Speaker 1: So, mister Vickers really appreciate your patients with us and
Speaker 1: your being gracious with your time. We'll jump right into
Speaker 1: it here. Could you tell us a little bit about
Speaker 1: your origin story, sort of about how you grew up
Speaker 1: and how that took you and led you towards governmental service.
Speaker 2: Sure. So I grew up in southern California and went
Speaker 2: to Hollywood High School and had dreams of being a
Speaker 2: professional baseball player, football player, or quarterback. And my passions
Speaker 2: were much greater than my abilities. So as I completed
Speaker 2: high school, I started thinking about what else I wanted
Speaker 2: to do. And as it turned out, a high school
Speaker 2: teacher gave me a copy of the New York Times
Speaker 2: or put it in front of my desk when I
Speaker 2: was in the school library, and it had an article
Speaker 2: about CIA's big paramilitary operation during the Vietnam War and
Speaker 2: Laos supporting the Homong tribesmen and said, you might be
Speaker 2: interested in this, and you know, it was about secret armies.
Speaker 2: It's the first I had heard of it, and I thought, yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, I think I might want to be a
Speaker 2: CI officer. And so that kind of planted the seed,
Speaker 2: and then I thought the best path for doing that
Speaker 2: was to go into the Special Forces, which I did
Speaker 2: after a couple of years of college and then became
Speaker 2: an officer and then actually then became a CIA operations officer.
Speaker 1: So tell us about landing in tenth Special Forces Group,
Speaker 1: and I mean this is during the Cold War, of course,
Speaker 1: what was tenth Group like at that time? What was
Speaker 1: your initial roles and duty positions?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I completed the Special Forces Qualification course as
Speaker 2: a weapons sergeant in May nineteen seventy four and then
Speaker 2: was assigned to the tenth Group, which had two battalions
Speaker 2: at Fort Devons, Massachusetts time. And you know, as you know,
Speaker 2: special Forces groups are oriented toward different regions of the world.
Speaker 2: And after Vietna the number of groups collapsed down to three.
Speaker 2: But the tenth Group had Europe and the Soviet Bloc,
Speaker 2: and basically the operational detachments were divided. Some of them
Speaker 2: would go had their operational areas were Eastern Europe and
Speaker 2: the Soviet Union, and that's the part I was in.
Speaker 2: So I had Russian and Czech and then others had
Speaker 2: the stay behind mission if the Soviets overran Germany or
Speaker 2: Scandinavia or others. And so they learned Norwegian and German
Speaker 2: and French and Danish and that sort of thing. And
Speaker 2: the group was really a fantastic learning experience. You know,
Speaker 2: I was kind of the youngest guy on the team.
Speaker 2: Most of my teammates were Vietnam veterans. Some had participated
Speaker 2: in you know, very sensitive reconnaissance operations in Laos and
Speaker 2: North Vietnam with MACV you know, studies and observation groups
Speaker 2: that were doing these dangerous special reconnaissance missions. And then
Speaker 2: we also had a number of Eastern European emigrats, you know,
Speaker 2: who were born in Czechoslovakia or elsewhere. One of my
Speaker 2: group commanders was born in Georgia and another Battanan commander
Speaker 2: was born in Czechoslovakia, and so they were a great
Speaker 2: source of knowledge about, you know, if we actually had
Speaker 2: to deploy into our unconventional warfare operational areas, what it
Speaker 2: would be like to live there and everything else. So
Speaker 2: it was a tremendous learning experience for me, and you know,
Speaker 2: they sent me to a lot of training then, you know,
Speaker 2: in the post Vietnam era, we didn't have a lot
Speaker 2: of operations, and so it was mostly a great deal
Speaker 2: of training till till the nineteen eighties, we did have one.
Speaker 2: You know, our job was mainly to prepare for World
Speaker 2: War three, and our job was either to do special
Speaker 2: reconnaissance behind enemy lines or direct action and then if
Speaker 2: there was a resistance movement, unconventional warfare. And one special
Speaker 2: mission we had a few of us in the group
Speaker 2: was to train with very small nuclear weapons, man portable
Speaker 2: nuclear weapons to actually try to stop the Soviet advances,
Speaker 2: you know, by interdicting the second Echelon. Forces had one
Speaker 2: potential combat deployment to Angola during that period. Angola had
Speaker 2: gone into a civil war, but it was aborted at
Speaker 2: the last minute, and the president decided to go to
Speaker 2: the covert action route rather than overt military or special operations. Use.
Speaker 1: Would you like to talk a little bit about one
Speaker 1: thing I thought was unique and interesting about your book
Speaker 1: was we talked about getting sent to Berlin to do
Speaker 1: some clandestine tradecraft training.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So the tenth Group in those days, you know,
Speaker 2: I mentioned two battalions in the group headquarters at Fort Devons.
Speaker 2: There was a battalion forward at bod Toltzen Bavaria. I
Speaker 2: later served in that unit, and then there was essentially
Speaker 2: a company size force in civilian clothes that was in
Speaker 2: Berlin called Detachment A, changed its name in the nineteen
Speaker 2: eighties to something else, but they had a stay behind mission,
Speaker 2: you know, if the Soviets overran Berlin and then also
Speaker 2: potentially to go out into East Germany, you know, given
Speaker 2: the location of Berlin in the event of war, and
Speaker 2: so one of the training episodes I had was to
Speaker 2: go serve with them and do essentially urban unconventional warfare.
Speaker 2: You know, how we would sabotage facilities and how we
Speaker 2: would clandestinely communicate so we couldn't be found out by
Speaker 2: the secret police, and so a lot of a lot
Speaker 2: of denied area trade crafts.
Speaker 1: And then you touched upon it the training with the
Speaker 1: special atomic demolition munition. Yeah, you tell us a little
Speaker 1: bit more about what that entailed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So from the early I guess the late nineteen
Speaker 2: sixties and early nineteen in nineteen seventies up until the
Speaker 2: mid nineteen eighties, special operations forces mainly seals and Green Berets,
Speaker 2: a select portion of them were given this mission to
Speaker 2: train to place, to arm and place this device. And
Speaker 2: you know, so with all nuclear weapons, you have personal
Speaker 2: reliability programs. You know, you have to do extra vetting
Speaker 2: of the people selected for this and pretty intensive training.
Speaker 2: You know, it's really a no fail mission, so you'd
Speaker 2: have these operational readiness evaluations by nuclear inspectors to make
Speaker 2: sure you knew how to do everything, and the command
Speaker 2: and control for those things obviously directed from very on
Speaker 2: high so there's communications procedures you have to learn, and
Speaker 2: so it's pretty intensive training. And as I said, the
Speaker 2: standards were very high for that, and you know, it
Speaker 2: was probably considered one of the most risky missions, and
Speaker 2: I mean they were all risky in those days if
Speaker 2: general war broke out, but this thing in particular to
Speaker 2: have to you know, emplace it and had a timer
Speaker 2: on it that you know, you could arm, and then
Speaker 2: you'd have to get in an overwatch position to maintain
Speaker 2: custody of it. So you know, the kind of the
Speaker 2: gallows humor among those trained in it was as soon
Speaker 2: as you'd you know, touch that dial, the thing would
Speaker 2: enough was in place that would detonate, and but yeah,
Speaker 2: it was it was a very interesting experience. And then
Speaker 2: you know, learning how to parachute with it, either freefall
Speaker 2: or static line, and you could also scuba with it too,
Speaker 2: so that's hence the Seals or Special Forces scuba teams.
Speaker 1: I've actually been doing a lot of research on the
Speaker 1: green Light Teams recently, and I think that it's it's
Speaker 1: easy for us today to look back on it as
Speaker 1: a sort of strange Doctor Strangelove sort of esque mission.
Speaker 3: But what I'm struck by all the people.
Speaker 1: I've talked to is like, how deadly serious all of
Speaker 1: you guys were about this mission and completely ready to
Speaker 1: execute it if they were called upon.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, I mean, so some context. You know, beginning
Speaker 2: in the nineteen fifties, you know, Soviet has had numerical
Speaker 2: superiority in Europe, and so we kind of went the
Speaker 2: route in the Eisenhower administration and through the sixties and
Speaker 2: seventies to make up for that numerical inferiority by having
Speaker 2: lots of tactical nuclear weapons, so artillery shills, minds, you know,
Speaker 2: things you can drop from air bombs from aircraft. And
Speaker 2: then this was just part of that family. You know
Speaker 2: that this was the Special Forces and seal role, you know,
Speaker 2: to go behind enemy lines with a small nuclear weapon,
Speaker 2: but you know, it's part of a part of a
Speaker 2: larger family, and it was a very very serious mission.
Speaker 1: So as a as you know, the kid, the teenager
Speaker 1: that read the New York Times article about Special Ops
Speaker 1: and LAOS, I mean, was this will all of this
Speaker 1: sounds like a dream come true?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I had to pinch myself. I was really you know,
Speaker 2: you know, the path actually worked out in terms of
Speaker 2: you know, I I originally thought I would go into
Speaker 2: Special Forces for maybe you know, five years or something
Speaker 2: and then go to CIA, and I decided to become
Speaker 2: an officer and ended up staying for ten before I
Speaker 2: went to CIA. You know, so I really loved it.
Speaker 2: It was just just a great experience.
Speaker 1: So you went to officer candidate school and then you
Speaker 1: got to do a pretty big venue change from Germany
Speaker 1: and tenth Group to third Battalion, seventh Group that was
Speaker 1: down at Fort Goolik, Panama, Right.
Speaker 2: That's right. Yeah, I was on the Atlantic side of
Speaker 2: the Canal zone rather than the Pacific side, so most
Speaker 2: of the forces in Panama were over on the Pacific side,
Speaker 2: but there was an infantry battalion and a Special Forces
Speaker 2: battalion on the Atlantic. And you know the reason I
Speaker 2: chose that. When I graduated from OCS, we didn't have
Speaker 2: an SF branch in those days. And so I was
Speaker 2: an infantry officer, went to Infantry officer training, and the
Speaker 2: assignments officer came down to our class as we were
Speaker 2: getting our assignments and said, how would you like to
Speaker 2: go right back to special Forces and be a detachment
Speaker 2: commander because you don't need to be a platoon leader
Speaker 2: given your enlisted experience, you could go right into company command.
Speaker 2: And I thought, well, great, so I get a captain's
Speaker 2: job as a lieutenant, and then I have a captain's
Speaker 2: job as a captain. And you know, there were three
Speaker 2: assignments offered, the tenth Group, the fifth Group, and third
Speaker 2: of the seventh and it was very tempted to go
Speaker 2: back to the tenth group. My former battalion commander had
Speaker 2: become the group commander and he just got the Medal
Speaker 2: of Honor award in Paris Davis this year. But you know,
Speaker 2: the insurgencies were really heating up in Central America. That
Speaker 2: was the big focus. You know, had a a communist
Speaker 2: insurgency and I'll solve it or and then the Sandinistas
Speaker 2: had taken over in Nicaragua. And you know, it's always
Speaker 2: good to kind of follow the sound of guns, you know,
Speaker 2: to go where the action is, and so I learned
Speaker 2: Spanish and ended up in third Battalion, seventh Group. And
Speaker 2: as it turned out, I was getting you know, after
Speaker 2: the Iran rescue attempt and the taking of our should
Speaker 2: say it the other way, the taking of our hostages
Speaker 2: in Tehran and then the Iran rescue attempt, we became
Speaker 2: very concerned about other high threat embassies and so I
Speaker 2: was given essentially a troop command of two operational detachments
Speaker 2: that would go around to high threat embassies in Latin America,
Speaker 2: mainly Central America, but Colombia and others too, to make
Speaker 2: sure that if we needed to do a rescue, you know,
Speaker 2: our special mission forces that they had the blueprints and
Speaker 2: you know, knew where the cameras were and you know
Speaker 2: all the things you would need to do to rescue
Speaker 2: like that. So you know, it caused me to interact
Speaker 2: a lot with the State Department and with CIA, you know,
Speaker 2: across the region, and again a great learning experience.
