The Team House - Special Forces to CIA Officer in Afghanistan Fighting the Soviets | Mike Vickers | Ep. 248

Episode Date: December 4, 2023

Mike Vickers was Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence (2011-2015) and Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations, Low Intensity Conflict and Interdependent Capabilities (2007-2011) ��� service that spanned the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations. Earlier in his career, he served as a CIA Operations Officer and Special Forces Officer and Non-Commissioned Officer. As the ASD SO/LIC&IC and USD(I), he had a central role in developing our strategy and overseeing our campaigns to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al-Qa’ida and in the operation to kill Usama Bin Ladin. As a CIA officer during the 1980s, he was the program officer and principal strategist for the largest and most successful covert action program in CIA’s history, enabling the Afghan resistance to drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan.He is a recipient of the Presidential National Security Medal, our nation’s highest award in intelligence. He has a Ph.D. in International Relations/Strategic Studies from Johns Hopkins, an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, and a B.A. in International Relations from the University of Alabama.Get Mike's book here:https://www.amazon.com/All-Means-Available-Operations-Intelligence/dp/B0BJ61DV28/ref=sr_1_1?hvadid=676936599747&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=9004338&hvnetw=g&hvqmt=e&hvrand=778790048467117615&hvtargid=kwd-2092266601107&hydadcr=22191_13517538&keywords=mike+vickers+book&qid=1701279110&sr=8-1--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Today's Sponsors:Barbell Apparelhttps://barbellapparel.com/teamhouseGet any athletic fit jeans, chinos, or pants for $50 off and get up to 50% off everything else sitewide. ⬇️https://barbellapparel.com/teamhouse---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------To help support the show and for all bonus content including:-AD FREE AUDIO-AD FREE VIDEO-Access to ALL bonus segments with our guestsSubscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouseOr make a one time donation at: ⬇️https://ko-fi.com/theteamhouseTeam House merch: ⬇️https://teespring.com/stores/my-store-10474963Social Media: ⬇️The Team House Instagram:https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_linkThe Team House Twitter:https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePodJack’s Instagram:https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_linkJack’s Twitter:https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21Dave’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/dave_parke?s=21Team House Discord: ⬇️https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6SubReddit: ⬇️https://www.reddit.com/r/TheTeamHouse/Jack Murphy's memoir "Murphy's Law" can be found here:⬇️https://www.amazon.com/Murphys-Law-Journey-Investigative-Journalist/dp/1501191241The Team Room Reading Room (Amazon Affiliate links):⬇️https://jackmurphywrites.com/the-team-room-reading-room/Intro music by https://www.youtube.com/user/RemixSampleWant to sponsor the show?Email: ⬇️[e-mail]#specialforces #cia #coldwarBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

Hey, folks, I just want to take a minute to ask you to go in rate this podcast, let the Team House know how you think we're doing, go and rate us on whatever platform you're listening to this on, whether it's iTunes or Spotify or whatever else. Those ratings really help us out, and we really appreciate the feedback to let us know what you like and what you don't like. And if you do like the Team House and you'd like to support us, go check out our Patreon page and you can actually support the stream as well as get access to our team house. bonus segments and bonus episodes. Yeah, if you're going to give us a great review, please do. And if

you're going to give us a not-so-good review, why don't you just send us an email and we'll talk about it. Special Operations, Covert Ops, espionage, The Team House, with your host, Jack Murphy and David Park. Hi, everyone. Welcome to episode 248 of The Team House. I'm Jack Murphy, here with Dave Park. Our guest on tonight's show is Michael Vickers. He is the author of By All Means Available. He served in 10th Special Forces Group as a CIA paramilitary officer and then went on to hold positions as the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict and the Undersecretary of Defense for Defense Intelligence. We're going to split this interview into two parts since Mike had a pretty extensive career. Tonight we're going to talk

about his time in special forces and at the agency. And then we're going to have him back next Friday to discuss the latter portion of his professional career. Mike, thank you for joining us tonight. Dave, do you want to give a quick shout out to our sponsor? Yeah, so our sponsor tonight is barbellbarbell apparel.com. It's the Cyber Monday sale runs all next week. Get any jeans, chinos, or pants for $50 off and get up to 50% off everything. else and we love barbell clothing i'm wearing their jeans their jeans are very stretchy if i if i were flexible you'd see how stretchy they were um uh makes my backside look great uh their workout gear is great too i the workout gear is fantastic yeah everybody check out barbell uh we love their

clothes it's amazing i will never buy another pair of jeans you know from any place else they're amazing uh also want to give a quick shout out to veterans hockey united for any veterans first responders or family members. If you're into hockey, they're volunteer leagues that spring up, but check out veteranshockeyunited.com. They're on Instagram. Check them out for all your hockey needs. So Mr. Vickers, really appreciate your patience with us and your being gracious with your time. We'll jump right into it here. Could you tell us a little bit about your origin story, sort of about how you grew up and how that took you and led you towards governmental service? Sure. So I grew up in Southern California and went to Hollywood High School and had dreams of being a professional baseball player or football player or quarterback. And my passions were much greater than my abilities. So as I completed high school, I started thinking about what else I wanted to do. And as it turned out, a high school teacher gave me a copy of the New York Times or put it in front of my

desk when I was in the school library and it had an article about CIA's big paramilitary operation during the Vietnam War in Laos supporting the Hmong tribesmen and said, you might be interested in this. And, you know, it was about secret armies. It's the first I had heard of it. And I thought, yeah, you know, I think I might want to be a CIA officer. And so that kind of planted the seed. And then I thought the best path for doing that was to go into the special forces, which I did after a couple years of college and then became an officer and then actually then became a CIA operations officer. Tell us about landing in 10th Special Forces Group and I mean this is during the Cold War of course. What was 10th group like at that time? What was your initial roles and duty positions?

Yeah, so I completed the Special Forces qualification course as a weapon sergeant in May 1974. and then was assigned to the 10th group, which had two battalions at Fort Devons, Massachusetts at the time. And, you know, as you know, special forces groups are oriented toward different regions of the world. And after Vietnam, the number of groups collapsed down to three. But the 10th group had Europe and the Soviet bloc. And basically the operational detachments were done. divided. Some of them would go, their operational areas were Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union,

and that's the part I was in. So I had Russian and Czech. And then others had the stay behind mission if the Soviets overran Germany or Scandinavia or others. And so they learned Norwegian and German and French and Danish and that sort of thing. And the group was really a fantastic learning experience. You know, I was kind of the youngest guy on the team. Most of my teammates were Vietnam veterans. Some had participated in, you know, very sensitive reconnaissance operations in Laos and North Vietnam with MacVe SAG or, you know, studies and observation groups that were doing these dangerous special reconnaissance missions. And then we also had a number of Eastern European emigrees, you know, who were born in Czechoslovakia or elsewhere. One of my group commanders was

born in Georgia. And a battalion commander was born in Czechoslovakia. And so they were a great source of knowledge about, you know, if we actually had to deploy into our unconventional warfare operational areas, what it would be like to live there and everything else. So it was a tremendous learning experience for me. And, you know, they sent me to a lot of training then. You know, in the post-Vietnam era, we didn't have a lot of operations. And so it was mostly a great deal of training until the 1980s. We did have one, you know, our job was mainly to prepare for World War III.

And our job was either to do special reconnaissance. behind enemy lines or direct action, and then if there was a resistance movement, unconventional warfare. And one special mission we had, a few of us in the group, was to train with very small nuclear weapons, man-portable nuclear weapons, to actually try to stop the Soviet advances, you know, by interdicting the second echelon forces. Had one potential combat deployment to Angola during that period, Angola had gone. gone into a civil war, but it was aborted at the last minute.

And the president decided to go the covert action route rather than overt military or special operations. Would you like to talk a little bit about one thing I thought was unique and interesting about your book was we talked about getting sent to Berlin to do like some clandestine tradecraft training? Yeah. So the 10th group in those days, you know,

I mentioned two battalion. in the group headquarters at Fort Devons. There was a battalion forward at Bod Toltz and Bavaria. I later served in that unit. And then there was essentially a company-sized force in civilian clothes that was in Berlin called Detachment A, changed its name in the 1980s to something else. But they had a stay-behind mission, you know, if the Soviets overran Berlin, and then also potentially to go out into East Germany,

you know, given the location of Berlin in the event of war. And so one of the training episodes I had was to go serve with them and do essentially urban unconventional warfare, you know, how we would sabotage facilities and how we would clandestinely communicate so we couldn't be found out by the secret police. and so a lot of denied area trade crops. And then you touched upon it the training with the special atomic demolition munition.

