The Megyn Kelly Show - Aftermath of Afghanistan and Julian Assange Allegations with Mike Pompeo and Jack Carr | Ep. 170

Episode Date: September 29, 2021

Megyn Kelly is joined by former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to discuss the failures of evacuating Afghanistan, his thoughts and recommendations on the plan to pull out, Trump’s true mental statepost-election,his reaction to allegations that the Trump administrationwasplanning to kidnap or assassinate Julian Assange, and the woke re-branding of the CIA. Megyn is also joined by bestselling author and former Navy SEAL sniper Jack Carr to discuss his personal opinion on the end of Afghanistan, the global reach of Al Qaeda, the discrepancies of war on the ground vs. on television, the benefits of hindsight on Iraq, raising patriotic children, and more.  Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/MegynKellyTwitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShow Find out more information at: https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow

Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations. Hey, everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. Today on the program, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is with us, and I've been looking forward to this. It's a great day to have him because President Biden's top military leaders are back on Capitol Hill this morning for a new round of questioning regarding the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan that ultimately led to just, I mean, so much devastation, including the deaths of 13 U.S. service members. And who knows how many Americans left behind? The administration saying 100. I've heard it put it a thousand. We really don't know is the truth. General Mark Milley today, back on Capitol Hill again yesterday, where they referred the Senate

now they're before the House Armed Services Committee. He called the war a strategic failure and warned the Taliban remains quote, a terrorist organization that maintains ties with Al Qaeda. So Mike Pompeo was a key figure in the United States beginning to pull out of Afghanistan after 20 long years of war under his then boss, President Donald Trump. And he's my guest now. Mr. Secretary, thank you so much for being with us. Megan, it's great to be with you. I've been looking forward to this as well. I'm looking forward to our conversation today a great deal. So I confess I didn't know the extent of your background. You're a smart guy. Number one in your class from West Point, Harvard Law School, almost as good as my alma mater albany law school editor of the law review you went on to

do uh some seven six or seven years in congress from kansas uh and then trump taps you to to be the head of the cia which is amazing that's got to be a pretty cool elevation, and then up to Secretary of State. So I got to ask you the same question that I asked Rick Grinnell, who is the DNI for a period of time under Trump. When you walk in as the head of the CIA, what's the first file you ask to take a look at? What's the first thing you want to get your hands on? Yeah, so Megan, thanks. And thanks for the kind words.

It was truly a privilege to be asked to lead the Central Intelligence Agency. I'd had a little exposure to it. I served on the House Intelligence Committee. So I knew a handful of people. But as you know, Megan, there's nothing like when you're in charge. So I was under strict directions from my son to make sure I read the UFO files first. Yes, of course. That's got to be it. And having read everything you've read without disclosing anything, you know, too classified. What's your conclusion? I think we're okay. I

think we have bigger challenges today that we need to take on and be sure we have right than what I was able to see in those files. All right. You're not sensing any hesitation. I can't say much more than that, but I think that's a decent summary. Okay. We're going to be okay. I'll accept that for now since we have so much to go over. All right. Let's start with Afghanistan and General Milley. He's been under cross-examination for, among other things, calling his Chinese counterpart while President Trump was still president and allegedly assuring him that the U.S. was not about to attack China. And then going on to say, if we are going to attack you, this is the allegation in the Bob

Woodward, Bob Costas book, I will give you a heads up. And there was a lot of back and forth about that yesterday saying that's insane. If you did that, that could potentially be treasonous, you know, on and on it went. And he he made two points. Number one, he said, I told Mike Pompeo after this happened, the then Secretary of State about that call, there was nothing inappropriate about it. And to prove it, I can tell you, I went to the Secretary of State and told him about it. And secondly, he tried to clarify what exactly that exchange sounded like. Let me get to him saying you knew all about it. Listen. On 31 December, the Chinese requested another call with me. The Deputy Assistant Secretary

of Defense for Asia Pacific Policy helped coordinate my call, which was then scheduled for 8 January, and he made a preliminary call on 6 January. Eleven people attended that call with me, and readouts of this call were distributed to the interagency that same day. Shortly after my call ended with General Lee, I personally informed both Secretary of State Pompeo and White House Chief of Staff Meadows about the call, among other topics. So did that happen? You know, I think the disconnect here, Megan, is the subject, what was actually said. I haven't seen General Milley knock down what Woodward and Costa wrote. Having said that, I know Woodward and Costa well enough to know that you should take everything they write with an enormous grain of salt.

The fact that General Milley chose to speak with them at such great length, I find deeply troubling. But in any event, someone needs to explain what's the disconnect. I heard what General Milley said he actually talked about on the call with his Chinese counterparts. And I've read what has been reportedly going to be in this book. Those aren't remotely the same. And I think that's what it gets to. I have no recollection of General Milley briefing me in the way that he described. But if he said, hey, I spoke with my Chinese counterparts yesterday, that wouldn't have been something particularly memorable. It would have been relatively ordinary course. I spoke with my

Chinese counterparts from time to time as well. Every senior leader in America would remember that. If that's precisely how General Milley told the Chinese that, I've worked with General Milley enough. But if he told Woodward and Costa that he said that, this is something he has to account for. That would be deeply inconsistent with his responsibilities as the senior military advisor, senior military defense advisor to the president of the United States. And it would make no tactical, operational, strategic sense to tell the Chinese that. Because in the end, it wasn't going to be how we rolled. It wasn't how the Trump administration rolled. We didn't warn our adversaries. We didn't tell them that there would be a date certain we'd leave Afghanistan. We were very clear we were going to use American power to protect America's interests. And we weren't about warning our adversaries of a potential attack if it was inconsistent with our objectives. On Afghanistan, we had a date of May 1st, but we said it was conditions based.

But let me stay on Milley and this call for one second. He did get into what specifically he said. Yesterday, when we did this broadcast, he had not yet been specifically asked, like, OK, well, what did you say? Later in the day, he was asked that. This is soundbite number two. Let's listen to it. You said you're, quote, certain that President Trump did not intend on attacking China. That's

what you just said. Correct. Yet you're quoted in the Woodward book as telling the top Chinese communist military commander, quote, if we're going to attack, I'm going to call you ahead of time. Is that true, General Milley? Well, let me tell you what I actually said. That's not true. I hope that's not true. Let me tell you what I actually said, Senator. What I said, if there's going to be a war, if there's going to be an attack, there's going to be a lot of calls and tension ahead of time. But what you're going to get called is a contact. Your testimony was that you were certain President Trump would not attack.

That's your testimony this morning. That is true. That is absolutely true. And why would you? And I was communicating to my Chinese counterpart on instructions, by the way, to de-escalate the situation. And I told him that we are not going to attack. President Trump has no intent to attack. And I told him that repeatedly. And I told him if there was going to be an attack, there'll be plenty of communications going back and forth. Your intel system is going to pick it

up. I said, I'll probably call you. Everybody will be calling you. We're not going to attack you. Just settle down. It's not going to happen. And I did it twice in October and January. I think if you're giving a heads up to the Chinese Communist Party, I didn't give him a heads up. We're going to attack because we weren't going to attack. If we're going to attack, I'm going to call you ahead of Donald Sullivan to the president of the United States's intent. He says that he told him, I'll probably call you. I don't know. You tell me. My read of that as a journalist is that's a general under fire inserting words like probably as hedges. It's not unheard of for senior U.S. officials to make very clear what our red lines are. If you do X, we'll do Y, right? You want your adversaries to know that. If you learn that your adversaries think, oh, my goodness, there's something going on

and they are prepared to counter, can you think they've got it wrong? This is what you have red phones for, right? Since you were a student of the Cold War, right? This is why you have the red line, to make absolutely crystal clear what the reality of the situation is. Those red phones are not used with the intention of giving your adversaries notice or providing them warning or providing them a guarantee, which is what General Milley's comments were dangerously close to, giving them a guarantee, which is what General Milley's comments were dangerously close to. Giving them a guarantee that says, look, I promise you we won't attack until we've given you an idea of exactly what that's going to look like. That is deeply troubling.

We want to make sure that we are crystal clear. We don't want accidental wars. We don't want accidental conflicts. We don't want ships at sea to collide with each other accidentally. Those are worthy efforts to engage in your counterparts. But it is always with the idea that you're protecting America's interests. Indeed, most importantly, you're preserving your president's freedom to act in a way he needs to without giving anyone any notice or anyone any advance warning. And I think General Milley in

his response yesterday came dangerously close to crossing that very line. What should happen to him, if anything? I will say this. The fact that he spoke at such length with Woodward is inconsistent with his duties as a general of the United States Army. So should he resign? I always leave those questions to the individual. I must say, General Milley, it appears to me that General Milley behaved in a way that is deeply inconsistent with the things that I learned when I was a young cadet and that my five years of active duty service, I would not be talking to reporters about conversations that I had with the chief rival for the United States of America to a reporter like Bob Woodward.