Speaker 1: I thought it was really cool as I was reading
Speaker 1: the book this I think you said it was the
Speaker 1: mission and then became the RST Mission. This this, this
Speaker 1: is that sort of nascent what we would call today,
Speaker 1: we advanced force operations is probably the term that you
Speaker 1: probably use nowadays. As I was reading the book, I
Speaker 1: read about it this operation that you guys got sent
Speaker 1: down to Honduras, and I was like, oh, I remember
Speaker 1: hearing about this years and years ago, but I had
Speaker 1: no idea it was you. Could you explain a little
Speaker 1: bit more about like what the mission entailed and how
Speaker 1: you guys went over to sort of prepare the environment?
Speaker 2: Sure, so you know, the normal mission was, you know,
Speaker 2: intelligence collection, so you know, visiting these embassies and making
Speaker 2: sure we had all the information we would need for
Speaker 2: a rescue beforehand. And then if there was an actual
Speaker 2: terrorist incident, then a small portion of my team would
Speaker 2: deploy to be the first on site where we'd been
Speaker 2: to this country several times, and start preparing the environment
Speaker 2: for the rescue force that would come in, but also
Speaker 2: provide special operations advice to the ambassador and the country team,
Speaker 2: Chief of station, ambassador, etc. And so in late April
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty two, a Honduras Honduran terrorist group supported by
Speaker 2: Cuba hijacked an airline or a Dash seven airliner a
Speaker 2: prop plane in Togusaglfa Airport, the capital of Honduras with
Speaker 2: fifty eight hostages on board, and ten of whom were Americans.
Speaker 2: And so we got deployed right away by Southcomb to
Speaker 2: the embassy to meet with the ambassador, who I served
Speaker 2: with a lot of years and govern he ended up
Speaker 2: becoming ambassador multiple places, John Negroponte, and then Deputy Secretary
Speaker 2: of State, and about military options, including bringing in some
Speaker 2: of our special mission forces to be in a position
Speaker 2: to do a rescue. And so they came in and
Speaker 2: there was a three day standoff with this terrorist group
Speaker 2: with the hostages. I was up for three nights essentially,
Speaker 2: you know, with my little team, my four man team
Speaker 2: doing surveillance around the airfield and with our Army Special
Speaker 2: Operations counterparts, and we had one interesting incident. The terrorists
Speaker 2: had a homemade improvised explosive device with nitro glycerin on
Speaker 2: the plane, and you know, the airplane was getting really
Speaker 2: hot and nitro glycerin can become unstable when it gets
Speaker 2: hot like that. So the terrorists actually asked for assistance
Speaker 2: in that regard and we had to scramble to how
Speaker 2: they would diffuse the bomb. And it turned out, you know,
Speaker 2: Kitty Litter was a pretty good field expedient to do,
Speaker 2: so we raced out to Degusigalpa to procure some and
Speaker 2: that that kind of did the trick, and some of
Speaker 2: the hostages were able to escape from the plane on
Speaker 2: the third day and the gunfire, but fortunately they were
Speaker 2: only injured from the fall, not from the terir of shots.
Speaker 2: And then the terrorists decided to give up the ghost
Speaker 2: after three days for safe passage to Cuba, and so
Speaker 2: that was incident number one. And then four months later,
Speaker 2: a similar terrorist group took one hundred and nine hostages
Speaker 2: in San Pedro Sula town in the north of Hunduras,
Speaker 2: including three government ministers. So we did it all over
Speaker 2: again and went there and did you know, ten day
Speaker 2: siege and it ended the same way with the negotiations.
Speaker 1: And also showed the capabilities of you know that the
Speaker 1: concept worked as far as the reconnaissance.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, So it was considered a model for the
Speaker 2: combat for other combatant commands to then follow south COM's
Speaker 2: lead on having this kind of capability, and that eventually
Speaker 2: led to more special operations, intelligence units and then the rsts.
Speaker 4: As you mentioned when when you guys were developing this capability,
Speaker 4: you know, if you're you're developing capability. There's not necessarily
Speaker 4: groundwork that's been laid before, you know, laid before. How
Speaker 4: how did you guys go about that process?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it was a you know, kind of a
Speaker 2: one of a kind unit at the time, made out
Speaker 2: of two O das and people were selected for their
Speaker 2: fluency and you know, civilian clothes and long hair, selected
Speaker 2: for their fluency in Spanish and their intelligence tradecraft in
Speaker 2: addition to other special operations skills and uh and then
Speaker 2: you know, we had to have training. We were kind
Speaker 2: of ahead of our time on satellite communications, so we
Speaker 2: had really reliable communications, some technical surveillance devices and stuff
Speaker 2: that weren't organic to the to the Special Forces Battalion
Speaker 2: that we had to procure commercially and learn how to use.
Speaker 2: And so we were really building this from the ground up,
Speaker 2: including you know, learning how to put these target folders together,
Speaker 2: of what exactly was needed and how to present it
Speaker 2: to the operators, you know, who would do the rescue
Speaker 2: and so you needed to know a lot about close
Speaker 2: quarter battle and sniping and lots of other things. So
Speaker 2: right before I had that command, for a few months,
Speaker 2: I had command of a sniper team which also was useful,
Speaker 2: you know, personal preparation before I took this counter terrorism
Speaker 2: intelligence mission.
Speaker 1: And then let's talk a little bit of about how
Speaker 1: you made that transition from Special Forces to the CIA,
Speaker 1: Like how did that take place for you?
Speaker 2: You know? So my original goal was to serve in
Speaker 2: the Special Forces and learn more languages and get competent
Speaker 2: in all these disciplines and then go to CIA. And
Speaker 2: then I thought, well, maybe I'll make the Army a career.
Speaker 2: And you know, I went to OCS and had this command,
Speaker 2: but you know, as I was wrestling with it, I thought, Okay,
Speaker 2: I've had this great experience as a lieutenant and captain
Speaker 2: commanding this troop and participating in real operations, you know,
Speaker 2: but my next assignment would be infantry company command and
Speaker 2: a peacetime army and I thought I wanted to join
Speaker 2: more of the Cold War fight. You I saw what
Speaker 2: was going on in Central America and what CIA was doing,
Speaker 2: and I thought, potentially I could contribute more if I
Speaker 2: went to CIA. And so I applied for a career
Speaker 2: training program and you know, got accepted and enjoined the agency.
Speaker 1: And the way I read it in the book, if I,
Speaker 1: if I understood correctly, you had some adventures before you
Speaker 1: even got trained as a CIA officer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so the in my day, the career training program
Speaker 2: for operations officers, we had a ten week course, you know,
Speaker 2: kind of introduction to CIA and the intelligence community, all
Speaker 2: the different directorates and learned how to write reports and
Speaker 2: do analysis and some basic trade craft, and learned about
Speaker 2: our satellites and you know, the science and technology side
Speaker 2: and et cetera. Had senior case officers come in and
Speaker 2: talk to us about agents they recruited and including Russians
Speaker 2: that were handled in Moscow, and you know, so it
Speaker 2: was pretty good training. And then you typically do two
Speaker 2: three month assignments on operational desk to learn operations more,
Speaker 2: and then you would go to the operations course at
Speaker 2: what we call the farm, a special facility. And then
Speaker 2: in those days we also had a twelve week paramilitary
Speaker 2: operations course called Special Operations Training. And during my first
Speaker 2: assignment in Latin America, Division I was selected for this
Speaker 2: because there was a coup in Suriname and a former
Speaker 2: Dutch colony in northern Tip of South America and we
Speaker 2: had assets in prison and the branch chief wanted to
Speaker 2: do a jail break essentially and thought I had the
Speaker 2: right skills to help plan that with the assets and stuff,
Speaker 2: and so that was kind of my introduction to CI
Speaker 2: and then LO and will Hold. A crisis occurred in
Speaker 2: Grenada as I was some weeks into this assignment working
Speaker 2: on this jail break plan, and you know, we had
Speaker 2: six hundred medical students attending training in Grenada, American medical students,
Speaker 2: and you know, the situation deteriorated. The coup leaders killed,
Speaker 2: the president of the country and some others, and President
Speaker 2: Reagan made the decision over a weekend to do the
Speaker 2: invasion of Grenada. It was combination of Special Operations Forces
Speaker 2: and Marines. And I was before I had even completed
Speaker 2: my CIA operational training. I was called into headquarters and
Speaker 2: said by the who was going to become the chief
Speaker 2: of station, a man named Bill Rooney, very distinguished career
Speaker 2: in CIA, said you're going to Grenada with me and
Speaker 2: a communicator and we were going in with the Special
Speaker 2: Operations Forces in the main effort in the south and uh.
Speaker 2: And I didn't know that at the time. I was
Speaker 2: just told to come into headquarters and pack for two
Speaker 2: weeks on a Sunday, and so I thought I was
Speaker 2: going to be going to one of the bases, uh
Speaker 2: supporting the operations, and so I packed a bunch of suits.
Speaker 2: And as soon as I got in and I was
Speaker 2: told I was going into combat, you know, I was
Speaker 2: glad I had a few casual clothes in my luggage.
Speaker 2: You know. So we got weapons, we got a lot
Speaker 2: of cash so we could uh pay assets and stuff.
Speaker 2: And the Satcom radio got a briefing and had an
Speaker 2: airplane take us to a staging base and then went
Speaker 2: in with the invading forces. And so I went into
Speaker 2: combat with a Ralph Lauren polo shirt, some linen pants
Speaker 2: and some loafers and a weapon and h a big
Speaker 2: bag of cash and set coom. Uh. You know you
Speaker 2: got a hand to the CIA. They go to Warren style.
Speaker 2: You know, this is not quite how we did it.
Speaker 2: The special courses.
Speaker 4: And the military elements. Lincoln out probably lets you get
Speaker 4: c I A I don't know, right right.
Speaker 2: Right yeah, and uh, and so you know our task
Speaker 2: was to establish a station and then you know, bring
Speaker 2: in people to interrogate Cuban prisoners and others, and then
Speaker 2: you know, we had some other things to do. That
Speaker 2: led to my first combat experience in Grenada. Uh, looking
Speaker 2: at an arms cash and in the very very forward
Speaker 2: lines where there was still a lot of combat, and
Speaker 2: it was a company of the eighty second that we
Speaker 2: were actually visiting at the time, and uh, you know,
Speaker 2: lo and behold. As soon as we got there, uh,
Speaker 2: Cubans attacked the position. And you know, all we had
Speaker 2: at the time were browning high power pistols. And so
Speaker 2: I thought about it for you know, as we're faced
Speaker 2: down in the dirt, I thought about it for a
Speaker 2: few seconds and I thought, I just saw a bunch
Speaker 2: of a k's and am mission in this warehouse. You know,
Speaker 2: there were cubans for the Grenadans, and I thought, you know,
Speaker 2: we could use some of those that we're going to
Speaker 2: get shot at and shoot back. So Low crawled over there,
Speaker 2: got some game, gave one to my chief of station
Speaker 2: and one for me, and battle was over in ten minutes.
Speaker 2: But it was an interesting experience.
