The Daily - Deployed in the U.S., Just Waiting for the Caravan

Episode Date: November 21, 2018

At nearly every turn, President Trump’s own generals tried to persuade him not to deploy active-duty troops to the United States border with Mexico. So what are 5,000 troops doing there? Guest: Helene Cooper, who covers the Pentagon for The New York Times. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today, at nearly every turn, President Trump's own generals resisted his calls to deploy active military troops to the U.S.-Mexico border. So what exactly are 5,000 of them doing there? It's Wednesday, November 21st. So Helene, as our reporter at the Pentagon,

when did you first start to hear about this mission? I was traveling with Defense Secretary Mattis to Vietnam and Singapore, and this was in October, mid-October. And everybody's watching TV in the United States and watching CNN because there was so much going on at the time with the run-up to the midterm elections. And during that time... A large group of people, they called a caravan. And during that time, a large group of people, they called a caravan. There were several rallies that I saw while in Singapore in which President Trump started talking about this migrant caravan. The Democrats want caravans. They like the caravans. A lot of people say, I wonder who started that caravan.

And I was headed to the borders. And then he started saying, you know, they're coming. This is a threat. This is an invasion. That is an assault on our country. I think he gave an interview with ABC News in which he called it an invasion. They can't invade our country. You look at that, it almost looks like an invasion. It really does look like an invasion. They call it an air event or an invasion? Oh, I think so. I think when you look at... And then at one point he said, and if necessary, we're going to deploy our military.

As you know, I'm willing to send the military to defend our southern border if necessary. So we got on the plane and we're flying back. It was a 20-hour flight from Singapore to Andrews Air Force Base. And we asked Defense Secretary Mattis on the plane, Trump is talking about this migrant caravan. Do you think United States troops will be sent to the border? And Mr. Mattis said, I haven't heard anything about that. I haven't received any requests from the White House. And he moved on. Helene Cooper covers the Pentagon for The Times.

We all moved on. We landed back in the United States. And within a couple of days, the Department of Homeland Security sent a request to the Pentagon asking for troops to be sent to help support the Border Patrol. They, however, believe that that request originated with the White House. They don't think the Department of Homeland Security came up with this by themselves. And why would the president need to ask for the Department of Homeland Security to ask for something? Why wouldn't he just ask for it himself? The whole point that these officials who I talked to were making was that the president didn't want to seem as if he's being political.

So if the White House asked for this, then it looks more obviously like you're being political. If this comes from the Department of Homeland Security, you can perhaps make the argument that there's a real need there. That is what these officials said to me. Got it. So the request comes from the Department of Homeland Security to the Pentagon, and they're asking for troops who would be armed and who would be much more forward-leaning on the border. And the Pentagon rejected that immediately, within a day. Why? Because it's against the law for American troops to get involved in any kind of law enforcement capacity within the domestic boundaries of the United States. So the original request was essentially extra-legal? In the view of the Pentagon, yes, the original request was extra

legal. Then Pentagon leaders, I was told by several defense officials, understanding at the time that this was something that the White House very much wanted, was writing up these deployment orders in such a way that, yes, on the outside, it would look to the American people as if President Trump can truthfully say, yes, I am deploying American soldiers to the border. But, you know, the normal person has an image of an armed American soldier or Marine standing there with a machine gun, you know, but that is so far from what's happening. It's not even funny. We are standing right now at the epicenter of the immigration debate. This is the area where the U.S. military is ramping up this encampment here. You see the barbed wire here right behind me. It's very much a sort of, OK, you're now here at this remote outpost in the middle of what

feels like nowhere. And you are on a mission on behalf of the United States. Now, this is the border town of Donna, Texas, about 20 miles from McAllen. Over the past few days here along the U.S.-Mexico border, we have seen Border Patrol agents as well as the military conducting drills. Except that at base camp Donna, the vast majority, 80% of the troops there don't have weapons. Scott McGrew's soldiers won't be carrying guns. That's an important detail now, isn't it? Good morning. These are troops who are at a military camp within the borders of the United States.

And the soldiers have been told that they are there to provide border support and logistics for the Border Patrol police who are guarding the United States-Mexican border from a caravan of migrants that is making its way quite slowly from Central America. And what do soldiers who are deployed there do most of the day? Do you need more slack over there or no? They're good. It's a combination of hurry up and then sit and wait.

Flip. It's a combination of hurry up and then sit and wait. Flip. You know, you hurry up and you web your concertina wire, or you fill out the notebooks, or you do the sort of support facilities, driving cement bags or that sort of thing to different posts. So are these cots even comfy?

