Hillary Clinton has the endorsements of nearly two dozen retired generals and admirals, as her campaign indicates an eagerness to seize the national security agenda from Donald Trump and the Republican party.



While the former secretary of state has yet to present a formal rollout of her senior military support, something recent campaigns have tended to do closer to election day, the Clinton campaign provided the Guardian with a tally of 22 retired general and flag officers who have already endorsed her. Campaign officials suggested more were likely to come in over the coming weeks and months.

Such early support for Clinton from retired senior officers comes as Trump fends off massive dissent from security experts long within the GOP orbit, owing to his vocal respect for Russian president Vladimir Putin; his enthusiasm for policies much of the world considers war crimes; his call to ban Muslim immigration; and his ongoing fight with the family of an army captain who was killed in Iraq. Clinton has capitalized on such wariness over Trump with a new advertisement.

Such dissatisfaction has spread into national security officials who are formally politically independent. Michael Morrell, an acting director of the CIA under Barack Obama and a longtime agency professional, endorsed Clinton and on Friday excoriated Trump in a New York Times op-ed as an “unwitting agent” of Putin, language designed to call Trump’s patriotism into question.

Similarly, another new ad by the Clinton campaign raises the specter that Trump is taking his foreign policy cues from the Russian president. The campaign has accused Russia of trying to influence the outcome of the US presidential election in a manner that benefits Trump.

Aside from the 22 endorsements thus far, Clinton campaign officials said they would continue outreach to national security practitioners, both military and civilian, indicating an effort not just to blunt the GOP nominee on national security, as previous Democratic campaigns have attempted, but to own the issue outright.

On the campaign trail, Clinton frequently references her experience as secretary of state to draw a contrast with Trump, about whom she said in her nomination speech last week: “A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons.”

John Allen, the marine general and former Nato commander, is Clinton’s highest-profile endorsement from the military thus far. An officer known in Washington for eschewing politics, he surprised observers with a speech at the Democratic convention so impassioned it prompted Trump to attack him as a failure.

At the convention, both Obama and Vice-President Joe Biden made national security a central aspect of their cases against Trump, delivering speeches that received rare praise from Republicans. Biden blatantly derided Trump, claiming: “No major party nominee in the history of this nation has ever known less or has been less prepared to deal with our national security.”

Some retired generals and admirals formally backing Clinton have long been in the Democratic firmament, like Wesley Clark, who ran for the nomination in 2004, former West Point superintendent Dan Christman and air force brigadier general John Douglass, who in 2012 ran unsuccessfully for a Virginia congressional seat. Others are familiar for joining public efforts against torture and to close the Guantánamo Bay detention facility, such as retired navy rear admiral Don Hutson and army brigadier general Stephen Xenakis.

Also endorsing Clinton are retired marine lieutenant general Walter Gaskin, a senior commander in volatile western Iraq during the surge who wrote an op-ed backing Clinton for the Military Times; army general Johnnie Wilson; air force major general Margaret Woodward, who led an effort at reducing sexual assault in the service; the former head of the Indiana national guard, George Buskirk; marine lieutenant general John Castellaw; army major general Donna Barbisch; air force brigadier generals Larry Gillespie and Dan Woodward; navy vice-admiral Kevin Green; air force lieutenant general Dirk Jameson, a senior officer with responsibility for nuclear weapons; navy rear admirals Dave Oliver, Harold Robinson, Jamie Barnett, Mike Smith and Steven Glass; and army brigadier general Loree Sutton, currently veterans services commissioner for New York City.

“Hillary Clinton has been honored by the breadth of support she’s seen from the military and national security communities across the board,” said campaign spokesman Jesse Lehrich, “from young veterans who know she has their back, to career flag officers and public servants who have never entered the political sphere, like General Allen and Michael Morell.

“It speaks to the deep relationships she’s built to earn these communities’ support and her preparedness for the job, but also to the astonishing disrespect Trump has shown them and the unique threat he would pose as commander-in-chief.”

General John Allen, former commander of US forces in Afghanistan, addresses delegates at the Democratic national convention last week. Photograph: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

In every presidential election since at least 1988, retired senior uniformed support for presidential candidates has led to debate within military circles over propriety. A generation’s worth of commentary has warned that political endorsement risks compromising public perceptions of military independence from politics. Yet every four years, the involvement deepens: on the eve of the 2012 election, Mitt Romney received the endorsement of 500 retired generals and admirals.

After Allen’s convention speech and that of retired army lieutenant general Mike Flynn, Trump’s highest-profile military supporter, a former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff implored his colleagues to stay out of the presidential race.

“The American people should not wonder where their military leaders draw the line between military advice and political preference,” wrote retired army general Martin Dempsey.

Thus far, several high-profile retired officers have indicated to the Guardian a lack of interest in political involvement. Stanley McChrystal, the former commander of the Afghanistan war and the joint special operations command (Jsoc), is staying out of the campaign fray, as is his successor at Jsoc, William McRaven, the retired navy admiral and architect of the 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden. A retired admiral whom Clinton reportedly vetted for the vice-presidency, James Stavridis, said his position at Tufts University prevented him from endorsing a presidential candidate.

Kori Schake, a foreign policy adviser to John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign, said she expected Clinton to unveil a slew of military endorsements, although many who served have watched the 2016 campaign with a sense of dread and surreality.

“The general attitude among military folks,” Schake said, “is that this campaign is so crazy and so far off the rails, as Trump’s comments over the last [several] days indicate, that first, they’re a little bit shellshocked, as people who put their lives on the line for their country, that someone with Trump’s views is a major party nominee. And second, that if anyone [in uniform] did with Clinton’s emails what she did that they’d wind up in jail.”

Xenakis, a retired army one-star general who has backed closing Guantánamo, said while he considered Trump an acute danger, he was backing Clinton on her own merits.

“I’m endorsing her because of who she is,” he said. “She does have the deepest experience in this area and has the potential to put us on a path for the future for what we need in our national strategy.”