Yeah. You tell us a little bit more about what that entailed. Yeah. So from the early, I guess the late 1960s and early 1970s up until the mid-1980s, special operations forces, mainly seals and green berets, a select portion of them were given this mission to train, to arm and place this device.

And, you know, so with all nuclear weapons, you have personal reliability programs. You know, you have to do extra vetting of the people selected for this. And pretty intensive training, you know, it's really a no-fail mission. So you'd have these operational readiness evaluation. by nuclear inspectors to make sure you knew how to do everything. And the command and control for those things, obviously directed from very on high. So there's communications procedures you have to learn. And so it's pretty intensive training.

And as I said, the standards were very high for that. And, you know, it was probably considered one of the most, risky missions. I mean, they were all risky in those days if general war broke out. But this thing in particular to have to, you know, emplace it and had a timer on it that, you know, you could arm and then you'd have to get in an Overwatch position to maintain custody of it.

So, you know, the kind of the gallows humor among those trained in it was as soon as you'd, you know, touch that dial, the thing would, you know, if it was in place that would detonate. but yeah, it was a very interesting experience. And then, you know, learning how to parachute with it, either free fall or static line. And you could also scuba with it, too. So that's, hence the SEALs or Special Forces scuba teams.

I've actually been doing a lot of research on the Greenlight teams recently. And I think that it's easy for us today to look back on it is this sort of strange Dr. Strangelove sort of esk mission. But what I'm struck by all the people I talk to is like how deadly serious all of you guys were about this mission and completely ready to execute it if they were called upon. Yeah. Well, I mean, so some context, you know, beginning in the 1950s, you know, Soviets had numerical superiority in Europe.

And so we kind of went the route in the Eisenhower administration and through the 60s and 70s to make up for that numerical inferiority by having lots of tactical nuclear weapons. So artillery shells, mines, you know, things you can drop from air bombs from aircraft. And then this was just part of that family, you know, that this was the special forces and seal role, you know, to go behind enemy lines with a small nuclear weapon. But, you know, it was part of a larger family. And it was a very, very serious mission. So as a, as, you know, the kid, the teenager that read the New York Times article about special ops in Laos, I mean, was this, all of this sounds like a dream come true. Yeah. I had to pinch myself. I was really lucky. You know, you know, the path actually worked out in terms of, you know, I originally thought I would go into special forces for maybe, you know, five years or something. and then go to CIA and I decided to become an officer and ended up staying for 10 before I went to

CIA. You know, so I really loved it. It was just a just a great experience. So you went to Officer Candidate School and then you got to do a pretty big venue change from Germany and 10th group to a third battalion seventh group that was down at Fort Gulick Panama, right? That's right. Yeah, I was on the Atlantic side of the canal zone rather than the Pacific.

side. So most of the forces in Panama were over on the Pacific side, but there was an infantry battalion and a special forces battalion on the Atlantic. And, you know, the reason I chose that when I, when I graduated from OCS, we didn't have an SF branch in those days. And so I was an infantry officer and went to infantry officer training. And the assignments officer came down to our class as we were getting our assignments and said, how would you like to go right back to special forces and be a detachment commander because you don't need to be a platoon leader given your enlisted experience, you could go right into company command. And I thought, well, great. So I get a captain's job as a lieutenant, and then I have a captain's job as a captain.

And, you know, there were three assignments offered, the 10th group, the fifth group, and third of the seventh. And it was very tempted to go back to the 10th group. My former battalion commander had become the group commander and he just got the Medal of Honor Award in Paris Davis this year. And, but, you know, the insurgencies were really heating up in Central America. That was the big focus.

You know, a communist insurgency in El Salvador and then the Sandinistas had taken over in Nicaragua. And, you know, it's always good to kind of follow the sound of guns, you know, to go where the action is. And so I learned Spanish and ended up in third battalion seventh group. And as it turned out, I was, you know, after the Iran rescue attempt and the taking of our, I should say it the other way, the taking of our hostages in Tehran and then the Iran rescue attempt,

we became very concerned about other high threat embassies. And so I was given essentially a troop command of two operational detachments that would go around to high threat embassies in Latin America, mainly Central America, but Columbia and others too, to make sure that if we needed to do a rescue, our special mission forces, that they had the blueprints and knew where the cameras were and all the things you would need to do a rescue like that.

So it caused me to interact a lot with the State Department and with CIA across the region and, again, a great learning experience. I thought it was really cool as I was reading the book. I think you said it was the AST mission and then became the RST mission. Yes. This is that sort of nascent what we would call today. Advanced Force Operations is probably the term that you probably use nowadays. As I was reading the book, I read about this operation that you guys got sent down to Honduras.

And I was like, oh, I remember hearing about this years and years ago, but I had no idea it was you. Could you explain a little bit more about what the mission entailed and how you guys went over to sort of prepare the environment? Sure. So, you know, the normal mission was, you know, intelligence collection. So, you know, visiting these embassies and making sure we had all the information we would need for a rescue beforehand. And then if there was an actual terrorist incident, then a small portion of my own, my team would deploy to be the first on site where we'd been to this country several times and start preparing the environment for the rescue force that would come in,

but also provide special operations advice to the ambassador in the country team, chief of station, ambassador, etc. And so in late April, 1982, a Honduran terrorist group, supported by Cuba, hijacked an airliner, a dash-7 airliner, a prop plane in, to Guza Gulfway Airport, the capital of Honduras, with 58 hostages on board,

and 10 of whom were Americans. And so we got deployed right away by South Khan to the embassy to meet with the ambassador who, I served with a lot of years and he ended up becoming ambassador multiple places, John Negroponte and then Deputy Secretary of State and about military options, including bringing in some of our special mission forces

to be in a position to do a rescue. And so they came in and there was a three-day standoff with this terrorist group with the hostages, I was up for three nights, essentially, you know, with my little team, my four-man team, doing surveillance around the airfield and with our Army Special Operations counterparts. And we had one interesting incident. The terrorists had a homemade, improvised explosive device with nitroglycerin on the plane. And, you know, the airplane was getting really hot.

and nitroglycerin can become unstable when it gets hot like that. So the terrorists actually asked for assistance in that regard. And we had to scramble to how they would diffuse the bomb. And it turned out, you know, kitty litter was a pretty good field expedient to do. So we raced out to Degusa Galpa to procure some. And that kind of did the trick. And some of the hostages were able to escape from the plane on the third day.

And their gunfire, but fortunately they were only injured from the fall, not from the terrorist shots. And then the terrorist decided to give up the ghost after three days for safe passage to Cuba. And so that was incident number one. And then four months later, a similar terrorist group took 109 hostages in San Pedro Sula, town in the north of Honduras, including three government ministers. So we did it all over again and went there and did a, you know, 10-day siege.

And it ended the same way with the negotiations. And also showed the capabilities of, you know, that the concept worked as far as the reconnaissance. Yes. Yes. So it was considered a model for the combat for other combatant commands to then follow Southcom's lead on having this kind of capability. and that eventually led to more special operations intelligence units and then the RSTs, as you mentioned. When you guys were developing this capability, you know, if you're developing a capability,

there's not necessarily groundwork that's been laid before, you know, laid before. How did you guys go about that process? Yeah, so it was a, you know, kind of a one-of-a-kind unit at the time made out of two ODAs. And people were selected for their fluency and, you know, clothing clothes and long hair, selected for their fluency in Spanish and their intelligence, tradecraft in addition to other special operations skills. And then, you know, had to have training. We were kind of ahead of our time on satellite communications. So we had really reliable communications, some technical surveillance devices and stuff that weren't organic to the Special

Forces Battalion that we had to procure commercially and learn how to use. And so we were really building this from the ground up, including, you know, learning how to put these target folders together of what exactly was needed and how to present it to the operators, you know, who would do the rescue. And so you needed to know a lot about close quarter battle and sniping and lots of other things. So right before I had that command for a few months, I had command of a sniper team, which also was useful, you know, personal preparation before I took this counterterrorism intelligence mission. And then let's talk a little bit about how you made that transition from special forces to the CIA. Like, how did that take place for you?

You know, so my original goal was to serve in the special forces and learn more languages and get competent in all these disciplines and then go to CIA. And then I thought, well, maybe I'll make the Army a career and, you know, I went to OCS and had this command. But, you know, as I was wrestling with it, I thought, okay, I've had this great experience as a lieutenant and captain commanding this troop and participating in real operations. operations, you know, but my next assignment would be infantry company command in a peacetime army. And I thought I wanted to join more of the Cold War fight. You know, I saw what was going on in Central America and what CIA was doing. And I thought potentially I could contribute more if I went to CIA. And so I applied for the career training program and, you know, got accepted and joined the agency.

