NORTH COUNTY -- Camp Pendleton's Lt. Gen. James Mattis will be nominated for the rank of general and appointed commander of a high-level military planning and strategy unit based in Virginia, the North County Times has learned.

Mattis, whose present job is commander of Marine Corps Forces Central Command and head of Camp Pendleton's I Marine Expeditionary Force, will become head of the Joint Forces Command and Supreme Allied Commander, Transformation.

Multiple sources within the military and in Washington, D.C., confirmed that Mattis, who has overseen Marine Corps forces in the Middle East for the last 15 months and is regarded as a "warrior monk" for his intellectual acumen and war-fighting skills, will be nominated for a fourth star by President Bush.

An announcement of the nomination is expected to come from the Defense Department within days. The move is subject to Senate confirmation.

In line to replace Mattis as head of the 25,000-member I Marine Expeditionary Force is Maj. Gen. Samuel Helland, former commander of the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing at Miramar Marine Corps Air Station. Major elements of the expeditionary force are scheduled to deploy to Iraq later this year.

The Joint Forces Command, based in Norfolk, Va., maps out battlefield strategies and plans war game exercises. Its Web site describes its job as being "the leader of change within our armed services, ensuring we fight smarter, with fewer resources and less risk."

John Pike, a military expert and founder of the Washington think tank GlobalSecurity.org, said the position Mattis is assuming is a high-visibility post. Pike said Mattis will be working with NATO, an alliance of military powers in North America and Europe.

"They are positioning him to figure out how to fight the next war," Pike said Friday during a telephone interview. "This is where they do all the forward-looking thinking by taking lessons learned and how to apply them and figure out whether proposed solutions will work."

The agency conducted a large-scale war exercise in 2002, for example, that served as a practice run for the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, Pike said.

Michael O'Hanlon, a defense and foreign policy expert at Washington's Brookings Institution, said Mattis will be on the cutting edge of military planning.

"General Mattis is regarded as a thoughtful and very creative guy and a lot of the thinking about the nature of future war comes out of war colleges or the Joint Forces Command," said O'Hanlon, whose research organization analyzes government policy on everything from the military to education. "It's the Department of Defense's most important command for those purposes."

Frequent Iraq trips

Mattis will become one of a small number of four-star generals in the Marine Corps. Efforts to reach him in Washington, where he has been in a series of meetings, were unsuccessful.

The appointment to the Joint Forces Command is expected to come as early as Nov. 1.

In June of last year, Mattis was named commander for Marine Corps forces throughout the Middle East as well as commanding general of the I Marine Expeditionary Force.

In those roles, he made frequent trips to Iraq to meet with battlefield commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He also has served as the authority over the investigations into the slayings of Iraqi civilians by Marines in the Iraqi towns of Hamdania and Haditha in 2005 and 2006. In that role, Mattis played a key role in issuing career-damaging letters of censure earlier this week to Marine Maj. Gen. Richard Huck and two colonels for failing to order a full-scale investigation into the deaths of 24 Iraqi civilians in Haditha.

Those punishments were announced this week after Mattis determined that their "actions, inactions and decisions" demonstrated a lack of due diligence on the part of senior commanders and staff."

Four other officers were criminally charged with dereliction in the Haditha incident and four enlisted men were charged with murder.

It was not immediately clear how much longer Mattis will serve as the authority over the Haditha case and other cases involving allegedly unlawful slayings in Iraq and Afghanistan.

'No better friend'

Known for his blunt-talking style and ease in talking with enlisted Marines as well as officers, Mattis has gotten into hot water with his bosses for some of his remarks.

In February 2005, he was chastised by then-Marine Corps Commandant Michael Hagee for saying at a conference in San Diego that he found warfare pleasurable, saying during his remarks that "it's fun to shoot people."

In 2001, Mattis also got into trouble when he said the U.S. "now owned a piece of Afghanistan" following the invasion of that country after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Those comments came as Mattis was a brigadier general commanding the 1st Marine Expeditionary Brigade during Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan.

He went on to head up the Camp Pendleton-based 1st Marine Division and led troops in the 2003 invasion of Iraq, during which he was known for often reminding them to "first, do no harm" and that there is "no better friend, no worse enemy" than a Marine.

In late 2003, Mattis was appointed to a job at the Marine Corps Combat Development Center in Virginia, where he was responsible for developing war fighting doctrine and training regimens.

Helland, the man designated to replace Mattis as commander of the I Marine Expeditionary Force, began his military career in 1968, when he enlisted in the Army. He spent three years in the Army's Special Forces, later joining the Marine Corps and becoming a helicopter pilot in 1974.

In 2004, he assumed a command in Africa and became commander of the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing in August 2005, a posting he recently left in preparation for his new job.

Contact staff writer Mark Walker at (760) 740-3529 or mlwalker@nctimes.com.