Senior Navy Intelligence Officer Canned by Pentagon for China Comments

A senior Navy intelligence officer has been removed from his position due to comments made regarding aggressive Chinese military movements that ran counter to the Pentagon’s talking points on the issue, according to the Navy Times.

Capt. James Fanell was removed from his position as the director of intelligence and information operations at U.S. Pacific Fleet. Fanell was reassigned within the command.

Though neither the Navy nor Fanell commented on the reason for the personnel change, it is widely believed to be due to an internal investigation of his comments on China, according to the report.

Fanell warned during a February public appearance that a recent Chinese amphibious exercise led naval intelligence to assess that China’s strategy was to be able to launch a “short, sharp war” with Japan, an unusually frank assessment about a closely watched region.

His comments, which ran counter to the Pentagon’s talking points on building ties to the increasingly assertive Chinese navy, were picked up by media outlets from The New York Times and Reuters to London’s Financial Times and Daily Telegraph. Top defense officials, including the 4-star head of the Army and the Pentagon spokesman, were forced to respond to his comment in the following days.

I think the issue is not that Capt. Fanell’s evaluation of the intelligence information ran counter to the accepted interpretation of that information by the Intelligence community. As an officer you owe your superiors you professional opinion on these types of issues. They will either accept them or reject them. You are free to argue up to a certain point. Once that point is reached, your responsibility to carry out the policy as stated by your superiors. Fanell’s problem is that once that point was reached, he went public with his opinion. That is generally a career killer in any military organization in the world.
It was an issue like this that almost got Field Marshal Montgomery sacked by Ike during WWII. Monty disagreed with Ike on the strategy for the conquest of Germany. Disagreement with Ike wasn’t the problem. Monty took the issue public. Ike was going to sack Monty, buy Montgomery
went to Ike with his hat in hand, apologized profusely and promised to say nothing more and carry out Ike’s plans. Fanell’s assessment of PLA intentions may be correct, but
that was an inhouse issue that should have remained way.

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