Mark A. Milley

Within days of this revelation, two members of Congress who sit on the House Armed Services Committee (Reps. Jackie Speier, D-California, and Ruben Gallego, D-Arizona) sent a letter to Army leaders expressing their anger over the delay. In a press release accompanying the letter to Milley and Esper, Rep. Speier said, "This is simply the Army being unwilling to publicly air its mistakes. Our military, Congress, and the American people deserve nothing less than total transparency on the lessons the Army has identified so that we may use those lessons to avoid costly, and too often deadly, mistakes of the past." The study was published January 17, 2019.

After attending 75th anniversary commemorations of the Battle of the Bulge in Belgium and Luxembourg on December 16, 2019, Milley met with the Russian military chief of staff Valery Gerasimov in Bern, Switzerland, on December 18. This continued a series of regular meetings between the American and Russian military chiefs reestablished by Milley's predecessor Joseph Dunford in 2017 to ensure open communication and avoid conflict, especially in Syria. The face-to-face meeting was arranged with the assistance of the incoming Swiss Chief of the Armed Forces Korpskommandant (Lieutenant General) Thomas Süssli.

In 2018, Milley was involved in deciding whether the Army would publish a controversial study on the Iraq War. Milley reportedly decided that he wanted to read the two-volume, 1,300-page, 500,000-word study before making a decision. Milley also directed that an external panel of scholars review the work. After the panel returned glowing reviews on the study, including one that described the study as "the gold standard in official history," Milley continued to delay publication so he could review the study further.

In September 2018, Secretary of the Army Mark Esper and other Army officials decided to distance themselves from the study by casting the study "as an independent" work of the authors, instead of being described as a project by the Chief of Staff of the Army's Operation Iraqi Freedom Study Group." When confronted by a journalist from The Wall Street Journal in October 2018, Milley reversed these decisions, ordering the study to be published officially, and with a foreword that he would write. He declared the team that wrote the study "did a damn good job," that the study itself was "a solid work," and noted that he aimed to publish the study by the holidays (2018).

On December 8, 2018, President Donald Trump announced that he would nominate Milley to serve as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. On July 25, 2019, the United States Senate confirmed Milley's nomination by a vote of 89–1, and he was sworn in on September 30, 2019.

General Milley has had multiple command and staff positions in eight divisions and Special Forces throughout the last 39 years to include command of the 1st Battalion, 506th Infantry, 2nd Infantry Division; Milley commanded the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division (Light) from December 2003 to July 2005, served as Deputy Commanding General (Operations), 101st Airborne Division from July 2007 to April 2008, and was Commander of the 10th Mountain Division from November 2011 to December 2012. He then served as the Commanding General of III Corps, based at Fort Hood, Texas, from 2012 to 2014, and as the Commanding General of United States Army Forces Command, based at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, from 2014 to 2015. He was appointed Chief of Staff of the United States Army on August 14, 2015.

Milley has served in the 82nd Airborne Division, the 5th Special Forces Group, the 7th Infantry Division, the 2nd Infantry Division, the Joint Readiness Training Center, the 25th Infantry Division, Operations Staff of the Joint Staff, and as a Military Assistant to the Secretary of Defense in the Pentagon. In November 2000, he participated in the 2nd Annual Army-Navy Ice Hockey Game in Honolulu, Hawaii, a charity event benefiting youth ice hockey players in the area.

Born in Winchester, Massachusetts, Milley attended the Belmont Hill School. Milley graduated from Princeton University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in politics in 1980 after completing a 185-page long senior thesis titled "A Critical Analysis of Revolutionary Guerrilla Organization in Theory and Practice". Milley also 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. He is also a graduate of the MIT Center for International Studies Seminar XXI National Security Studies Program.

Although Milley earned his commission as an Armor officer through Princeton's Army Reserve Officers' Training Corps program in 1980, he has spent most of his career in Infantry assignments.

Mark Alexander Milley (born June 18, 1958) is a United States Army general and the 20th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. As Chairman, he is the highest-ranking and senior-most military officer in the United States Armed Forces. He previously served as 39th Chief of Staff of the Army.