The only objective there, Megan, that I can identify, the only reason I can actually think General Milley would have done that was to protect himself. It was a political act. It was to tell his version of events. And the last thing to say here, Megan, and we haven't touched on this, this is important. All the stuff that I've read about these top lines on the Woodward story, half is their predicate that on whatever this was, January 8th or December 31st, that there was this craziness going on and that there was this real risk in the world. And Woodward is capturing that in the conversations that General Milley had. So the point of Woodward's book is,

look what Milley had to do to stop President Trump. I want to tell everyone who's listening to this, that was just simply not the case. I saw no evidence of this. There was no need for General Milley to be the guy who said, yes, Speaker Pelosi, I'm going to make sure there's no nuclear weapon launch. I'm going to make sure we don't start a war, I've heard, with Iran or with China. I have to tell you that that's not what I saw. I was in nearly every meeting with the president, not only for the entire four years, but in those weeks leading up to the transition to President Biden. The whole predicate, the whole case that General Milley, I think, was trying to shape and tell

a story about is just fundamentally false. He's he on the China thing. He said, oh, well, there was some traffic. We could tell that they were they were starting to wonder whether we were going to launch an attack back on October 30. And then on January 8th, two days after the Capitol Hill riot, he's painting Pelosi as calling him saying, and I quote, he's crazy about President Trump. He's crazy. You know, he's crazy. And Woodward has Milley saying, yes, I know, agreeing. Milley denied that yesterday. Well, let me ask you as somebody who was in the administration during

that time, we all know President Trump did not accept the results of the election and that he challenged them into court and otherwise for weeks thereafter. But what do you make of that allegation? Because I've heard Republicans who I like and trust say, if he were crazy, I would like to know because we could see another Trump run in 2024. I mean, what what was his mental state? How would you describe him in those days? This is really easy. No crazy, Megan. None of us were. That's it. No color. Come on. I mean, like he he was angry. This is this is this is the this is the media narrative of this is the this is the Joy Reid CNN media narrative. Right. It was the media narrative for four years, five, if you count the election cycle. Right. Right. That we were the rubes. We were the barbarians. We're going to tear down America's central institutions, that there weren't processes and controls.

I always respond to that by saying, okay, let's look at the outcomes. Let's measure the performance outcomes. And I think when you do that, it racks and stacks pretty nicely, certainly against the last eight months, but I think it racks and stacks pretty nicely against the previous eight years as well. And so this narrative that somehow it was zany or the zoo, which I think is what General Milley's comments further, further provide fuel for were inconsistent with my observations for the four years I served in the National Security Office. And the media spent four years telling us that, you know, all Trump's lies and he's a serial liar. And yet it's far less an asset to boot. Yes.

Yeah. And it's far less interested in Joe Biden's many lies like there's no more Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. And this was a this was done an extraordinary success, the withdrawal and that it wasn't going to collapse immediately. All that stuff. OK, so let's get on to Afghanistan and the withdrawal and all that, because I saw you tweet the other day and I completely agree. Leaders take responsibility. Joe Biden hasn't done that. He has not done that at the border. He hasn't done that in Afghanistan. But I wanted to ask you about whether you should be taking responsibility. Donald Trump should, because it was you two who struck this deal. And I know that you say it was conditions based. You know, you struck it in February 2020, signed a withdrawal agreement in Doha, Qatar with the Taliban co-founder. And it said, we're going to leave Afghanistan in 14 months on May 1st, 2021. And it had conditions that the Taliban was supposed to meet before we would withdraw. They weren't supposed to let Afghanistan become a haven for terrorists. They were supposed to stop attacking U.S. service members. They were supposed to start peace talks with the Afghan government and consider a ceasefire with them. And then we were going to reduce our troops, which we started to do thereafter. But the question is whether

at the time, let me start with this, at the time and thereafter, did you believe that the Taliban was meeting our conditions? No. So why did we continue withdrawing our troops while you guys were still in office? Because we were able to do that, because we were able to reduce the forces there on the ground, which President Trump had made a deep commitment to executing. Right. He campaigned on this his entire time. The American people wanted it was, in fact, the right thing to do. And we were able to do that. You know this, Megan. We we'd reduced our force posture in Afghanistan multiple times. We increased our force posture multiple times over 20 years. You adjust your forces to meet what you believe are the desired end outcomes so that you can protect America's interests, right?

President Trump was always very clear. Mike, I want everybody out. This is no secret. He tweeted it. He wanted our young men and women home. He wanted that war over. Yeah, right. He wanted the war over.

We were working diligently to achieve that. One of the threads of our strategy was to try and convince the Taliban to sit at the table with their Afghan fellow citizens and try and arm wrestle their way to peace and reconciliation. We knew, Megan, this is a decade-long process, maybe five years if you're lucky. We know the history of Afghanistan. We weren't remotely naive, but we got them to sit at the table. The Bush administration had tried and failed. Everyone had. We got it done. We had women sitting with senior Taliban leaders, NGOs sitting with senior Taliban leaders. We didn't just sign an agreement with the Taliban. I signed one with the Afghan government as well. So the comprehensive effort involved three pieces. One, getting our force

posture right. We did that. You talked about the fact we drew down. If you think about the trace of our forces there, the president in June of 17 actually increased the number of uniformed military personnel there. I should be careful. I should always refer to that, right? Uniformed military personnel on the ground went up. We then began to go down from just over 15,000 to 8,600. We stopped, we paused, we evaluated the conditions on the ground. We worked closely with General Miller, who was the commander of forces in Afghanistan to do that. We then went down to, I think the next step was 4,700 and then ultimately down to 2,800. But each step along the way, Megan, we evaluated the conditions on the

ground. Are they doing the things that we need them to do to secure America's interests, make sure we can get Americans out, make sure that we can ultimately get our equipment out? Are they breaking with Al Qaeda? Will they do the things necessary to reduce risk that we're ever attacked from that place again? The president gave us each of those missions, not just getting everyone out. And so on January 20th of 2021, we were at somewhere around 2,800 uniformed military personnel on the ground. And that was as far as we got because of the conditions on the ground. And Megan, the last thing to say here is we did that and maintained the force posture to protect America. We had a plan to do that. It was a deterrence model. The Taliban knew we'd quite readily attack them if they attacked an

American. So that's why I think they did not do that until the Biden administration came in. We didn't have an American soldier killed from the date you talked about, February 29, 2020, until we left office. And it wasn't because of the piece of paper. It was because the Taliban knew we were deadly serious. They'd watched our strike in Qasem Soleimani. They'd watched us take down ISIS. And we knew, they knew, if they moved on a checkpoint, if they moved in a way that was inconsistent with America's interest, we would wreak all kinds of havoc on them. We had to do that a handful of times to communicate clearly to them that we were going to do it. And sadly, when the Biden mission came in,

they ripped up that plan, set a political arbitrary end date, September 11th, 2021, and you can see the end result. Well, but let me ask you that, because nothing in the deal that we struck with them mandated that the Taliban stop its military campaign or refrain from capturing Kabul or agree to an actual deal with the Afghan government. So what specifically were

they violating that would have caused us to leave those last twenty five hundred troops that Trump left and Biden had at the time we got to August. Yeah, I think that's an important question. The single thing that the thing that frankly matters most that they are in violation of was that we still hadn't satisfactorily achieved a set of conditions that we thought we could preserve our capacity to reduce risk that we'd be attacked from there. A subset of that is their break with Al Qaeda. The reason that we've gone to Afghanistan in the first place was the crushing of al-Qaeda's component in Afghanistan. But have they ever changed that?

I mean, you tell me. I look back on when you struck the deal with the Taliban just prior to when you guys struck the deal. And every day thereafter, the Taliban presence in Afghanistan has been, I mean, sorry, al-Qaeda's presence in Afghanistan has been the same. They've been in some 13 of the counties or provinces, whatever you call them. And the deal, those two are friendly and the Taliban never really stopped providing a safe haven for Al Qaeda. They never did it. They said they'd do it. They never lived up to it and they still weren't living up to it. And they're still not living up to it now. Am I wrong about that? Some of what you say is right. Some, it doesn't quite capture the complexity of the arrangements between the two of them and the important American interest that's connected to that.

Your point about the fact that they are friendly, absolutely true. Siraj Akhani is number two guy, part of the Taliban chain of command. I think he's now the minister of interior in Afghanistan. So those ties are deep and strong and real. Having said that, we saw times too where they were in conflict. They also gave us, I think, because of massive American power, not because they loved us, but they gave us the capacity to accomplish a mission. And we did that, right? You know how many Al Qaeda were there when we showed up. There were fewer than 200 by the time that our administration departed. Importantly, too, Megan, the networks, right? When we think about America's counterterrorism operations, sometimes we just focus on Afghanistan in a way that's not consistent with risk.

