion of Shanahan has less to do with his commitment to Pentagon budget reform than to the fact that the two were close colleagues at Boeing, where Ricardel served for nine years as vice president of strategic missile and defense systems.
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/hired-to-drain-the-swamp-fired-in-less-than-a-year/
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