A former aide on Monday pushed back at ex-Defense Secretary James Mattis’s office over criticism of his new tell-all book.
Retired Navy Cmdr. Guy Snodgrass, who served as Mattis’s communications director and head speechwriter, told Hill.TV that he was “disappointed” by the comments.
An assistant for Mattis, Candace Currier, issued a statement last month knocked Snodgrass’s book, describing him as a “junior staffer” who “played no role in decision making.”
Snodgrass maintains that he played a key role in the Defense Department’s messaging.
“It was just the traditional Washington, D.C. if you want to try and undercut someone’s position, you call into question the position they held or the accomplishments they had, which is unfortunately what President Trump has done with Secretary Mattis,” he told Hill.TV. “It was a little like the pot calling the kettle black.
“That being said, I served alongside him for a year and a half was on a vast majority of travel that he had, wrote all of the speeches and a lot of his messages and strategies that he put out during his tenure,” he added.
Currier declined to provide further comment, saying “we have nothing to add to the original statement issued.”
A number of bombshell details were reported in the lead-up to the release of Snodgress’s memoir, “Holding The Line: Inside Trump’s Pentagon with Secretary Mattis.”
Snodgrass alleged that Mattis said privately that he’d “rather swallow acid” than watch a massive Fourth of July military parade that had been requested by President Trump. The book also claims that Trump wanted to “screw” Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos out of a $10 billion Pentagon cloud computing contract.
Snodgrass also offered praise in his book for the retired general, saying that “Mattis provided a valuable service to the nation, our international allies and partners, and the members of the department he led.”
“Holding the Line” was released last Friday after initially being delayed over concerns that its contents could potentially jeopardize U.S. national security.
Updated at 12:28 a.m.
—Tess Bonn
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