Special Forces to CIA in Afghanistan Fighting the Soviets | Mike Vickers (throwback)
original air date 12/1/23
Michael Vickers joins us to discuss his path from 10th Special Forces Group to the CIA, including Cold War missions, Berlin tradecraft, Grenada, Beirut, and Ground Branch. We also get into the covert war in Afghanistan, the Reagan Doctrine, working with foreign partners like Pakistan and China, and how the U.S. helped drive the Soviet Union out by all means available.
Grab Mike's book here:
https://a.co/d/05Lzlki9
00:00 — Start
02:19 — Michael Vickers’ Origin Story
03:39 — 10th Special Forces Group During the Cold War
07:14 — Berlin, Detachment A, and Denied-Area Tradecraft
08:28 — Training With Man-Portable Nuclear Weapons
12:30 — OCS, Panama, and 7th Special Forces Group
15:16 — Embassy Rescue Prep and the RST Mission
21:16 — Leaving Special Forces for the CIA
22:27 — CIA Training, Suriname, and the Road to Grenada
26:16 — First Combat in Grenada
30:33 — Beirut, Hezbollah, and Failed Policy
33:49 — Ground Branch and the Afghanistan Assignment
40:31 — How the Afghan Covert Action Program Evolved
45:12 — “By All Means Available”: Defeating the Soviets
50:45 — Blowpipe, Stingers, and Escalating the War
53:12 — Selling the Strategy to Foreign Partners
56:18 — Working With Chinese Intelligence
01:00:07 — The Soviet Withdrawal From Afghanistan
01:03:32 — Reagan Doctrine and the Global Irregular War
01:10:21 — CIA Covert Action vs. Special Forces
01:18:23 — China, the New Cold War, and U.S. Power
01:30:38 — Cyber Attacks as Acts of War
01:37:09 — Chips, Rare Earths, and Protecting U.S. Infrastructure
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Speaker 1: So, mister Vickers really appreciate your patients 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.
Speaker 2: Sure. So I grew up in southern California and went
to Hollywood High School and had dreams of being a
professional baseball player, 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 and
Laos supporting the Homong 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
CI 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 of years of college and then became
an officer and then actually then became a CIA operations officer.
Speaker 1: So tell us about landing in tenth Special Forces Group,
and I mean this is during the Cold War, of course,
what was tenth Group like at that time? What was
your initial roles and duty positions?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I completed the Special Forces Qualification course as
a weapons sergeant in May nineteen seventy four and then
was assigned to the tenth Group, which had two battalions
at Fort Devons, Massachusetts time. And you know, as you know,
special Forces groups are oriented toward different regions of the world.
And after Vietna the number of groups collapsed down to three.
But the tenth Group had Europe and the Soviet Bloc,
and basically the operational detachments were divided. Some of them
would go had 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 MACV you know, studies and observation groups
that were doing these dangerous special reconnaissance missions. And then
we also had a number of Eastern European emigrats, you know,
who were born in Czechoslovakia or elsewhere. One of my
group commanders was born in Georgia and another Battanan 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 till till the nineteen eighties, we did have one.
You know, our job was mainly to prepare for World
War three, 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 into a civil war, but it was aborted at
the last minute, and the president decided to go to
the covert action route rather than overt military or special operations. Use.
Speaker 1: 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
some clandestine tradecraft training.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So the tenth Group in those days, you know,
I mentioned two battalions in the group headquarters at Fort Devons.
There was a battalion forward at bod Toltzen Bavaria. I
later served in that unit, and then there was essentially
a company size force in civilian clothes that was in
Berlin called Detachment A, changed its name in the nineteen
eighties 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 a lot
of denied area trade crafts.
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So from the early I guess the late nineteen
sixties and early nineteen in nineteen seventies up until the
mid nineteen eighties, special operations forces mainly seals and Green Berets,
a select portion of them were given this mission to
train to place, 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 evaluations 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, and
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
enough was in place that would detonate, and but yeah,
it was it was a very interesting experience. And then
you know, learning how to parachute with it, either freefall
or static line, and you could also scuba with it too,
so that's hence the Seals or Special Forces scuba teams.
Speaker 1: I've actually been doing a lot of research on the
green Light Teams recently, and I think that it's it's
easy for us today to look back on it as
a sort of strange Doctor Strangelove sort of esque mission.
Speaker 3: But what I'm struck by all the people.
Speaker 1: I've talked to is like, how deadly serious all of
you guys were about this mission and completely ready to
execute it if they were called upon.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, I mean, so some context. You know, beginning
in the nineteen fifties, you know, Soviet has had numerical
superiority in Europe, and so we kind of went the
route in the Eisenhower administration and through the sixties and
seventies to make up for that numerical inferiority by having
lots of tactical nuclear weapons, so artillery shills, minds, 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's part of a part of a
larger family, and it was a very very serious mission.
