A Sacred Oath: Memoirs of a Secretary of Defense During Extraordinary Times is a book by Mark Esper, 27th United States Secretary of Defense which was published on May 10, 2022 by HarperCollins. [1]
In the book, Esper wrote that President Donald Trump wanted to launch a missile into Mexico. [2] [3] [4]
He made many other claims about Trump. [5] Among these claims, Esper asserts that, during a meeting in June 2020, Trump asked whether U.S. troops could shoot Black Lives Matter protesters; [6] that Trump once called Esper, Vice President Mike Pence and General Mark Milley "fucking losers" after Milley told him that he had no command authority over the active duty and National Guard troops Trump wanted to deploy against protesters; [7] and that an officer, whom Esper does not name, explored the possibility of invoking the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office after a May 2020 meeting of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. [8]
Lloyd Green of The Guardian wrote "The ex-defense secretary’s memoir is scary and sobering – but don’t expect Republican leaders or voters to heed his warning" [9] and John Bolton of The Wall Street Journal wrote "I still believe this. 'A Sacred Oath' is not a gratuitous tell-all. It is a work of history.". [10]
The book has been also reviewed by Laura Miller of Slate [11] and Thomas F. Lynch III of National Defense University. [12]
The book was listed in The New York Times Best Seller list. [13]
The Presidential Emergency Operations Center is a bunker-like structure underneath the East Wing of the White House. It serves as a secure shelter and communications center for the president of the United States and others in case of an emergency.
The nuclear football is a briefcase, the contents of which are to be used by the president of the United States to communicate and authorize a nuclear attack while away from fixed command centers, such as the White House Situation Room or the Presidential Emergency Operations Center. Functioning as a mobile hub in the strategic defense system of the United States, the football is carried by a military aide when the President is traveling.
Since the Iranian Revolution in 1979, the Islamic Republic of Iran has been embroiled in tense relations with the U.S. and its allies. Following the overthrow of the American-backed Shah and a hostage crisis, both countries severed relations. Since then, both countries have been involved in numerous direct confrontations, diplomatic incidents, and proxy wars throughout the Middle East, which has caused the tense nature of the relationship between the two to be called an 'international crisis'. Both countries have often accused each other of breaking international law on several occasions. The U.S. has often accused Iran of sponsoring terrorism and of illegally maintaining a nuclear program, as well as using strong rhetoric against Israel, of which Iran has questioned its legitimacy and its right to exist while supporting Hamas, an antizionist group in the Gaza Strip. Meanwhile, Iran has often accused the U.S. of human rights violations and of meddling in their affairs, especially within the Iranian Democracy Movement.
James Northey Miller Jr. is the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory's Assistant Director for Policy and Analysis and also serves on the National Security Council staff as U.S. Coordinator for the Australia-United Kingdom-United States (AUKUS) security agreement. He previously served as the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy from February 18, 2012 until January 8, 2014 and as Deputy Under Secretary of Defense from April 2009 to February 2012.
Mark Alexander Milley is a retired United States Army general who last served as the 20th chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from October 1, 2019, to September 30, 2023. He previously served as the 39th chief of staff of the Army from August 14, 2015, to August 9, 2019, and held multiple command and staff positions in eight divisions and special forces throughout his military career.
Patrick Michael Shanahan is the interim CEO of Spirit AeroSystems. He is a former United States federal government official who served as acting U.S. Secretary of Defense in 2019. President Donald Trump appointed Shanahan to the role after the resignation of Retired General James N. Mattis. Shanahan served as Deputy Secretary of Defense from 2017 to 2019. He previously spent 30 years at Boeing in a variety of roles.
Ryan D. McCarthy is an American business executive and former U.S. Army Ranger who served as the 24th United States Secretary of the Army, from 2019 to 2021. He previously held the office in an acting capacity in 2017 and 2019.
Mark Thomas Esper is an American politician and manufacturing executive who served as the 27th United States secretary of defense from 2019 to 2020. A member of the Republican Party, he had previously served as the 23rd U.S. secretary of the Army from November 2017 to July 2019.