And the way I read it in the book, if I understood correctly, you had some adventures before you even got trained as a CIA officer. Yeah. So in my day, the career training program for operations officers, we had a 10-week course, you know, kind of introduction to CIA and the intelligence community, all the different directorates and learned how to write reports and do analysis and some basic. basic tradecraft and learned about our satellites and, you know, the science and technology side and etc. Had senior case officers come in and talk to us about agents they recruited and including Russians that were handled in Moscow and, you know, so it was pretty good training. And then you typically do two, three month assignments on a operational desk to learn operations more and then you would go to the operations course at what we call the farm a special facility and then in those days we also had a 12-week paramilitary operations course called special

operations training and during my first assignment in Latin America division I was selected for this because there was a coup in Suriname and a former Dutch colony in northern tip of South America. And we had assets in prison. And the branch chief wanted to do a jail break, essentially, and thought I had the right skills to help plan that with assets and stuff. And so that was kind of my introduction to CIA.

And then lo and behold, a crisis occurred in Grenada as I was some weeks into this assignment working on this jail break plan. And, you know, we had 600 medical students attending training in Grenada, American medical students. And, you know, the situation deteriorated. The coup leaders killed the president of the country and some others. and President Reagan made the decision over a weekend to do the invasion of Grenada, it was a combination of special operations forces and Marines. And I was, before I had even completed my CIA operational training,

I was called into headquarters and said, by the who was going to become the chief of station, a man named Bill Rooney, a very distinguished career in CIA, said, you're going to Grenada with me and a communicator. And we were going in with the special operations. forces in the main effort in the south. And I didn't know that at the time. I was just told to come into headquarters and pack for two weeks on a Sunday. And so I thought I was going to be going to one of the bases supporting the operations. And so I packed a bunch of suits. And as soon as I got

in and I was told I was going into combat, you know, I was glad I had a few casual clothes in my luggage. So we got weapons, we got a lot of cash so we could pay assets and stuff. And the setcom radio got a briefing and had an airplane take us to a staging base and then went in with the invading forces.

And so I went into combat with a Ralph Lauren polo shirt, some linen pants and some loafers and a weapon and a big bag of cash in a set com. You know, you've got to hand it to CIA. They go to Warren's stock. You know, this is not quite how we did at the special forces. And the military,

the military element you're leaking up probably looks, you go, CIA. They don't know anything. Right, right. Yeah. And so, you know, our task was to establish a station and then, you know,

bring in people to interrogate Cuban prisoners and others. And then, you know, we had some other things to do that led to that, led to my first combat experience in Grenada, looking at an arms cached in the very, very forward lines where there was still a lot of combat.

And it was a company of the 82nd that we were actually visiting at the time. And, you know, lo and behold, as soon as we got there, Cubans attacked the position. And, you know, all we had at the time were Browning, high power. pistols. And so I thought about it for, you know, as we're face down in the dirt, I thought about it for a few seconds. And I thought, I just saw a bunch of AKs and ammunition in this warehouse, you know, that were Cubans for the Grenadins. And I thought, you know, we could use some of those if we're going to get shot at and shoot back. So low crawled over there, got some, gave,

gave one to my chief of station and one for me. And battle was over in 10 minutes. But it was an interesting experience. And so I think you said you spent like a week, crawling around Grenada and then showed up back home, you know, covered in dirt in your Ralph Lauren Polo shirt that you'd been wearing for a week? Yeah, so it was actually almost two weeks. And we had another mission where we were told to apprehend a Libyan intelligence officer on the island who had been ordered by Gaddafi to take American hostages. And before we could capture him, he had fled to the same.

Soviet embassy, but we had this chase around St. George's, the capital. And yeah, toward the end of the operation, that when the training staff learned that I had been in combat for 10 days, they weren't too happy about it. And so they said, okay, war's over for you. Come home. And so I hitched a military flight to Barbados, took off, went into the bathroom, took off all my dirty closed, threw them in the trash can, you know, put on some fresh civilian clothes, took my Amex card out, bought a plane ticket, you know, for the States, and came home. I'm really surprised you didn't get like a deal with Ralph Lauren after that. And like they didn't develop it, they didn't develop a new combat line of leisure wear.

Yeah, there you go. So now you finally have the opportunity to go to the farm and become, you know, a formalized officer. Yeah, so before that, you know, when I came into the agency, I had Czech, Russian, and Spanish, and I was debating whether I would go to Latin America where the wars were or, you know, to Moscow or somewhere for a first assignment. And so I thought I would get assigned to Soviet operations when I came back from Grenada. That's what I had requested. And they called me in, as it turned out,

we invaded Grenada on a Tuesday the Sunday before the Marine barracks were blown up in Lebanon. And then months before that, our embassy had been blown up by what today we know is Hezbollah. And so I was called in and said the Near East Division wants you assigned to them for a special counterterrorism task force to identify the perpetrators and develop response options, et cetera. And I said, you know, I don't know anything about the Middle East, you know. And well, it's a directed assignment and they want you. And so that was my introduction to the Middle East to work with our station there on assets who could report on Hezbollah and then develop various strike options. And then after that, I went to the farm. I mean, just to wrap up Beirut, I mean, was there any kind of final thoughts or did anything come

out of that time that you spent there that you thought was notable or important or even personal reflections? Yeah. So, I mean, one, you know, Grenada was this great exhilarating experience. And it felt like a real extension of what I had been doing in special forces, particularly the last years as an officer in Latin America. And, you know, I knew the people we were going in with. And so it was like old home week for me in the operation. You know, were problems, but the operation was generally a success. With Lebanon, you know, we had a peacekeeping force in there with the Marines who did not have good rules of engagement, very restrictive rules of engagement. And, you know, it was really kind of muddled policy for a country that was,

you know, essentially heading into civil war and sectarian conflict. And the same thing, our station, had similar challenges, you know. And so Americans started getting kidnapped, including our chiefest station, the late Bill Buckley, you know, tortured and killed. And so it really was a searing experience for me in terms of, you know, failed policy. You know, we weren't in it to win it. And we essentially put ourselves in a position where we were very vulnerable. And as I said, it was my introduction into the Middle East.

And then later, you know, decades later, when I was involved in Iraq and others, you know, seeing that sectarian conflict again and back all those memories. Yeah. When you did go to the farm now, now you're going to the farm, but you've already had combat experience as a CIA officer or a CIA employee. Did that help you or hurt you or did nobody there know about it? Now, they knew about it, and it was both. You know, they, uh, the chief instructor pulled me aside.

You know, I got an award for heroism. And, uh, one of the top agency officials came down and they talked about it. And, you know, some of the instructors were, okay, let's test this guy's medal some more, you know, so he doesn't think he's too big for his britches and all that. But others, you know, were, we're impressed. And one guy said to me, geez, you really just, you know, picked up the weapons. and did this, you know, I don't know if I could have done that in that situation. And this guy had served in mostly Europe.

And I thought, well, you know, this is kind of what I'd been trained to do for 10 years. Right. So it's kind of a mixture, actually, of both. You know, some let's screw with them a little bit. And then others, you know, I was a little bit of a special class. But some of them were sort of like, okay, you can handle a grenade of, let's see how you handle the seedier sides of Virginia. Sure. Right.

Can you man up? Yeah. Yeah. And after the farm, you got what I, as I recall, you described in your book as sort of your dream assignment. You got assigned to Ground Branch. Yeah. So, you know, after the operations course where you're trained to recruit and handle agents, then we had this special operations course, including another airborne school, you know,

five parachute jumps, which was old hat. But, you know, it was sort of like a special forces qualification course, again, not as strenuous, but same basic tactics and techniques. And then as I came out again was thinking about where I would go for an assignment, which division are part of the world, you know, Soviet East European or Latin America, the, what today is the special activity center, then it was called international. activities because it had counterterrorism and counter-narcotics as well as the paramilitary stuff. The division chief there said to me, we would like you to come to this division because we're

creating a program to fast track a few officers for leadership of our covert action that would combine case officer work with management of these covert action programs and said, we want you to be the first case. And so how are you going to argue with a senior official and on a fast track to the top? So I did. And then he said, where do you want to go? You want to go to El Salvador? What would you like for a first tour?