And if you're doing counterterrorism, it's about risk to the homeland, most importantly. I mean, we got bin Laden in Pakistan. Al-Qaeda's senior leadership today isn't in Afghanistan, Megan. It's not in Pakistan. It's in Tehran. The senior operational leaders for global Al-Qaeda, the people who build the networks that threaten countries outside of their localities, sit in Tehran, Iran today. We drove them out. In fact, you know, there was a CIA strike on the number two Al-Qaeda

leader in Tehran during our time. It was a beautiful operation. I'm incredibly proud of the work that we did there. Soleimani. No, not Soleimani, Al-Qaeda. Oh, you're talking Al-Qaeda, Al-Qaeda leader. Yes, no, Al-Qaeda. This is something we have to make sure everybody understands. Al-Qaeda's senior leadership, the place that they are talking to their forces in the Philippines, to Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Yemen, to al-Shabaab, the place that global Al-Qaeda runs its global network today is not in Afghanistan. It's not in Pakistan. It's in Iran. And just as a footnote, this administration is now talking with the Iranian leadership in Vienna. I mean, it's nuts. They are hosting al-Qaeda's senior leadership in Tehran, and our nation's leaders are talking about, can't we all just get along? So we need to be mindful. When we think about al-Qaeda, we are faced with wisdom al-Qaeda from multiple places, including still from Afghanistan. And so as we began to think about how we maintain our counterterrorism posture, we I recommended to the president that we could withdraw our troops to the extent we did.

Each time we evaluated the conditions, could we continue to reduce risk in Afghanistan? I was never able to get to a place where I could tell the president that we could get all the way to the end objective of getting everyone out. We were working along multiple vectors to try and create that set of conditions. We didn't achieve the point where I could make that recommendation. Well, let me ask you that. So let's go back to August, just last month, as the Taliban's taking over city after city in Afghanistan. And again, we've got 2,500 troops there who had not been attacked since the time you signed that deal. But what the administration says and what the generals were saying yesterday was the deal was about to expire.

And on August 30th, it had been extended. Let me just stop you there. They're saying on August 30th, they would have come after us. The war would have ramped back up. You had the generals yesterday saying we would have had to put 20,000 troops back in Afghanistan if we hadn't pulled them. Yeah. Look, Megan, you're asking me to do something that I don't think any previous secretary of space would have to speculate about what would have happened if we were still there. Well, you say what you said.

Trump wouldn't have done this. I wish the American people had allowed us to stay there because I know how we would have responded because I know what we did. I can speak to what we did. When the Taliban moved in ways that were inconsistent with protecting the Afghan senior security interests and America's interests, we crushed them. We built a deterrence model. We made their costs in excess of the benefits they thought they could derive. And so to suggest somehow that on some date, May 31st, I've heard people say, I heard you talk about August there, on some date that the Trump administration would have ceased its deterrence mechanism, right? We'd been fighting the Taliban for 20 years there.

The Trump administration understood how to continue to perform our CT function there, protect Kabul, protect, to keep the Afghan security forces together. I don't have to speculate about whether we could do it. We did it. We did it for four years. And we, you just threw out a number of 20,000 that someone may have suggested yesterday. We did it for an awfully long time and we never had 20,000 troops on the ground and we achieved it for four years, Megan. Well, and that's what, I mean, the peace was kept. I mean, it wasn't perfect, but it was Afghan. It was Afghan disorder, but it was it was allowing us to continue to perform our counterterrorism mission and protect the United States. That's the thing. So and we didn't have another major attack during that time during under Trump.

And and now we have our generals coming out and saying one's coming. I mean, they're putting months on it, you know, 12 months, 24, 36. And there's sort of this collective shoulder shrug of, OK, well, you know what? Welcome to what it's like to be a Gen Xer to the young people today. Right. It's like this is how we've been living since 9-11, worried about another attack. And now they're going to have to worry about another attack because our generals seem to be saying, yeah, one's coming. So I want to ask former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo about that in just one minute. Going to squeeze in a quick break and then come back to that topic.

Welcome back, everyone, to The Megyn Kelly Show. My guest right now is former head of the CIA, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. So let's talk about that because now they are pretty clear that we're very vulnerable to an attack by al-Qaeda from Afghanistan. Just moments ago, General McKenzie, the head of CENTCOM testified there's no indication the Taliban has broken ties with al-Qaeda. Oh, great. And so I'm kind of stunned at the cavalier attitude the generals, the administration seem to have about that very real possibility. Your thoughts on it? Megan, I think what you're hearing from them is a little bit of their reflection when they told the president that this risk existed. I'm confident they did. They told President Trump

this same thing for four years as well, right? That this risk was real and we had to make sure that the conditions were right. So the Trump administration honored that, right? That security risk. We didn't do what the Biden administration did. And I think that's what you're hearing in their voices there. It is the case that the fact that we have fewer Americans on the ground in Afghanistan, now zero uniformed military personnel, creates an ability for us to see what's going on there is reduced and therefore risk is increased. I do want to remind everyone that's true in lots of places in the world where there's ungoverned space. We should all note we have ungoverned space on our southern border as well now, because we have cartels that have control and the Mexican government does not. When we think about risk, as we think about CT risk around the world, we have done amazing work for the last 20 years. I take no credit for this. These are people who came long before me and who built out a pretty robust set of counterterrorism operational capabilities that still exist,

that are still working, that make it difficult to conduct a complex operation. Not impossible, for sure, but pretty darn difficult. It has served us pretty well these last two decades. I hope that this administration will keep that set of capabilities in place. And now we have one in Afghanistan where we have less insight, less visibility, and therefore less intelligence. And so I think they're rightly reflecting the fact that there is more risk today now that the Taliban are in control of Kabul. Can you speak to the upset that a lot of soldiers and servicemen and women are feeling

in the wake of this Afghanistan debacle, the way we withdrew, the way we abandoned our allies, you know, the people who helped us and some some just feeling like we we lost, we we lost, right, like we didn't have to lose, that we kind of surrendered. I I've heard it from service personnel who are supportive of President Trump, but didn't really love the Doha agreement. And from those who were supportive of Biden in general, but can't stand the way he did the withdrawal. But I think there's a lot of malaise now and a lot of sadness within the military community about the way America looks and what the blood and treasure sacrifices were for. I don't know, as somebody who was in the position you were in, what do you want them to know yeah three three things come to mind as i listened to your question there megan first

their sacrifice was noble it was important the takedown of al-qaeda which we successfully did right we took them from being a massive threat to the united states sitting in the caves of torabora to a place where now their operational leadership is no longer in that space. And for 20 years, we maintained a posture that has successfully prevented the same kind of attack that we saw now 20 years ago. So they should feel proud of the work that they did. Absent that work, we take this as for granted now because we can look back. But absent that work, I am as sure as you can be without being able to prove it. I am as sure as you can be that we would have had a much greater

likelihood that Al-Qaeda would have been able to repeat what they did. Their service was important, it was noble, and it achieved really good outcomes. And all of us who live in the United States today should be thankful for the work that every soldier, every sailor, every airman, marine, every intelligence officer and diplomat who served there, they delivered that security for us for 20 years, and they should be very proud of it. The second thought is I understand their feeling. I feel it too. The debacle that was the departure from Afghanistan is tragic. It didn't have to be that way. We always knew that there would be a day, we didn't know when, when we could have fewer American lives at risk in Afghanistan. I went to Dover Air Force Base to see

the families of those who had fallen when their remains were returned here. It is heartbreaking that we lost so many in the 20 years, and we needed to do the right thing to reduce the cost to the United States of America and the risk to our young men and women. But it didn't have to end in a way which had no conditions, an arbitrary political deadline, and ultimately the chaos of the departure where we not only left Americans behind. And in your intro, Megan, you talked about how many. It's in the hundreds for sure. I hear from people nearly every day who are trying to help extract Americans. We left Americans behind. We left equipment behind. We didn't live up to the

promises that America made to those who had supported us for those 20 years or some part of those 20 years. And I understand why people are saddened by that. It's deeply inconsistent with the American tradition. Can I ask you some criticism from the former National Security Advisor, Henry McMaster? He spoke to Barry Weiss. He pointed the finger at you, at Trump, and said, you know, it's thanks to you guys that this happened. I'll play you the soundbite, and you can tell me what you think. Our Secretary of State signed a surrender agreement to the Taliban. You're talking about Mike Pompeo.

Yes. And do you know what happened next? The Taliban began to marshal weapons and fighters. They left Pakistan, began to marshal for a major offensive, timed for about this time, right, planned well in advance, planned, by the way, by Siraj Haqqani, who's a member of al-Qaeda and the military commander of the Taliban. time, right? Planned well in advance. Planned, by the way, by Siraj Haqqani, who's a member of Al-Qaeda and the military commander of the Taliban. Okay, tell me again how there's this bold line, you know, between the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. It's laughable, right? And then what

they did is they went to Afghan commanders at various levels and said, hey, here's your alternatives. The Americans already told you they're abandoning you. So either we can come to an agreement, you know, where we'll, you know, we'll give you some payout, we'll give you free passage and everything. Or the alternative is we're going to kill you and your families. How about that for a deal? And so that's why you saw the collapse. This collapse goes back to the capitulation agreement of 2020. I mean, the Taliban didn't defeat us. We defeated ourselves. And we, And what's worse is we threw the Afghans under the bus on our way out. Hey, if we were just going to leave, why the hell didn't we just leave?

