Office of the Secretary of Defense

And at this point, my client base is the

Office of the Secretary of Defense.

Jesus Christ.

Very important.

Funding and bureaucratic debates delayed construction for several years.

By the fall of nineteen fifty-nine, the Air Force had selected Cheyenne Mountain and obtained initial funding, but the Office of the Secretary of Defense temporarily froze much of the money while defense plans were reassessed.

The project finally received renewed approval in nineteen sixty-one.

The Utah Construction and Mining Company received the excavation contract and worked under the supervision of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

But Rumsfeld would not be denied.

So the admiral said, "Sir, w- we've got an alternate place in, in OSD, Office of Secretary of Defense.

We could move there.

We still got comms.

So, I mean, I think there's additional context here, which is that, you know, there's been a lot of turmoil in the Army in that space relative to the Navy, the Air Force.

Yes, the original SEC NAV was canned, but that was over like specific things versus this has been a constant meddling between OSD and SEC Army's office.

Um, there's personality differences that were there.

There's just straight up like one cares about the force.

And either way, you're just not going to get – there's no energy to get these types of people in anymore.

So you're just going to be stuck with acting.

You're going to have continued meddling from OSD.

Um, from a force perspective for the army, like again, the op tempo hasn't slowed down.

Before that, he worked in the Office of Management and Budget, where he spent more than seven years as chief of the Force Structure and Investment Division, working on issues such as the Department of Defense budget strategy, war funding, and procurement programs, as well as nuclear weapons development and nonproliferation activities in the Department of Energy.

Before that, he worked in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, He also spent over three decades in the United States Marine Corps, active in reserve, serving as an infantry, artillery, and civil affairs officer, and in overseas tours in Vietnam, Desert Storm, and Iraq twice.

I consider Mark one of the most knowledgeable, incredible voices on defense policy issues in Washington, and I always find his insights substantive and informative.

Mark, thank you for your service to our country and all the great work you continue to do and for joining me for this conversation.

We worked together in twenty twenty-one, twenty twenty-two.

You took some leave from Stanford to serve in the strategy office within the Office of the Secretary of Defense.

For our listeners, the Office of the Secretary of Defense is not literally the secretary's office.

It's a huge, sprawling civilian bureaucracy that supports the secretary, and Jim worked in the strategy shop.

And specifically, you had an opportunity to work on the twenty twenty-two National Defense Strategy, which is an important intellectual and framing document for the Pentagon.

allies and partners? To discuss these questions, I'm delighted to welcome the Honorable Cara Abercrombie on the podcast.

Cara is a senior advisor with Cohen Group following a two-decade civil service career in the Office of the Secretary of Defense.

She held numerous senior positions in the Pentagon and White House, and most recently serving as the Acting Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Policy.

Saqqara, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast.

[upbeat music] US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has vowed to asphyxiate Iran economically, warning of plans to freeze assets linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard.

Mark Vargas served as a civilian within the Office of the Secretary of Defense on a special task force in Iraq from 2007 to 2010.

In Iraq, we called this money as a weapon system, and that's exactly what President Trump is deploying, money as a weapon system.

We're gonna find your offshore accounts.

Uh, I was a contractor at the time.

Um, I was working the counter WMD mission for the Office of the Secretary of Defense for, uh, the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy.

And, um, you know, s- down in the org chart is, is where I was, but we'll just leave it there, um, for...

Yeah, I still respect the mission.

Danielle Metz is Chief Policy Officer at Second Front Systems.

She's former Chief Information Officer for the Office of the Secretary of Defense.

Danielle, welcome.

Thanks for joining me today.