John Suthers Making Last Push to Keep Space Command Headquarters

“While I am hardly an unbiased observer of the process, I do want to relate two conversations I had with former President Donald Trump that led me to conclude the President’s decision to move Space Command headquarters to Huntsville, Alabama was a wholly political one,” Republican Suthers wrote in a March 7 letter to Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall. “Both conversations took place on the tarmac at Peterson Space Force Base and both were witnessed by high-ranking officers in the U.S. Space Force.”

Throughout much of Trump’s tenure in the White House, a bipartisan delegation of Colorado economic boosters and politicians fought to retain Space Command’s temporary headquarters in Colorado Springs. The Trump administration had established Space Command — a combatant command that coordinates space-focused activities of all the military branches — in 2019, temporarily locating it at Peterson Air Force Base, which has since been renamed Peterson Space Force Base.

Space Command had been located at Peterson before, from 1985 to 2002 — until the George W. Bush administration shut it down. In the years since, the space economy of Colorado Springs has continued to grow, helping turn Colorado into one of the country’s aerospace industry heavyweights.

But while Peterson was a finalist in the contest to become the permanent headquarters, Trump awarded Space Command to Alabama — a deep-red state.

The Colorado delegation that had been pushing for the Springs immediately cried foul, arguing that the decision was based on politics, not merit.

When Joe Biden entered the White House, the federal government launched multiple investigations to determine whether the decision to move Space Command from Colorado to Alabama had been political rather than practical.

According to Suthers, the Trump administration’s decision was largely based on politics, and in his letter, he recounted two conversations with the then-president as evidence.

The first was when Trump came to Colorado Springs to speak at the Air Force Academy graduation ceremony. “In the spring 2019 meeting, I was surprised to hear the President assert that, despite any process the Air Force was pursuing, he would make the decision ‘personally,’ and the only question is whether it would be before or after the 2020 election,” Suthers wrote in his March 7 letter.

Colorado Springs Mayor John Suthers.

coloradosprings.gov

The second conversation was in February 2020, when Trump came to Colorado Springs for a political rally. It “was more extensive and enlightening,” Suthers recalled in his letter. “My wife Janet and I were both standing next to high-ranking Space Force officers. When I once again made my pitch to President Trump, he asked me if I was a Republican mayor. When I replied that I was, he asked what his chances were of carrying Colorado in the November election. When I said they were ‘uncertain,’ he seemed perturbed. He then turned to the high-ranking officer in the Space Force and asked him, ‘Is this where it should be?’ The high-ranking officer replied, ‘Absolutely, Mr. President.’ The President then reiterated that he would make the decision and said it would be after the 2020 election. ‘I want to see how it turns out,’ he said.”

Both conversations occurred when Suthers greeted Trump after he had gotten off Air Force One; according to Suthers, during both greetings, he mentioned that Colorado Springs had been the home of all the previous iterations of Space Command.

Based on these conversations and the fact that Mo Brooks — a congressman from Alabama — had played a role in the rally before the storming of the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, Suthers said he was “disappointed, but not surprised” that Trump made the decision five days later to move Space Command to Alabama.

Suthers also pointed out that Trump appeared on an Alabama-based talk show in August 2021 and said that he “single-handedly said, ‘Let’s go to Alabama.'”

According to a March 23 Washington Post column by David Ignatius, the White House “appears ready to reverse a Trump administration plan to relocate the U.S. Space Command from Colorado Springs to Huntsville, Alabama, because it fears the transfer would disrupt operations at a time when space is increasingly important to the military.”