The Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, or ASD(PA) is the principal staff advisor and assistant to the Secretary of Defense and Deputy Secretary of Defense for public information, internal information, community relations, information training, and audiovisual matters in support of Department of Defense activities, leading a worldwide public affairs community of some 3,800 military and civilian personnel. The Assistant Secretary follows the Secretary's Principles of Information in providing Defense Department information to the public, the United States Congress and the media.
The current ASD(PA) is Douglas B. Wilson, who previously served as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs under former Defense Secretary William S. Cohen.
The ASD (PA) is the principal but not the sole spokesperson for the Department. In July 2011, the ASD (PA) announced the appointment of two additional spokespersons for the Department. George E. Little, one of two Deputy Assistant Secretaries of Defense for Public Affairs, serves concurrently as the Pentagon Press Secretary. Navy Captain John Kirby, former spokesman for Admiral Michael Mullen, the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, now serves as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Media Operations and Spokesman. Both Little and Kirby serve as spokesmen for the Secretary of Defense and for the Department.
Read more about Assistant Secretary Of Defense For Public Affairs: Roles and Responsibilities, History, Office Holders
Famous quotes containing the words public affairs, secretary, defense, public and/or affairs:
“He who doesn’t know how to be a servant should never be allowed to be a master; the interests of public life are alien to anyone who is unable to enjoy others’ successes, and such a person should never be entrusted with public affairs.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)
“The truth is, the whole administration under Roosevelt was demoralized by the system of dealing directly with subordinates. It was obviated in the State Department and the War Department under [Secretary of State Elihu] Root and me [Taft was the Secretary of War], because we simply ignored the interference and went on as we chose.... The subordinates gained nothing by his assumption of authority, but it was not so in the other departments.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“The sick man is taken away by the institution that takes charge not of the individual, but of his illness, an isolated object transformed or eliminated by technicians devoted to the defense of health the way others are attached to the defense of law and order or tidiness.”
—Michel de Certeau (1925–1986)
“The designers [of the 1930s] were populists, you see; they were trying to give the public what it wanted. What the public wanted was the future.”
—William Gibson (b. 1948)
“A man with your experience in affairs must have seen cause to appreciate the futility of opposition to the moral sentiment. However feeble the sufferer and however great the oppressor, it is in the nature of things that the blow should recoil upon the aggressor. For God is in the sentiment, and it cannot be withstood.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)