49 Facts About Mark Milley

1.

Mark Alexander Milley was born on June 20,1958 and is a United States Army general who has been serving as the 20th chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff since October 1,2019.

2.

Mark Milley previously served as the 39th chief of staff of the Army from August 14,2015, to August 9,2019, and held multiple command and staff positions in eight divisions and special forces throughout his military career.

3.

An ROTC graduate from Princeton University, Milley earned his commission as an armor officer in 1980.

4.

Mark Milley was appointed chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff by President Donald Trump, making Milley the tenth US Army officer to be chairman.

5.

Mark Milley was born on June 20,1958, in Winchester, Massachusetts.

6.

Mark Milley is of Irish descent, and was raised Roman Catholic.

7.

Mark Milley was assigned to the 4th Marine Division and landed at Kwajalein, Saipan, Tinian and Iwo Jima.

8.

Mark Milley was a member of the Knights of Columbus, whose membership is limited to practicing Catholic men.

9.

Mark Milley's mother, Mary Elizabeth, was a nurse who served with the Navy's WAVES in World War II and is described by Mark Milley as a "break-the-glass-ceiling" type of woman.

10.

Mark Milley holds a Master of Arts degree in international relations from Columbia University and another Master of Arts degree in national security and strategic studies from the Naval War College.

11.

Mark Milley is an attendee of the MIT Center for International Studies Seminar XXI National Security Studies Program.

12.

Mark Milley earned his commission as an armor officer through Princeton's Army Reserve Officers' Training Corps program in 1980.

13.

Mark Milley's career has included assignments with the 82nd Airborne Division, 5th Special Forces Group, 7th Infantry Division, 2nd Infantry Division, Joint Readiness Training Center, 25th Infantry Division, Operations Staff of the Joint Staff, and a posting as Military Assistant to the Secretary of Defense.

14.

Mark Milley has held multiple command and staff positions in eight divisions and special forces throughout his military career.

15.

Mark Milley commanded 1st Battalion, 506th Infantry, 2nd Infantry Division, in South Korea from 1996 to 1998.

16.

Mark Milley served as commander of 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division from December 2003 to July 2005; deputy commanding general for operations of the 101st Airborne Division from July 2007 to April 2008, and as commanding general of the 10th Mountain Division from November 2011 to December 2012.

17.

Mark Milley commanded III Corps, based at Fort Hood, Texas, from December 2012 to August 2014, and concurrently the International Security Assistance Force Joint Command from May 2013 to February 2014.

18.

Mark Milley served as the commanding general of the United States Army Forces Command at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, from August 2014 to August 2015.

19.

Mark Milley was appointed chief of staff of the Army on August 14,2015.

20.

At the 2017 Association of the United States Army annual meeting, Mark Milley described the areas targeted for modernization, including tanks, aircraft and weapons.

21.

In 2018, Mark Milley established Army Futures Command in Austin, Texas, to take advantage of nearby academic and industrial expertise.

22.

In 2018, Mark Milley led the roll out of a new Army Combat Fitness Test.

23.

Mark Milley reportedly decided he wanted to read the two-volume, 1,300-page, 500,000-word document before making a decision.

24.

Mark Milley directed that an external panel of scholars review the work.

25.

When confronted by a journalist from The Wall Street Journal in October 2018, Mark Milley reversed these decisions, ordering the study published officially and with a foreword from himself.

26.

Mark Milley said the team who wrote the study "did a damn good job", the study itself was "a solid work", and that he aimed to publish the study by the holidays.

27.

In May 2019, Mark Milley commissioned a US Army War College report on the impact of climate change on society as a whole and on the US military.

28.

On December 8,2018, President Donald Trump announced that he would nominate Milley to serve as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, although Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis and then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Joseph Dunford favored Air Force Chief of Staff General David L Goldfein for the appointment.

29.

Mark Milley initially been fielded as a candidate to succeed Curtis Scaparrotti as commander of the United States European Command and Supreme Allied Commander Europe but after the interview with Trump was nominated for the chairmanship instead.

30.

Reports say that when Mark Milley learned of the scandal, he was shocked, and stated he would consider a more systematic fix on how the military keeps track of its firearms.

31.

However, some claim that Mark Milley actually downplayed the report of 1,900 lost or stolen military firearms.

32.

In November 2022, Mark Milley urged Russia and Ukraine to find a "political solution" to the Russo-Ukrainian War, saying that the war in Ukraine is unwinnable by purely military means.

33.

In February 2023, Mark Milley said that Russia had lost "strategically, operationally and tactically" and that it was "paying an enormous price on the battlefield" in Ukraine.

34.

Trump previously denied the incident and accused Mark Milley of falsifying it.

35.

The authors reported that after Trump refused to concede his election loss, CIA director Gina Haspel told Mark Milley, "We are on the way to a right-wing coup" and was worried Trump might attack Iran.

36.

One briefed on Mark Milley's call said that it was "implausible that [Mark Milley's call] would have been done without" Sbragia's knowledge.

37.

At a congressional hearing on September 28,2021, Mark Milley testified that both calls were coordinated with the staffs of Esper and Miller both before and after they were made.

38.

Woodward and Costa wrote that after the attack on the Capitol Mark Milley became concerned Trump might "go rogue", telling staff "You never know what a president's trigger point is".

39.

Mark Milley's reported comments and actions have drawn criticism from multiple Republicans.

40.

Trump said that if the reporting was true, then Trump believed Mark Milley should be "tried for treason" for talking to Li "behind the President's back and telling China that he would be giving them notification" of an American attack.

41.

Alexander Vindman said that Mark Milley needed to resign if it was true that he broke the chain of command.

42.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said that President Biden had worked closely with Mark Milley and considered him to be a patriot.

43.

Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby stated that Mark Milley had the trust and confidence of Austin.

44.

In December 2020, Mark Milley met with the Taliban in Doha in an effort to arrange peace talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government.

45.

On July 21,2021, Mark Milley reported that half of all districts in Afghanistan were under Taliban control and that momentum was "sort of" on the side of the Taliban.

46.

In late September 2021, Mark Milley, at hearings before both the Senate and House Armed Services Committees said that the withdrawal from Afghanistan and evacuation from Kabul was "a logistical success but a strategic failure".

47.

Mark Milley rejected demands from Republican committee members to resign.

48.

Mark Milley and Hollyanne Haas was born on January 19,1965 and were married in May 1985.

49.

Hollyanne Mark Milley is a nurse who worked in critical care for 18 years and then in cardiac nursing for 15, currently in Northern Virginia.