Speaker 1: And so I think you said you spent like a
Speaker 1: week crawling around Grenada and then showed up back home,
Speaker 1: you know, covered in dirt in your Ralph Laurent polo
Speaker 1: shirt that you've been wearing for a week.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it was actually almost two weeks and we
Speaker 2: had another mission where we were told to apprehend a
Speaker 2: Libyan intelligence officer on the island who had been ordered
Speaker 2: by Kadafi to take American hostages. And before we could
Speaker 2: capture him, he had fled to the Soviet embassy. But
Speaker 2: we had this chase around Saint George's, the capitol. And Yeah,
Speaker 2: toward the the end of the operation that when the
Speaker 2: training staff learned that I had been in combat for
Speaker 2: ten days, they weren't too happy about it. And so
Speaker 2: they said, Okay, war's over for you, come home. And
Speaker 2: so I hitched a military flight to Barbados, took off,
Speaker 2: went into the bathroom, took off all my dirty clothes,
Speaker 2: threw them in the trash, can you know, put on
Speaker 2: some fresh civilian clothes, took my AMEX card out, bought
Speaker 2: a plane ticket, you know, for the States, and came home.
Speaker 4: I'm really surprised you didn't get like a deal with
Speaker 4: Ralph Florin after that, and like they didn't develop it,
Speaker 4: they didn't develop a new combat line of leisure wear.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there you go.
Speaker 1: So now you finally have the opportunity to go to
Speaker 1: the farm and become, you know, a formalized officer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so before that, you know. When I came into
Speaker 2: the agency, I had check Russian and SPAN and I
Speaker 2: was debating whether I would go to Latin America where
Speaker 2: the wars were, or you know, to Moscow or somewhere
Speaker 2: for a first assignment. And so I thought I would
Speaker 2: get assigned to Soviet operations when I came back from Grenada.
Speaker 2: That's what I had requested, and they called me in.
Speaker 2: As it turned out, we invaded Grenada on a Tuesday,
Speaker 2: the Sunday before the marine barracks were blown up in
Speaker 2: Leven And and then months before that, our embassy had
Speaker 2: been blown up by you know what today we know
Speaker 2: is his Balla. And so I was called in and said,
Speaker 2: the Near East Division wants you assigned to them for
Speaker 2: a special counter terrace and task force to identify the
Speaker 2: perpetrators and develop response options, et cetera. And I said,
Speaker 2: you know, I don't know anything about the Middle East,
Speaker 2: you know, and and well it's a directed assignment and
Speaker 2: they want you. And so that was my introduction to
Speaker 2: the to the Middle East to work with our station
Speaker 2: there on assets who could report on Hezbala and then
Speaker 2: develop various strike options. And then after that I went
Speaker 2: to the farm.
Speaker 1: I mean, just to wrap up of Beirute, I mean,
Speaker 1: was there any kind of kind of final thoughts or
Speaker 1: did anything come out of that time that you spent
Speaker 1: there that you thought was notable or important or even
Speaker 1: personal reflections?
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, I mean one, you know, Grenada was this great,
Speaker 2: exhilarating experience, and it felt like a real extension of
Speaker 2: what I'd been doing in Special Forces, particularly the last
Speaker 2: years as an officer in Latin America. And you know,
Speaker 2: I knew the people we were going in with, and
Speaker 2: so it was like old home week for me. In
Speaker 2: the operation, there were problems, but the operation was generally
Speaker 2: a success. With Lebanon, you know, we had a peacekeeping
Speaker 2: force in there with the Marines who did not have
Speaker 2: good rules of engagement, very restrictive rules of engagement, and
Speaker 2: you know, it was really kind of muddled policy for
Speaker 2: a country that was, you know, essentially heading into civil
Speaker 2: war and sectarian conflict and the same thing. Our station
Speaker 2: had similar challenges, you know, and so Americans started getting kidnapped,
Speaker 2: including our chief of station, the late Bill Buckley, and
Speaker 2: tortured and killed, and so it really was a searing
Speaker 2: experience for me in terms of you know, failed policy
Speaker 2: you know, we weren't in it to win it, and
Speaker 2: we essentially put ourselves in a position where we were
Speaker 2: we were very vulnerable and and you know, and as
Speaker 2: I said, it was my introduction into the Middle East.
Speaker 2: And then later, you know, decades later, when I was
Speaker 2: involved in I Rock and others, you know, seeing that
Speaker 2: sectarian conflict again and back all those memories.
Speaker 4: Yeah, when you did go to the farm. Now now
Speaker 4: you're going to the farm, but you've already had combat
Speaker 4: experience as a CIA officer, a CIA employee. Did that
Speaker 4: help you or hurt you? Or didn't Nobody there know
Speaker 4: about it?
Speaker 2: Now they knew about it, and it was both, you know.
Speaker 2: They the chief instructor pulled me aside. You know, I
Speaker 2: got an award for heroism, and one of the top
Speaker 2: agency officials came down and they talked about it, and
Speaker 2: you know, some of the instructors were, Okay, let's test
Speaker 2: this guy's metal some more, you know, so he doesn't
Speaker 2: think he's too big for his breeches and all that.
Speaker 2: But others, you know, we were impressed. And one guy
Speaker 2: said to me, geez, you really just you know, picked
Speaker 2: up the weapons and did this. You know, I don't
Speaker 2: know if I could have done that in that situation,
Speaker 2: and this guy had served in mostly Europe, and I thought, well,
Speaker 2: you know, this is kind of what I've been trained
Speaker 2: to do for ten years, so it's kind of but yeah.
Speaker 2: So it was a mixture actually of both. You know,
Speaker 2: some let's screw with them a little bit, and then others.
Speaker 2: You know, I was a little bit of a special class.
Speaker 4: But some of them are sort of like, okay, you
Speaker 4: can handle grenative, let's see how you handle the seedier
Speaker 4: sides of Virginia.
Speaker 2: Sure right, can you man up? Yeah? Yeah? Right?
Speaker 1: And after the form you got what I as I
Speaker 1: recall you describing your book as sort of your dream assignment,
Speaker 1: you got assigned to a ground branch.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so, you know, after the operations course where you're
Speaker 2: trained to recruit and handle agents, then we had this
Speaker 2: special operations course including another airborne school, you know, five
Speaker 2: parachute jobs, which was old hat, but you know, it
Speaker 2: was sort of like a Special Forces qualification course again
Speaker 2: not as strenuous, but the same basic tactics and techniques.
Speaker 2: And then as I came out again and was thinking
Speaker 2: about where I would go for an assignment, which the
Speaker 2: division or part of the world, you know, Soviet, East
Speaker 2: European or Latin America. What today is the Special Activity Center.
Speaker 2: Then it was called International Activities because it had counter
Speaker 2: terrorism and counter narcotics as well as the paramilitary stuff.
Speaker 2: The division chief there said to me, we would like
Speaker 2: you to come to this division because we're creating a
Speaker 2: program to fast track a few officers for leadership of
Speaker 2: our covert action that would combine case officer work with
Speaker 2: management of these covert action programs. And said we want
Speaker 2: you to be the first case and so how you
Speaker 2: can argue with a senior official and on a fast
Speaker 2: track to the top. So I did, and then he
Speaker 2: said where do you want to go? You want to
Speaker 2: go to El Salvador. What would you like for a
Speaker 2: first tour. There's a lot of wars going on and
Speaker 2: so if you don't mind, I'd like to go to
Speaker 2: branch first and then do the case officer stuff next.
Speaker 2: And said sure. So I got assigned a ground branch
Speaker 2: in Special Operations Group, and then within a couple weeks
Speaker 2: I was told that they were creating this new position
Speaker 2: for the Afghanistan Covered Action program, combining two jobs into one,
Speaker 2: essentially the program officer overall oversight of management of the program,
Speaker 2: which had been a senior CIA case officer, and then
Speaker 2: the chief Paramilitary Advisor who had been a Marine colonel
Speaker 2: on detail, and they were combining them into two and
Speaker 2: interviewed a bunch of candidates and thought I was the
Speaker 2: right guy for the job. So it was really like
Speaker 2: the job of a lifetime for me, you know. And
Speaker 2: I thought, you know, instead of just fighting Soviet surrogates
Speaker 2: in Central America or elsewhere, now we've got the main
Speaker 2: enemy in Afghania. Stand and it, you know, And so
Speaker 2: it really seemed like the job of a lifetime.
Speaker 4: Prior to that, though, you know, you're going to volunteering
Speaker 4: to go to grand branch tracking studies? Was that a
Speaker 4: Did some people consider that like a misstep in a
Speaker 4: career as it wasn't really attached to a larger division
Speaker 4: or whatever, and like did it have legitimacy in the
Speaker 4: in the wider agency at the time?
Speaker 2: Yes, and no. I mean there were a lot of
Speaker 2: paramilitary operations going on that hadn't been before, you know, uh,
Speaker 2: Central America and Afghanistan, and so that raised the important
Speaker 2: you know, they were the first one since Laos in
Speaker 2: a way. But yeah, in those days, ground branch officers
Speaker 2: didn't become chiefs of station. Later they would uh integrated
Speaker 2: more into the Director of Operations. And so that's why
Speaker 2: I kind of chose the general operations track. I knew
Speaker 2: I could do the paramilitary stuff, but I didn't want
Speaker 2: to just do that, you know, since aspirations to become
Speaker 2: a chief of station and other things, and so, you know,
Speaker 2: and my reasoning was just this is a unique time.
Speaker 2: We're in a lot of wars, and I have skills
Speaker 2: that can contribute to this, and so I want to
Speaker 2: do this first, but I knew i'd have to do
Speaker 2: the other stuff.
Speaker 1: Right, So, as you get on the Afghan program, I
Speaker 1: would be remiss if I didn't ask you. I mean,
Speaker 1: you dedicated your book to gust and Bert Dunn, and
Speaker 1: I'd love to ask you about those two gentlemen, and
Speaker 1: if you could tell us about coming onto the program
Speaker 1: and working with them.
Speaker 2: Sure. So, the Near East and South Asia Division was
Speaker 2: responsible for agency operations from Morocco to Bangladesh and essentially
Speaker 2: divided in half, you know, the Arab Israeli world up
Speaker 2: to the Arabian Gulf, the Gulf States in Iraq and
Speaker 2: then Iran over to Bangladesh for South Asian Operations, and Gustavraccados,
Speaker 2: a veteran case officer in Greek American was the chief
Speaker 2: of South Asian Operations, And so he's the guy who
Speaker 2: wanted to create this new position as program officer and
Speaker 2: chief Paramilitary Advisor into one and brought me in. And
Speaker 2: then Bert Dunn was his boss. Burt Dunn had just
Speaker 2: come in as the chief of Near East Division, and
Speaker 2: Bert was one of the founding members of Special Forces
Speaker 2: West Virginia lawyer founding members of Special Forces in nineteen
Speaker 2: fifty two. And I had been in the eighty second
Speaker 2: before that, you know, and his Army time and then
Speaker 2: joined the CIA after law school, and his first assignment
Speaker 2: was in Pakistan and learned Pashto. He was the agency's
Speaker 2: most fluent Pashto speaker, and set up the Pakistani Special
Speaker 2: Forces and went all over, you know, the tribal areas.
