Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has agreed to move up the release date of the Pentagon’s study of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell by one day — from Wednesday December 1st to Tuesday, November 30, Defense Department spokesperson Geoff Morrell said in a statement emailed to reporters tonight. Politico’s Josh Gerstein has Morrell’s statement:

“Secretary Gates is pushing all involved in the Comprehensive Review Working Group’s report to have it ready for public release on November 30th in order to accommodate the desire of the Senate Armed Services Committee to hold hearings as soon as possible.” [...]

“Frankly, December 1st was already an aggressive deadline by which to complete the report, incorporate the views of service secretaries and chiefs and for the Secretary to make a recommendation on the way ahead, but he has further compressed the timeline in order to support Congress’ wish to consider repeal before they adjourn,” Morell wrote. “Now, the Secretary has instructed his staff, without cutting any corners, to have everything ready a day sooner because he wants to ensure members of the Armed Services Committee are able to read and consider the complex, lengthy report before holding hearings with its authors and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.”

Last week, hoping to ensure that repeal can be passed during the lame duck session, Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and Susan Collins (R-ME) sent a letter to Gates asking the Secretary to release the study as soon as possible. “Given the limited amount of time remaining in the 111th Congress, the soonest possible release of the working group’s report could therefore be instrumental in allowing the defense bill to move forward,” they wrote.

But until tonight, the Pentagon has argued that it was already operating on an expedited timeline and wouldn’t release the study before the first of the month. “We have compressed that timeline such that we are now operating on parallel tracks. Not only is the draft report still being finalized, but we are also doing the internal work that would have taken place after December 1st simultaneously so that we can, on December the 1, not just release the report but the Secretary can state where he wants to take us with regards to this measure,” Morrell said in his press conference on Thursday. He also assured reporters, “Congress will see this report on December the 1, not before December the 1. So don’t go camped out on the Hill, it’s not going to be worth your while.”

A leak to the Washington Post from two sources who have seen a copy of the study have said that more than “70 percent of respondents to a survey sent to active-duty and reserve troops over the summer said the effect of repealing the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy would be positive, mixed or nonexistent. Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-MI) is expected to hold hearings on the report during the “first days of December.”

Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen reiterated his “concern” over Marine Commandant Gen. James Amos’ widely publicized comments about the potential “risk” of repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, telling ABC’s This Week that “what concerned me about his most recent comments, it came at a time where we actually had the draft report in hand, and we had all agreed that we would speak to this privately until we completed the report and made our recommendations up the chain.”

Mullen refused to characterize the Pentagon’s Working Group report — which has allegedly found that 70% of servicemembers would not oppose lifting the ban — until it is released and repeated his “personal” belief that the policy undermines the “integrity” of the “institution.” He stopped short of calling on the Senate to pass repeal in the lame duck session, but echoed Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’ comments about the danger of leaving this policy to the courts:

AMANPOUR: And if it does not get voted on in the lame duck session, is there any chance that it will come up in any reasonable time period afterwards?

MULLEN: Well, it — I mean it’s very hard to predict what’s going to happen…from a legislative perspective. The other piece that is out there that is very real is the courts are very active on this, and my concern is that at some point in time the courts could change this law and in that not give us the right amount of time to implement it. I think it’s much better done if it’s going to get done, it’s much better done through legislature than it is out of the courts.

Watch it:

Earlier this month, Gates urged the Senate to take-up repeal in the lame-duck session, saying, “The question is whether it is done by legislation that allows us to do it in a thoughtful and careful way, or whether it is struck down by the courts. Because recent court decisions are certainly pointing in that direction,” he explained.

Indeed, in October, a federal district court issued an injunction against the implementation of the policy. The Pentagon did not enforce the ban for eight days, until the Obama administration appealed the district court’s decision to Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. That court issued a stay of the injunction.

This morning, during an appearance on CNN’s State of the Union, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen responded to Marine Commandant Gen. James Amos’ concerns about repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, saying he was confident Amos would be able to effectively implement repeal once Congress lifts the ban:

MULLEN: I don’t think there is any question he can. In fact, I’ve spoken to him as recently as last week and he recounted a town hall that he had on the east coast recently and he was very clear and very public to his Marines and he basically said that if this law changes we are going to implement it and we are going to implement it better than anybody else. So I have great confidence in him that if it gets to the change in the law, that the Marine Corps will implement it as he’s described.

Watch it:

Mullen also expressed confidence in the Pentagon’s study of the policy, rebutting Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) recent criticism that the Working Group only studied how the policy should be repealed and failed to asses if should be overturned in the first place. “Very clearly, this was a study that was initiated to look at if and when the law changes, how we’re going to implement it,” he argued. “Key is the leadership that it’s going to take to implement it when the law changes, specifically, and to understand as clearly as we could, the issues that surface from those it would affect the most, our men and women and their families.”

Amos said earlier this month that he was concerned about a possible loss of unit cohesion and combat readiness if the ban is overturned, but has previously stressed that the Pentagon’s review of the policy would inform the military about how best to implement a repeal and allow the Marine Corps to change the policy “smartly.”

In fact, during his confirmation hearings in September, Amos countered McCain’s argument that the Pentagon’s study won’t tell military leaders if repeal would undermine military effectiveness, insisting that “at the end of the day, when all of this information comes to whoever is the 35th Commandant of the Marine Corps in December….will be able to give his best military advise on that.” “If this policy is changed. The last thing you’re going to see your Marine Corps do is try to step in and push it aside. That will simply not be the case,” Amos added. “There will be issues, we’re going to work through them.”