Well, there's a lot of wars going on. And so if you don't mind, I'd like to go to Ground Branch first and then do the case officer stuff next and said, sure. So I got assigned to Ground Branch in special operations group. And then within a couple. weeks, I was told that they were creating this new position for the Afghanistan Covert Action Program, combining two jobs into one, essentially. The program officer, overall oversight of management of the program, which had been a senior CIA case officer, and then the chief paramilitary

advisor, who had been a Marine Colonel on detail, and they were combining them into two and interviewed a bunch of candidates and thought I was the right guy for the job. So it was really like the job of a lifetime for me, you know, and I, I thought, you know, instead of just fighting Soviet surrogates in Central America or elsewhere, now we've got the main enemy in Afghanistan. And it, you know, and so it really seemed like the job of a lifetime. Prior to that, though, you know, you're going to or volunteering to go to Graham, which like you said, is that, was that a, did some, Some people consider that like a misstep in a career as it wasn't really attached to a larger division or whatever. And like, did it have legitimacy in the wider agency at the time?

Yes and no. I mean, there were a lot of paramilitary operations going on that hadn't been before, you know, Central America and Afghanistan. And so that raised the important, you know, the first one since Laos in a big. But, yeah, in those days, ground branch officers didn't become chiefs of station. Later, they would. Integrated more into the directorate of operations. And so that's why I kind of chose the general operations track. I knew I could do the paramilitary stuff, but I didn't want to just do that, you know,

since I've had aspirations to become a chief of station and other things. And so, you know, and my reasoning was just this is a unique time. We're in a lot of wars. And I have skills that can contribute to this. And so I want to do this first. But I knew I'd have to do the other stuff. Right. So as you get on the Afghan program, I would be remiss if I didn't ask you.

I mean, you dedicated your book to Gust and Bert Dunn. And I'd love to ask you about those two gentlemen. And if you could tell us about coming on to the program and working with them. Sure. So the Near East and South Asia Division was responsible for agency operations from Morocco to Bangladesh and essentially divided in half. You know, the Arab-Israeli world up to the, you know, Arab-Galph, the Gulf states in Iraq, and then Iran over to Bangladesh for South Asian operations. And Gustavricados, a veteran case officer and Greek American, was the chief of South Asian operations. And so he's the guy who wanted to create this new position

as program officer and chief paramilitary advisor into one and brought me in. And then Bert Dunn was his boss. Burd Dunn had just come in as the chief of Near East Division. And Bert was one of the founding members of special forces, the West Virginia lawyer, founding members of special forces in 1952. And had been in the 82nd before that, you know, in his army time. And then joined the CIA after law school. And his first assignment was in Pakistan and learned Pashto,

he was the agency's most fluent Pashto speaker. and set up the Pakistani Special Forces and went all over, you know, the tribal areas. In those days, we had the U-2 flights over the Soviet Union out of Peshawar, Gary Powers and all that. And so he was involved in that too. And he'd served in all these difficult places around the world. He'd been chief in Afghanistan. He'd served in Pakistan, India. supporting Tibetan insurgents when we were doing that in the 60s against China,

served in Vietnam, and then in Africa. And so he was my kind of, both of them were really my kind of guys, you know, street smart, but also, you know, a guy who went to the sound of guns and had the, you know, the special forces background. And so we just clicked and they were very good to me. And as the program, I mean, I'd love to hear in your words how this program evolved as it sort of got off the ground. And there was a presidential finding for Afghanistan. And the impression I get reading through your book is that as time went on, the spigot became fully open.

Like we were really about sticking it to the Soviets in Afghanistan. Yeah. So, you know, as background, There was, you know, there was kind of this great game, you know, first between the Russians and the British and then the 19th century and then later in the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union for influence in Afghanistan, you know, and the Soviets generally got the better of the deal. They built a tunnel. They trained a lot of Afghan military officers, you know, and then they started underground communist parties in the same. 60s. And we focused on agriculture in the south and Helmand province and, you know, up to that period. And then in 1973, the king's cousin overthrew him after, you know, several decades of royal rule.

And the prime minister ran the country for five years. And then he was overthrown in 1978 by the communist parties with Soviet support, launching a communist revolution in Afghanistan. And immediately it triggered resistance, you know, trying to impose land reform, which really means land appropriation, and then, you know, atheism, you know, just not going to fly in Afghanistan. And the communist Afghan government asked for Soviet. assistance and Soviets were given a lot but didn't want to intervene, you know, until they did finally. And so before the Soviets intervened in December, late December, 1979, that summer, there were a couple of what we call non-lethal findings to provide political and psychological support to the resistance and money, essentially, in communications.

support. And then when the Soviets invaded in force, then three days after that, President Jimmy Carter signed a lethal finding, authorizing CIA, the third finding, authorizing CIA to support the resistance, you know, fully with, and so within 10 days, CIA actually had weapons starting flowing to the resistance. But for the first five years, President Carter's last year in President Reagan's first term, the program was reasonably big. It was, we had a lot of foreign partners and Saudis being won, obviously, Pakistan. The Saudis matched this dollar for dollar. And so the U.S. government budget was 60 million, and the Saudis matched that.

So it was $120 million a year. but analysts thought there was no chance that the resistance could defeat the Soviets. The policy goal in the finding was just to make the occupation as costly as possible for the Soviets. So the war kind of settled into this stalemate, and the resistance was lightly equipped, mostly with small arms, not a lot of heavy weapons, mortars and anti-tank weapons and rocket launchers and stuff. a very few surface air missiles, a handful of them, 20 or so, not a lot of training,

communication, not a lot of intelligence, but they were still holding their own against the Soviets. And then in the summer of 1984, Congressman Charlie Wilson from Texas, who was on the House Defense Appropriation Subcommittee, really wanted to expand the funding for the program. So CIA went in for a 10% budget increase, and Wilson quadrupled the budget,

you know, 300% increase, which you don't see every day. And that's right at the, you know, and so that naturally caused a lot of concern in CIA about, you know, can we execute this? You know, is it too much money? Can the resistance absorb it? And that's exactly the moment that I got the job. And I thought, hell yeah, we can execute it.

18 Bravo, of course you think he could execute on it. Right, exactly. Here's what I'm going to do with this, you know. And so you started to develop plans and everything else. And so a series of things led to a big change. That was the first one that, you know, the funding just went way up. And the Saudis agreed to match it. And then five years into the war, we were getting some criticism in Congress.

You know, and Central America was already very controversial. You know, you had a thing called the Boland Amendment that suspended aid to the Contras for a while and other things. But the controversy on Afghanistan was, you know, some Republicans felt that the Pakistanis were, a corruption problem. The Pakistanis were keeping all the weapons. for themselves and they weren't getting into the resistance. And so we had to show that and that CIA's management of the program wasn't very good

because we were letting the Pakistanis control the end distribution. And so we had to address that. And then on the left side of the aisle, there was concern that this was a hopeless war and were just fighting to the last Afghan and it was immoral. And so that triggered a national security, Council review of the program, how to deal with these political problems, you know, from both left and right.

But as any good NSC review, it also said, okay, what are we trying to do here? We're five years into this thing. What are, should we revisit our goals? And the inner, what today we would call a paper principles committee meeting, the NSC staff circulates circulated documents with questions that the State Department, Defense Department, and CIA were supposed to answer about, you know, our goals and what we thought we should do. And one of them was instead of, you know, stay the course, et cetera, it was to change our goal to defeating the Soviets and drive them out by all means available. It was in the working papers. And I'd like the phrase.

I remembered it 30 years later and, you know, made it the title of my book. But I thought, that's the one we want to do. you know, with all this new money. And, you know, it didn't really have an idea yet totally how we would do that. But reprogrammed everything I could in terms of more heavy weapons, more this, more that. But I knew it wasn't going to be enough yet. And lo and behold, George Schultz at the State Department and his key deputies went along with this. CIA's leadership did under Bill Casey, Casper Weinberger, and DeVos.

defense did, you know, on the policy side. And so our goal then became to defeat the Soviets and drive them out. And President Reagan signed a top secret national security decision directive, which has been mostly declassified for the past decade, with that goal in mind. That was, that was our aim there. And so in a sense, now we had a hunting license to do what was required to do that. And so then that triggered, okay, do one can we get all our partners to escalate with us? And so that meant resting strategic control. So we controlled the strategy from the Pakistanis, you know,

and that would help solve this issue of are they controlling too much or diverting things, but also for us to put in all these new weapons and both quantity and quality. and then getting our suppliers, the Chinese were a big ally of ours, and our largest arm supplier, and Egypt was another, would they agree with the escalation? And not only escalation in quantity, but also in more advanced weapons, you know, rocket launchers from the Chinese,

surface-air missiles, you know, that would really make our partners more vulnerable. And, you know, Pakistan, in terms of subversion and maybe in, invasion, you know, the Chinese with diplomatic repercussions when their weapons are found, you know, surface-air missiles are shooting down Soviet aircraft. And so I had to go to all these countries with the top leadership of their intelligence services to try to get them to go along with the escalation. And they all did within six months. And then that included trying to get a more advanced surface-air weapon. You know, in covert action, programs, you want a plausible deniability.