Why did we force them to release 5,000 of some of the most heinous people on earth who immediately went back to terrorizing the Afghan people? And before the ink was even dry, right, on this capitulation agreement, they were attacking maternity hospitals, gunning down expectant mothers and infants. They were setting bombs in girls' schools and setting secondary bombs up outside so as they fleed the initial explosion, they could kill more of them, right? This is the enemy who we surrendered to. Some tough words there from H.R.

McMaster. Your response to him? Yes. Look, General McMaster had a view on Afghanistan. It was shared in other Republican circles as well. That was about staying in Afghanistan with 100,000 troops forever. That would have been their model. The generals are still saying they would have needed 20,000. That wasn't the reality. It wasn't what the American people wanted. It wasn't what President Trump campaigned on. I think that's why General McMaster didn't make it all the way through the administration. The document that was signed in February was no more a surrender document in Man in the Moon. General McMaster knows that that was just good theater. He knows

it wasn't a surrender document. I can tell you it wasn't a surrender document because I know how it was dealt with for the, what would it be, 11 months after the day we signed that document. We were still fully engaged in our counterterrorism mission there and fully engaged in supporting the Afghan National Security Forces as well. We agreed to release 5,000 of their prisoners, some of whom have gone on to lead the battle and were directly responsible for taking over the country once we started our withdrawal. Yeah, I'm not sure the second part of that's accurate. I'd have to see some evidence that some of those were there. I'm happy to review it. Could be the case. These were Afghan prisoners.

We were working diligently to try and get to peace and reconciliation. The Afghan leadership wanted that too. Remember, they had a very contentious presidential election. The government itself was corrupt. The Afghan government itself, President Ghani was among the most corrupt leaders I had ever encountered in my time as Secretary of State. Megan, you know the world. That's a pretty tall order. He was stealing money from the United States of America left and right. So we were left with a very weak Afghan government trying diligently to deliver a model that could ultimately get to something that looked like a Afghan government that represented all Afghans. We knew this was- But just to follow up on, and I'm not going to defend President Ghani,

but just to follow up, there was a Wall Street Journal report in August saying many of the Taliban insurgents currently aiding in the conquest of Afghanistan were once prisoners of the American-backed Afghan government were in the 5,000. The Taliban commander overseeing an assault on the key southern city of Lashkarga is one of 5,000 former prisoners released by the Afghan government last year under pressure from the U.S. And it goes on to talk about some others who we could be. It could absolutely be the Afghans help people. They release people all the time for 20 years. This this went on.

We were we were doing our best to kill bad guys and keep America safe. We didn't do it. We got these guys released. That's that's the criticism. We were we were working to deliver on American security. And we did that. We did that, Megan. No one can dispute that during the Trump administration, we delivered on the central things that mattered to the United States of America. We were unashamed, Megan, talking about America first. We did it. And I'll never apologize for the way

that we delivered that outcome for the American people. We didn't set an arbitrary date. We didn't pull our troops out. We didn't leave equipment behind. We didn't leave Americans and Afghans who helped us behind. We delivered for our entire four years. Inside the prison, there were some very bad guys. Outside the prison, there were some very bad guys. I mean, this is part of the difficulty of dealing with a country like Afghanistan and trying to negotiate an end to a very long conflict. Just one last thought. To tie the prisoner release to the debacle that the Biden administration led to is just, it's deeply disconnected from reality. I mean, it's all such a mess. Afghanistan is a mess.

The suggestion from Jake Sullivan and H.R. McMaster somehow that this prisoner release resulted in the collapse of the Afghan government. Yeah, that's rich too. The prisoners were released and there was no collapse of the Afghan government, right? So this is a red herring thrown up by the Biden administration

to do what presidents should never do. And that's passed the buck from the central responsibility that the deep, important responsibility you have as the president of the United States to protect America. OK, my guest at the moment is former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Up next, how concerned should we be about the CIA's focus on becoming woke and highlighting agents professing their generalized anxiety disorders in commercial ads. I only wish I were kidding. Welcome back to the Megyn Kelly show, everyone.

My guest right now is former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. All right. So I want to get to the woke military in one second. But first, I've got to ask you about this Yahoo reporting on Julian Assange, in addition to being the former Secretary of State, used to run the CIA, as we discussed. And their report a couple of days ago by Mike Isikoff, among others, is that they who wrote for Yahoo, a long piece, an investigation in which they claim to have spoken to more than 30 former US.S. officials and revealed that in 2017, the CIA, which you were running at the time, plotted to kidnap Julian Assange and even discussed plans to assassinate him.

They report that this sparked heated debate amongst Trump administration officials about the legality and practicality of such a plan. Again, that some inside the CIA and the Trump administration actively discussed killing Assange and even requested sketches and options for how to assassinate him. True or false?

Makes for pretty good fiction, Megan. They should write such a novel. This is classic Isikoff. I can't say much about this other than whoever those 30 people who allegedly spoke with one of these reporters, they should all be prosecuted for speaking about classified activity inside the Central Intelligence Agency. Maybe they didn't. Maybe Isikoff just made it up. But you should know I take seriously my responsibilities to protect that information. Second thing, there is no doubt WikiLeaks is in fact a non-state

hostile intelligence service. They're actively seeking to steal American classified information. This isn't good reporting. This isn't asking someone to leak. This is working to steal secrets from the United States of America. We have a responsibility to protect that information. And the Trump administration worked doggedly every day to do just that. Now, I'm gleaning that the answer is therefore false. You're saying if it's fiction, you deny the charges, you deny the report. So, Megan, I read the article just the other day. There's pieces of it that are true. Were we trying to protect American information from Julian Assange and WikiLeaks? Absolutely, yes.

Did our Justice Department believe they had a valid claim, which would have resulted in the extradition of Julian Assange to the United States to stand trial here? Yes, I supported that effort for sure. Did we ever engage in activity that was inconsistent with U.S. law? You know the rules here, Megan. You know precisely how the CIA operates in the sense of we're not permitted by U.S. law to conduct assassinations. We never acted in a way that was inconsistent with that, nor did we ever circumvent. There's some suggestion in this article that we circumvented the lawyers to conduct these kinds of rogue things. Well, we know we never acted in it because Julian Assange is still alive.

The reporting is that there was a plot that, you know, plans and sketches and pretty detailed discussions. Yeah, I can say we never conducted planning to violate U.S. law, not once in my time. Hmm. Can I just ask you about it? Because I confess I wasn't all that up to speed on what WikiLeaks had reported on this Vault 7. Vault 7 detailed the CIA's electronic surveillance and cyber warfare activities from 2013 and 2016. And apparently WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, got their hands on it, reported on it.

How damaging was that? Again, the response to efforts to take American secrets is very sensitive stuff. Megan, I'll say this generically. When our secrets are stolen, when we have deep efforts that the United States has been using to counter our foreign adversaries, ones like we just spoke the first 30 minutes about, al-Qaeda, all across the world, when bad guys steal those secrets, we have a responsibility to go after them, to prevent that from happening. And then once we find that they were able to do that,

they were successful at doing that, we have the absolute responsibility to respond. It is expensive. It is time consuming. Gathering this intelligence is hard work. It takes years to do and can take just minutes for it to be stolen by groups like WikiLeaks. The dog is upset about it, too. He's mad. He's not a Julian Assange fan.

Both of them are. Okay, so I got it. I've got it. Let me ask you one other question on this. You guys labeled WikiLeaks a hostile intelligence service. Can I ask you, what actions did you want to see taken as a result of that? Megan, I can't say much other than we desperately wanted to hold accountable those individuals that had violated U.S. law, that had violated the requirements to protect and preserve our information and had tried to steal it. There's a deep legal framework to do that. And we took actions consistent with American law to achieve that. I wish I could say

more. I said, I got it. I got it. You're in a sensitive position. What do you make of, do you think Assange was treated very badly? That's what Trump said. No, Assange treated the United States and its people very badly. He wanted Trump to pardon him at the end of the term. Trump declined to do that. So, you know, we'll see. It doesn't seem like Trump may think he was treated very badly, but when asked to actually, you know, give him a break legally, he didn't do it. OK, let's see how the dog feels about a woke CIA. He's going to be just as upset about that, Megan. He thinks it's rough, really rough.

Really rough, yes. Sorry. Oh, Abby is covering her face. My assistant does not approve of my stupid joke. Nice. Tell Abby I think it's world class. I like it. All right, so I only wish this were a parody,

but this is an actual CIA recruiting video. Here's how they're now trying to get CIA agents, analysts, etc. Watch. I'm a woman of color. I am a mom. I am a cisgender millennial who's been diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder. I am intersectional, but my existence is not a box checking exercise. I did not sneak into CIA. My employment was not and is not the result of a fluke or slip through the cracks. I earned my way in, and I earned my way up the ranks of this organization. I am educated, qualified, and competent. I refuse to internalize misguided patriarchal ideas of what a woman can or should be.

