Donald Trump's foreign policy team contains five men who are little known to Republicans who work in foreign policy circles.
In an interview with
The Washington Post, Trump named Joseph E. Schmitz, Gen. Keith Kellogg, Carter Page, George Papadopoulos and Walid Phares as his top five foreign policy advisers.
The group will be chaired by Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, according to
Newsweek.
Google searches shed little light on Schmitz, Gen. Kellogg, Page, Papadopoulos and Phares.
"Many of us who have held senior positions in previous Republican administrations have been asking each other if we have ever heard of them, and pretty much everybody is turning to Google to see what they can find," foreign policy expert Mike Green told
The New York Times.
"These are people who work for a living," said Sam Clovis, Trump's senior policy analyst. "If you're looking for show ponies, you're coming to the wrong stable."
Phares, a Fox News analyst, has the highest profile among the five. He told
NPR he doesn't believe Trump is actually planning to implement torture, because "this is a political season."
A report in
Mother Jones linked Phares to militant factions in Lebanon during its civil war.
Gen. Kellogg worked for the coalition provisional authority in Iraq in 2003 and 2004. His most recent employer did not know his whereabouts.
Papadopoulos is an energy analyst in London whose employer told the Times he was not reachable. He was an adviser to Ben Carson's campaign.
Page is a managing partner at Global Energy Capital. He said he sent policy memos to Trump's campaign, but was not in contact with him.
Schmitz was Inspector General for the Department of Defense from 2002 to 2005. He resigned amid allegations that he "slowed or blocked investigations of senior Bush administration officials, spent taxpayer money on pet projects, and accepted gifts that violated ethics guidelines," reports Newsweek.
"Normally, the front-runner for a Republican presidential campaign, by March of the campaign year, has assembled a team that is more distinguished than this," said political science professor Peter D. Feaver.
"This suggests that he might be straining to assemble a list."
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