You know, so what, you know, covert means for your listeners is you're concealing the sponsor of the operation, but not the operation because you're influencing events. You know, you're supporting a war, you're doing political action or whatever it is. But you don't want the United States role to be apparent. You know, even if people suspect it, you're not acknowledging it. Right. And, you know, so in paramilitary operations, the ones that are kind of the most deniable are when you're using the enemy's weapons, which is what the Afghan program was for the first five years.

And then, you know, you can lift up the skirt a little more by going to Western weapons and then even more with U.S. weapons. And within 12 months, we kind of went to the spectrum in certain high areas. You know, we went for Western surface to air. missiles, a British blowpipe, and then eventually the U.S. Stinger. You know, so further escalations in that regard. And so first, the Brits turned us down on the blowpipe, and then we went back to them, and Prime Minister Thatcher agreed, and so we started that program up.

And then we went back to Congress and said, you know, we now have a strategy and a real detailed plan. And we know you just quadrupled our budget, but we actually need double that. You know, if you'll just double it one more time and take us up to a billion, billion, two, we think we can actually achieve this objective in a couple years. And lo and behold, Charlie Wilson came through again that summer and transferred money from the Department of Defense and the Saudis matched it. And so within less than 12 months,

the program had increased by a factor of more than 10, you know, from like 120 million to almost 1.2 billion where it leveled off. And then lots of, you know, we went from 20 surfaced air missiles, some of which didn't work to, you know, damn near 2000 and increased our training by factor of 10 and, you know, all sorts of other things. And so the tempo of combat went up, the number of aircraft shot down, the size of ambushes, the attacks on urban areas and bases, shelling with rockets, shelling into Kabul, you know, all that just increased dramatically. And at the same time, Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in the Soviet Union in March 85, just as we were beginning on this escalation path, all of 85, took us top general from Eastern Europe,

Germany and put them in charge and got two years to win the war. We'll give you 25,000 more troops to the 105 that the Soviets had there already. So we had this dual escalation, you know, ours covert and there's over. And within 12 months, we had won that battle of the surges. And Gorbachev started looking for the exit. Mike, when I just out of curiosity, when you're going around and selling, you know, partner nations on the idea of increasing their investments, it's increasing the weaponship to Afghanistan, things like that. Do you need a different pitch for each country? Because Afghanistan isn't necessarily strategically necessary for anybody.

Is it just the idea of bleeding the Soviet Union? Yeah, so it differed in each case. So, you know, with China, they had had a border clash in 1969, and we had, you know, the opening to China led by, Henry Kissinger and Nixon and then consolidated in the normalization of relations under President Carter and started an intelligence partnership with the Chinese and then started supporting the Afghan program because they wanted to weaken the Soviets and have them tied down in a war because, you know, they were worried about a Soviet invasion of China from the north.

You know, Soviet priorities were NATO number one. You know, that was the big war. China number two and then maybe Iran number three. And Afghanistan was kind of number four there, which is why we thought there were limits on their ability to escalate. And so with the Chinese, it was really more a case of they're already in it. Are they willing to go in it even more with more sophisticated weapons and numbers of weapons? And, you know, there was a debate about whether they would, the national intelligence. officer for China told me there's no way they will give you these surface-air missiles,

and they ended up doing it, you know. And where with Pakistan, you know, it was a function of the Islamic world not liking these infidels invading a Muslim country. And so that, you know, affected Egypt and Pakistan. And then with Pakistan, there was really the risk of, you know, cross-border raids with Soviet special forces, airstrikes, sabotaged by the KGB and Afghan Secret Service, and maybe an invasion, because the Soviets would do these big sweeps, you know, search and destroy missions right up to the border.

And so it was a little different for them. And they were in it, but it took some convincing more about the risk of, you know, escalation that would directly affect them as the frontline state. I should have mentioned Saudi Arabia, too, another one that was mostly helping fund the program. But, again, it was the invasion of a Muslim country. And then with the Brits, you know, it was more high technology. You know, we were partnering on intelligence collection and other things and support for resistance commanders. But it was really, you know, do we want to stick it to the Soviets with this advanced weapon that they're not going to, you know, that shoots on more aircraft?

And same for the U.S. decision. So, yeah, you know, the pitch was tailored to their own interests in Afghanistan in each case. I think you answered at least half of my next question. But because you talked about it in the book at some length, I wanted to ask you about the covert operation cooperation that you mentioned with China, which is this interesting historical interlude, almost impossible to imagine something like that happening today. But I just wanted to see if I can tease out. of you a little bit, any sort of a cultural observations about their approach to warfare, covert operations, or anything else that you took away from those numerous meetings where you interface directly with the Chinese intelligence apparatus?

Yeah. So, you know, it was very interesting in a sense that, you know, they had the long Chinese civil war and, you know, Mao, had been dead for almost a decade, and Deng Xiaoping actually approved this big escalation. But, you know, so in our initial discussions, we had big debates about guerrilla warfare strategy. And, you know, so try different visions about how to defeat the Soviets in Afghanistan. You know, is it really lots of people armed with AKs,

or is it combined arms and stuff? which I was pushing and more, you know, when shift the anti-air balance more in the insurgents favor and stuff. And so that took some convincing, you know, we went back and forth. And, you know, they're saying to me, look, we really know guerrilla warfare. You know, we over to our own government this way. And I'd say, well, yeah, I know something about it too. And here's why I think we need to do this.

And they finally, you know, went along. But it was very interesting. It was very interesting culturally in a sense that they're negotiating style. You know, you weren't allowed to, when you made presentations, they would just say, continue, continue with no break. You know, and if you said you couldn't ask them questions when they were talking for 30 minutes and they didn't want any interrupt. You know, if I'd say, well, okay, you want me to elaborate on this or something,

then just continue, you know. And so we were really almost like ships passing in the night. And then, you know, as they often, as I later learned, they do with businesses a lot. You don't clinch the deal until the very end. And so it looked like we weren't going to get everything we want. We were heading to the air. We got some things. We were heading to the airport and they're waiting for us in an airport lounge with drinks and stuff

was the head of armaments for the PLA and said, okay, read everything. I said, better late than never. But yeah, it was, you know, and I imagined myself when I was in Special Forces, you know, in the 10th group, where we had this World War III mission and, you know, to liberate Eastern Europe, you know, I thought this would be, if this ever came to pass, this would be, you know, T.E. Lawrence and all this great stuff. But I also thought I'd read about World War II and OSS and China and others. And I knew about the border conflict that they had had in 69. I'd study that as I was completing my bachelor's degree. And I thought, well, maybe I'd find myself on the side of the Chinese against the Russians. You know, that would be really exotic.

You know, Eastern Europe, I kind of know, but this one would be exotic. And lo and behold, they became my partner to fight in Afghanistan. I didn't have the imagination to think about that. But as far as the end game in Afghanistan, I mean, the obvious end of the conflict is the Soviet withdraw. When did you know it was over? Really in sort of early 1986, Gorbachev gave this open speech in February 86 about bleeding wound and we've got to extricate ourselves from this. And our escalation was just starting.

I mean, we had flows of stuff going there through 1987. And, you know, this meant strengthening the logistics system from ships to what you do at ports, to railroads, to trucks, to warehouses, and then to Toyota land cruisers and even, you know, 10,000 mules. You know, I grew up in Hollywood. I didn't know a damn thing about mules. And suddenly I find myself dealing with China about, you know, 10,000 of these things. And it turns out Chinese mules were better for Afghanistan than Tennessee mules, which, you know, who would think?

But there's the mountains. And so, you know, it really was pretty clear in 86. But then you had this dance of negotiations, the first Soviet. six regiments come out that summer, but the Soviets are hoping that we'll leave the Afghan government in place. And so there's negotiations about that. And the U.S. rightly holds firm. And then eventually Gorbachev says, okay, we just want out. We don't care what kind of government is there.

And that's since the deal. And then from the time the agreement was signed, they withdrew in two. big phases. And so that was not quite a year, like nine months, but you know, so it just played out in slow motion. But the writing was on the wall. Their their tactics shifted.

