The Recusal That Wasn’t
The Army's No. 2 swore he was "recused, writ large" from his former employer Anduril. The document he'd signed did much less. Then Anduril won $20 billion in contracts.
In September 2025, Michael Obadal told the Senate under oath that he was “recused, writ large, from anything having to do personally and substantially” with Anduril Industries, the defense-tech company where he had worked until the moment he was confirmed. The document he had actually signed, four months earlier, described a different kind of recusal — narrower in scope, limited in duration, and suspendable in writing by a government ethics official. Nearly six months after Obadal’s confirmation, the Army awarded Anduril a $20 billion contract. No waiver has been disclosed.
This is not a story about a smoking gun. It is a story about two documents that do not match, and about the administrative process that made them different without Congress knowing.
The Man and the Job
Michael Obadal spent 27 years as an Army colonel before joining Anduril Industries as a Senior Director. His background — decades in military acquisition and operations — made him the kind of hire that defense companies make when they want to build relationships with the government they are trying to sell to. Trump nominated him to be Under Secretary of the Army in March 2025. The Senate confirmed him on September 18, 2025, by a vote of 51 to 47.
The Under Secretary of the Army is one of the most consequential procurement officials in the federal government. The office oversees Army acquisition and technology programs, including decisions about which defense contractors win the contracts that drive American military modernization. When the Army wants to buy autonomous systems, AI battlefield software, or drone-killing counter-air platforms, the Under Secretary’s office is in the chain.
Anduril Industries builds all of those things. In the nearly six months between Obadal’s September confirmation and the March 2026 contract award, the Army was negotiating and finalizing an Indefinite Delivery, Indefinite Quantity contract with his former employer — the largest Army AI contract in history.
The recusal question was not theoretical.
Two Documents, One Recusal
Here is what Obadal said at his Senate Armed Services Committee confirmation hearing on May 8, 2025, as reported by Breaking Defense:
“I am recused, writ large, from anything having to do personally and substantially with my former employer.”
Here is what his signed ethics agreement actually says. This is the verbatim text of Section 2 of the Amended Ethics Agreement, signed by Obadal on August 15, 2025, and transmitted to the U.S. Office of Government Ethics by the Department of Defense on August 18, 2025:
“Pursuant to the impartiality regulation at 5 C.F.R. § 2635.503, for a period of two years after my resignation, I will not participate personally and substantially in any particular matter involving specific parties in which I know Anduril Industries or is a party or represents a party, unless I first receive a written waiver, pursuant to 5 C.F.R. § 2635.503(c).”
The difference is not a matter of legal hair-splitting. Under federal ethics regulations, “particular matter involving specific parties” is a term of art with a defined scope. It means specific decisions — specific named contracts, specific named companies — not the broader program-level architecture decisions in which a former employer has only a generalized interest. The regulation that uses this term (5 C.F.R. § 2635.503) explicitly excludes broader policy matters, rulemakings, and program-level decisions from its coverage.
In plain English: “anything having to do with my former employer” covers Anduril’s interests broadly. “Any particular matter involving specific parties” covers only specific named-Anduril decisions. Those are not the same commitment.
There are two other gaps in the document record that compound the mismatch.
The first is time. Obadal’s testimony described the recusal without a sunset date — consistent with a permanent or indefinite commitment. The document he signed commits him for exactly two years after his resignation, expiring on approximately September 22, 2027. Senator Elizabeth Warren’s May 7, 2025 letter to Obadal explicitly demanded a four-year recusal. The document delivers half.
The second is the override mechanism. The recusal in the ethics agreement is not absolute. It can be suspended whenever Obadal “first receives a written waiver, pursuant to 5 C.F.R. § 2635.503(c).” The waiver is issued by the Designated Agency Ethics Official in the Department of Defense Office of the General Counsel — the same office that processed the ethics agreement in the first place. A written-waiver carveout converts the recusal from a wall into a door that ethics officials can open.
How It Got That Way
The mismatch between testimony and document traces to an administrative process that happened between Obadal’s nomination in March 2025 and his confirmation in September 2025 — without public disclosure.
