Phil Carter touched off a bit of a speculative frenzy last night, when he announced his resignation from the Pentagon. Carter served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee policy, handling porcupine-thorny issues like Guantanamo. So when Carter said he was stepping down for "personal and family reasons," some wondered whether that was Beltway code for unhappiness with the way the Obama administration was dealing with Gitmo. After all, *every *D.C. official says he or she's resigning to get in more family time.
I just got off the phone with Carter. "I know this is a Washington cliche, but sometimes the cliches are true," he tells me. "I made this tough decision for personal reasons, even though I loved the job and the work we were doing. Hopefully I'll have the chance to serve again."
I got to know Carter nearly seven years ago -- before he was a military police officer in Iraq, before he was a corporate lawyer, before he was a veterans' coordinator for the Obama campaign, before he was a well-known defense pundit, and before he moved from Los Angeles to New York to Washington to take his position at the Pentagon. We were neighbors in L.A., and we've thrown back a boat-load of sushi and beer over the years. I know he's had some very real family matters to handle along the way. So I think he's being straight-up, and not just giving the typical Washington exit excuse.
Were detainees a bear of an issue? For sure; that's a job you couldn't pay me enough to tackle. Did the Obama administration handle it the same way that the Obama campaign suggested it might? No, not exactly. Carter was pragmatic enough to keep going, though. Of course, no big decision is made on a single factor. But I don't think he resigned over policy differences or over professional personality conflicts. For private reasons, he just needed a change.
[Photo: DoD]