Once we started shooting down so many aircraft, they started flying above surface-air missile range, which meant they couldn't do closer support very well. They didn't do offensive operations as much anymore. You know, they just kind of hunkered down to their bases.

And, you know, so it was pretty clear And also, they announced this policy like we did in Vietnam, the Afghanization, you know, to basically shift to an indirect role where the Afghan, their communist Afghans are going to do the fighting and the Soviets are going to support them, but not do the combat. And, you know, so we saw all that. And that kind of, you know, led to the end game. What was important was holding their feet to the fire, you know, really sustained. this through this period. And this is where I really give, I think there's important lessons from President Reagan in this, is that, you know, as relations were really warming between Reagan and Gorbachev and, you know, bring breakthroughs in diplomacy, we kept the heat on in Afghanistan

pressure. You know, and still said, look, we want to do business with you. This can be great, but, you know, we disagree on this one thing. And, you know, he ended up getting his way. Yeah. As we kind of get towards the end of part one of our interview with you, I wanted to ask a couple questions that are sort of like big picture, things that I think maybe you're uniquely qualified to answer. At the time, we've talked at length about supporting the Mujahideen in Afghanistan. At the same time, there were paramilitary programs supporting Unita in Angola

and the FDN or the Contras in Nicaragua. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about these three anti-Sysmal. essentially anti-Soviet covert operations around the world. And what was the global strategy behind them? Yeah, and there was also a brief period of supporting Cambodians against the Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia, although it was very, very small. So, you know, it really, we started this period on defense in Central America.

You know, Nicaragua had fallen to the Sandinistas. You know, and there was a sense that the Soviets and their Cuban allies and others were really on the march. And insurgency really exploded in El Salvador. And, you know, so we were counterinsurgency and essentially dealing there. And then the Contra program is kind of the first big one, in a sense, because Afghanistan is this we're doing what we can

there but there's no thought you're going to win where we really didn't want to lose and we certainly didn't want to have more countries fall to communism in Central America but there was even a hope well maybe we could defeat him in Nicaragua and at least in our backyard you know so it starts off fairly modest

and then as you move to 1984 one the contra program becomes politically controversial and has this hiatus And it's, you know, it's doing so-so. We had a lot of success in counter-insurgency in El Salvador, but not as much, you know, on the offensive side in Nicaragua. And then as Afghanistan escalates, that then becomes the real main effort. And so people's minds change between this is hopeless to maybe we can win there.

And if we win here, it really matters. You know, this is the main enemy in the big engine. Chalada, where if you went in Nicaragua, you move a pawn on the chessboard rather than a queen. And then Angola picks up, I think, in 86 or so. And, you know, the Cubans had sent a big proxy army into Angola, 20-some thousand troops. And that kicks in as well. And then President Reagan gives the Reagan Doctrine speech, which is, we'll see. support anti-communist insurgencies. And I want to say that's early, early 85, if I remember,

right. And it provides kind of the strategic framework for this global irregular war that kind of came in parts, essentially, in a different times and different emphasis. And it's tied to a broader strategy of restricting technology transfer hurting the Soviets with low oil prices you know

other things to kind of weaken the system and then of course the Reagan buildup you know that they really can't match the Star Wars Yeah and that you know missile defense and

and then since the late 70s we started shifting our strategy, our conventional strategy in Europe to deep attack. You know, we knew we really couldn't, you know, up until, say, 1976, our strategy was to trade space for time, essentially to withdraw under pressure of a Soviet advance. And every war game showed that they could break through on multiple fronts, and it just didn't work. Once we developed the precision weapons and the intelligence. surveillance and reconnaissance and other things.

The first stealth aircraft, the F-117, the Army tactical missile system, you know, that's finally getting to Ukraine today, the joint surveillance and target acquisition, J-Stars, that really worried the Soviets about their strategy, that, you know, all the second echelon forces would be vulnerable. And, you know, rather than having a tank battle right up at front, those reinforcing forces could get hit. And that's what the Soviet general staff backed Gorbachev, because as they looked out, you know, 10, 20 years,

they thought, we're just going to fall further behind the United States and technology, and we've got to do something to revitalize our system to catch up. And so all that weighed them down. Do you think that all of these? That I would add two, support for solidarity in Poland. You know, that was a big one, too, keeping them alive. Yep, yep. Do you think that all these these counter sort of Soviet wars that we fought that, you know, are challenging because you can't, you can't always mold the indigenous peoples that are your proxy soldiers, right?

They're doing their thing. But do you think that all those led up to Gorbachev to the, you know, because in 89 we saw the fall of the Berlin Wall? Like, do you think that we basically defeated the Soviet Union through these even? if we didn't win in the specific places all the time? Yeah, so I think, you know, in Nicaragua, the result was a little more ambiguous because the Sandinistas got defeated in election in 1990. But, you know, pressure from the insurgents.

In Angola, we really defeated the Cubans, and in Afghanistan, defeated the Soviets, and it was the only defeat the Red Army had suffered in its history. So a real blow to its credibility and claim on resources, and same with the KGB. And, you know, and I do think that had a big effect on the Soviets. You know, it's not the only thing that led to the disillusion of the Soviet Empire. Gorbachev's critical in that, in a sense, not using force in Eastern Europe when, you know,

the wall starts cumbling down and solidarity gets elected and, you know, all that. But the defeat of the Red Army was a big deal, yeah. Another sort of like big picture, and this is more of an institutional question, and I hope I won't start a food fight with this one. But the differences between the special activities division and special forces, or between ground branch and special forces, what are the pros and cons of each? Why do we maintain these two, in some ways, parallel capabilities? Yeah, so that's a question that's been debated over the decades. You know, should CIA just focus on intelligence and not covert action? particularly paramilitary covert action where, you know, the military has very strong capabilities.

And so, you know, part of the reason for that is the political benefits of covert action to begin with. You know, so the way I like to describe it, if we're going to support an insurgency against the hostile power in peacetime, presidents overwhelmingly defer to CIA there. So it's not a question of capabilities. It's a question of plausible deniability and escalation control. And, you know, if we had special forces doing Afghanistan, it's not that they couldn't do it technically. It's that you run a higher risk that you're going to trigger a direct war

than if CIA is doing it. You're still killing Soviets. You know, I mean, it's still a war. It's just that it provides this level of control that president seems to go to. And then when you, go to war, you know, particularly a big war, you don't have enough CIA for that. And then there's no reason not to use your military, you know, for that. And then all these other missions, counterterrorism and, you know, that require real surgical

skill and everything, that's properly the military, you know, and those things occur in peacetime. But, you know, so there's this kind of division of labor based on, you know, the politics of it and whether covert or overt makes sense or whether, you know, and then CIA essentially working through partners with a smaller footprint rather than, you know, something more muscular. You know, as you get to the more muscular side, you get to DOD. And, you know, that's true in a number of areas, whether it's drones or whether it's cyber. You know, you have these equal, you have capabilities in both areas, but for different purposes.

So I think it serves the country. It gives the president more options, and it serves the country well to have both. But you've got to know the limitations of both. There's sort of this idea or rumor, I guess, that Republican presidents will lean more heavily on the military and Democratic presidents will lean more heavily on the CIA. Do you think that's an actual thing? is it just sort of whomever fits best? Yeah, I don't think that bears out necessarily in history. I mean, the, you know, from the last two decades of the Cold War and maybe parts of the last 20 years, you know, the differences in general about aggressive foreign policy have differentiated the parties until recently.

when you've got all this isolationism strain creeping in. But part of the reason, I think analysts explain that Republicans won five out of six presidential elections in the late Cold War is because they were trusted more on national security. So I think rather than military or CIA, I think it's more how aggressively you use either one. There's still nuances in both, like I said, you know, what Carter, started, Reagan continued, and then Reagan escalated, but it took a while. Right. And then, you know, after 9-11, President Bush for the invasion of Afghanistan, went with essentially a CIA-led plan because it was very rapid. And, you know, of course the

military was going to fold in on that. You know, CIA wasn't going to fight the Afghan war by themselves, but you needed air power and you needed special forces. and all that. But, you know, the initial options that the military came up with weren't unconventional. They were air strikes or massive invasion. And President Bush didn't want to, you know, air strikes were too little and massive invasion too late. Yeah.

So, you know, so that's what kind of drove it. Do we have any questions? And then, you know, the other thing that drives it is our foreign partners. You know, a lot of times for their own risk, they'll want to deal with, CIA are intelligence channels because they think it provides them more protection. And, you know, and then it's also flexible. Like we can, you know, if CIA needs certain capabilities that the Department of Defense has, we can loan them to them.

