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 secretary, defense, public and/or affairs:
“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)
“Unlike Boswell, whose Journals record a long and unrewarded search for a self, Johnson possessed a formidable one. His life in London—he arrived twenty-five years earlier than Boswell—turned out to be a long defense of the values of Augustan humanism against the pressures of other possibilities. In contrast to Boswell, Johnson possesses an identity not because he has gone in search of one, but because of his allegiance to a set of assumptions that he regards as objectively true.”
—Jeffrey Hart (b. 1930)
“But one day he met a man who was a whole lot badder,
And now he’s dead, and we ain’t none the sadder.”
—Administration in the State of Texa, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“To grant woman an equality with man in the affairs of life is contrary to every tradition, every precedent, every inheritance, every instinct and every teaching. The acceptance of this idea is possible only to those of especially progressive tendencies and a strong sense of justice, and it is yet too soon to expect these from the majority.”
—Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906)