 | |
| Type | Defense news publication |
|---|---|
| Format | Website |
| Owner(s) | North Equity LLC |
| Founder(s) | Zachary Iscol, Brian Jones, and Lauren Katzenberg |
| Editor-in-chief | Marty Skovlund Jr. |
| Founded | 2014 |
| Headquarters | New York, NY |
| Website | taskandpurpose |
Task & Purpose is an American online publication founded in 2014 which covers the United States Armed Forces and the defense industry. They serve millions of readers monthly. [1]
Task & Purpose was founded in 2014 by Zachary Iscol, Brian Jones, and Lauren Katzenberg. [2] The company grew out of the job board HirePurpose and its content originally had a focus on helping soldiers transition back to civilian life. [3]
In 2018 managing editor Adam Weinstein resigned after CEO Zachary Iscol requested that he change the title of a ProPublica investigation into undue influence over the Department of Veterans Affairs featured on the site. [1] Weinstein contended that Iscol strongly disagreed with both the title and the factual accuracy of the reporting done by ProPublica which Weinstein felt was undue influence on the publication's editorial independence. Weinstein also said that this was not the first time that management, specifically Iscol, had interfered in the editorial process in an effort to make the publication appealing to more conservative readers. [4]
In October 2018, Paul Szoldra was named the editor-in-chief. Szoldra is a U.S. Marine Corps veteran and the founder of the popular military satire website The DuffelBlog. [5]
In 2019, Task & Purpose broke the story that eight of the Navy staff involved in the Eddie Gallagher trial had been awarded the Navy Achievement Medal. Following the reporting President Trump ordered the medals rescinded. [6]
In October 2020, Task & Purpose was acquired by North Equity LLC. [7]
In March 2021, James Clark was promoted to deputy editor of Task & Purpose. Clark had been with the publication for over six years. [8]
In November of 2022, Marty Skovlund Jr. was named the editor-in-chief. Marty is an Army veteran and served as an Army Ranger with the 75th Ranger Regiment. He has five combat deployments. He was one of the original contributors to Task & Purpose and was the founding editor of Coffee or Die.
A 2018 article titled "‘They didn’t have to kill him’: The death of Lance Corporal Brian Easley" by author Aaron Gell was later made into the movie "Breaking" starring John Boyega and the late Michael K. Williams. [9]
More than 500 contributing authors have published work in Task & Purpose. These authors have been a mix of active military, retired military, and civilian. Notable authors who have contributed work to Task & Purpose include President Barack Obama and the late Senator John McCain. [2]
Robert Allen Iger is an American media business executive who serves as chief executive officer (CEO) of The Walt Disney Company. He previously served as the president of ABC between 1994 and 1995 and the president and chief operating officer (COO) of Capital Cities/ABC, from 1995 until its acquisition by Disney in 1996. Iger was named president of Disney in 2000 and succeeded Michael Eisner as CEO in 2005, until his contract expired in 2020. He then served as executive chairman until his retirement from the company on December 31, 2021. At the request of Disney's board of directors, Iger returned to Disney as CEO on November 20, 2022, following the unscheduled and immediate dismissal of his appointed successor, Bob Chapek.
Kate Bohner is an American investment banker, journalist, author, and an active C-Suite executive holding a multitude of senior positions within global financial services firms. She specializes in Crisis Management and "Tech" Marketing. She was a correspondent for CNBC and associate editor for Forbes magazine. Bohner currently serves as chief communications, research & marketing officer and managing director for DMS Governance.
David Isaac Adelman is an American lawyer, businessman and diplomat. He was the United States Ambassador to the Republic of Singapore from April 2010 to September 2013. Adelman is Managing Director and General Counsel of asset manager Krane Funds Advisors in New York. He was a Managing Director of Goldman Sachs in Hong Kong. He was an Independent Non-Executive Director of Noble Group Holdings for approximately three years after the company's 2018 restructuring. He was a senior advisor to Israel-focused indexing firm BlueStar Indexes prior to its sale to Van Eck in 2020. He is an Advisor to private equity firms Olympus Capital and Ion Pacific. He is a member of the Advisory Board of Climate Finance Partners. Adelman is a Trustee of the National Committee on American Foreign Policy and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is an adjunct professor at New York University.
Robert Leon Wilkie Jr. is an American lawyer and government official who served as the United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs from 2018 to 2021, during the Trump administration. He was previously Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness during the Trump administration, from November 2017 to July 2018. A Naval intelligence officer in the Reserve, he was Assistant Secretary of Defense for Legislative Affairs in the administration of President George W. Bush.
Marc Lasry is an American billionaire businessman and private equity manager. He is the co-founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of Avenue Capital Group. He was a co-owner of the NBA's Milwaukee Bucks basketball team from 2014 to 2023.