Right. So, you know, and so then it's just a question of what authority do you want? Right. I think we have a few viewer questions. Yeah, we have some great questions. first off Rory, thank you very much for the donation. I didn't see a question. If there is one, please start in chat and we'll keep an eye out for it.

Andrew Dunbar, thanks, buddy. Do you have any funny anecdotes about dealing with the State Department? Seems like SF and the diplomatic service would be a bit of a culture clash. Well, I don't know how funny they are, but, you know, When I was dealing on the counterterrorism intelligence collection, you know, in case our embassies were seized by terrorists, you know, the diplomat, the ambassadors and the diplomats thought, okay, this is a good thing to have. I want someone to come and rescue me if things go bad. And so, you know, I dealt with the security people and the ambassador and the chief station, and they were all, they were in high threat areas. So they were supportive of having the military, you know, prepare for this.

And, you know, more I think what your listener is referring to is approaches to foreign policy decisions and use of force, the interagency, where we do have differences of opinion, you know, sometimes. That's where the different departments, you know, can diverge sometimes. But on what I did there, I don't think. And then also generally, I wouldn't say all ambassadors, but lots of ambassadors welcome all the help they can get. So they've got us, you know, whatever size country team. But, you know, if you can send them a few people that will really augment them and do something for them useful, they generally welcome it.

You know, it's more for their empire and more ability to do good things, you know, in their particular country. So, yeah, I didn't really have that experience. They didn't look at you as atavistic knuckle-dragers who should, like, sit in a corner and only come out when, you know, break. They'd laugh. Like, you know, like, one ambassador, you know, I mentioned John Negroponte earlier that I served with over several decades, you know, when we were both in the Bush II administration, he said, I remember you as a special forces captain. And, you know, you wanted to take pictures of my bathroom. and all this other stuff.

If you were being held in your bathroom, we're going to want to know how to get in there. Spencer Devons, thank you very much. From your perspective, what does the United States need to address the PRC going into the rest of this century? Good question. When does your recommendation need to be done by?

Ah, so I have a chapter in the book called Winning the New Cold War that deals with how to compete, how to prevail over China over several decades, and Russia as an ally of China as well. And, you know, probably the biggest factor, since they're a global power and an integrated world, is really the economic and technological competition. We've been the dominant economic power in the world for a century, and we never had a rival in the 20th century that had more than 50% of our GDP. So we had this economic escalation dominance. You know, and World War II is the best example of that. You know, we get surprised at the beginning, but then we mobilize American industry, and, you know, we flood the Pacific with ships and,

you know, other things and landing craft to go to D-Day and all that. And, you know, that, you know, that may not be as true in the 21st century if China continues to grow. Now, they've been stumbling. And then you also have this revolution and technology with AI and quantum, and that can remake the world, and we don't want to be on the losing end of that. Right. And then those things translate into, like the original Cold War,

into competitions for global influence, you know, all around Africa, Latin America, and elsewhere. And as warfare, has evolved. You know, our position has been eroded in the Western Pacific. So China kind of went to school on the U.S. military more than any other country in Desert Storm or in the aftermath of Desert Storm. And the big conclusion the Chinese drew out of this was terrible idea to give the United States six months to build up massive combat power right on your border and then beat your brains in, you know, and so they developed this anti-access strategy to try to prevent.

prevent U.S. force, hurt the ones that are in the region by attacking air bases and surface ships, and then prevent the reinforcements or make it very costly for them to come in. And they've pursued that strategy for several decades. And now you have these new warfare domains, space and cyber that are inherently global. And while the Chinese are pretty powerful opposite Taiwan, you know, once you get out of missile range, you know, if we were both projecting power, say to Africa or somewhere, you know, the U.S. would dominate and we'd like to keep it that way. So we have undersea dominance, you know, we have really more and long-range strike.

We have better space systems. I'd like to keep it that way because the way for China to become a global military power is to gain advantages in those areas. And, you know, so there's a number of things you have to do to strengthen regional and global deterrents, but then you got to win this Cold War, which might be from proxies and influence and a lot of the covert action and the special ops stuff that, you know, below direct conflict. Because, you know, another characteristic of the old Cold War in this one is nuclear weapons

tends to put a little bit of a break on conventional war. You can't do World War the way, you know, you otherwise would. And so that means you got to get at your adversary through more devious ways. you know, we've got our work cut out for us for there. M. Corbyn, thank you very much. If possible, any commentary on the lasting impact

of the ISI director, General Ahmed Ghul? Ah, so he, it's a funny question. So he came in late in the Soviet-Afghan War

and was a conventional armor officer and wanted to shift the insurgency into conventional battle, essentially, and ordered assaults on cities, which played right into Soviet and communist Afghan government hands. You know, like, you make yourself a big target and stay there long enough. We'll pound you. You know, you don't want to do daylight assaults on cities generally, but particularly when, your enemy has artillery superiority and air superiority and, you know, everything else. So he was a pretty disruptive force in the endgame of Afghanistan and then became very anti-U.S.

And so over time, you know, supported the Taliban and others. Over time, really became an agitator for, you know essentially not partnering with the U.S. and everything else. So he's not my favorite Pakistani gentleman. Spencer Devin's. Thank you very much. He has a couple questions coming up. He's in a meeting, so he's going to get to these later.

Do you see any sort of scenario where we risk becoming Eisenhower's feared Garrison State while we try to maintain escalation, dominance with an adversary that could have a larger DDP than we do. Yeah, so that's the challenge of the economics is that I say, now China may have peaked and they're, you know, they're emphasizing political control over economic growth. And so they're kind of killing their golden goose right now. So it may not be as dire as we think.

But, you know, they could, they can recover. And, you know, the genius of Eisenhower was to, recognized that the Cold War would be fought hopefully short of conventional war because of nuclear weapons. And in fact, he emphasized nuclear weapons very dramatically in his strategy, the national security strategy, the new look. But he also thought it was very important to put the United States in a long-term competition on a sustainable fiscal path. You know, we had spent a lot of money mobilizing for Korea, you know, demobilized after World War II and then ramped up for Korea, and it really created a lot of budget problems and everything. And so Eisenhower kind of put us on a steady state where innovation was emphasized, nuclear weapons would be used to deter war and hopefully bring an end if you had one. But also all these innovations in, you know, after Sputnik and the space race, NASA and DARPA was created and then the NRO.

And so, you know, it was a, and then used covert action, you know, to compete in the third world. And so it was a pretty effective grand strategy. And, you know, and then even on the economics side, you know, the interstate highway system, you know, it's a good model for, you know, at the end of the day, I think who wins this new Cold War between us and China and its allies will be who has the strongest overall system, which means our domestic power base, you know, which it's got resilient. You can't spend yourself into oblivion. And, you know, and one of the dangers of great powers is they, you know, both we and the Soviets

made these mistakes in the Cold War is, you know, strategies and art, not a science. So you can overreach and make yourself vulnerable on peripheral things, or you can underreach and not do anything and then the world really gets bad for you. And you know, we've done over various periods of time. And you know, and you want to find that realm where you're adding to your power, not depleting it and then taking advantage of your adversary. when they make a mistake, you know, and that's what we eventually did in the late Cold War. You know, I like to describe the Cold War. We started off pretty strong, you know, the first

decade and a half. We kind of had trouble in the middle couple decades, and then we finished strong, and that was enough to win it. Great answer. Also from Spencer, if it's possible, how would you seek to make covert action programs immune to the polls of U.S. domestic political theater? I'm not sure it works like that. Yeah, so, you know, intelligence emphasizes our Republican form of government where a couple committees in Congress do the oversight for the American people to keep things secret. But, you know, one of the tests of a covert action program is, you know,

it ought to be consistent with broader U.S. foreign policy interests and goals. and when it's too disjointed from that, you know, and then the likelihood that it's going to get leaked by opponents goes up as well, you're going to have trouble. You know, you're going to have controversy. And so, you know, you'd like the test of it is you'd like the American people to say, okay, yeah, I see why my government's doing that. It's in our interest.

And I see why it was secret, you know, rather than what the hell are you doing? Right, right. you know, and so we've had both over decades and, you know, hopefully we've learned how to do that. You know, the answer is not to do covert action. I mean, presidents will differ on, you know, how aggressive they want to be. But, you know, when it succeeds, it really succeeds very well. And it's generally our biggest programs that are the most successful. But then we've also had spectacular failures like Bay of Pig.

and others. You just got to avoid the dumb shit and do the smart shit. Right. And unfortunately, sometimes you don't know if it's dumb shit or smart shit until it's already done. Yeah, right. I mean, sometimes. That's right. How involved or where should the average American be about national security topics,

and how would you amend current engagement? Well, I think we're very affected by what goes on. and the rest of the world. And, you know, it's incumbent upon our political leaders, you know, to make that case. And then, you know, and I think engagement is important. And, you know, and one of the reasons we're connected is not just trade and others, although that matters. It's also the reach of weapons, you know, and the destructedness of weapons.