Oh, these cots are the most comfortable cots you'd ever find. The soldiers spent a lot of time making camp. Soldiers, get over to the shower. You have people there who are building the shower tents. You know, mosquito bites and chiggers and stuff. They're setting up a medical tent for soldiers who get sick. So no major trauma or anything like that. And then there's a lot of sitting around waiting for nothing to happen.

And part of the issue is that these soldiers, a lot of them know that nothing is going to happen. So you can do all of that kind of stuff. But at the end of the day, there's the question of to what end, because there is at the moment nothing to do. So President Trump's original request, his explicit desire, is to have American soldiers going to the border and acting as a form of law enforcement. And General Mattis, the Department of Defense, essentially says, that's not going to happen. That is what I was told.

And so this all gets refashioned somewhat behind the scenes as a different mission, much more support staff logistics. So now you have these American troops down there doing the exact same thing that National Guard troops who have been deployed to the border in the past for drug support missions and other things have been doing, which begs the question, why couldn't we just do this with the National Guard? And is there an answer to that? You know, the answer is 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. I think the belief at the Pentagon is that President Trump wanted to say that he deployed American troops. So the Pentagon is sort of placating the president. President Trump's relationship with the American military and with military leaders has been really, really interesting to cover. This is a case where you have a president who I don't believe understands what his military

can or can't do. And you have time and time again in the history of his relationship now with the Pentagon, where you have the president trying to do this and announcing or saying in a rally or saying in an interview that he's going to do this. Are we going to have a parade? Well, I'd like to have a parade. A lot of the generals would like to have a parade to celebrate what we're doing. And the Pentagon's saying, whoa, whoa, whoa, sir, you know, we'd love to comply, but actually we can't. And you see them walking back what he's done.

Yesterday, the Pentagon said it was postponing the parade until next year. And there were reports it would cost $92 million. So this is not the first time that this has happened. This is not the first time. One issue that sort of shows kind of the incongruity of all this is the name of the mission, which was originally given the name Operation Faithful Patriot. Faithful Patriot.

Yeah. But defense officials told me, Defense Secretary Mattis thought that that name was just too political. And so on, funnily enough, on Election Day,

Mattis decided to drop the name. The day after Election Day, the Pentagon sent a note out to reporters just saying that from now on, the name would be border support. But dropping it on Election Day is very intriguing.

It sounds almost as if it was dropped the day that that name, which is very politically minded, outlived its usefulness. Yes, you could certainly make that argument. And how do soldiers on the ground feel about this seemingly politically motivated mission? I'm sorry to ask this so bluntly. Do you feel genuinely like there is a need for you to be here right now? That's my personal opinion.

I'm not really here to talk about my personal feelings. I'm here to talk about my job. I have feelings, but again, that's not really what I'm here to do. Can you tell us your feelings? No. American troops are very careful when they're talking to reporters. And on the record, you're not going to hear any of them saying on the record, using their name and saying, we think this is stupid because they'll get fired. You're not allowed to do that.

But in subtler ways. Yeah. And they will talk to us off the record. And off the record, some of them have said, you know, this is fine. This is what we do. There are definitely several of them who have said this is part of our job is to do what the commander in chief tells us. And that's all I have to say. And then there are plenty who say off the record that this is ridiculous. We're not happy to be deployed right now within the United States. And those who say that this is ridiculous or to their mind inappropriate,

what's their explanation for feeling that way? They don't think there's a threat. And Helene, did you actually talk to people inside the Pentagon, higher up commanders? It certainly sounds like you spoke with soldiers who were in the field. But have you talked to leaders in the Pentagon about this mission and how it has been pushed through? this mission and how it has been pushed through? I have. And at the end of the day, the military commanders that we talked to have all said on the record, homeland security is part of the duty of the United States. Defending our homeland is something that we're always going to do. And when we get these requests, we're going to comply with them within the boundaries of the law.

That is what they will tell you when you ask them formally. Informally, many, many of them will tell you that they think that this is a political use of the military that makes them very, very angry. And you've seen many former military officials complaining about that as well. military officials complaining about that as well. Critics like retired Army General Martin Dempsey, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, are flatly calling this a, quote, wasteful deployment. Because this is a pretty overtly political act in the way that I'm going to send military to the border to defend the south wall of the Alamo from an invasion, which probably isn't an accurate representation of a column of migrants coming up and trying to get asylum.

And this is, you have to remember, military is a fairly conservative group of people. So when you hear former top brass saying that we think that this is political, that says something. So you're saying that's strikingly unusual. It is strikingly unusual. So Helene, your reporting suggests that this mission was born out of political motivations, not military urgency. And that was tied directly to the midterms. The midterms are now over, but the troops are still there.