Speaker 2: In those days. We had the U two flights over
Speaker 2: the Soviet Union out of Peshawar, Gary Powers and all that,
Speaker 2: and so it was involved in that too. And he'd
Speaker 2: served in all these difficult places around the world. He'd
Speaker 2: been chief in Afghanistan, he'd served in Pakistan, India supporting
Speaker 2: Tibetan insurgents when we were doing that in the sixties
Speaker 2: against China, served in Vietnam and then in Africa, and
Speaker 2: so he was my kind of Both of them were
Speaker 2: really my kind of guys, you know, street smart, but
Speaker 2: also you know, a guy who went to the sound
Speaker 2: of guns and had, you know, the Special Forces background,
Speaker 2: and so we just clicked and they were very good
Speaker 2: to me.
Speaker 1: And as the program, I mean, I'd love to hear
Speaker 1: in your words, how this program evolved as it sort
Speaker 1: of got off the ground and there was a presidential
Speaker 1: finding for Afghanistan. And the impression I get reading through
Speaker 1: your book is that as time went on, the spigot
Speaker 1: became fully open, like we were really about.
Speaker 3: Sticking it to the Soviets in Afghanistan.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So, you know, as background, there was, you know,
Speaker 2: there was kind of this great game, you know, first
Speaker 2: between the Russians and the British and then the nineteenth
Speaker 2: century and then later in the Cold War between the
Speaker 2: United States and the Soviet Union for influence in Afghanistan,
Speaker 2: you know, and the Soviets generally got the better of
Speaker 2: the deal. They built a tunnel, they trained a lot
Speaker 2: of Afghan military officers, you know, and then they started
Speaker 2: underground communist parties in the sixties and we focused on
Speaker 2: agriculture in the South and Helman Province and you know,
Speaker 2: up to that period. And then in nineteen seventy three,
Speaker 2: the king's cousin overthrew him after you know, several decades
Speaker 2: of royal rule, and the prime minister ran the country
Speaker 2: for five years, and then he was overthrown in nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy eight by the communist parties with Soviet support, launching
Speaker 2: a communist revolution in Afghanistan, and immediately it triggered resistance,
Speaker 2: you know, trying to impose land reform, which really means
Speaker 2: land appropriation, and then you know, atheism, you know, just
Speaker 2: not going to fly in Afghanistan. And the communist Afghan
Speaker 2: govern asked for Soviet assistance, and Soviets were given a lot,
Speaker 2: but didn't want to intervene, you know, until they did finally.
Speaker 2: And so before the Soviets intervened in December late December
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy nine, that summer, there were a couple of
Speaker 2: what we call non lethal findings to provide political and
Speaker 2: psychological support to the resistance and money essentially and communications support,
Speaker 2: and then when the Soviets invaded in force, then three
Speaker 2: days after that, President Jimmy Carter signed a lethal Finding
Speaker 2: authorizing CI, the third Finding authorizing CIA to support the resistance,
Speaker 2: you know, fully with and so within ten days CI
Speaker 2: actually had weapons starting flowing to the resistance. But for
Speaker 2: the first five years, President Carter's last year and President
Speaker 2: Reagan's first term, the program was reasonably big. It was
Speaker 2: we had a lot of foreign partners, and Saudi's being one,
Speaker 2: obviously Pakistan. The Saudi's matched this dollar for dollar, and
Speaker 2: so the US government budget was sixty million, and the
Speaker 2: Saudi's matched that, so it was one hundred and twenty
Speaker 2: million dollars a year. But analysts thought there was no
Speaker 2: chance that the resistance could defeat the Soviets. The policy
Speaker 2: goal in the finding was just to make the occupation
Speaker 2: as costly as possible for the Soviets. So the war
Speaker 2: kind of settled into this stalemate, and the resistance was
Speaker 2: lightly equipped, mostly with small arms, not a lot of
Speaker 2: heavy weapons, mortars and anti tank weapons and rocket launchers
Speaker 2: and stuff. Very few surfaced air missiles, you know, handful
Speaker 2: of them, twenty or so, not a lot of training, munication,
Speaker 2: not a lot of intelligence, but they were still holding
Speaker 2: their own against the Soviets. And then in the summer
Speaker 2: of nineteen eighty four, Congressman Charlie Wilson from Texas, who
Speaker 2: was on the House Defense Appropriation Subcommittee, really wanted to
Speaker 2: expand the funding for the program. So CIA went in
Speaker 2: for a ten percent budget increase, and Wilson quadrupled the budget,
Speaker 2: you know, three hundred percent increase, which you don't see
Speaker 2: every day, and that's right at the you know, and
Speaker 2: so that naturally caused a lot of concern in CIA about,
Speaker 2: you know, can we execute this, you know, is it
Speaker 2: too much money? Can the resistance absorb it? And that's
Speaker 2: exactly the moment that I got the job, and I thought, hell.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we can act.
Speaker 2: Eighteen. Bravo.
Speaker 3: Of course he think, right, exactly.
Speaker 2: How to do with this, you know, and so yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: developing plans and everything else, and so a series of
Speaker 2: things led to a big change. That was the first
Speaker 2: one that you know, the funding just went way up
Speaker 2: and the Saudis agreed to match it. And then five
Speaker 2: years into the war, we were getting some criticism in Congress,
Speaker 2: you know, and Central America was already very controversial you know,
Speaker 2: you had a thing called the Bowl and Amendment that
Speaker 2: suspended aid to the contrast for a while and other things.
Speaker 2: But the controversy on Afghanistan was, you know, some Republicans
Speaker 2: felt that the Pakistanis were a corruption problem. The Pakistanis
Speaker 2: were keeping all the weapons for themselves and they weren't
Speaker 2: getting into the resistance, and so we had to show
Speaker 2: that and and that Sea Ice management of the program
Speaker 2: wasn't very good because we were letting the power. Kistani's
Speaker 2: controlled the the end distribution, and so we had to
Speaker 2: address that. And then on the left side of the aisle,
Speaker 2: there was concern that this was a hopeless war and
Speaker 2: we're just fighting to the last last Afghan and it
Speaker 2: was immoral, and so that triggered a National Security Council
Speaker 2: review of the program how to deal with these political problems,
Speaker 2: you know, from both left and right. But as any
Speaker 2: good NSC review, it also said, okay, what are we
Speaker 2: trying to do here? We're five years into this thing.
Speaker 2: What are should we read? Visit our goals and the
Speaker 2: inner what today we would call a paper principles committee meeting.
Speaker 2: The NSC staff circulated documents with questions at the State Department,
Speaker 2: Defense Department, and CIA were supposed to answer about, you know,
Speaker 2: our goals and what we thought we should do, and
Speaker 2: one of them was, instead of you know, stay the course,
Speaker 2: et cetera, it was to change our goal to defeating
Speaker 2: the Soviets and drive them out by all means available.
Speaker 2: It was in the working papers, and I'd liked the phrase.
Speaker 2: I remembered it thirty years later and you know, made
Speaker 2: it the title of my book. But I thought, that's
Speaker 2: the one we want to do with all this new money.
Speaker 2: And you know, it didn't really have an idea yet
Speaker 2: totally how we would do that, but we programmed everything
Speaker 2: I could in terms of more heavy weapons, this, more
Speaker 2: of that. But I knew it wasn't going to be
Speaker 2: enough yet. And lo and behold, George Schultz at the
Speaker 2: State Department and his key deputies went along with this.
Speaker 2: CIA's leadership did under Bill Casey, Casper Weinberger and Defense
Speaker 2: did you know on the policy side, And so our
Speaker 2: goal then became to defeat the Soviets and drive them out,
Speaker 2: and President Reagan signed a top secret National Security Decision
Speaker 2: Directive which has been mostly declassified for the past decade
Speaker 2: with that goal in mind. That that was our aim
Speaker 2: there and so in a sense now we had a
Speaker 2: hunting license to do what was required to do that.
Speaker 2: And so then that triggered, okay, do when can we
Speaker 2: get all our partners to escalate with us? And so
Speaker 2: that meant resting strategic control. So we controlled the strategy
Speaker 2: from the pakistanis, you know, and that would help solve
Speaker 2: this issue of are they controlling too much or diverting things?
Speaker 2: But also for us to put in all these new
Speaker 2: weapons and both quantity and quality, and then getting our suppliers.
Speaker 2: The Chinese were a big ally of ours and our
Speaker 2: largest arms supplier, and Egypt was another. Would they agree
Speaker 2: with the escalation and not only escalation and quantity, but
Speaker 2: also in more advanced weapons, you know, rocket launchers from
Speaker 2: the Chinese surface stair missiles. You know, that would really
Speaker 2: make our partners more vulnerable. And you know Pakistan in
Speaker 2: terms of subversion and maybe invasion. Uh, you know, the
Speaker 2: Chinese with diplomatic repercussions when their weapons are found, you know,
Speaker 2: surface stare missiles or shooting down aircraft. And so I
Speaker 2: had to go to all these countries with the top
Speaker 2: leadership of their intelligence services to try to get them
Speaker 2: to go along with the escalation, and they all did
Speaker 2: within six months. And then that included trying to get
Speaker 2: a more advanced surface stare weapon. You know, in covert
Speaker 2: action programs you want a plausible deniability, you know, so
Speaker 2: what you know covert means for your listeners is you're
Speaker 2: concealing the sponsor of the operation, but not the operation,
Speaker 2: because you're influencing events. You know, you're supporting a war,
Speaker 2: you're doing political action or whatever it is. But you
Speaker 2: don't want the United States role to be a parent.
Speaker 2: You know, even if people suspect it, you're not acknowledging it.
Speaker 2: And you know, so in paramilitary operations, the ones that
Speaker 2: are kind of the most deniable were when you're using
Speaker 2: the enemy's weapons, which is what the Afghan program was
Speaker 2: for the first five years. And then you know, you
Speaker 2: can lift up the skirt a little more by going
Speaker 2: to Western weapons and then even more with US weapons,
Speaker 2: And within twelve months we kind of went to the
Speaker 2: spectrum in certain high areas. You know, we went for
Speaker 2: Western surface to air missiles, a British blowpipe, and then
Speaker 2: eventually the US Stinger. You know, so further escalations in
Speaker 2: that regard and so first the Britz turned us down
Speaker 2: on the blowpipe, and then we went back to them
Speaker 2: and Prime Minister Thatcher agreed, and so we started that
Speaker 2: program up. And then we went back to Congress and said,
Speaker 2: you know, we now have a strategy and a real
Speaker 2: detailed plan, and we know you just get you quadrupled
Speaker 2: our budget, but we actually need double that. You know,
Speaker 2: if you'll just double it one more time and take
Speaker 2: us up to a billion billion two, we think we
Speaker 2: can actually achieve this objective in a couple of years.
Speaker 2: And lo and behold, Charlie Wilson came through again that
Speaker 2: summer and transferred money from the Department of Defense, and
Speaker 2: the Saudi's matched it, and so within less than twelve
Speaker 2: months the program had increased by a factor of more
Speaker 2: than ten, you know, from like one hundred and twenty
Speaker 2: million to almost one point two billion, where it leveled up.
Speaker 2: And then lots of you know, we went from twenty
Speaker 2: surfaced air missiles some of which didn't work, you know,
Speaker 2: damn near two thousand, and increased our training by factor
Speaker 2: of and you know, all sorts of other things, and
Speaker 2: so the temple of combat went up, the number of
Speaker 2: aircraft shot down, the size of ambushes, the attacks on
Speaker 2: urban areas and bases, shelling with rockets, shelling in the cobble,
Speaker 2: you know, all that just increased dramatically. And at the
Speaker 2: same the same time, Mikhyle Gorbachev came to power in
Speaker 2: the Soviet Union in March eighty five, just as we
Speaker 2: were beginning on this escalation path all of eighty five,
Speaker 2: took us top general from Eastern Europe East Germany and
Speaker 2: put them in charge. It got two years to win
Speaker 2: the war. We'll give you twenty five thousand more troops
Speaker 2: to the one hundred and five that the Soviets had
Speaker 2: there already. So we had this dual escalation, you know,
Speaker 2: ours covert and there's over. And within twelve months we
Speaker 2: had won that battle of the surges, and Gorbachev started
Speaker 2: looking for the exit.
