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By Phil Stewart and Idrees Ali
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Marine Corps said Wednesday that its No. 2 officer, Gen. Gary Thomas, has tested positive for COVID-19, becoming the second senior military officer to do so this week, another sign of danger to the top brass I met both men at the Pentagon.
Thomas, the assistant commandant of the Marine Corps, suffers from mild symptoms and is self-quarantined at home, the Marine Corps said. Reuters was the first to report Thomas’s positive result.
Nearly all of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, including their chairman, Army General Mark Milley, are in quarantine after attending high-level meetings last week with Thomas and the No. 2 Coast Guard officer, Admiral Charles Ray. , who tested positive Monday for the illness caused by the coronavirus.
The list of top quarantined generals reads like a “Who’s Who” of the US military, including Gen. Paul Nakasone, head of the National Security Agency and the US Cyber Command, as well as the heads of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Space Force.
“At this time we do not have positive test results for additional senior leaders to report,” Pentagon spokesman Jonathan Hoffman said in a statement.
“We will continue to follow the CDC guidelines for self-quarantine and contact tracing,” Hoffman said, referring to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Hoffman offered no further details, including whether other top generals were experiencing potential symptoms.
The disclosure risks increasing a growing sense of uncertainty about the degree of risk to America’s national security leadership as President Donald Trump himself tries to recover from the disease.
The White House says the increase in cases among senior White House officials and others in Washington has not fazed the government. [nL1N2GX16C]
“Our adversaries are always looking for any weakness to exploit,” Representative Adam Smith, chairman of the Democratic-led House Armed Services Committee, warned Tuesday in a terse statement targeting Trump.
“While our military can still operate while the leadership is in quarantine, the national security implications of the president’s recklessness cannot be overstated,” Smith added.
(Reporting by Phil Stewart and Idrees Ali; Editing by Jacqueline Wong)