I stand here today a proud first- Latina, an officer at CIA. OMG. What are we to make of that? Lost. Just lost. You're a CIA, you're an officer of the United States serving the Central Intelligence Agency. You're not a male CIA officer. You're not a female CIA officer. You're not a Latin CIA officer. You're a CIA officer. This is what we should be focused on. We should be demanding excellence from everybody who

comes onto that team. Megan, you know this problem is much bigger than just the CIA. We see it in our military today. We see it in every element of the United States government. Frankly, we see it in the private sector as well, where we've lost this central idea of every American should be tweeted fairly, equally, regardless of their race or their gender. And now we've moved to a place where we are telling our adversaries that we are retaining and recruiting our operatives in the United States of America based on something totally unrelated and their excellence in conducting espionage. Right. No one cares about you being cisgendered or it's all right. So Mike Pompeo sat here and he's taken my tough questions for the better part of an hour, which I greatly appreciate.

Not everybody has the stones to do it. So hats off to you. However, I have to end on this happy note. Mike and I first started corresponding a couple of Easter's ago when I posted a tweet of my Easter cake. And then he posted a tweet of his Easter cake. And this is how we first bonded. And I have to ask you, is this your tradition or your wife's tradition or who actually baked that cake, sir? Again, I got it. Just like I told you the truth

the last hour, my wife did the cake. I thought you were going to go back to, there's only so much I can reveal. No, ma'am. That's an easy one. Well, I love it. I love your sense of humor. Listen, I really do appreciate it. And next time you come on, we'll talk about 2024 and whether we're going to see the name Mike Pompeo on one of those lecterns. It's been a pleasure. Thank you so much for being here. Yes, ma'am. Thank you, Megan.

All the best. Up next, bestselling author and former Navy SEAL sniper Jack Carr. Don't go away. Welcome back to The Megan Kelly Show, everyone. Currently, the House Armed Services Committee is questioning General Milley. You recall he was before the Senate Armed Services Committee yesterday. Today, before the House, Congressman Matt Gaetz just grilled General Milley on his knowledge of Biden's phone call with President Ghani. You recall there was an allegation that Biden, he misled, he asked President Ghani to mislead everyone about

the Taliban's aggressive takeover there. Gates said that General Milley spent more time talking with Bob Woodward for his new book than he did worrying about Afghanistan. Watch this. When did you become aware that Joe Biden tried to get Ghani to lie about the conditions in Afghanistan? He did that in July. Did you know that right away? I'm not aware of what President Biden. You're not aware of the phone call that Biden had with Ghani where he said, whether it is true or not, we want you to go out there and paint a rosy picture of what's going on in Afghanistan. You're the chief military advisor to the president.

You said that the Taliban was not going to defeat the government of Afghanistan militarily, which, by the way, they cut through them like a hot knife through butter. And then the president tries to get Ghani to lie. When did you become aware of that attempt? Well, there's two things there, Congressman, if I may. One is what I said was the situation was stalemate. And if we kept advisors with there, the government of Afghanistan and the army would have still been there. That's what I said. Whether that's right

or wrong, I don't know. So basically a dodge. He doesn't know about it. Joining me now, Jack Carr, a bestselling author who spent 20 years as a Navy SEAL leading sniper teams in Iraq and Afghanistan. Jack, thank you so much for being here. How are you doing? Great. Thank you so much for having me on. So, you know, basically, this is the generals there with their tails between their legs, just getting hammered by yesterday, the Senate and today, the House on the numerous debacles that we've seen. I mean, every piece of this withdrawal has just been awful. There's really very little for them to defend on substance. And, you know, the one person who's not there is Joe Biden, who hasn't taken any responsibility so far. And the one person who's not there is Joe Biden, who hasn't taken

any responsibility so far. And the generals are sort of twisting in the wind and trying to do their level best not to completely throw him under the bus. But you can see sort of in the eyes and with the wink and a nod, they're all saying, we tried to warn him. He didn't listen. Yeah, there's that. But then there's also they are saying essentially the same thing that you just discussed Joe Biden talking about on that phone call. Paint a rosier picture. Well, that's what they did for 20 years. And you can go back and look at testimony to Congress, look at interviews with Pentagon reporters, speeches to their troops when they talk to the American public on different news shows. And they're painting a rosy picture this entire time. If you go back and look at how many times they say progress, or we're making progress, we're achieving progress, we're meeting our goals.

I mean, you can just plug and play all these different generals over the last 20 years, with the exception of one who was fired not long after. He essentially told the truth about what was happening in Afghanistan. That's General McKiernan. But they said the same thing that the president was saying on that phone call, painting that rosier picture. But the president's phone call is interesting because you can see province after province, city after city, village after village falling to the Taliban from early in 2001 up to August. So it's so heartbreaking to see how all of this played out, especially after our initial successes in 2001, particularly December 2001, which would be what Carl von Clausewitz would have called the culminating point of victory, which means that

if you keep pushing these initial successes and push past them, you'll turn those successes into failures. And that's when we had bin Laden in Tora Bora. We had about 2,500 troops on the ground, but only 100 in those mountains. And they were requesting additional forces to cut off bin Laden's escape route into Pakistan. And those requests were denied. We had some Afghan partners on the ground. And I put that in quotations because we're just paying them to be our partners at that time. And of course, bin Laden escapes into Pakistan. And then we have what we saw for the next 20 years. What do you make? I just had Mike Pompeo on and talk to him about should we have left more forces? Should we know what we have done? He denies that they would

have pulled the forces out in any way resembling what happened under Biden. But to the point of withdrawing in general, to the point of just ending this thing after the 20 years, how did you feel about it? Well, I felt that after December 2001, particularly if you are a student of history, or if you just have some common sense, and that's another thing that Klausowitz said was the most important attribute of a military leader was having common sense. Our military leaders seem to be missing that, or a lot of our elected officials seem to be missing that common sense. Our military leaders seem to be missing that, or a lot of our elected officials seem to be missing that common sense component. And that is why so many people, so many junior enlisted, junior officers who actually spent time in combat on the ground, and then people that

are just informed citizens with common sense could look at this situation and say, why are we giving up Bagram? Why are we giving up a strategically advantageous position and then intentionally putting our troops in a disadvantageous position at the Kabul airport? It just didn't make sense to anyone who would look at that with just a little bit of common sense. So adaptability is that other thing that's in warfare is extremely important. You're adapting to the enemy. The enemy is always adapting to you. So it's a constant game of adaptation. And typically, sense and played right into the enemy's hands psychologically as well as tactically on the ground. And we stuck with that. And we saw that disaster unfold in August before our very eyes.

And to those of us who were on the ground there, I mean, it's so disheartening and avoidable. That was the hardest part about it. It was avoidable. Even with the decision to get out, what happened in August was that part was avoidable. That was the hardest part about it. It was avoidable. Even with the decision to get out, what happened in August was that part was avoidable. That's what these generals seem to be saying yesterday, that they were placed in a position of having to choose between Bagram and the embassy. And they did not have the troops to protect both locations. And so they decided to go with the embassy, thinking that the Afghans were going to protect Bagram, which of course, they didn't, and completely imploded and the Taliban got control of it. And then there was no there's just been no reassessment. It wasn't until six days before we were supposed to have everybody out that that Biden even asked these guys to draw up a plan or to get him some real information on what if we stayed longer? What are the options to stay longer so we can do this more safely,

more securely and get the hundreds of Americans who now, according to Mike Pompeo, are still there out? Oh, it's ridiculous. And we even had President Biden sitting down with George Stephanopoulos saying, hey, we'll move that date. We'll adapt here if there are American citizens on the ground. And then, of course, we went right ahead and did not do that. A lot of this, I think, plays back. If you look at how many generals were fired during the Civil War by President Lincoln, if you look at how many generals were fired in the lead up to World War II and during World War II by General George Marshall, they fired people until they got the right people in the right places to win those wars. We also had

what was called, it was the secretary, was not the Secretary of Defense at that time, it was the Secretary of War, and it was the secretary, was not the secretary of defense at that time. It was the secretary of war. And it was the war department, not the department of defense. And that changed in 1947. And we have not had the best track record going forward because defense and war are almost two separate things. You want to talk about defense, we can defend the borders of our country. But war is actually focused on that one sole thing, committing America's sons and daughters to a conflict, understanding the nature of that conflict, and crushing the enemy.

And we haven't really done that since 1947. I heard you talk about this and sort of say, and we also haven't won a war since then. So why is that? Why is that? The United States, such a military power with all of our resources and all of our amazing fighters, why can't those in charge manage to actually design a plan that leads us into the winner's circle? I think it's because there is no accountability. We're seeing that right now. Back in 2007, I have a quote written down right here. And although he was talking about Iraq, it really holds true for the military in general from 1947 on. And it's Lieutenant Colonel Paul Yingling.

