 Marine Corps Gen. James Mattis arrives on Capitol Hill in Washington on July 27, 2010. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon) By Carolyn Y. Johnson Retired Marine Gen. James N. Mattis, reportedly President-elect Donald Trump's pick for secretary of defense, had a long military career, leading the U.S. Central Command before he retired in 2013. But a series of emails obtained by The Post last year revealed that, in a lesser-known incident late in his military tenure, Mattis took the unusual step of personally pushing for a start-up company — the controversial blood-testing Theranos — to land a deal for a military field test. In 2012, Theranos — which has since had a long and tortuous fall from Silicon Valley darling to cautionary tale — was a secretive blood-testing company with politically connected board members. Mattis first met Theranos chief executive Elizabeth Holmes in 2011 at a Marine Memorial event, a Theranos spokeswoman told The Post. The emails revealed Mattis's interest in the start-up's blood-testing technology and the personal actions he took to try and push its technology into a field test in Afghanistan. Theranos promised to revolutionize blood testing by performing rapid tests on small volumes of blood, using a closely held technology. In June 2012, Holmes emailed Gen. Mattis, attaching a memo about Theranos's regulatory certifications. The four-star Marine general was busy overseeing the war in Afghanistan, but he responded promptly.
Read the rest on Wonkblog.
Number of the day 4.6 percent. That was the unemployment rate in November, the lowest level in nearly a decade. Ana Swanson has more.
Top jobs tweets | 
Twitter
Facebook
No comments:
Post a Comment