"Jim, just to be clear, you're saying you have no idea where the missing trillion dollars went?"
Posted on 03/14/2025 4:53:05 AM PDT by Fish Speaker
WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is “disestablishing” the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment, a key office responsible for high-level strategic analysis, according to a memo obtained by Breaking Defense.
The memo, dated today and signed by Hegseth, directs the Pentagon’s Performance Improvement Officer and Director of Administration and Management to reassign all civilian employees to other “mission critical positions” inside the department, while military personnel will return to their service to receive new billets.
Simultaneously, the Pentagon’s top acquisition official is directed to “ensure that the necessary steps are taken” by department contracting authorities to terminate “all ONA contracts awarded for ONA and ONA-related requirements.” A number of DC think tanks and research organizations will likely be impacted by these cancelled contracts.
However, it appears ONA will live on in some manner: The memo directs the deputy secretary of defense to provide a plan in 30 days to rebuild the office in a manner “consistent with [Hegseth’s] priorities.”
The Pentagon did not directly return a request for comment. At roughly the time this story was published, Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell sent out a brief public statement announcing the move, saying, “This decision ensures that our resources are focused on the most pressing national security challenges while maintaining accountability and efficiency.”
“The Department remains committed to conducting rigorous, forward-looking strategic assessments that directly inform defense planning and decision-making,” the statement said.
Founded in 1973, the Office of Net Assessment is sometimes referred to as the Pentagon’s internal think tank due to its role providing classified, long-term strategic-level studies on threats, trends, risks and opportunities that could shape the geopolitical environment 20 to 30 years in the future.
Jim Baker, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, took over ONA in 2015 following the retirement of Andrew Marshall, its founding director who was often referred to as the “Pentagon’s Yoda.” The Washington Post reported in 2015 that Baker’s appointment reflected then-Defense Secretary Ashton Carter’s interest in receiving assessments related to near-term threats as well as the long-term studies the office was known for.
On Feb. 7, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, (R-Iowa), sent a letter to Hegseth questioning whether the office was still necessary and asking for information related to ONA’s production net assessments since 2007 and the last decade of contracts.
“I remain concerned that ONA is not performing its mission for the taxpayer and has engaged in financial waste,” he wrote at the time.
My guess is that the ONA was a big cheerleader for how “climate change” was a major national security threat.
And it all needed to be addressed with massive doses of DEI.
Maybe ONA also had a Muslim outreach mission.
“… a key office responsible for high-level strategic analysis,…”
I guess it wasn’t as “key” as they thought.
Hegseth’s doing stuff.
What’s Bondi up to?
Scam Blondi?
That’s our gal.
Jim Baker, head of ONA, wrote a $1million contract to Stephan Halper who was one of the informants behind Russiagate.
A committed deep stater.
"Jim, just to be clear, you're saying you have no idea where the missing trillion dollars went?"
Thinking of all the attacks America has suffered at home and abroad from 1973 to today... Exactly WHAT were they “assessing” that they missed everything that actually made news?
That statement hopefully allows for the possibility that there was a lot that WAS stopped/assessed before it became an issue.
“My guess is that the ONA was a big cheerleader for how ‘climate change” was a major national security threat.”
Bingo! Joe Biden repeatedly emphasized that Climate Change, not war, was the greatest threat to the country. This group was probably just dedicated to following Joe’s priorities.
(I retired from DOD 10 years ago after working in the DoD environmental program for ~30 years. By the time I retired, at least half of any DoD conference on environmental protection was about Climate Change. Hazardous materials and hazardous waste? Clean air? Clean water? All those must have been fixed. It must have gotten so much worse under Biden.)
Wait a minute. I thought WHITE RAGE was the greatest threat ... and white nationalism and far far far far far far right groups.
For that matter, what's Patel been doing? Not one of the FBI's 10 most wanted has been caught yet.......
I think Patel’s been busy. Bigger fish to fry than that.
Then again, this seems like an obvious Chinese blackmail ring. Where’s the DoJ and FBI on that angle?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14499047/brothel-users-rich-powerful-named-today.html
“Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is “disestablishing” the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment...”
What they filed to say in that statement is “...and the development of a plan to rebuild it in alignment with the Department’s strategic priorities. This decision ensures that our resources are focused on the most pressing national security challenges while maintaining accountability and efficiency. That’s like saying the sky is falling until they admit it is rain.
wy69
I’m sure the ONA determined CC was a national security threat. Yes, dump it and rebuild with common sense.
No doubt a lot of neocons involved with think tanks were getting fat contracts. Nuland’s family comes to mind with the Center for the Study of War.
It used to be very useful, and a lot of future defense VIPs cycled through it in the early part of their careers. I would not be surprised if became filled with DEI and global alarming crap during the Obama and Biden administrations.
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