When Obadal signed his original ethics agreement on April 11, 2025, he committed to a different and broader standard. The original agreement, included in the amended document’s enclosures, covered him under 18 U.S.C. § 208 — the criminal conflicts-of-interest statute — because he represented that he held vested Anduril restricted stock units. The § 208 commitment was indefinite: it applied for as long as Obadal held financial interests in the company. It also covered any matter with “a direct and predictable effect on the financial interests of Anduril Industries” — a broader standard than the named-contract-specific test in the later version.
Between April and August, the document changed.
Obadal’s August 15, 2025 letter to the DoD ethics official explained the reason: he had not actually held vested restricted stock units as of the original signing date, only unvested RSUs. Because unvested RSUs would be forfeited upon confirmation — and because he held no other Anduril equity — the financial-interest basis for the § 208 commitment evaporated. The original ethics agreement’s premise was wrong.
So the commitment was narrowed to match the corrected facts: from the indefinite, broader § 208 financial-interest bar to the two-year, named-party-specific § 2635.503 impartiality commitment.
That substitution was processed administratively, through a letter from Obadal to DoD’s ethics official and transmitted to the Office of Government Ethics (OGE) by Danica S. Irvine, Alternate Designated Agency Ethics Official, DoD OGC. The whole process was complete on August 18, 2025 — four weeks before the Armed Services Committee voted to confirm Obadal. There is no public record that the committee was informed that the recusal commitment had been substantively narrowed between the original nomination and the confirmation vote.
This note is about the structural gap in the process, not a claim that any rule was broken. The OGE administrative-amendment process permits amendments when underlying facts change. The Senate could have requested the updated Ethics Agreement (EA) before voting. The piece’s structural claim is narrower: Senators who voted on whether Obadal’s recusal was adequate did so without being publicly informed that the recusal had been narrowed since his nomination.
The $20 Billion Question
In March 2026, the Army awarded Anduril Industries a contract with a ceiling of $20 billion.
Contract PIID W9128Z-26-D-A001, awarded March 13, 2026, is an Indefinite Delivery, Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) vehicle — meaning the ceiling represents the total authorized spending authority over the contract’s life, not a single payment. The contracting officers of record are Kristin Height and Robin Delossantos at the Army Contracting Command at Aberdeen Proving Ground. The contract is for Army enterprise-wide AI, autonomous systems, and command-and-control platforms. The first task order, issued later in 2026, was worth $87 million and covers counter-drone command-and-control.
Under a plain reading of the § 2635.503 language, the $20B IDIQ — in which Anduril is the named contract awardee — would appear to be “a particular matter involving specific parties.” Under that reading, the commitment in the EA would prohibit Obadal from personally and substantially participating in the award unless a written waiver was issued first. Whether the IDIQ in fact falls within that statutory scope is the kind of determination a DoD ethics official would make — but the plain text of the regulation and the contract point in the same direction.
No written waiver has been disclosed. The Certification of Ethics Agreement Compliance — a document Obadal was required to submit to OGE within 90 days of his September 22, 2025 confirmation, meaning by approximately December 22, 2025 — has not been located in OGE’s public PAS Index as of the date of this publication.
One possibility is that both documents exist but have not been made public or have not yet been indexed in a way our search reached. Another is that they do not exist. Either outcome is significant: the first invites the documents’ disclosure; the second raises questions about whether the ethics compliance regime is functioning.
The Pattern
This is the second time RAMM has documented this specific mechanism.
In February, we covered Tom Homan’s appointment as Border Czar and the ethics architecture that accompanied his team. David Venturella, a former senior vice president for Client Relations at GEO Group — the private prison company that holds billions of dollars in ICE detention contracts — returned to DHS as a senior adviser in February 2025. He received an ethics waiver that allowed him to participate in GEO-related detention matters, converting what would have been a statutory post-employment restriction into an administratively-granted permission.