Speaker 4: Mike, I just out of curious when you're going around
Speaker 4: and selling, you know, partner nation is on the idea
Speaker 4: of increasing their investments, increasing the weaponship to Afghanistan, things
Speaker 4: like that. Do you need a different pitch for each country,
Speaker 4: Like because Afghanistan isn't like necessarily strategically necessary for anybody.
Speaker 4: Is it just the idea of bleeding the Soviet Union.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it differed in each case. So, you know,
Speaker 2: with China, they had had a border clash in nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty nine and we had, you know, the Opening to
Speaker 2: China led by Henry Kissinger and Nixon and then consolidated
Speaker 2: in the normalization of relations under President Carter and started
Speaker 2: an intelligence partnership with the Chinese and then started supporting
Speaker 2: the afghan program because they wanted to weaken the Soviets
Speaker 2: and have them tied down in a war because you know,
Speaker 2: they were worried about a Soviet invasion of China from
Speaker 2: the north. You know, Soviet priorities were NATO number one,
Speaker 2: you know, that was the Big War, China number two,
Speaker 2: and then maybe Iran number three, and Afghanistan was kind
Speaker 2: of number four there, which is why we thought there
Speaker 2: were limits on their ability to escalate. And so with
Speaker 2: the Chinese, it was really more a case of they're
Speaker 2: already in it, are they willing to go in it
Speaker 2: even more with more sophisticated weapons and numbers of weapons,
Speaker 2: And you know, there was a debate about whether they
Speaker 2: would The National Intelligence officer for China told me, there's
Speaker 2: no way they will give you these surface their missiles,
Speaker 2: and they ended up doing it, you know, and where
Speaker 2: with Pakistan, you know, it was a function of the
Speaker 2: Islamic world not liking these infidels invading a Muslim country
Speaker 2: and so that you know, affected Egypt and Pakistan. And
Speaker 2: then with Pakistan there was really the risk of you know,
Speaker 2: cross border raids with special forces, airstrikes, sabotaged by the
Speaker 2: KGB and Afghan Secret Service, and maybe an invasion because
Speaker 2: the Soviets would do these big sweeps, you know, searching,
Speaker 2: destroy missions right up to the border, and so it
Speaker 2: was a little different and they were in it, but
Speaker 2: it took some convincing more about the risk of you know,
Speaker 2: escalation that would directly affect them as the frontline state.
Speaker 2: I meant I should have mentioned Saudi Arabia to another one,
Speaker 2: you know, was mostly helping fund the program, but again
Speaker 2: it was the invasion of a Muslim country. And then
Speaker 2: with the Brits, you know, it was more high technology.
Speaker 2: You know, we were partnering on intelligence collection and other
Speaker 2: things and support for resistance commanders, but it was it
Speaker 2: was really you know, do we want to stick it
Speaker 2: to the Soviets with this advanced weapon that they're not
Speaker 2: going to you know that shoots down more aircraft, and
Speaker 2: same for the US decision. So yeah, you know, the
Speaker 2: pitch was tailored to their own interests in Afghanistan in
Speaker 2: each case.
Speaker 1: I think you answered at least half of my next question,
Speaker 1: But because you talked about it in the book at
Speaker 1: some length, I wanted to ask you about the covert
Speaker 1: operation cooperation that you mentioned with China, which is this
Speaker 1: interesting historical interlude, almost impossible to imagine something like that
Speaker 1: happening today, But I just wanted to see if I
Speaker 1: can tease out of you a little bit any sort
Speaker 1: of a cultural observations about their approach to warfare, covert operations,
Speaker 1: or anything else that you took away from those numerous
Speaker 1: meetings where you interfaced directly with the Chinese intelligence apparatus.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, you know, it was very interesting in a
Speaker 2: sense that you know, they had the long Chinese Civil War,
Speaker 2: and you know, Mao had been dead for almost a decade,
Speaker 2: but and Dung Chaoping actually approved it big escalation. But
Speaker 2: you know, so in our initial discussions, we had big
Speaker 2: debates about guerrilla warfare strategy, and you know, so try
Speaker 2: different visions about how to defeat the Soviets in Afghanistan.
Speaker 2: You know, is it really lots of people armed with
Speaker 2: a KS or is it combined arms and stuff which
Speaker 2: I was pushing and more, you know, win shift the
Speaker 2: anti air balance more in the insurgents favor and stuff.
Speaker 2: And so that took some convincing. You know. We went
Speaker 2: back and forth, and you know, you know, they're saying
Speaker 2: to me, look, we really know guerrilla warfare, you know,
Speaker 2: we we we we over to our own government this way,
Speaker 2: and and I'd say, well, yeah, I know something about
Speaker 2: it too, and here's why I think we need to
Speaker 2: do this, and and they finally, you know, went along.
Speaker 2: But it was very interesting. It was very interesting culturally
Speaker 2: in a sense that they're negotiating style. You know, you
Speaker 2: weren't allowed to when you make presentations. They would just
Speaker 2: say continue, continue, with no break, you know. And if
Speaker 2: you said you couldn't ask them questions when they were
Speaker 2: talking for thirty minutes and they didn't want any interruption,
Speaker 2: you know, if I'd say, well, okay, you want me
Speaker 2: to elaborate on this or something, they don't just continue,
Speaker 2: you know. And so we were really almost like ships
Speaker 2: passing in the night. And then you know, as they often,
Speaker 2: as I later learned, they do with businesses a lot.
Speaker 2: You don't clinch the deal until the very end. And
Speaker 2: so it looked like we weren't going to get everything
Speaker 2: we want. We were heading to the air we got
Speaker 2: some things. We were heading to the airport, and they're
Speaker 2: waiting for us at an airport lounge with drinks and stuff.
Speaker 2: Was the head of armaments for the play.
Speaker 5: Okay, read everything better late than never, But yeah, it was,
Speaker 5: you know, and I I imagined myself when I was
Speaker 5: in spe Forces, you know, in the tenth Group, where
Speaker 5: we had this World War three mission and you know,
Speaker 5: to liberate Eastern Europe. You know, I thought this would
Speaker 5: be if this ever came to pass, this would be
Speaker 5: you know, T. E.
Speaker 2: Lawrence and all this great stuff. But I also thought
Speaker 2: I'd read, you know, about World War two and Oss
Speaker 2: and China and others, and I knew about the the
Speaker 2: border conflict that they had had in sixty nine. I'd
Speaker 2: study that as I was completing my bachelor's degree, and
Speaker 2: I thought, well, maybe I'd find myself on the side
Speaker 2: of the Chinese against the Russians. You know, that would
Speaker 2: be really exotic, you know, Eastern Europe, I kind of know,
Speaker 2: but this one would be exotic and lo and behold,
Speaker 2: they became my partner to fight in Afghanistan. You know,
Speaker 2: I didn't have the imagination to think about that.
Speaker 1: But yeah, as far as the end game in Afghanistan,
Speaker 1: I mean, the obvious end of the conflict is the
Speaker 1: Soviet withdraw When did you know it was over?
Speaker 2: Really in sort of early nineteen eighty six. Gorbachev gave
Speaker 2: this open speech in February eighty six about bleeding wound
Speaker 2: and we've got to extricate ourselves from this, and our
Speaker 2: escalation was just starting. I mean, we had we had
Speaker 2: flows of stuff going there through nineteen eighty seven, and
Speaker 2: you know, this meant strengthening the logistics system from ships
Speaker 2: to what you do at ports, to railroads, to trucks,
Speaker 2: to warehouses and then to Toyota land cruisers and even
Speaker 2: you know, ten thousand mules. You know, I grew up
Speaker 2: in Hollywood. I didn't know a damn thing about mules,
Speaker 2: and suddenly I find myself dealing with China about you know,
Speaker 2: ten thousand of these things. And it turns out Chinese
Speaker 2: mules were better for Afghanistan than Tennessee mules, which you know,
Speaker 2: who would think. But there's the mountain, and so, you know,
Speaker 2: it really was pretty clear in eighty six, but then
Speaker 2: you had this dance of negotiations. The first Soviet six
Speaker 2: regiments come out that summer, but the Soviets are hoping
Speaker 2: that we'll leave the Afghan government in place, and so
Speaker 2: there's negotiations about that, and the US rightly holds firm
Speaker 2: and then eventually Gorbachev says, okay, we just want out.
Speaker 2: We don't care what kind of government is there, and
Speaker 2: that sense the deal. And then from the time the
Speaker 2: agreement was signed, they withdrew in two big phases, and
Speaker 2: so that was not quite a year, like nine months,
Speaker 2: but you know, so it just played out in slow motion,
Speaker 2: but the writing was on the wall. Their tactic shifted
Speaker 2: there once we started shooting down so many aircraft, they
Speaker 2: start and flying above surface the era Michial range, which meant
Speaker 2: they couldn't do close order support very well. They didn't
Speaker 2: do offensive operations as much anymore. You know, they just
Speaker 2: kind of hunkered down to their bases, and uh, you know,
Speaker 2: so it was pretty clear. And also they announced this
Speaker 2: policy like we did in Vietnam, the Afghanization, you know,
Speaker 2: to basically shift to an indirect role where the afghan
Speaker 2: the communist Afghans are going to do the fighting and
Speaker 2: the Soviets are going to support them but not do
Speaker 2: the combat. And and you know, so we saw all
Speaker 2: that and that that kind of you know, led to
Speaker 2: the led to the end game. What was important was
Speaker 2: holding their feet to the fire, you know, really sustaining
Speaker 2: this through this period. And this is where I really
Speaker 2: give I think there's important lessons from President Reagan in
Speaker 2: this is that, you know, as relations were really warming
Speaker 2: between Reagan and Gorbachev and uh, you know, bring breakthroughs
Speaker 2: in diplomacy, we kept the heat on in Afghanistan, pressure
Speaker 2: and still said, look, we want to do business with you.
Speaker 2: This can be great, but you know, we disagree on
Speaker 2: this one thing, and you know, he ended up getting
Speaker 2: his way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the as we kind of get towards the end
Speaker 1: of part one of our interview with you, I wanted
Speaker 1: to ask a couple of questions that are sort of
Speaker 1: like big picture things that I think maybe you're uniquely
Speaker 1: qualified to answer. At the time, we've talked at length
Speaker 1: about supporting the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan. At the same time,
Speaker 1: there were paramilitary programs supporting Yunida in Angola and the
Speaker 1: FDN or the Contras in Nicaragua. I wonder if you
Speaker 1: could talk a little bit about these three anti essentially
Speaker 1: anti Soviet covert operations around the world and what was
Speaker 1: the global strategy behind them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and there was also a brief period of supporting
Speaker 2: Cambodia against the Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia, although it was
Speaker 2: very very small, so you know it really we started
Speaker 2: this period on defense in Central America. You know, Nicaragua
Speaker 2: had fallen to the Sandinistas, you know, and there was
Speaker 2: a sense that the Soviets and their Cuban allies and
Speaker 2: others were really on the march, and insurgency really exploded
Speaker 2: inn l Salvador, and you know, so we were counterinsurgency
Speaker 2: and essentially dealing there. And then the country program is
Speaker 2: kind of the first big one in a sense because
Speaker 2: Afghanistan is this. We're doing what we can there, but
Speaker 2: there's no thought you're going to win. Where we really
Speaker 2: didn't want to lose in We certainly didn't want to
Speaker 2: have more countries fall to communism in Central America, but
Speaker 2: there was even a hope, well, maybe we could defeat
Speaker 2: them in Nicaragua and at least in our backyard, you know.