Yes, the midterms are now over, but the troops are still there. And the deployment orders would leave them there until December 15th. And that's when the caravan is expected to arrive, I presume. No, the caravan is not expected to arrive before December 15th. At the rate it's going, we're looking at the end of December and January. At the rate it's going, we're looking at the end of December and January. So their deployment to intercept the caravan ends before the caravan is expected to arrive. That is correct, Michael.

That's pretty confusing. Yeah, but that's what happens when you mix politics with national security. Why not bring these troops home now, before December 15th? I think to bring the troops home right now would really expose the lie of why they were sent down there. I think it would look pretty—I mean, I don't think the American people are stupid. And I think if you say that there's an invasion coming, and then the day after Election Day you pull the troops back, that's going to look pretty obvious. But at the end of the day, several of the generals who were involved say they think the numbers have now peaked

and we're going to start looking at how to bring people home soon, even though unfortunately for the majority of these soldiers, they will be deployed over Thanksgiving Day. Helene, in all your years covering the Pentagon, there has to be several examples of questionable military deployments.

Where does this one rank? Because it feels kind of rare to have a very strong sense in advance that a threat is not really a threat. You know, I've covered the Pentagon since 2014, and I've been deployed with American troops many times since 2003, I think, in the Iraq War, I think was my first deployment. I've never seen something quite like this deployment before.

You've certainly seen deployments that critics could question. I remember covering President Obama's deployment of 3,000 American troops to Liberia to fight Ebola and to build treatment units there. And Donald Trump, who was then not president, but he was planning to run, thought that was crazy. And he, you know, called for the borders to be shut down. And the Obama decision to deploy American troops there was certainly criticized by Republicans and by a lot of conservatives. And there were some reasons you could criticize that and reasons a lot of conservatives. And there were some reasons you could criticize that and reasons that you couldn't. You know, this debate was certainly had. This one feels a little bit different from that because nothing has changed. This is something

that has been going on for years and years and years and decades and decades and decades. You know, people have come to this country looking for refuge. But now the whole idea of putting American soldiers to fight that, that's a whole different story. It's a different deployment. And it's not something that I've covered before. It's not something that I've seen before. And I sort of have felt a little bit out of my element writing about this because I don't have a reference point, you know? With so many other things, you have a reference point. We've decided that we're going to fight the Islamic state in Syria. You have a reference point for that. You know, this whole fight against Islamic

terror. We've deployed special operations troops to Yemen or to Niger or all over the world to do targeted missions. And, you know, I had a reference point for that. I didn't have a reference point for using American troops to go to the border to stop poor people from coming to America. That's like not a, I didn't know, I was, I didn't have a reference point for how does this fit in with the other ways that we use American troops. So this is still, I think for reporters who are writing about this, we're in different territory. Helene, what will this mission ultimately cost the U.S.? The Pentagon has not given a final number, public number, for what this will cost. Estimates have gone up to $200 million, but we have not seen anything formal from DOD. But that's the

financial cost. And then there's also the morale cost, because American troops, they're pretty stoic, and they're used to giving up family time and holidays and that sort of thing for a real combat to get a job done. But when you do this, you know, there's the fear that when you do this for not a good reason and there is no real job for them to get done, then you start dealing with people questioning the very reason for why they are. And that's not a position you ever want to see your military getting into. In other words, a mission like this, which may not serve any legitimate military aim, risks undermining the very nature of serving in the military. I think it does.

I think it does. be ashamed of or that is political in nature. And what they promise us is that they will put their lives on the line to protect us. And I think when you put these young men and women in a position where they are giving up huge portions of their private time with their family to do something that is political in nature, you run the risk that the next time you ask them to do something, they're not going to believe there's a good reason for it. Helene, thank you very much. We appreciate it. Thanks for having me, Michael. On Tuesday afternoon, as he prepared to board Marine One outside the White House,

President Trump was asked about the U.S. soldiers at the southern border. Oh, don't worry about the Thanksgiving. These are tough people. They know what they're doing and they're great. And they've done a great job. You're so worried about the Thanksgiving holiday for them. They are so proud to be representing our country on the border. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today.

On Tuesday, in a statement that ignored the findings of his own intelligence agencies, President Trump said that the role of Saudi Arabia's crown prince in the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi might never be known. It could very well be that the crown prince had knowledge of this tragic event, Trump wrote. Maybe he did, and maybe he didn't. In what is likely to be his final word on the matter, Trump defended the crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, despite the CIA's conclusion

that bin Salman ordered Khashoggi's assassination, the U.S., Trump wrote, intends to remain a steadfast partner of Saudi Arabia. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. We'll see you on Monday after the holiday.