So beginning with nuclear weapons, but also not. there's more ways to reach intercontinental distances, cyber being one example, you know, so the two oceans don't protect us in the way they have in the past and, you know, what what happens overseas matters to us. And it's the same thing, you know, as terrorists go from a local or regional problem to ones with global ambitions or extra regional, you know, it affects our interests more. you know, generally, when we've disengaged, we've paid a price for it down the road. Now, that doesn't mean overengagement. It just means you can't completely disengage. You know, you use economy of force in a lot of places, and that's enough, but you can't just up and leave and say, I don't care about the place.

Mike, you know, you mentioned cyber a couple times, and I'm curious about your position on this. And obviously, sometimes the cyber gangs are in China. or in Russia, they're in a non-permissive environment. But, you know, we do see, like, ransomware attacks on hospitals where a hospital will get locked down. If a group of armed people were to go into that hospital and lock it down, we have specific reactions to it, do you feel as though the U.S. government should start viewing certain types of cyber attacks

as actually offensive military or acts of war or acts of war or acts of terrorism them and treat them as such? Yeah, it's a great question. So, so one, you know, cyber is this unique weapon that it, you know, it can be used by states. It can be used, you know, to harass and destroy, you know, distributed denial of service attacks and then really destructive attacks. It can be used for intelligence collection as well as force, et cetera. So it has a lot of different attributes.

And so where a lot of supposedly non-governmental cyber actors are operating hostile territory and hurting you, you have to have some kind of diplomatic or some response because they're operating on this guy's territory, probably with his and they're hurting you. So it's only a problem right now in Russia, but it's also China as well. And then, you know, as you mentioned, we had this experience.

You know, when I was under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, North Korea whacked Sony pictures. And the Iranians whacked Saudi Arabian oil, you know, abcake and other. others, big destructive attacks. And as you said, had North Koreans walked into Sony and blew up those computers, there'd be no doubt about a response. But, you know, if you do it with cyber, it's this, well, what is it?

And, you know, it's just a computer and or 30,000 computers or whatever the case is. But so we have a ways to go in this nascent field to develop, you know, in a way. it was easier to develop strategy in the nuclear world after the advent of nuclear weapons than it has been. You know, cyber has been around now for a couple decades and we're still struggling

with what does it mean and how is it that fit in the world of force and what's acceptable intelligence collection and what's not, you know, so like this intellectual mass, on a massive scale, this intellectual property theft, you know, like one of the things I

thought in the cold war against the Soviet Union, where we really didn't interact economically and we restricted technologies. They got some of them. But I thought, you know, you really can't steal your way to economic competitiveness. So they're trying to get our computers through, you know, clandestine means and stuff like that. And it seemed like we had enormous advantage. Cyber and the Chinese have changed my views about that, given massive gains they've made economically from taking intellectual property. It looks like crime pays. Right. Right. And it's also tough because we've had people on the show in the counterintelligence industry or from, you know, the FBI, the CIA who are like,

when every, you know, Chinese national or Chinese descendant who has relatives in mainland are a potential spy for the United States, like how do you stop your technology from walking out the doors when the Chinese government can walk up and go, hey, I saw your grandmother last week. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, you know, the FBI's job jar has grown dramatically with this technology problem and the proliferation, you know, the traditional counterintelligence problem of I've got, you

know, 100 intelligence off, hostile intelligence officers working in this country has changed pretty dramatically. And then you've got, you know, still international terrorist extremists. extremists and domestic, so they got their pets. Yeah. Maybe we'll do one more before we let Mike. We have like three more if that's okay. Because one of them like is a very generous donation.

I want to make sure we get to it. I read in your bio that in 1978 you went to over to Hereford, UK and completed a British SASU K-B course. How did you get that opportunity and how was that experience for you? It's also in the book, by all means available, which I hope you guys will go and take a look at. Yeah, so, you know, we were just starting to develop precision counterterrorism capabilities in the late 1970s, you know, after the Munich Massacre in 72 and some airline hijackers or hijackings. And, you know, so the Israelis were ahead of us and the Brits were ahead of us in certain ways.

And then we started building this capability. And I was fortunate enough. I was in a special forces unit in Germany at the time and Bob Tolts part of the 10th group. And I got selected to go to this training early on. And, you know, it not only gave me some new tactical skills, this close quarter battle, and they had a lot to teach us then.

Today, you know, we're the best force in the world in those areas and have been for the past couple of decades. But, you know, it started me really on this counterterrorism track that became a pretty big part of my career along with unconventional warfare and, you know, other parts that, you know, so it was more than just tactical training in a sense that, you know, got me thinking about precision counterterrorism operations and all that goes into it and stuff. So it's a great experience. So we have four questions off. I'm only going to ask one of them. And then we'll get the other three next show, because we don't want to keep you too late.

We know you're on a timeline. Mohamed Sabani, thank you very much for the very generous nation. Love the show, as always, y'all. What actions, if any, can be taken for America to compete in hardware chip production with the entire rare earth processing and supply chain being owned by Chinese? Also, how can America protect its infrastructure from cyber attacks? Yeah, two great questions, really at the heart of this new competition. So one, you know, we've got this chip acts to try to repatriate production that had gone overseas the past couple decades.

In advanced chips, you know, we really are still ahead, but then you want to restrict some of that. So I think, you know, and that's companies like Nvidia, you know, the GPUs and stuff that's been subject of some administration restrictions and things. I want to maintain that lead. There are certain areas where we're behind in, you know, precision, you know, how many things you can fit on a chip and stuff, the scale, nanometers and things, that Taiwan semiconductor, you know, is more advanced than us. But it's just a critical area. It's an area that, you know, we invented, we dominated. It had military implications as well as commercial and economic. and, you know, it's going to be just as important in this century.

And then the caller, two other parts to that. One, you know, the de-risking of supply chains. Now, I think there's more, we're discovering more rare earths everywhere. You know, China has pretty big dominance now, but, you know, they're all over the world, and including in the United States, you know, Wyoming and elsewhere. And so we just got to have the right policies to go after them and then the relationships with some foreign governments

to compete in that area. And then, you know, where we're dependent in pharmaceuticals, as we saw in COVID and medical supplies, you know, you've got to de-risk that. It doesn't mean decouple completely, but you have to have alternative sources to supply and assured sources to supply. It doesn't mean everything has to be in the United States.

just can't all be in China. Right. And then on cybersecurity, you know, that's a tough one because the public-private partnership only goes so far because, you know, we've got a free market system and it's sensitive. You know, companies don't want to tell you all their vulnerabilities or, you know, for lots of reasons. And so, you know, our cyber command, commander has three missions essentially to support combatant commanders to defend all of DOD's networks but then to defend the United States against a massive attack, you know,

something that's beyond crime and everything else. But he's the only commander who really can't see the battlefield. You know, he sees part of the battlefield or if he can, if he can target the attacker, you know, where it's coming from, he can see that. But, you know, if the attacks, If he doesn't see the point of origin, and it's hitting all these other places that he doesn't have visibility on, you got a challenge with that. And so, you know, there's a big debate about cyber offense and cyber defense. You know, I think some of the advances in AI are going to really enable the offense going forward. We need a lot of attention to this.

and if quantum computing comes around in the next decade or so. It's great. Those are both really strategic questions, and it's not something national security councils typically are trained or to the kind of problem. Mike, I really appreciate you being willing to tackle so many of these difficult subjects, and this turned out to be a pretty wide-ranging interview, actually. I hope that all of you out there will go and check out his memoir by all means available.

I read it. It was terrific. And we will have Mike back next Friday for Part 2, where I'm sure we'll have more of these policy discussions. And we'll also be talking about the latter part of his career where he served as the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Ops and Low Intensity Conflict, ASD Solic, and also headed up USDA. So again, Mike, you thank you very much for taking the time for this interview. Thank you both. And we will see all of you next Friday. Also, real quick, make sure you check out Jack and I being interviewed on the cleared hot podcast with Andy Stump. He was generous enough to invite us out to Montana.

It's out there now. Sat around and shot the shift for a while. And Mike, thanks so much. We will see you on Friday. Okay, take care. Thanks.