Speaker 2: So it starts off fairly modest, and then as you
Speaker 2: move to nineteen eighty four when the country program becomes
Speaker 2: politically controversial and has this hiatus and it's you know,
Speaker 2: it's doing so. So we had a lot of success
Speaker 2: and counterinsurgency in Al Salvador, but not as much, you know,
Speaker 2: on the offensive side in Nicaragua. And then as Afghanistan escalates,
Speaker 2: that then becomes the real main effort, and so people's
Speaker 2: minds changed between this is hopeless too, maybe we can
Speaker 2: win there, and if we win here it really matters.
Speaker 2: You know, this is the main enemy in the in
Speaker 2: the big Enchilada, where if you win in Nicaragua, you know,
Speaker 2: you move upon on the chessboard rather than a queen.
Speaker 2: And then Angola picks up, I think in eighty six
Speaker 2: or so, and you know, the Cubans had sent a
Speaker 2: big proxy army into a goal of twenty some thousand troops,
Speaker 2: and that kicks in as well, and then President Reagan
Speaker 2: gives the Reagan Doctrine speech, which is will support anti
Speaker 2: communist insurgencies. And I want to say that's early eighty
Speaker 2: five if I remember, right, and it provides kind of
Speaker 2: the strategic framework for this global irregular war that kind
Speaker 2: of came in parts, essentially, in at different times and
Speaker 2: different emphasis, and it's tied to a broader strategy of
Speaker 2: restricting technology transfer, hurting the Soviets with low oil prices,
Speaker 2: you know, other things to kind of weaken the system.
Speaker 2: And then of course the Reagan built up you know
Speaker 2: that they really can't match this defense, yeah, and that
Speaker 2: you know, missile defense. And then since the late seventies,
Speaker 2: we started shifting our strategy or conventional strategy in Europe
Speaker 2: to deep attack. You know, we knew we really couldn't,
Speaker 2: you know, Up until say nineteen seventy six, our strategy
Speaker 2: was to trade space for time, essentially to withdraw under
Speaker 2: pressure of a Soviet advance. And every war game showed
Speaker 2: that they could break through on multiple fronts, and it
Speaker 2: just didn't work. Once we developed the precision weapons and
Speaker 2: the intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance and other things, the first
Speaker 2: stealth aircraft, the F one seventeen, the Army tactical missile system,
Speaker 2: you know that's finally getting to Ukraine today, the Joint
Speaker 2: Surveillance and Market Acquisition JSTARS that really worried the Soviets
Speaker 2: about their strategy that you know, all the second echelon
Speaker 2: forces would be vulnerable, you know, rather than having a
Speaker 2: tank battle right up in front, those reinforcing forces could
Speaker 2: get hit. And that's what the Soviet general staff back
Speaker 2: garbage off because as they looked out, you know, ten
Speaker 2: twenty years, they thought, we're just going to fall further
Speaker 2: behind the United States and technology, and we got to
Speaker 2: do something to revitalize our system to catch up. And
Speaker 2: so all that weighed them down.
Speaker 4: Do you think that all of the and I would add.
Speaker 2: Two support for Solidarity Poland you know, that was keeping
Speaker 2: them alive?
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: Do you think that all these these these counter sort
Speaker 4: of Soviet wars that we fought, that you know, are
Speaker 4: challenging because you can't you can't always mold the the
Speaker 4: indigenous peoples that that you are your proxy soldiers, right,
Speaker 4: they're doing their thing. But do you think that all
Speaker 4: those led up to Gorbachev to the you know, because
Speaker 4: in eighty nine we saw the fall of the Berlin
Speaker 4: Wall like that. Do you think that we basely defeated
Speaker 4: the Soviets through these even if we didn't win in
Speaker 4: the specific places, all the time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I think. You know, in Nicaragua the result
Speaker 2: was a little more ambiguous because the sandin East has
Speaker 2: got defeated an election in nineteen ninety, but you know,
Speaker 2: pressure from the insurgents in Angola, we really defeated the Cubans,
Speaker 2: and in Afghanistan defeated the Soviets, and it was the
Speaker 2: only defeat the Red Army had suffered in its history,
Speaker 2: so real blow to its credibility and claim on resources.
Speaker 2: And same with the KGB, and you know, and I
Speaker 2: do think that had a big effect on the Soviets.
Speaker 2: You know, it's not the only thing that led to
Speaker 2: the disillusion of the Soviet Empire. Gorbachev's critical in that
Speaker 2: in a sense not using force in Eastern Europe when
Speaker 2: you know, the wall starts cumbling down and Solidarity gets
Speaker 2: elected and you know all that. But the defeat of
Speaker 2: the Red Army was a big deal.
Speaker 3: You know, another sort of like big picture.
Speaker 1: And this is more of an institutional question, and I
Speaker 1: hope I won't start a food fight with this one.
Speaker 1: But the differences between the Special Activities Division and special Forces,
Speaker 1: or between ground branch and special forces, what are the
Speaker 1: pros and cons of each why do we maintain these
Speaker 1: two in some ways parallel capabilities.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so that's a question that's been debated over the decades.
Speaker 2: You know, should see, I just focus on intelligence and
Speaker 2: not covert action, and particularly paramilitary covert action, where you know,
Speaker 2: the military has very strong capabilities, and so you know,
Speaker 2: part of the reason for that is the political benefits
Speaker 2: of covert action to begin with. You know, so the
Speaker 2: way I like to describe it, if we're going to
Speaker 2: support an insurgency against the hostile power, and peace time
Speaker 2: presidents overwhelmingly for the CIA there. So it's not a
Speaker 2: question of capabilities, it's a question of plausible deniability and
Speaker 2: escalation control. And you know, if we had special forces
Speaker 2: doing Afghanistan, it's not that they couldn't do it technically,
Speaker 2: it's that you run a higher risk that you're going
Speaker 2: to trigger a direct war than if CI is doing it.
Speaker 2: You're still killing Soviets, you know, I mean, it's still
Speaker 2: a war. It's just that it provides this level of
Speaker 2: control that president seems to go to. And then when
Speaker 2: you go to war, you know, particularly a big war,
Speaker 2: you don't have enough CI for that, and then there's
Speaker 2: no reason not to use your military, you know, for that,
Speaker 2: and then all these other missions counter terrorism and you
Speaker 2: know that require real surgical skill and everything that's properly
Speaker 2: the military, you know, and those things occur in peace time.
Speaker 2: But you know, so there's this kind of division of
Speaker 2: labor based on you know, the politics of it and
Speaker 2: whether covert or over makes sense or whether you know,
Speaker 2: and then CIA essentially working through partners with a smaller
Speaker 2: footprint rather than you know, something more muscular. You know,
Speaker 2: as you get to the more muscular side, you get
Speaker 2: to do od And you know that's true in a
Speaker 2: number of areas, whether it's drones or whether it's cyber
Speaker 2: you know, you have these equal you have capabilities in
Speaker 2: both areas, but for different purposes there So I think
Speaker 2: it serves the country. It gives the president more options,
Speaker 2: and it serves the country well to have both, but
Speaker 2: you got to know the limitations of both.
Speaker 4: There's sort of this idea or rumor, I guess that
Speaker 4: Republican presidents will lean more heavily on the military and
Speaker 4: Democratic presidents will lean more heavily on the CIA. Do
Speaker 4: you think that's an actual thing or is it just
Speaker 4: sort of whomever?
Speaker 2: I don't think that bears out necessarily in history. I mean,
Speaker 2: the you know, from the last two decades of the
Speaker 2: Cold War and maybe parts of the last twenty years.
Speaker 2: You know, the differences in general about aggressive foreign policy
Speaker 2: have differentiated the parties until recently, you know, when you
Speaker 2: know you've got all this isolationism strain creeping in. But
Speaker 2: you know, part of the reason I think analysts explain
Speaker 2: that Republicans won five out of six presidential elections in
Speaker 2: the late Cold War is because they were trusted more
Speaker 2: on national security. So I think it rather than military
Speaker 2: or CIA, I think it's more how aggressively you use
Speaker 2: either one. There's still nuances, And like I said, you
Speaker 2: know what Carter started, Reagan continued, and then Reagan escalated,
Speaker 2: but it took a while, right and and then you know,
Speaker 2: after nine to eleven, President Bush, for the invasion of Afghanistan,
Speaker 2: went with essentially a CI led plan because it was
Speaker 2: very rapid, and you know, of course the military was
Speaker 2: going to fold in on that. You know, see, I
Speaker 2: wasn't going to fight the Afghan War by themselves, but
Speaker 2: you needed airpower and you needed special forces and all that.
Speaker 2: But you know, the initial options that the military came
Speaker 2: up with weren't unconventional. They were airstrikes or massive invasion,
Speaker 2: and President Bush didn't want to you know, air strikes
Speaker 2: were too little and massive invasion too late, you know.
Speaker 2: So you know, so that's what kind of drove it.
Speaker 3: Do we have any questions?
Speaker 2: And then the other thing that drives it is our
Speaker 2: foreign partners. You know a lot of times for their
Speaker 2: own risk, they'll want to deal with CI or and
Speaker 2: intelligence channels because they think it provides them more more protection,
Speaker 2: and you know, and then it's it's also flexible, like
Speaker 2: we can, uh, you know, if CI needs certain capabilities
Speaker 2: that the Department of Defense has, we can loan them
Speaker 2: to them, you know, so you know, and so then
Speaker 2: it's just a question of what authority do you want?
Speaker 3: Right I think we have a few of youwer questions.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we have some great questions. First off, Rory, thank
Speaker 4: you very much for the donation. I didn't see a question.
Speaker 4: If there is one, police art and chat and we'll
Speaker 4: keep an eye out for it. Andrew Dunbar, thanks buddy.
Speaker 4: Do you have any funny anecdotes about dealing with the
Speaker 4: State Department. It seems like s after the Diplomatic Service
Speaker 4: would be a bit of a culture clash.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I don't know how funny they are. But
Speaker 2: you know, when I was dealing on the counter terrorism
Speaker 2: intelligence collection, you know, in case our embassies were seized
Speaker 2: by terrorists, you know, the diplomat the ambassadors, and the
Speaker 2: diplomats thought, okay, this is a good thing to have.
Speaker 2: I want someone to come and rescue me if things
Speaker 2: go bad. And so you know I dealt with the
Speaker 2: security people and the ambassador and the chiefest station and
Speaker 2: they were all they were in high thread areas, so
Speaker 2: they were supportive of having the military and you know,
Speaker 2: prepare for this. And you know more, I think what
Speaker 2: your listener is referring to is approaches to foreign policy
Speaker 2: decisions and use of force the inner agency where we
Speaker 2: do have differences of opinion, you know. Sometimes that's where
Speaker 2: the different departments, you know, can diverge sometimes. But on
Speaker 2: what I did there, I don't think. And then also
Speaker 2: so generally I wouldn't say all ambassadors, but lots of
Speaker 2: ambassadors welcome all the help they can get, you know,
Speaker 2: so they've got us, you know, whatever size country team,
Speaker 2: but you know, if you can send them a few
Speaker 2: people that will really augment them and do something for
Speaker 2: them useful. They generally welcome it. You know, it's it's
Speaker 2: more for their empire and more more ability to do
Speaker 2: good things, you know, in in their particular country. So yeah,
Speaker 2: I didn't I didn't really have that experience.
