WASHINGTONâ€"President-elect Donald Trump has tapped retired Marine Corps Gen. James Mattis to become his secretary of defenseâ€"a choice that requires Congress to pass a special law for the recently retired military officer to take up the Pentagon’s top post.
“We are going to appoint ‘Mad Dog’ Mattis as our secretary of defense,†Mr. Trump said at a rally in Cincinnati on Thursday. Mr. Trump’s speech in Ohio was the first stop in a nationwide “Thank You†tour he will conduct over the next few weeks.
The decision brings a longtime military hand, known for his battlefield toughness and intellectual heft, to the lead of the nation’s armed forces as thousands of U.S. troops remain on the ground in Afghanistan and Iraq. Gen. Mattis rose through the ranks of the Marine Corps over 43 years to become the U.S. military’s top commander in the Middle East.
Since retiring in 2013, Gen. Mattis has become a vocal critic of what he calls Washington’s “strategy-free†approach to warfare and threats. He has urged the U.S. to engage in the Middle East more directly and without preset limits on the use of force, echoing critics of President Barack Obama’s administration who say it has taken an overly incremental and fair-weather approach.
The retired general has agreed with Mr. Trump about taking more intensive action against U.S. enemies such as Islamic State, but he also has articulated views that contradict Mr. Trump’s campaign-trail talking points, setting up potential battles over policy.
The selection of Gen. Mattis adds to Mr. Trump’s reliance on former military officers for his national-security team. The president-elect chose retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn as his national security adviser and is considering Navy Adm. Michael Rogers to become director of national intelligence. He has also spoken to another retired Marine Corps general, John Kelly, about a top administration post.
Gen. Mattis has also served as a director at the eblood-testing startup, Theranos Inc., for the last three years as it battled regulatory sanctions and federal criminal and civil probes. His ties to the company stretch back to his days overseeing the military’s operations in the Middle East and central Asia.
In 2012, Gen. Mattis, then leading the military’s Central Command, pressed for the U.S. Army to procure Theranos lab equipment and deploy it in the battlefield, according to senior military officials involved in Army medical research. The officials said officers and civilian personnel involved in a review of the technology were told Gen. Mattis sought the procurement.
A Fort Detrick, Md.-based Army unit that oversees health-care regulatory matters, however, found Theranos wasn’t prepared to meet requirements and halted the procurement, the officials said. The concern, one of the officials said, was that some components of Theranos’s lab-testing equipment required U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval, which the company hadn’t obtained. In 2015, the FDA warned Theranos it was using an uncleared blood-collection device.
Gen. Mattis joined Theranos’s board in July 2013, a couple of months after retiring from the Marine Corps. As of late Thursday afternoon, Theranos’s website continued to list Gen. Mattis as a company director. Theranos didn’t immediately respond to questions about the 2012 episode. It referred questions about Gen. Mattis’s directorship to him.
â€"Gordon Lubold, Christopher Weaver and Julian E. Barnes contributed to this article.
Write to Paul Sonne at paul.sonne@wsj.com and Damian Paletta at damian.paletta@wsj.com
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