WASHINGTON — The White House advanced its nominee for Navy secretary and two other Defense Department officials to the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday.
The nominees — Richard Spencer for Navy secretary, Owen West for assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict, and Charles "Cully" Stimson for Navy general counsel — have been formally referred to the SASC. They are expected to receive a committee hearing and approval vote in committee before the full Senate votes on their nominations.
Charles "Cully" Stimson has been senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation since 2007, when he resigned as deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs over controversial remarks in which he criticized lawyers who represent terrorism suspects.
Stimson said at the time he was leaving because of the controversy over a radio interview in which he said he found it shocking that lawyers at many of the nation's top law firms represent detainees held at the U.S. military prison in Cuba, The Washington Post had reported. The comments drew outrage from the legal community and a disavowal from the Defense Department.
Stimson is the commander of the Navy appellate government unit and serves as a captain in the Navy Judge Advocate General's Corps. He previously served as an assistant U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia and as a private equity mergers and acquisitions executive at Marsh & McLennan, a professional services firm.
He would replace the acting general counsel of the Navy, Anne M. Brennan.
On Wednesday, retired Lt. Gen. Thomas Spoehr, director of the Center for National Defense at The Heritage Foundation, told Defense News he hoped the past controversy would not impede Stimson's confirmation.
"He is such a great American and a servant to his country," Spoehr said. "I've never seen a man with more integrity than him and more respect for the system of legal jurisprudence."
Richard Spencer is a former financial industry executive and former Marine Corps captain.
The White House says Spencer most recently was a managing partner of Fall Creek Management, a privately held management consulting company in Wyoming. Spencer also was vice chairman and chief financial officer for Intercontinental Exchange, Inc., a financial market company, and president of Crossroads Group, a venture capital firm that was bought by Lehman Brothers in 2003.
President Donald Trump's first choice for Navy secretary, businessman Philip Bilden, withdrew from consideration in February. Bilden cited privacy concerns and the difficulty of separating from his business interests.
Spencer would replace Sean Stackley, the acting Navy secretary.
Owen West served as an infantry platoon commander, reconnaissance platoon leader and combat adviser in the Marine Corps, where he served two tours in Iraq. He is also a director of the Marine Corps Scholarship Foundation and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
The White House says West "most recently served as Partner, Head of Global Natural Gas Trading and Co-Head of Global Power Trading at Goldman Sachs & Co., where he designed and managed this international risk business."
He graduated Harvard University and the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
West, a third-generation Marine who joined the military after 9/11, took three leaves of absence during his time at Goldman Sachs, according to a story in The Telegraph newspaper in London. Business Insider called him a "badass" in a write-up of his third book, "Snake Eaters," a nonfiction account of the role of military advisers for foreign armies.
West would replace Mark Mitchell as the acting assistant secretary of defense for special operations/low-intensity conflict.
Trump nominated former Army Ranger Ryan McCarthy as undersecretary of the Army on Tuesday, putting him in line for the service's second-ranking post and a possible temporary promotion to the top job, according to a Military Times report. McCarthy was a staffer for former Secretary of Defense Bob Gates and now works as a vice president at the defense contractor Lockheed Martin.
Email: jgould@defensenews.com
Twitter: @reporterjoe
Joe Gould was the senior Pentagon reporter for Defense News, covering the intersection of national security policy, politics and the defense industry. He had previously served as Congress reporter.