And he says in an article he wrote called The Failure of Generalship, he said, as matters stand now, a private who loses a rifle suffers a far greater consequence than a general who loses a war. And we're seeing that right now. We have 600,000 weapons left behind. We have 75,000 vehicles, 200 aircraft. Yet a private, if he loses his rifle, there are major consequences. You lose all the rest of that sort of thing and lose a war.

Guess what? You fail upwards. You oftentimes get promoted. You retire. You go sit on the board at a company that is attached to the defense industry in some way, shape, or form. And it's really that accountability piece that it holds true for junior level enlisted, junior level officers, but not for our senior level leaders. And I think that's where we can make some serious changes going forward is in the selection of our generals and then holding them accountable for their failures so that we can grow stronger as a country, as a military, and apply these lessons going forward as wisdom. Because if we don't, then those people who sacrificed over the last 20 years have done that sacrifice has been in vain. How would you do it? How would you select the leaders, the generals?

So there are so many more technological ways that we can look at someone's career outlook rather than impressing your boss. And that's what we're based on now. Essentially, it's a turn of the 19th to 20th century type of an advancement system, where if you impress your boss and his view of you or her view of you, that dictates whether you go forward or not. Well, guess what we have now? We have technology. We can assess people based on peers, based on subordinates, more importantly, especially in the military and leaders to get a more holistic view of this person. Is this the right person? Is this the leader that we want taking our sons and daughters into battle? So there are tools at our disposal that we are

certainly not using right now. It's still based on if your boss has a good view of you. And so the actions that you take are meant to give that boss the view that you want so you can move up in this chain of command. And people look at it as a career. It's a good point. It's basically the best ass kissers make their way up to the top positions. That's exactly right. Exactly what I was thinking. That's so wrong. I mean, it's fine in corporate America, I guess, but in the military, these should not be the criteria. No, no, exactly not. And for the military, that's the sole purpose of the military is to take the country to war and to crush our enemies.

Anything that distracts from that mission, and we're seeing more and more distractions these days. Of course, with the rise of social media, it kind of makes it easier to be distracted for these people that are thinking ahead and thinking to their transition, maybe out of the military and onto these different corporate boards here and there. But the sole focus of the military is to go to war and win wars. If you go back and look at that track record, you wouldn't keep hiring the same coaches if this was a sports team. They keep losing these games and keep hiring your coaches the same way. If you keep plugging and playing different people in there and they keep losing the game and you keep selecting them based on the same criteria, maybe it's time to reevaluate and do things a little differently. So what you're saying is it may be not exactly part of the core mission to have the military read Ibram X. Kendi's How to

Be an Anti-Racist. You might want to spend some more time with this, On War by Carl Don Kloschwitz or a host of other books out there. And reading is such an important part of being an officer, being enlisted in the military, that professional development. And to have some of those books that aren't focused on making you a better operator, a better soldier, better sailor, better airman, better Marine, then those books are probably to drop to the bottom of the list or not be on it. Let's just focus on those books that are going to help us win wars. And those books exist out there, kind of like this one that our generals probably should have spent more time reading rather than those things that are the new additions to the current reading list.

I want to read it too. I haven't read that, but I will. But can you speak to, going back to one of the comments earlier about the rosy projections? And of course, we've got the Afghanistan papers, which prove all of that by the Washington Post, revealing just the overstatement of rosy scenarios from the beginning on in Afghanistan, how we've been misled, our leaders, our presidents, our generals, and so on. They've all done it. But you I've heard you talk about how at your level as a SEAL, how you'd see sort of initial projections, and then once they got filtered up the line, they would change and they would always change in one direction.

That's correct. And there's a there's a meme out there that talks about it that shows the private on the battlefield that passes up some information and then how that changes at each level as it goes up to the flag level officers. But it's so interesting to be on the ground in one of these places, Iraq, Afghanistan, and look around, see what's happening, and then turn on the news and see these generals sitting in front of Congress saying something that doesn't square up to what you're seeing with your own eyes on the ground. And what happened when General McKiernan was fired back in 2009, that sent a message to the rest of the general officer corps and those about to become general officers, that if you say that if you tell the truth to the

American people, to Congress, to your troops, then this is your future. You're going to be fired. So whether they meant to or not, they sent this message to the rest of the military that you're going to continue to sit in front of Congress. You're going to continue to talk to your troops, talk to the American people and say, we are making progress. We just need more resources, more funding, more troops to get the job done. And each and every one of these guys did that, except for the one general who was fired for telling the truth. Remind us what happened with him. So he, in 2009, and he didn't even say anything too horrible. He just didn't say we're making progress and we're going to meet our goals. He said, you know what? Things are not going so well here.

And he said that in a couple of different interviews. And about a month or two later, he was fired. And the secretary of defense, chairman of the Joint Chiefs at the time, Gates and Mullen, they couldn't really give a good explanation as to why this person was fired. And somebody at that level hasn't been fired for something other than scandal, really, since General MacArthur was fired by Truman during the Korean War. So he just made a few comments that weren't as rosy as some of the things that his predecessors had said. And then in 2009, he was fired. General McChrystal was then put in charge. And what is very interesting about that is that when McChrystal did his strategic

review and all these guys, they come in and they do a strategic review and that's how it goes. And in his, guess who was not mentioned in that strategic review? Al-Qaeda. And this is 2009. The reason we went to Afghanistan in the first place was to destroy Al-Qaeda and to deny it a sanctuary from which to plan attacks against the United States. In 2009, Al-Qaeda and to deny it a sanctuary from which to plan attacks against the United States. In 2009, al-Qaeda is not even mentioned in the first draft of this strategic review by McChrystal. And once again, that's shift, that is a drift in the mission that happened very soon after 9-11. December 2001, we're shifting focus already to Iraq when President Bush asked Tommy Franks to come to Crawford, Texas and asked him about a two-front war, one in Afghanistan, one in Iraq, the Bonn

Conference, of course, in Germany, where the Taliban are not invited to participate, and then us letting bin Laden slip away in the mountains of Tora Bora in Afghanistan because the request for troops were denied by those on the ground. So once again, it's failure after failure after failure, 20 years. We had 20 years to adapt and try to get this right. And then we knew this date was coming. This withdrawal date was coming and we still screwed it up about as the worst way we possibly could have done it worse. Have we been actively trying? Right. Have we tried? So much to follow up on in there. I want to start with the Al-Qaeda because I was just talking about them with Pompeo. And he was saying, look, they've always been there. And yes, we made significant progress after 9-11, our troops and so on. But they're still there. And we've heard the generals telling us that we're likely to see an attack attempted by them from Afghanistan over the next 12 to 24 to 36 months. Oh, great. But Pompeo's point was, you know what, they're, they're really more in Iran now than they are in Afghanistan. And they're elsewhere. And you know, you can't sort of keep

these troops going in all of these places, just to ensure total, this is my paraphrase, just to ensure total security across the globe. That's really globe. That's not realistic. He was saying, look, we've got bad guys in Mexico right now. We can't keep an eye on them because Mexico is basically run by cartels. We're not boots on the ground in Iran either. It was the right decision to pull the troops out of Afghanistan, even though we won't be able to keep as close an eye on al-Qaeda. Though, of course, he maintained that the Trump administration would have done it differently. So your thoughts on that? Because as a mom of three kids, I'm over here saying, well, why can't we? I want the troops there. I want the Navy SEALs there. I want them watching. I don't care if it's 2500. You know, that's what the military guys want to do. They want to go over there and serve and do their active, you know, theater kind of thing. So help me understand those points of view. Yeah. The guys want to get after it. I mean, on September 11th, 2001, if you weren't deployed, you thought, oh my goodness, I'm going to miss it. Everything I've trained for the country was attacked. We want to get in there, get after it, do our duty.

And of course that didn't end up being the case. We had another 20 years to continue to go and get after it. But yeah, in Iran, not that long ago, we had a senior al-Qaeda person assassinated. People think it's Israel and CIA. Who knows? But regardless, the important part of that, they were in Iran. We, of course, see that in Pakistan. Al-Qaeda is the worldwide organization. Taliban, of course, is regionally focused in Afghanistan and surrounding countries. But what's also happened over the last 20 years, and this goes back to our failure to adapt, is we're solely focused on Afghanistan here as the place where planning can occur for attacks on the homeland. And that's true in some sense. But remember that the plan for 9-11 was the idea for it was really hatched in the Southern Philippines. It was greenlit, of course,

in Afghanistan, but training took place in Germany, took place in Florida, took place in San Diego, took place in Arizona. And just over the last 20 years, we've seen that ability to plan and train virtually just expand in ways that we couldn't have envisioned in 2001 or 2000 or 1999. So while we're focused on Afghanistan, the enemy can see that too. And the enemy is always learning. They're always adapting. They're always studying us. So what does that mean for them? Well, if we're focused here, if I'm the enemy, maybe I'm going to go elsewhere to plan, to train, and to greenlight some of these operations. So whether it's virtual or other countries around the world, there are plenty of options out there for al-Qaeda and their affiliates and even inspired affiliates or what we call lone wolf type people to plan and execute these attacks. So the battlefield has shifted and changed. I feel no better.

