Former defense secretary's concern about National Guard in L.A. is "loss of life like we saw in 1970"

CBS News

11-06-2025

As President Trump warned Tuesday that the deployment of National Guard troops and Marines in Los Angeles is just the start of what he'd do to quell protests against immigration operations, a former defense secretary cautioned about the risk of potentially deadly consequences.
In an interview with CBS News' Ed O'Keefe, Chuck Hagel, a former Republican senator and Army veteran who served as defense secretary in the Obama administration, said his greatest concern about having troops deployed in large American cities like L.A. would be "loss of life like we saw in 1970."
On May 4, 1970, after days of nationwide protests over the U.S. invasion of Cambodia during the Vietnam War, students demonstrating at Kent State University clashed with Ohio National Guardsmen. Soldiers opened fire, killing four students and wounding nine others.
"When the National Guard opened up on students and killed students, partly because they weren't trained, they panicked," Hagel said.
The Ohio National Guard troops were called in by Republican Gov. Jim Rhodes against the advice of university and many local officials, according to Brian VanDeMark, a U.S. Naval Academy history professor. While it's unclear exactly why the troops fired into a group of unarmed students, some testified during the investigation that they felt that their lives were in danger.
Instead of leading to a decrease in protests around the country, they escalated further. Many colleges and universities shut down their campuses for fear of similar violence. Now, more protests against immigration arrests have popped up across the country, including in Washington, D.C., New York City, Boston, Seattle and Chicago.
The National Guard's training has improved significantly in the decades since Kent State, but they are "still military troops who are fundamentally trained to fight, not to control crowds," VanDeMark wrote for The Conversation, a nonprofit that publishes articles written by academic experts.
When asked Tuesday about the conditions for National Guard troops at a House subcommittee hearing, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said troops in the field are "very well prepared" and "responded incredibly rapidly to a deteriorating situation, with equipment and capabilities."
But Hagel called the decision to deploy the National Guard and Marines a "grotesque overreach of federal authority" and said it's "clearly politicizing our military."
"This is really authoritarian," he said. "You normally — our system works where you have state responsibility, where the governor has responsibility, the mayor has responsibility. We put an emphasis on local control in this country, this issue in Los Angeles is a law enforcement issue. It's an immigration issue. It's not a National Guard or active-duty Marine issue. It's not for our armed forces. We don't use our armed forces against our own citizens, especially you don't use the National Guard."
The National Guard is typically called on by the state governors to respond to major incidents or natural disasters. While it's a rare occurrence, presidents have the authority to federalize the National Guard.
In 1992, President George H.W. Bush invoked the Insurrection Act to deploy thousands of National Guard troops to L.A. following unrest that broke out after a jury acquitted police officers who beat Black motorist Rodney King. But he was acting at the request of state officials.
The rare instances in which a president called in troops without the governor's cooperation included situations in the 1960s when Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson federalized National Guard troops in order to protect civil rights demonstrators and students desegregating schools.
Hagel said it's not the role of the troops to conduct law enforcement activities in the U.S.
"They're not trained for law enforcement, he said. "They're not trained for riot in mob control."
Defense personnel are generally prohibited from direct law enforcement activities, including arrests of civilians, but they may detain individuals temporarily to protect federal property or personnel under "exigent circumstances."
"These people are agitators. They're troublemakers," Mr. Trump said of the protests Tuesday. "And if we didn't get involved, Los Angeles would be burning down right now."
California officials, including L.A. Mayor Karen Bass and Gov. Gavin Newsom, have also strongly objected to Mr. Trump sending in the National Guard and Marines. The state is suing the Trump administration, arguing the deployment of troops is unlawful and asking a federal court to block them from coming onto city streets.
The Justice Department responded in a filing Wednesday, "There is no rioters' veto to enforcement of federal law. And the President has every right under the Constitution and by statute to call forth the National Guard and Marines to quell lawless violence directed against enforcement of federal law."
And Mr. Trump showed no sign of backing down from the show of force. Speculating that the LA protests might be "the first, perhaps of many" protests across the country, the president said Tuesday, "If we didn't attack this one very strongly, you'd have them all over the country, I can inform the rest of the country that when they do it, if they do it, they're going to be met with equal or greater force than we met right here."
Mr. Trump's comments have raised the risk for escalation, Hagel said.
"When you lay down a challenge like this, and then you send more troops in, active-duty troops into a place, then you are really laying out here some very dangerous dynamics," he said.
contributed to this report.