The structural logic is the same in both cases. A categorical legal bar — the kind of bar designed to prevent officials from serving the interests of their former employers — gets converted into a narrower administrative commitment. The commitment comes with a written-waiver mechanism, which means that a government ethics official can lift the restriction. Within the rules of the system as designed, the restriction is no longer a wall. It is a door.
In the Homan-Venturella case, the statutory pathway was 18 U.S.C. § 207 — the post-employment restriction statute — lifted by formal waiver after appointment. In the Obadal case, the statutory pathway was 18 U.S.C. § 208 — the financial-interest-based conflict statute — narrowed at the pre-confirmation stage by amendment to a weaker regulatory standard. The mechanisms differ; the outcome is the same: the categorical bar becomes administratively tractable within the appointee’s expected tenure, with a written-waiver override built in.
The difference with Obadal is the gap between what the document says and what was said under oath to describe it.
What We Don’t Know
There is a dispositive question this piece cannot answer.
Whether Obadal participated personally and substantially in the decision to award the $20 billion IDIQ to Anduril, and whether any written waiver was issued to authorize that participation, is not established by the documents in the public record. It is what the FOIA process exists to resolve. RAMM has filed or will file Freedom of Information Act requests with the U.S. Office of Government Ethics and the Army Office of the General Counsel seeking the Certification of Ethics Agreement Compliance, any written waivers issued under § 2635.503(c) related to Anduril matters, and any recusal-scope determinations issued for the Under Secretary’s office in connection with the IDIQ award decision.
What the existing public record does establish is this: in April 2026, Obadal gave public statements to Breaking Defense characterizing the Army’s enterprise-licensing-agreement program — the program architecture of which the Anduril IDIQ is the first major vehicle — as a program-wide initiative he was publicly associated with. He did not identify himself as recused from it in those statements.
The question of whether that program-level decision falls inside or outside the “particular matter involving specific parties” scope of his ethics agreement is the question his ethics agreement creates but leaves unanswered. The testimony language — “writ large, from anything having to do personally and substantially with my former employer” — would cover it. The document language may not.
The Document Is on the Internet
The ethics agreement that governs Michael Obadal’s conduct as Under Secretary of the Army is publicly posted on the U.S. Office of Government Ethics website. It has been there since August 2025. It is not classified, not FOIA-dependent, not contested.
The document he signed is narrower than the recusal he described under oath. That narrowing happened through an administrative process that the senators who confirmed him had no public notice of. A $20 billion contract went to his former employer nearly six months into his tenure. No waiver has been disclosed.
The answers to what happened between that document and that contract may eventually come through FOIA responses or congressional inquiry. But the document the government has already made public is enough to ask the question.
The RAMM documents the connections that beat reporting can’t see:
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Sources
Primary Documents
Michael Obadal Ethics Agreement (AMENDED) — OGE PAS Index, signed August 15, 2025; DoD transmittal August 18, 2025. Full text on file.
Senator Warren letter to Obadal on ethics commitments — May 7, 2025.
5 C.F.R. § 2635.503 — Extraordinary payments from former employer; impartiality recusal regulation
18 U.S.C. § 208 — Acts affecting a personal financial interest; criminal conflicts-of-interest statute
Contract W9128Z-26-D-A001 — Army IDIQ to Anduril Industries, $20B ceiling, awarded March 13, 2026. ACC Aberdeen Proving Ground. Contracting officers: Kristin Height, Robin Delossantos. Federal record: https://www.usaspending.gov/award/CONT_AWD_W9128Z26DA001_2100_-NONE-_-NONE-/
Confirmation Testimony
Breaking Defense, May 8, 2025 — Senate Armed Services Committee confirmation hearing; testimony quote: “I am recused, writ large, from anything having to do personally and substantially with my former employer.” (https://breakingdefense.com/2025/05/army-undersecretary-nominee-faces-questions-about-financial-ties-to-anduril/)
Context and Coverage
Breaking Defense, April 2026 — Obadal public statements on Army enterprise-licensing program.
Tom Homan: The Commander — RAMM, February 2, 2026. Background on the Homan-Venturella ethics-waiver pattern.