I'm glad. I think about that too. I think about my kids and they ask me about joining the military and that sort of thing. And it's a very difficult question to answer these days because there are so many, of course, benefits to investing in the country that has given you so much freedom, so much opportunity. But at the same time, you look at our senior level leaders and you look to military and political. And as a parent, it is very tough to to encourage your child to to serve in the armed forces. But maybe this maybe your your belief and Pompeo's belief as well supports Trump's decision of it's time to get out. You know, I've definitely been more in the camp of why not?

Why wouldn't we have left that 2,500 man and woman force just to preserve eyes, you know, counterterrorism forces and eyes on the ground? And at least try to keep an eye on Al Qaeda and make sure that some, I don't know, order remains there because it's in our strategic military interest. But am I wrong? No, we do that other places around the world as well, whether it's the Philippines or, I mean, hundreds of countries around the world. We have a very small presence, some very large, but it all depends on the situation and what that country will allow us to have, what makes sense, what's appropriate. So maybe it was appropriate to leave 2,500 troops behind in Afghanistan. It certainly seems like as an American citizen, we were given two options, stay or go.

But in very few cases are there only two options for something. You take a step back, take a breath, look at it holistically, and then adapt to a changing situation. Perhaps that would have been a wise idea to leave, whether it's 1,000 troops, 2,500 troops, 4,500 troops, but that is dictated by the situation on the ground and the relationship, of course, with the Afghan government and what's happening there at the time. I hope that we were smart enough to leave a fairly robust intelligence apparatus behind, meaning that we have contacts from Pakistan. Yeah, this is one of the things that we'll know like 20 years from now when someone writes a book about it,

about how they ran agents out of Pakistan now because of the relationships they were able to forge and the agents they were able to recruit over the 20 years that we were in Afghanistan. So we'll see when someone writes that book in 20 years. Well, that's fascinating. It's like Pompeo. Look, he was the secretary of state. He wasn't the commander in chief. So Trump was the one making these calls. Trump wanted out and Pompeo's job was to make it happen. And then Biden, too, like he can't he can't point the finger at Trump. He's commander in chief right now. He it was up to him to ensure a safe exit or to control the exit or to decide I'm going to reevaluate this and leave behind some very small residual force like we have all over the globe and other countries

just to maintain some order. So there's a lot of people to point the finger at here. But Biden's the last man standing. He is the president right now. And his attempt to take zero responsibility for this has fallen flat, I think, as his poll numbers show. My guest today is Jack Carr. He's a bestselling author, number one New York Times bestselling author, who spent 20 years as a Navy SEAL. against higher ups in what have become viral videos. They're getting in trouble all over the place. Is this a good thing? Is it a good thing depending on what their message is, right? You got to be consistent on something like this. Should these sort of lower end soldiers be allowed to speak out contrary to orders? Think about it. Think about if they were saying something you didn't like. That's what makes it a tough decision. Plus his advice on raising strong and patriotic children. And in about 20 minutes, we're going to be taking your calls at 833-44-MEGYN.

That's 833-446-3496. Welcome back to The Megyn Kelly Show. Jack Carr is with me today. He is a bestselling author who spent 20 years as a Navy SEAL leading sniper teams in Iraq and Afghanistan. And we'd love to know your thoughts on anything we've discussed today. If you want to give us a call, now's Iraq, you know, quagmire, and I get it. Just with the benefit of hindsight now, that decision seems like such a disaster and possibly one of the worst military decisions ever made by a president in American history. Do I overstate it? I don't think so. And of course, the benefit of hindsight is called that for a reason. It does seem that history clearly points to a shift that occurred quite quickly after 9-11, away from a primary mission in Afghanistan to another one that possibly could have waited. But once again, I like to give the benefit of

the doubt to those senior level leaders. I think they tried to make the best decisions possible with what they had available at the time. But if you fast forward a few years after the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and you push that five years to the right as a junior enlisted guy on the ground, junior officer on the ground, you would not have been allowed to execute a mission in Iraq based on the type of intelligence that we had that launched that whole war, that launched that whole conflict. You really had to be sure you were going after the right person for the right reason. You weren't being manipulated, that you had multiple different human intelligence sources, multiple different technical sources manipulated, that you had multiple different human intelligence sources, multiple different technical sources, and that you were doing the right thing for the right reasons. We did not have that. If you look back, the intelligence that pushed us into Iraq was very shaky. Oh, yeah. I mean, to put it charitably. So does it change the way we look at George W. Bush? I look at it as that he made the right decisions with what he had at the time.

We didn't have that the benefit of five, six, seven, eight years at war from which to evaluate intelligence, apply these new new technical intelligence capabilities to a problem set. They had some single source Intel that was very shaky. They had some technical corroboration, not nearly as technically proficient as we have now. So I like to look at it through that lens. And perhaps I'm being too generous in that because I do want to hold these senior level leaders accountable, but I also have to put myself back in 2001, 2002, 2003, and look at what was available to us at that time. I don't think I'm one of those people who's ever believed, you know, the Bush lied, people died. Like, I don't think President Bush lied to get us into that war.

People think he had daddy issues based on what happened with his dad when he was President Saddam Hussein. I think he was in earnest and trying to protect us. That doesn't change the fact that it was the wrong move. But I do think there's a distinction in what we're seeing now with Joe Biden, who seems to be actively misleading us, gaslighting us. I don't know. But the you know that this was this was done perfectly or this was an extraordinary success. And the point was made by Representative Mike Rogers, Republican today. He's ranking member on the House Armed Services Committee, sort of calling him out on this. Here's what he had to say. On August 31st, hundreds of Americans left behind the 13 service members murdered.

President stood in the East Room of the White House and called the withdrawal, quote, an extraordinary success, close quote. I fear the president is delusional. I also fear that. Yes. And that's that's not too far removed from what our generals have been doing the last 20 years once again. But it's so crazy, at least if you were to go back, let's say, 30, 40 years, at least people would defend their hypocrisy or try to say, hey, I'm not being hypocritical because of X, Y or Z. Now it just seems to be a normal part of political discourse, where you're going to say one thing when the person you're talking to, the American public, is seeing something with their own eyes right here. And those are two

diametrically opposed things that you're looking at. So it's, I mean, it doesn't bode well for the future of the nation. I hate to say that because I like to remain hopeful and positive as much as I possibly can. But where you see how divisive everything is, how social media just lends itself who is standing in front of the American people saying that this is a resounding success. When we're seeing leaving Bagram, going to Kabul, and we're seeing 13 dead Americans come home in flag-draped coffins. We're seeing that chaos. We're seeing the Afghans hanging on to our C-17s, falling to their deaths. We're seeing American citizens still left behind. I got texts this morning of American passports from veteran friends of mine who are over in surrounding countries right there, still trying

to get some of these people who helped us out and actual American citizens. They sent me pictures of the passports, U.S. passports, still trying to get them out of the country, essentially abandoned by the government of the United States. Right. Despite an explicit promise from the president. Let's talk about Stuart Schuller and guys like him. So he spoke out. He's in the military. He spoke out about the disastrous withdrawal and then was told to be quiet in a direct order, like stop doing that because that's not allowed. And then said, well, I'm doing it again. I'm doing it anyway. Then spoke out about the order telling him to be quiet. And now he's in the brig. Here he is. And I'd love to get your thoughts on whether this should be

allowed. The reason people are so upset on social media right now is not because the Marine on the battlefield let someone down. That service member has always rose to the occasion, done extraordinary things. People are upset because their senior leaders let them down and none of them are raising their hands and accepting accountability or saying we messed this up and from my position potentially all those people did die in vain if we don't have senior leaders that own up and raise their hand and say, we did not do this well in the end. Without that, we just keep repeating the same mistakes. This amalgamation of the economic slash corporate slash political slash higher military ranks are not holding up their end of the bargain.

I want to say this very strongly. I have been fighting for 17 years. I am willing to throw it all away to say to my senior leaders, I demand accountability. So Scheller, I guess, it's S-C-H-E-L-L-E-R. And his parents are now calling for the resignation of our top military leaders as he sits in the brig. He's a Marine officer, Lieutenant Colonel. You tell me whether it's okay. I mean, should he be allowed to have his say? Well, I agree with everything he said. And I think you'd be hard pressed to prove that any of it is untruthful in any way, shape or form. It's difficult because you have to know if you're going to do something like that in the military, then you're going to, there are going to be consequences.

