Top Aide To Former Defense Chief James Mattis Recounts What The General Has Not

For all of you who've been waiting for a tell-all account of James Mattis' 710 days as President Trump's first Pentagon chief, that book has now been written.

It is not Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead, the book Mattis published in September that recounts many battles he fought — but only those that came before a president-elect Trump tapped him to be defense secretary. Mattis maddeningly refuses in that tome to go into his time serving a president who's still in office.

Instead, Holding the Line: Inside Trump's Pentagon With Secretary Mattis essentially picks up the story where the former defense secretary left off. And its author had unique access to his subject: former Navy commander Guy "Bus" Snodgrass spent 17 months as Mattis' chief speechwriter and communications director before quitting four months prior to Mattis' own departure.

This is not, it would seem, a book the Defense Department was eager to see published. It took a lawsuit to spring Snodgrass' memoir in September from the Department of Defense, where it had languished for months in a mandatory prepublication review.

Nor was Mattis pleased to learn that one of his top aides was chronicling the drama of a Pentagon under Trump as commander in chief. "I regret that you appear to be violating the trust that permitted you as a member of my staff to be in private meetings in my office," Mattis rebuked Snodgrass in an email that became part of the lawsuit. "You understand that you