This section of the timeline of United States history includes major events from 2010 to the present.
On June 20, 2019, Iran's integrated system of Air Defense Forces shot down a United States RQ-4A Global Hawk BAMS-D surveillance drone with a surface-to-air missile over the Strait of Hormuz. Iran and the U.S. differ on where the incident actually occurred. Iranian officials said that the drone violated their airspace, while U.S. officials responded that the drone was in international airspace.
The U.S. embassy in the Green Zone of Bagdhad, Iraq, was attacked on 31 December 2019 by Kata'ib Hezbollah militiamen and their Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) supporters and sympathizers. The attack was prompted by the U.S. airstrikes on 29 December 2019 that targeted weapons depots and command and control installations of Kata'ib Hezbollah across Iraq and Syria.
On 3 January 2020, Qasem Soleimani, an Iranian major general, was targeted and killed by a U.S. drone strike near the Baghdad International Airport in Iraq while he was on his way to meet Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi.
On June 1, 2020, amid the George Floyd protests in Washington, D.C., law enforcement officers used tear gas and other riot control tactics to forcefully clear peaceful protesters from Lafayette Square, creating a path for President Donald Trump and senior administration officials to walk from the White House to St. John's Episcopal Church. Trump held up a Bible and posed for a photo op in front of Ashburton House, which had been damaged by a fire during protests the night before.
Christopher Charles Miller is an American retired United States Army Special Forces colonel who served as acting United States secretary of defense from November 9, 2020, to January 20, 2021. He previously served as Director of the National Counterterrorism Center from August 10 to November 9, 2020. Before his civilian service in the Department of Defense, Miller was a Green Beret, commanding 5th Special Forces Group in Iraq and Afghanistan, and later spent time as a defense contractor.
After Democratic nominee Joe Biden won the 2020 United States presidential election, Republican nominee and then-incumbent President Donald Trump pursued an unprecedented effort to overturn the election, with support and assistance from his campaign, proxies, political allies, and many of his supporters. These efforts culminated in the January 6 United States Capitol attack by Trump supporters, which was widely described as an attempted coup d'état. One week later, Trump was impeached for incitement of insurrection but was acquitted by the Senate by a vote of 57–43, 10 votes short of the 67 votes required to convict him.
In the early afternoon of Wednesday, January 6, 2021, two months after the defeat of 45th U.S. president Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election, a mob of his supporters attacked the United States Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. The mob sought to keep Trump in power by preventing a joint session of Congress from counting the Electoral College votes to formalize the victory of President-elect Joe Biden. According to the House select committee that investigated the incident, the attack was the culmination of a seven-part plan by Trump to overturn the election.
The following article is a broad timeline of the course of events surrounding the attack on the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021, by rioters supporting United States President Donald Trump's attempts to overturn his defeat in the 2020 presidential election. Pro-Trump rioters stormed the United States Capitol after assembling on the Ellipse of the Capitol complex for a rally headlined as the "Save America March".
Law enforcement mounted a response to the January 6 United States Capitol attack, initially failing to maintain security perimeters and protect parts of the building from being breached and occupied, but succeeding at protecting members of Congress, and subsequently, as reinforcements arrived, to secure the breached Capitol.
An ongoing special counsel investigation was opened by U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland on November 18, 2022, to continue two investigations initiated by the Justice Department (DOJ) regarding former U.S. President Donald Trump. Garland appointed Jack Smith, a longtime federal prosecutor, to lead the independent investigations. Smith was tasked with investigating Trump's role in the January 6 United States Capitol attack and Trump's mishandling of government records, including classified documents.
After Donald Trump lost the 2020 United States presidential election, multiple individuals plotted to use force to stop the peaceful transition of power; this was one aspect of what eventually led to the January 6 attack on the United States Capitol. Fourteen members of the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys militias were convicted of seditious conspiracy for planning and leading the attack, while an unidentified pipe-bomber remains at-large.