Going to the brig is odd though, based on just my personal experience in the military. So I think there might be a little more to this, but I'm not, I have nothing to base that upon. But you have to know if you're going to do this, there are going to be consequences. And essentially what you are doing is you're taking that rank off and you are throwing it on the table and you are going to be leaving the military. You're making a statement by doing that. And a very important one in this case. This one is so, our hearts go out on this one because you're seeing these senior level leaders sitting in front of Congress, still painting rosy pictures. You're seeing the disaster of the withdrawal. You're seeing the failures of the last 20 years. You're seeing zero accountability

at these senior levels. And then you're seeing a Marine Lieutenant Colonel speak the truth on social media. In solitary confinement, no less. Like, okay, that seems a little excessive. I don't even know what to make of that. That sounds like there has to be more to this. But if there's not, then we have even bigger problems than we've been discussing here right now. Then you're getting thrown.

He's sitting in Camp Lejeune down there. I mean, he said he was prepared to resign. But, you know, still, you're not allowed to, you're not allowed to speak out like this while you're in uniform against the government and your leaders against orders. Last question for you before I let you go. I mentioned I'd love to ask you about raising patriotic children. It's so hard right now for many of us because the schools and the towns and the media want to say nothing but negative things about America.

They want to make putting a flag out in your front yard some sort of, I don't know, racist thing, political thing. I mean, I don't listen to any of that, but I think a lot of people object to it and wish they had the help of their community in raising little patriots. And I mean that in the truest sense of the word, not in any political sense. Your thoughts on it? That makes parenting even more important today, rather than outsourcing that to a school district, whether it's public school, private school, whatever it might be, it makes our job as parents, our most important job out there because now you have to counter so many other things than we had to count. Our parents had to counter in the seventies and the eighties and the nins. You're countering social media, almost every single platform that

has an agenda. Your friends of our kids who are influenced by those same platforms, every single input seems to be a negative one when it comes to talking about the United States, our freedoms, our opportunities, and why we have those. So at every chance I possibly get, I talk to our kids about the sacrifices made by people from the inception of this country up through today that gave us these freedoms, that gave us these options and opportunities. And then what we owe these future generations and why social media is such a negative part of our lives these days is because it counters that and it allows us to make snap judgments with a retweet based on information coming from someone who also didn't put in the time, energy, and effort to the study of a certain problem set or an issue.

And it just makes everything move to the negative. So I talk to our kids about that all the time. At my military retirement, I gave them each four gifts. I gave them a Bible and an old brass compass, both to help guide their way. I gave them a hardbound copy of the Constitution so that they knew where our rights are enshrined, these God-given natural rights where they're enshrined. And then I gave them a tomahawk like the one on the wall behind me and said, here's the means to defend it. So as parents, really, it's on us to raise the next generation of patriots. They're going to continue to make decisions that allow those other future generations

to have the same freedoms and options and opportunities that we all have. Amen. Wow. You've been so brave in your opinions and your books are amazing. It's why you've been met with such success. But we'll be forever grateful for the sacrifices and the risks you took on the battlefield. Former Navy SEAL Jack Carr, so nice to get to know you. Thank you for being here. Thank you so much for having me. Take care. Thanks to guys like that, right? They give you hope. You watch the generals, maybe not so much.

You listen to Jack Carr, you think, okay, yes, that's what I know as our military. We'd love to get your thoughts on it today. How about making him a general? Maybe we can recruit him back from the author ranks, get him back out on the battlefield and do commanding troops. Give us a call on your thoughts on that at 833-44-MEGYN. That's 833-446-3496. Do you feel sorry for the generals? Let me know. Well, the phone lines are open. Give us a call now at 833-44-MEGYN. That's 833-446-3496. We're going to take our first caller, who is Greg in Washington. Hey, Greg, what's on your mind? Oh, you know, hey, Megan, your screener asked,

what do you want to talk about today? And I'm like, where do you even begin? If I kind of joke like two years ago, somebody would have told you what's even going on anymore. You would have thought it was some, you know, weird science fiction movie or something. But it is where we are. So I thought I'd just say something positive. And your show's awesome. I've enjoyed immensely so far this format of the longer interviews, you know, you can really ask some good questions and get a lot of information out of these people. So I wish you the best of luck and look forward to listening to your show from now on. Thank you. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. You know, I love the longer format too. It's like if I had, if I had Mike Pompeo on the Kelly file at most, if Debbie, Canadian Debbie were feeling generous, I'd get

eight minutes with him and that would be huge. And she'd be like, I am Santa. And all I want to hear from you is thank you. Um, cause you only have 42 minutes of content and you have other guests and you got to squeeze it in. You got to be fair to everybody. Somebody like Pompeo for an hour, that is such a treat. And that's why I say that guy had stones to come on and sit there for it because I asked him some tough questions. But look, you could tell the audience can figure out where he's where he's vulnerable, where he's not where he's really got good positions and where he's got to sort of do the political dancing. And it's just so much more illuminating.

And some guys will do it. Some guys are too scared. Guys are gals. So I love it. I have to say, I think I find that so much more meaningful than just the up and down, quick up and down on somebody, you know, jiffy quick. And people who come on know that's going to happen too. So, you know, they got to be willing to stand and take it.

No, I really enjoy it. And I think you're, I I think you're just the cred you bring to this whole thing. You're going to get some pretty incredible opportunities to interview people. And again, look forward to it. Good job. Thanks, Greg. I appreciate it. All right. So let's head on down to looks like Texas. And Beth has got some thoughts. Beth, what's on your mind? Yeah. And well, I actually have changed my questions for you. Lay it on me.

I'm a non-party loyalist. And what I mean by that is I'm tired of the term being used as independent. Right. I'm not a Republican. I'm not a Democrat. And Jack Carr actually gave me a lot of thoughts, good thoughts, right? I have an uncle that has worked for the State Department for years, retired now, right? And one of the confusing things has been over Afghanistan of, you know, we've got to call each president that has been over 20 years. And honestly, One of the problems that I've seen is that Trump didn't replace a lot of State Department people. He was focused on judges and that. has been, why? Why are we focusing on Biden when the transition has been almost about there were not people in place to handle that transition? Yeah, well, I mean, it's a fair question. I'm with you. I'm not a partisan. I don't have anybody's team jersey on my chest. They don't deserve a spot there. I don't have any party loyalty,

which drives some people crazy, but I think it's a good trait in a journalist. So yeah, I think we have to be honest about the Trump administration's role in getting us here, not to mention Obama before him and George W. Bush, as we talked about with Jack. How are we ever going to solve anything if we just come at it with our partisan lenses on and then try to filter everything through that? Everything through that is BS. You know, one of the things I didn't get to with Pompeo, but it was on my list, but there's so much to go over, was how the Afghan applications for these special visas were slow rolled during the Trump administration. And so much so that a lawsuit was actually filed against Pompeo and the Trump administration for why, you know, this, it seems intentional. And these are

not all good people. You know, some people try to take advantage of it, but a lot of these guys did help us out. And we're trying to get their visas in place, understanding the war would come to an end and we slow rolled it. And then Biden did nothing much to change that either. But you know, now it's like, you can't sort of look at the situation as somebody who was in the Trump administration and say, oh, those poor Afghans who helped us, you know, they're all stuck there on the tarmac. It's like, well, you know, you could have gotten some of them off. That doesn't take away Biden's responsibility, you know, to do it better and to do it in a more planned way, blah, blah, blah. But, you know, you got to got to be honest about it, Beth. Thank you. Thank you for being one of the people who's willing to be open-minded on it.

Maureen in Ohio, one of my favorite places. I used to practice law with a firm named Jones Day, and they were based in Cleveland. And whenever I went to Ohio, I was like, this place doesn't get enough street cred for how gorgeous it is, especially in the fall. Yes, we love Ohio too. OHIO. I'm calling actually because I have been a fan of yours for over 15 years. You actually got me through like some of the worst times when, you know, my kids were little and they had nap time from one to three. I just focused in on you and you kept me informed and I just absolutely have when you left Fox. I prayed for you when you were at NBC. And I was praying that you would get a platform. And I just absolutely love you. And I wanted to let you know that your courage and the way that you speak about empowering women and everything that you do for moms that are at home with their kids that don't know how they can use their voice. You have just been so inspiring. And I just want to thank you so much.

Oh, you gave me a little chill. Thank you. Oh, Abby, too. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Gosh, that that makes me feel so good because I I feel like stay at home moms in particular right now are hugely important in these crazy culture battles that we're having because they're

kind of the most empowered money. I mean, listen, I've lived this firsthand money in these school districts. That's not going to make the difference. It's man and woman power. It's people walking with their feet. It's people getting on the school boards as people being the squeaky wheels and stay at home. Moms are like just fierce. You know, they're the mama bears and good luck trying to shut them up. Maureen, thank you. Thanks for watching me back on Fox and listening to me now. And thanks to all of you as well. Listen, I want to tell you tomorrow, we're getting back to COVID and we're going to have Dr. Monica Gandhi. She's been super smart on all of this. She's going to be here. Check out our show in the meantime on youtube.com slash Megyn Kelly. If you want to see it, Touch your mouth.