Speaker 4: They didn't look at you as outavis knuckle driggers who
Speaker 4: should like sit in a corner and only come out
Speaker 4: when you know, breaking.
Speaker 2: They'd laugh like, you know, like the one ambassador. You know,
Speaker 2: I mentioned John Negroponte earlier that I served with over
Speaker 2: several decades, you know, when we were both in the
Speaker 2: Bush to administration. He said, I remember you as a
Speaker 2: Special Forces captain, and you know you wanted to take
Speaker 2: pictures of my bathroom and all this other stuff you
Speaker 2: were being held in your bathroom. We're going to want
Speaker 2: to know how to get in there.
Speaker 4: Spencer Devns, thank you very much. From your perspective, What
Speaker 4: does the United States need to address the PRC going
Speaker 4: into the rest of this century? When does your recommendation
Speaker 4: need to be done by.
Speaker 2: Ah So, I have a chapter in the book called
Speaker 2: Winning the New Cold War that deals with how to compete,
Speaker 2: how to prevail over China over several decades, and Russia
Speaker 2: is an ally of China as well. And you know,
Speaker 2: probably the biggest factor, since they're a global power and
Speaker 2: an integrated world, is really the economic and technological competition.
Speaker 2: We've been the dominant economic power in the world for
Speaker 2: a century and we never had a rival in the
Speaker 2: twentieth century that had more than fifty percent of our
Speaker 2: so we had this economic escalation dominance. You know. World
Speaker 2: War two is the best example of that. You know,
Speaker 2: we get surprised at the beginning, but then we mobilize
Speaker 2: American industry and you know, we flood the Pacific with
Speaker 2: ships and you know, other things and landing craft to
Speaker 2: go to D Day and all that. And you know
Speaker 2: that may not be as true in the twenty first
Speaker 2: century if China continues to grow now they've been stumbling.
Speaker 2: And then you also have this revolution and technology with
Speaker 2: AI and quantum and that can remake the world, and
Speaker 2: we don't want to be on the losing end of that.
Speaker 2: And then those things translate into like the original Cold War,
Speaker 2: into competitions for global influence, you know, all around Africa,
Speaker 2: Latin America and elsewhere. And as warfare has evolved, you know,
Speaker 2: our position has been eroded in the Western Pacific so
Speaker 2: China kind of went to school on the US military
Speaker 2: more than any other country in Desert Storm. In the
Speaker 2: aftermath of Desert Storm and the big conclusion the Chinese
Speaker 2: drew out of this was terrible idea to give the
Speaker 2: United States six months to build up massive combat power
Speaker 2: right on your border and then beat your brains in,
Speaker 2: you know. And so they developed this anti access strategy
Speaker 2: to try to prevent US force, hurt the ones that
Speaker 2: are in the region by attacking air bases and surface ships,
Speaker 2: and then prevent the reinforcements or make it very costly
Speaker 2: for them to come in. And they've pursued that strategy
Speaker 2: for several decades. And now you have these new warfare domains,
Speaker 2: space and cyber that are inherently global. And while the
Speaker 2: Chinese are pretty powerful opposite Taiwan, you know, once you
Speaker 2: get out of missile range, you know, if we were
Speaker 2: both projecting power stay to Africa or somewhere, you know,
Speaker 2: the US would dominate, and we'd like to keep it
Speaker 2: that way. So we have undersea dominance, you know, we
Speaker 2: have really more and longer and strike we have better
Speaker 2: space systems. I'd like to keep it that way because
Speaker 2: the way for China. To become a global military power
Speaker 2: is to gain advantages in those areas. And you know,
Speaker 2: so there's a number of things you have to do
Speaker 2: to strengthen regional and global deterrence. But then you got
Speaker 2: to win this Cold War, which might be from proxies
Speaker 2: and influence and a lot of the covered action and
Speaker 2: the special ops stuff that you know below direct conflict.
Speaker 2: Because you know, another characteristic of the old Cold War
Speaker 2: in this one is nuclear weapons tends to put a
Speaker 2: little bit of a break on conventional war. You can't
Speaker 2: do world too the way you know you otherwise would,
Speaker 2: and so that means you got to get at your
Speaker 2: adversary through more devious ways. And you know, we've got
Speaker 2: our work work cut out for us for there.
Speaker 4: And Cormoran, thank you very much, if possible, any commentary
Speaker 4: on the lasting impact of the ISI. Director General ahamdul.
Speaker 2: Ah So uh, he's funny question. So he he came
Speaker 2: in late in the Soviet Afghan War and was a
Speaker 2: conventional armor officer and wanted to shift uh the insurgency
Speaker 2: into conventional battle essentially, and ordered assaults on cities which
Speaker 2: played right into Soviet and common Afghan government hands. You know,
Speaker 2: like you make yourself a big target and stay there
Speaker 2: long enough, we'll pound you. You know, you don't want
Speaker 2: to do daylight assaults on cities generally, but particularly when
Speaker 2: your enemy has artillery superiority and air superiority and you know,
Speaker 2: everything else. So he was a pretty disruptive force in
Speaker 2: the endgame of Afghanistan and then became very anti US
Speaker 2: and so over time, you know, supported the Taliban and others.
Speaker 2: Over time, really became an agitator for uh, you know,
Speaker 2: essentially not partnering with the US and everything else. So
Speaker 2: he's he's not my favorite Pakistani.
Speaker 4: Spencer day devins, thank you very much. He has a
Speaker 4: couple of questions coming up. He's in a meeting, so
Speaker 4: he's going to get to these later. H Do you
Speaker 4: see any sort of scenario where we risk becoming Eisenhower's
Speaker 4: feared garrison state while we try to maintain escalation dominance
Speaker 4: with an adversary that could have a larger DDP than
Speaker 4: we do.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So that's the challenge of the economics is that,
Speaker 2: I say, now, China may have peaked, and they're you know,
Speaker 2: they're emphasizing political control over economic growth, and so they're
Speaker 2: kind of killing their golden goose right now. So it
Speaker 2: may not be as dire as as we think, but
Speaker 2: you know, they could, they could recover. And you know,
Speaker 2: the genius of Eisenhower was to recognize that the Cold
Speaker 2: War would be fought hopefully short of conventional war because
Speaker 2: of nuclear weapons. And in fact, you know, he emphasized
Speaker 2: nuclear weapons very dramatically in his strategy, the National Security Strategy,
Speaker 2: the New the New Look. But he also thought it
Speaker 2: was very important to put the United States in a
Speaker 2: long term competition on a sustainable fiscal path. You know,
Speaker 2: we had spent a lot of money mobilizing for Korea,
Speaker 2: you know, demobilized after World War Two and then ramped
Speaker 2: up for Korea, and it really created a lot of
Speaker 2: budget problems and everything. And so Eisenhower kind of put
Speaker 2: us on a steady state where innovation was emphasized. Nuclear
Speaker 2: weapons would be used to deter war and hopefully bring
Speaker 2: an end if you if you had one. But also
Speaker 2: all these innovations in you know, after Sputnik, in the
Speaker 2: space race, NASA and DARPA was created, and then the
Speaker 2: NRO and and so you know, it was a and
Speaker 2: then used COVID action, you know, to compete in the
Speaker 2: Third World, and so it was a pretty effective grand strategy,
Speaker 2: you know. And then even on the economic side, you know,
Speaker 2: the interstate highway system, you know, and so it's a
Speaker 2: good model for you know. You know, at the end
Speaker 2: of the day, I think who wins this new Cold
Speaker 2: War between US and China and its allies will be
Speaker 2: who has the strongest overall system, which means our domestic
Speaker 2: power base, you know, which it's got resilient. You can't
Speaker 2: spend yourself into oblivion, and you know, and one of
Speaker 2: you know, one of the dangers of great powers is
Speaker 2: they you know, both we and the Soviets made these
Speaker 2: mistakes in the Cold War is you know, strategies and
Speaker 2: art not a science. So you can overreach and make
Speaker 2: yourself vulnerable on peripheral things, or you can underreach and
Speaker 2: not do anything, and then the world really gets bad
Speaker 2: for you. And you know we've done over various periods
Speaker 2: of time, and you know, and you want to find
Speaker 2: that realm where you're adding to your power, not depleting it,
Speaker 2: and then taking advantage of your adversary when they make
Speaker 2: a mistake, you know, and that's what we eventually did
Speaker 2: in the late Cold War. You know, you know, I
Speaker 2: like to describe the Cold War. We started off pretty strong,
Speaker 2: you know, the first decade and a half. We kind
Speaker 2: of had trouble in the middle couple decades, and then
Speaker 2: we finished strong and that was enough to win it.
Speaker 4: Great answer also from Censor. If it's possible, how would
Speaker 4: you seek to make COVID action programs immune to the
Speaker 4: holes of the US domestic domestic political theater.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure it works like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So you know, Intelligence emphasizes our republican form of government,
Speaker 2: where a couple committees in Congress do the oversight for
Speaker 2: the American people to keep things secret. But you know,
Speaker 2: one of the tests of a COVID action program is,
Speaker 2: you know, it ought to be consistent with broader US
Speaker 2: foreign policy interests and goals. And when it's too disjointed
Speaker 2: from that, you know, and then the likelihood that it's
Speaker 2: going to get leaked by opponents goes up as well,
Speaker 2: you're going to have trouble. You know, you're going to
Speaker 2: have controversy, and so you know, you'd like the test
Speaker 2: of it is you'd like the American people to say, Okay, yeah,
Speaker 2: I see, I see why my government's doing that. It's
Speaker 2: in our interest and I see why it was secret,
Speaker 2: you know, rather than what the hell are you doing? Right?
Speaker 1: Right? Uh?
Speaker 2: Uh, you know, and so and so we've had both
Speaker 2: over decades, and uh, you know, hopefully we've learned how
Speaker 2: to do that. You know, the answer is not to
Speaker 2: do COVID action. I mean, presidents will differ on you know,
Speaker 2: how aggressive they want to be. But you know, when
Speaker 2: it succeeds, it really succeeds very well. And it's generally
Speaker 2: our biggest programs that are the most successful. But then
Speaker 2: we've also had spectacular failures like Bay of Pigs and others.
Speaker 2: You just got, you know, got to avoid the dumb
Speaker 2: ship and do the smart ship.
Speaker 4: Right and unfortunately, sometimes you don't know if it's dumb
Speaker 4: shit or smart shit until it's already yeah, right, I
Speaker 4: mean sometimes that's right. How involved or aware should the
Speaker 4: average American be about national security topics? And how would
Speaker 4: you amend current engagement?
Speaker 2: Well, I think we're very affected by what goes on
Speaker 2: in the rest of the world, and you know, it's
Speaker 2: incumbent about our political leaders, you know, to make that case,
Speaker 2: and then you know, and I think engagement is important,
Speaker 2: and you know, and one of the reasons we're connected
Speaker 2: is not just trade and and and others, all of
Speaker 2: that that matters. It's also the reach of weapons, you know,
Speaker 2: and the destructiveness of weapons, so beginning with nuclear weapons,
Speaker 2: but also now there's more ways to reach intercontinental distances,
Speaker 2: cyber being one example. You know, so the two oceans
Speaker 2: don't protect us in the way they have in the past,
Speaker 2: and you know, what happens overseas matters to us. And
Speaker 2: it's the same thing, you know, as terrorists go from
Speaker 2: a local regional problem to ones with global ambitions or
Speaker 2: extra regional you know, it affects our interests more. And
Speaker 2: so you know, generally, when we've disengaged, we've paid a
Speaker 2: price for it down the road. Now that doesn't mean
Speaker 2: over engagement. It just means you can't completely disengage. You know.