Donald Mitchell Brown, Jr. is an American author, attorney, and former United States Navy JAG Officer. He has published fifteen books on the United States military, including eleven military-genre novels, the best known of which is Treason (2005) in which radical Islamic clerics infiltrate the United States Navy Chaplain Corps. He has published four works of military nonfiction, including his national bestseller, The Last Fighter Pilot: The True Story of the Final Combat Mission of World War II (2017). Brown may be best known for his work as legal counsel to convicted war criminal Army Lieutenant Clint Lorance, and his authorship of the 2019 book Travesty of Justice: The Shocking Prosecution of Lt. Clint Lorance. On November 15, 2019, President Donald Trump pardoned Lorance, and the book is considered to be a major factor in leading to that pardon. Between the release of Travesty of Justice on March 31, 2019, and Lorance's pardon on November 15, 2019, Brown made numerous national television appearances and penned a number of national Op-eds arguing that President Trump should free and exonerate Lieutenant Lorance. On the Wednesday night before Thanksgiving, November 27, 2019, Brown and Lorance appeared on Hannity, the nightly national broadcast on the Fox News Channel to discuss the presidential pardon and release.
Richard Vaughn Spencer is an American politician and businessman who served as the 76th United States Secretary of the Navy from August 3, 2017, to November 24, 2019. While serving as Secretary of the Navy, he also briefly served as Acting United States Secretary of Defense and Acting United States Deputy Secretary of Defense. Spencer served in the U.S. Marine Corps from 1976 to 1981 as a Marine Aviator and also served as Vice Chairman and Chief Financial Officer of Intercontinental Exchange from November 2001 to January 2008. Spencer served as Secretary of the Navy from August 3, 2017, to November 24, 2019, when Secretary of Defense Mark Esper requested his resignation over his handling of the Eddie Gallagher case. Spencer was displeased that the White House interfered and pressured him to let Gallagher retire as a Navy SEAL.
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.
Thomas B. Modly is an American businessman and former government official who served as acting United States Secretary of the Navy from November 24, 2019, to April 7, 2020. He resigned as acting Secretary in the wake of his firing and berating Brett Crozier, the captain of the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt, for allegedly going outside his chain of command in calling for help to deal with a COVID-19 outbreak onboard. Later, Modly traveled to the ship at port in Guam, where he addressed the crew in a manner that was perceived as disrespectful. He was subsequently widely criticized, and submitted a letter of resignation.
"I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration" is an anonymous essay published by The New York Times on September 5, 2018. The author was described as a senior Trump administration official. About a week before the 2020 United States presidential election, Miles Taylor, who had been deputy chief of staff to the Department of Homeland Security's secretary Kirstjen Nielsen when writing the essay, revealed himself as the author. The op-ed criticizes Donald Trump and states that many current members of the administration deliberately undermine his suggestions and orders for the good of the country. It also states that some cabinet members in the early days of the administration discussed using the Twenty-fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution as a way to remove the president from power.
Travesty of Justice: The Shocking Prosecution of Lt. Clint Lorance is a 2019 book of creative nonfiction written by Don Brown, about the United States Army’s prosecution of Lieutenant Clint Lorance. Lorance, a former paratrooper with the Army's 82nd Airborne Division, was convicted in 2013 for murder by an army court-martial for ordering Private E-2 David Shilo to fire on three Afghan men who had been riding a motorcycle toward their position in Kandahar Province, Afghanistan, in 2012. Lorance was sentenced to twenty years imprisonment. The book discusses what Brown contends are numerous efforts by Army prosecutors to coverup evidence of Lorance's innocence, including biometrics evidence that he argues links the motorcycle riders shot by Lorance's men to bombmaking that killed American troops in the Afghan War.
Edward R. Gallagher is a retired United States Navy SEAL who was accused and partially convicted of war crimes. He came to national attention in the United States after he was charged in September 2018 with ten offenses under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. In the most prominently reported offense, he was accused of fatally stabbing an injured 17-year-old ISIS prisoner, photographing himself with the corpse, and sending the photo to friends.
Black Rifle Coffee Company (BRCC) is a coffee company based in Salt Lake City, Utah, United States. It gained national attention in 2017, when it employed about 50 people, after pledging to hire 10,000 veterans to protest Starbucks's pledge to hire 10,000 refugees.
The Mar-a-Lago Crowd, also Mar-a-Lago Three, was an informal council organized by US President Donald Trump which oversaw many of the activities of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). Despite not holding any official position, the Mar-A-Lago Crowd were seen as key architects of the Administration's veterans policy. All three members were members of Trump's Mar-a-Lago Club.
Guy Snodgrass is a retired American naval aviator, TOPGUN graduate and instructor, who served as Jim Mattis's speechwriter and chief of communications during his time as Secretary of Defense. His book Holding the Line: Inside Trump's Pentagon with Secretary Mattis was released in October 2019. The book details key decisions and moments during Mattis' time as Secretary of Defense and provides the author's first-hand look into the relationship between Mattis and Trump, the Pentagon, The White House, and American national security decision making.
The Military Sexual Trauma Movement (MSTM) is a nonprofit organization founded by Janelle Marina Mendez Viera in 2018 with the aim of protecting members of the United States Armed Forces from military sexual trauma (MST) and advocating for survivors of trauma. The Military Sexual Trauma Movement seeks legislative and institutional reforms that would prevent sexual violence and harassment in the military, and create greater accountability for harassment within the military.
Zach Iscol is an American civil servant, non-profit executive, politician, and armed forces veteran who serves as Commissioner of New York City Emergency Management. Iscol is a United States Marine veteran and was a Democratic candidate in the 2021 New York City Comptroller election.