Back already, Panetta returns to his empty office
Empty chairs and empty tables. Eisenhower and Marshall. Grant and Lee. The flags. The multi time-zone digital clock. And Leon Panetta. Still the secretary of defense. Still at Gen. John “Black Jack” Pershing’s desk. For one …more …day. Panetta is back already. The secretary returned on Tuesday to the Pentagon – and his now starkly ...
Empty chairs and empty tables. Eisenhower and Marshall. Grant and Lee. The flags. The multi time-zone digital clock. And Leon Panetta. Still the secretary of defense. Still at Gen. John “Black Jack” Pershing’s desk. For one …more …day.
Empty chairs and empty tables. Eisenhower and Marshall. Grant and Lee. The flags. The multi time-zone digital clock. And Leon Panetta. Still the secretary of defense. Still at Gen. John “Black Jack” Pershing’s desk. For one …more …day.
Panetta is back already. The secretary returned on Tuesday to the Pentagon – and his now starkly empty office – for a bit of work before departing on Wednesday morning for Brussels and a regularly scheduled meeting of NATO defense ministers.
Just five days ago, the secretary’s staff lined the hallway from his office to the front door, carrying out every last box and applauding as he walked down the grand staircase with his wife, Sylvia, and his beloved dog, Bravo, in a staged exit worthy a lifelong public servant.
Panetta said his Valentines Day present “would be to allow Sylvia and I to get the hell out of town at the end of the day. I feel like it’s ‘Groundhog Day’ around here.”
Now, only the portraits of Gens. Dwight D. Eisenhower and George C. Marshall look down on Panetta’s chair, waiting for Chuck Hagel to arrive as soon as next week if the Senate moves his confirmation forward as expected. Images of Civil War rivals Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant hang nearby as well, the E-Ring learned, perhaps a reminder to the incoming Hagel that this nation is a union once divided far more viciously than today’s Senate.
Panetta called Eisenhower and Marshall his “heroes” when he arrived in 2011, and left their paintings in place after Robert Gates handed him the keys.
“I kind of look at them and every once and a while I’ll turn around and say: What the hell would you do?” Panetta said, at the time.
Hagel will get to ask them, soon enough.
Kevin Baron is a national security reporter for Foreign Policy, covering defense and military issues in Washington. He is also vice president of the Pentagon Press Association. Baron previously was a national security staff writer for National Journal, covering the "business of war." Prior to that, Baron worked in the resident daily Pentagon press corps as a reporter/photographer for Stars and Stripes. For three years with Stripes, Baron covered the building and traveled overseas extensively with the secretary of defense and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, covering official visits to Afghanistan and Iraq, the Middle East and Europe, China, Japan and South Korea, in more than a dozen countries. From 2004 to 2009, Baron was the Boston Globe Washington bureau's investigative projects reporter, covering defense, international affairs, lobbying and other issues. Before that, he muckraked at the Center for Public Integrity. Baron has reported on assignment from Asia, Africa, Australia, Europe, the Middle East and the South Pacific. He was won two Polk Awards, among other honors. He has a B.A. in international studies from the University of Richmond and M.A. in media and public affairs from George Washington University. Originally from Orlando, Fla., Baron has lived in the Washington area since 1998 and currently resides in Northern Virginia with his wife, three sons, and the family dog, The Edge. Twitter: @FPBaron
More from Foreign Policy
A New Multilateralism
How the United States can rejuvenate the global institutions it created.
America Prepares for a Pacific War With China It Doesn’t Want
Embedded with U.S. forces in the Pacific, I saw the dilemmas of deterrence firsthand.
The Endless Frustration of Chinese Diplomacy
Beijing’s representatives are always scared they could be the next to vanish.
The End of America’s Middle East
The region’s four major countries have all forfeited Washington’s trust.
Sign up for World Brief
FP’s flagship evening newsletter guiding you through the most important world stories of the day. Delivered weekdays.
By submitting your email, you agree to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use and to receive email correspondence from us. You may opt out at any time.