Speaker 2: You get you use economy of force in a lot
Speaker 2: of places and that's enough. But you can't just up
Speaker 2: and leave and say I don't care about the place. Mike.
Speaker 4: You know, you mentioned cyber a couple times, and I'm
Speaker 4: curious about your position on this. And obviously sometimes the
Speaker 4: cyber gangs are in China or in Russia, they're in
Speaker 4: a non permissive environment. But you know, we do see
Speaker 4: like ransomware attacks on hospitals where a hospital will get
Speaker 4: locked down. If if a group of armed people were
Speaker 4: to go into that hospital and lock it down, we
Speaker 4: have specific reactions to it. Do you feel as though
Speaker 4: the US government should start viewing certain types of cyber
Speaker 4: attacks as actually offensive military or acts of war or
Speaker 4: acts of terrorism and treat them as such.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a great question. So so one, you know,
Speaker 2: cyber is this unique weapon that it uh, you know,
Speaker 2: it can be used by states. It can be used,
Speaker 2: you know to harass and destroy, you know, distributed denial
Speaker 2: of service attacks and then really destructive attacks. It can
Speaker 2: be used for intelligence collection as well as force, et cetera.
Speaker 2: So it has a lot of a lot of different attributes.
Speaker 2: And so where a lot of supposedly non governmental cyber
Speaker 2: actors or operate hostile territory and hurting you, you have
Speaker 2: to have some kind of diplomatic or some response because
Speaker 2: they're operating on this guy's territory, probably with his and
Speaker 2: they're hurting you. You know. So mainly a problem right
Speaker 2: now in Russia, but it's also China, China as well.
Speaker 2: And then you know, as you mentioned, we had this experience,
Speaker 2: you know, when I was Under Secretary of Defense for intelligence.
Speaker 2: North Korea whacked Sony Pictures and the Iranians whacked Saudi
Speaker 2: Arabian oil, you know, ab Cake and others, big destructive attacks.
Speaker 2: And as you said, had North Koreans walked into Sony
Speaker 2: and blew up those computers, there'd be no doubt about
Speaker 2: a response. But you know, if you do it with cyber,
Speaker 2: it's this, well what is it? And you know, it's
Speaker 2: just a computer and or thirty thirty thousand computers or
Speaker 2: whatever the case is. But so we have a ways
Speaker 2: to go in this nascent field to develop you know,
Speaker 2: in a way it was easier to develop strategy in
Speaker 2: the nuclear world after the advent of nuclear weapons, and
Speaker 2: it has been you know, cyber has been around now
Speaker 2: for a couple of decades and we're still struggling with
Speaker 2: what does it mean and how is it fit in
Speaker 2: the world of force, and what's acceptable intelligence collection and
Speaker 2: what's not. You know, so like this intellectual mass on
Speaker 2: a massive scale, this intellectual property theft, you know, like
Speaker 2: one of the things I thought in the Cold War
Speaker 2: against the Soviet Union, you know, where we really didn't
Speaker 2: interact economically and we restricted technologies. They got some of them,
Speaker 2: but I thought, you know, you really can't steal your
Speaker 2: way to economic competitiveness, you know, so they're trying to
Speaker 2: get our computers through you know, clandestine means and stuff
Speaker 2: like that, and it seemed like we had enormous advantage
Speaker 2: cyber and the Chinese have changed my views about that, right,
Speaker 2: given massive gains they've made economically from taking intellectual property,
Speaker 2: it looks like crime.
Speaker 4: Pays right, so right, And it's also tough because we've
Speaker 4: had people on the show when the counter intelligence industry
Speaker 4: or from you know, the FBI, the CIA, who are
Speaker 4: like when every you know, Chinese national or Chinese descendant
Speaker 4: who has relatives in mainland are a potential spy for
Speaker 4: the United States, Like, how do you stop how do
Speaker 4: you stop your technology from walking out the doors when
Speaker 4: the Chinese government can walk up and go, hey, I
Speaker 4: saw your grandmother last week, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, So, I mean, you know, the FBI's job
Speaker 2: jar has grown dramatically with this ology problem and the proliferation,
Speaker 2: you know, the traditional counter intelligence problem of I've got
Speaker 2: you know, one hundred intelligence of hostile intelligence officers working
Speaker 2: in this country has changed pretty dramatically, and then you've
Speaker 2: got you know, still international terrorist extremists and domestics. So
Speaker 2: they got that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe we'll do well one more before we let Mike,
Speaker 1: we have we.
Speaker 4: Have like three more, if that's okay, because one of them,
Speaker 4: like is a very generous donation. I want to make
Speaker 4: sure we get to it. I read in your bio
Speaker 4: that in nineteen seventy eight you went to over to
Speaker 4: Harefair in UK and completed a British SASUQB course. How
Speaker 4: did you get that opportunity and how was that experience
Speaker 4: for you?
Speaker 1: It's also in the book By All Means Available, which
Speaker 1: I hope you guys would go and take a look at.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so, you know, we were just starting to develop
Speaker 2: precision counter terrorism capabilities in the late nineteen seventies, you know,
Speaker 2: after the Munich massacre in seventy two and some airline
Speaker 2: hijackers or hijackings, and you know, so the Israelis were
Speaker 2: ahead of us, and the Brits were ahead of us
Speaker 2: in certain ways, and then we started building this capability
Speaker 2: and I was fortunate enough I was in a special
Speaker 2: Forces unit in Germany at the time, and Bob Tolt's
Speaker 2: part of the tenth Group, and I got selected to
Speaker 2: go to this training early on, and you know, and
Speaker 2: not only gave me some new tactical skills this close
Speaker 2: quarter battle and they had a lot to teach us.
Speaker 2: Then you know today, you know, we're we're the best
Speaker 2: force in the world in those areas, but and have
Speaker 2: been for the past couple of decades. But you know it,
Speaker 2: it started me really on this counter terrorism track that
Speaker 2: became a pretty big part of my career, along with
Speaker 2: unconventional warfare and you know other parts that you know,
Speaker 2: so it was more than just tactical training in a
Speaker 2: sense that you know, got me thinking about precision counter
Speaker 2: terrorisms and operations and all that goes into it and stuff.
Speaker 2: So it's a great experience.
Speaker 4: So we have four questions. Off, I'm only going to
Speaker 4: ask one of them and then we'll to get the
Speaker 4: other three next shows. We don't want to keep it
Speaker 4: too late. We know you're on a timeline. Mohammed Sabani,
Speaker 4: thank you very much for the very genest nation love
Speaker 4: the show is always y'all. What actions, if any, can
Speaker 4: be taken for America to compete and hardware chip production
Speaker 4: with the entire rare Earth process and the supply chain
Speaker 4: being owned by Chinese. Also, how can America protect its
Speaker 4: infrastructure from cyber attacks?
Speaker 2: Yeah, two great questions really at the heart of this
Speaker 2: new competition. So one, you know, we've got this chip
Speaker 2: acts to try to repatriate production that had gone overseas
Speaker 2: the past couple of decades. In advanced chips, you know,
Speaker 2: we really are still ahead. But then you want to
Speaker 2: restrict some of that. So I think, you know, and
Speaker 2: that's companies like Nvidia, you know, the GPUs and stuff
Speaker 2: that's been subject of some administration restrictions and things. I
Speaker 2: want to maintain that lead. There are certain areas where
Speaker 2: behind in you know, precision, you know how many things
Speaker 2: you can fit on a chip and stuff the scale,
Speaker 2: nanometers and things that Taiwan Semiconductor, you know, is more
Speaker 2: advanced than us, but it's it's it's just a critical area.
Speaker 2: It's an area that you know, we invented, we dominated.
Speaker 2: It had military implications as well as commercial economic and
Speaker 2: you know it's going to be just as important in
Speaker 2: this century. And then the caller. Two other parts to that. One,
Speaker 2: you know, the the de risking of supply chains. Now
Speaker 2: that I think there's more we're discovering more rare earth's everywhere.
Speaker 2: You know, China has pretty big dominance now, but you
Speaker 2: know they're all over the world and including in the
Speaker 2: United States, you know, Wyoming and elsewhere, and so we
Speaker 2: just got to have the right policies to go after them,
Speaker 2: and then the relationships with with with some foreign governments
Speaker 2: to compete in that area. And then you know where
Speaker 2: we're dependent in pharmaceuticals as we saw and many you know,
Speaker 2: in COVID and medical supplies. You know, you got to
Speaker 2: de risk. That doesn't mean decouple completely, but you have
Speaker 2: to have alternative sources to supply and assured sources to supply.
Speaker 2: Doesn't mean everything has to be in the United States.
Speaker 2: Just can't all be in China, right. And then on
Speaker 2: cyber security, you know, that's a tough one because the
Speaker 2: public private partnership only goes so far because you know,
Speaker 2: we've got a free market system and it's sense that
Speaker 2: you know, companies don't want to tell you all their
Speaker 2: vulnerabilities or you know, for lots of reasons. And so
Speaker 2: you know, our Cyber Command commander has three missions essentially
Speaker 2: to support combatant commanders to defend all of DoD's networks.
Speaker 2: But then to defend the United States against the massive attack,
Speaker 2: you know, something that's beyond crime and everything else. But
Speaker 2: he's the only commander who really can't see the battlefield.
Speaker 2: You know, he sees partner that field or if if
Speaker 2: he can if he can target the attack or you know,
Speaker 2: where it's coming from, he can see that. But you know,
Speaker 2: if the attacks, if he doesn't see the point of
Speaker 2: origin and it's hitting all these other places that he
Speaker 2: doesn't have visibility on. He got a challenge with that.
Speaker 2: And so you know, and I you know, there's a
Speaker 2: big debate about cyber offense and cyber defense. You know,
Speaker 2: I think some of the advances in AI are going
Speaker 2: to really enable the offense going forward. We need a
Speaker 2: lot of you know, attention to this and and and
Speaker 2: you know, if quantum computing comes around in the next
Speaker 2: decade or so. So yeah, I mean it's great. Those
Speaker 2: are both really strategic questions and it's not something national
Speaker 2: security councils typically are trained or you know, kind of problem.
Speaker 1: Well, Mike, I really appreciate you, you know, being willing
Speaker 1: to tackle so many of these difficult subjects. And this
Speaker 1: turned out to be a pretty wide ranging interview. Actually,
Speaker 1: I hope that all of you out there will go
Speaker 1: and check out his memoir by all means available.
Speaker 3: I read it. It was terrific.
Speaker 1: And we will have Mike back next Friday for part two,
Speaker 1: where I'm sure we'll have more of these policy discussions
Speaker 1: and we'll also be talking about the latter part of
Speaker 1: his career where he served as the Assistant Secretary of
Speaker 1: Defense for Special Ops and Low Intensity Conflict asd Solick
Speaker 1: and also headed up USDI. So again, Mike, you thank
Speaker 1: you very much for taking the time for this interview.
Speaker 1: Thank you both, and we will see all of you
Speaker 1: next Friday.
Speaker 4: Also, real quick, make sure you check out Jack and
Speaker 4: I being interviewed on the Cleared Hot podcast for Andy Stump.
Speaker 4: He was generous enough to invite us out to Montana
Speaker 4: and it's out there now, sat around and shot the
Speaker 4: shit for a while. So and Mike, thanks so much.
Speaker 4: We will see you on Friday.
Speaker 2: Okay, take care. Thanks