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Former deputy secretary of Defense Ashton Carter in May 2011.(Photo: Alex Wong, Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — Ashton Carter, the former No. 2 official at the Pentagon, is a "leading candidate" to be President Obama's nominee to succeed Chuck Hagel as secretary of Defense, three administration officials said Tuesday.
The officials, all speaking on condition of anonymity because the president's selection is not public, would not confirm earlier reports by CNN and the Washington Post that Carter will be Obama's pick.
Sen. Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, a key member of the Armed Services Committee, told the Associated Press on Tuesday morning that the White House said Carter would be the pick. Inhofe's spokesman later recanted the comment, saying "there was a misunderstanding."
White House officials, however, would not confirm that Carter was Obama's pick, saying the president has not yet made the final call.
Carter is certainly qualified to be defense secretary, and is on the president's "short list," said White House spokesman Josh Earnest. But he declined further comment.
Carter stepped down as the deputy secretary of Defense on Dec. 4, 2013. He had served as the top deputy to Hagel and his predecessor Leon Panetta.
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He had been considered a leading candidate to replace Panetta but Obama opted for Hagel instead. Carter served as deputy secretary of defense from October 2011 until his retirement in December of 2013. His specialties include science, technology, and developing the defense budget in tight economic times.
From 2009 to 2011, Carter — a Yale graduate with a degree in physics — served as undersecretary for acquisition, specializing in procuring equipment to meet emerging threats.
Before he left the Pentagon, Carter was the military's top weapons' buyer and pushed hard for gear that troops needed to stay alive on the battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan: Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) trucks to protect them from roadside bombs, surveillance equipment to spy on insurgents, and bomb-sniffing dogs to find the buried mines that killed and maimed troops on foot patrols.
Regarded as capable, brainy and wonkish, Carter, toward the end of his tenure, led the Pentagon review of its budget as the days of unconstrained spending came to an end. In fiscal year 2001, adopted prior to the 9/11 terror attacks, the Pentagon's budget was $297 billion. Ten years later, it had ballooned to $687 billion, including funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Carter, in an interview with USA TODAY shortly before retiring in 2013, said that Pentagon budget writers had developed a mindset prompted them to solve "problems with money rather than using other managerial tools."
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Carter pointed to compensation for troops as an area of potential saving. Reforming the Pentagon's pay and retirement systems has been difficult politically. But outside observers, such as Todd Harrison at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, say it is vital.
If personnel costs continue growing the current rate and the overall defense budget remains flat, military personnel costs will eat up the entire defense budget by 2039, Harrison said.
Hagel was charged with overseeing a downsizing at the Pentagon as troops exited Iraq in 2011 and began withdrawing from Afghanistan. Each service has begun trimming troops from the ranks, although the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and continued combat in Afghanistan has prompted second thoughts on deep cuts to defense spending. The Republican-led Congress is likely next year to push for greater spending on the military.
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Carter would replace Hagel, who resigned under pressure last month.
He also worked in the Clinton administration, helping developed the U.S. nuclear weapons policy after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Other potential candidates — former undersecretary of Defense Michele Flournoy and Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I. — withdrew from consideration in the days following Hagel's resignation.
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