After graduating college, Gordon entered the Navy, where he was commissioned as an officer through the Navy ROTC program. He was initially assigned to the
Naval Amphibious Base Little Creek in Virginia. He had additional professional training at the
Air Command and Staff College. Beginning in the early 1990s, Gordon served as a Navy spokesman in various assignments and geographical locations, to include the
Pacific Fleet Headquarters in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii;
Naval Forces Southern Command in Roosevelt Roads, Puerto Rico; Naval Support Activity, Naples, Italy;
Amphibious Force Seventh Fleet based in Okinawa, Japan; and
Atlantic Fleet headquarters in Norfolk, Virginia. In 1994, Gordon served at
Guantanamo Bay Naval Base as the spokesman for the Haitian and Cuban refugee crises. Later that year, he deployed to Haiti with the Multi-National Force for the restoration of President
Jean Bertrand Aristide to power. While based in Puerto Rico from 1999 to 2001, Gordon served as a spokesman for the Atlantic Fleet during controversy associated with its training range on
Vieques Island. It had been occupied by protesters who were trying to force the Navy to leave. The Navy
had used the range for major fleet exercises for decades. Gordon also served in Navy Office of Information (CHINFO) as the director of public affairs plans.
Pentagon spokesman In 2005, Gordon transferred to the
Office of the Secretary of Defense, where he served as a Pentagon spokesman, first under Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld and later Secretary
Robert Gates. In this period, notable issues were related to the wars in
Iraq and
Afghanistan, as well as the
extrajudicial detention of captives in the
Guantanamo Bay detention camps in
Cuba. Other issues were increasing U.S. tensions with
Venezuela under
Hugo Chavez, and increasing cooperation between the U.S. and
Mexico against drug cartels. Gordon contributed to developing Defense Department policies related to the use of social networking services and sites such as
YouTube by military personnel, which DoD prohibits. On October 2, 2007, Gordon explained why the Defense Department continued to hold certain detainees at Guantanamo, although they had been cleared for release. He touched on the need to ensure that receiving countries treated them properly, saying "All detainees at Guantanamo are considered a threat to the United States — to include those transferred yesterday. As a condition of repatriation, nations accepting detainees must take steps to prevent the return to terrorism, as well as providing credible assurances of humane treatment." Gordon retired from the Navy as a Commander.
Complaint with the Miami Herald In his position as Pentagon spokesman, on July 25, 2009, Gordon wrote to a senior editor at the
Miami Herald, reporting what he characterized as
sexual harassment by its reporter
Carol Rosenberg, whose beat was the Guantanamo detention camp. He said that Rosenberg had made crude jokes at his expense. The
Miami Herald conducted an internal investigation, and reported on August 3, 2009, that it had concluded that, while Rosenberg had used profanity, she had not carried out sexual harassment. Gordon returned to the issue a year later in a column written for Fox News on August 9, 2010. In discussing the Pentagon having banned four reporters from Guantanamo, including Rosenberg, he said that Rosenberg was "notorious for clashes" and claimed she used language to him "... that would make even
Helen Thomas blush", referring to a prominent reporter at the White House. ==Political career==