Speaker 1: So as a as you know, the kid, the teenager
that read the New York Times article about Special Ops
and LAOS, I mean, was this will all of this
sounds like a dream come true?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I had to pinch myself. I was really you know,
you know, the path actually worked out in terms of
you know, I 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 ten before I
went to CIA. You know, so I really loved it.
It was just just a great experience.
Speaker 1: So you went to officer candidate school and then you
got to do a pretty big venue change from Germany
and tenth Group to third Battalion, seventh Group that was
down at Fort Goolik, Panama, Right.
Speaker 2: 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 graduated from OCS, we didn't have
an SF branch in those days. And so I was
an infantry officer, 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 tenth Group, the fifth Group, and third
of the seventh and it was very tempted to go
back to the tenth group. My former battalion commander had
become the group commander and he just got the Medal
of Honor award in Paris Davis this year. But you know,
the insurgencies were really heating up in Central America. That
was the big focus. You know, had a a communist
insurgency and I'll solve it or 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 getting you know, after
the Iran rescue attempt and the taking of our 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 Colombia and others too, to make
sure that if we needed to do a rescue, you know,
our special mission forces that they had the blueprints and
you know, knew where the cameras were and you know
all the things you would need to do to rescue
like that. So you know, it caused me to interact
a lot with the State Department and with CIA, you know,
across the region, and again a great learning experience.
Speaker 1: I thought it was really cool as I was reading
the book this I think you said it was the
mission and then became the RST Mission. This this, this
is that sort of nascent what we would call today,
we advanced force operations is probably the term that you
probably use nowadays. As I was reading the book, I
read about it 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 like what the mission entailed and how
you guys went over to sort of prepare the environment?
Speaker 2: 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 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 and the country team,
Chief of station, ambassador, etc. And so in late April
nineteen eighty two, a Honduras Honduran terrorist group supported by
Cuba hijacked an airline or a Dash seven airliner a
prop plane in Togusaglfa Airport, the capital of Honduras with
fifty eight hostages on board, and ten of whom were Americans.
And so we got deployed right away by Southcomb to
the embassy to meet with the ambassador, who I served
with a lot of years and govern 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 nitro glycerin on
the plane, and you know, the airplane was getting really
hot and nitro glycerin 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 Degusigalpa to procure some and
that that kind of did the trick, and some of
the hostages were able to escape from the plane on
the third day and the gunfire, but fortunately they were
only injured from the fall, not from the terir of shots.
And then the terrorists 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 one hundred and nine hostages
in San Pedro Sula town in the north of Hunduras,
including three government ministers. So we did it all over
again and went there and did you know, ten day
siege and it ended the same way with the negotiations.
Speaker 1: And also showed the capabilities of you know that the
concept worked as far as the reconnaissance.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, So it was considered a model for the
combat for other combatant commands to then follow south COM's
lead on having this kind of capability, and that eventually
led to more special operations, intelligence units and then the rsts.
Speaker 4: As you mentioned when when you guys were developing this capability,
you know, if you're you're developing capability. There's not necessarily
groundwork that's been laid before, you know, laid before. How
how did you guys go about that process?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it was a you know, kind of a
one of a kind unit at the time, made out
of two O das and people were selected for their
fluency and you know, civilian clothes and long hair, selected
for their fluency in Spanish and their intelligence tradecraft in
addition to other special operations skills and uh and then
you know, we 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 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 counter terrorism
intelligence mission.
Speaker 1: And then let's talk a little bit of about how
you made that transition from Special Forces to the CIA,
Like how did that take place for you?
Speaker 2: 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, you know,
but my next assignment would be infantry company command and
a peacetime army and I thought I wanted to join
more of the Cold War fight. You 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 a career
training program and you know, got accepted and enjoined the agency.
Speaker 1: And the way I read it in the book, if I,
if I understood correctly, you had some adventures before you
even got trained as a CIA officer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so the in my day, the career training program
for operations officers, we had a ten 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 trade craft, and learned about
our satellites and you know, the science and technology side
and et cetera. 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 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 twelve 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 the assets and stuff,
and so that was kind of my introduction to CI
and then LO and will Hold. A crisis occurred in
Grenada as I was some weeks into this assignment working
on this jail break plan, and you know, we had
six hundred 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 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, 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 uh.
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, uh
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.
You know. So we got weapons, we got a lot
of cash so we could uh pay assets and stuff.
And the Satcom 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 h a big
bag of cash and set coom. Uh. You know you
got a hand to the CIA. They go to Warren style.
You know, this is not quite how we did it.
The special courses.
Speaker 4: And the military elements. Lincoln out probably lets you get
c I A I don't know, right right.
Speaker 2: Right yeah, and uh, 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 my first combat experience in Grenada. Uh, looking
at an arms cash and in the very very forward
lines where there was still a lot of combat, and
it was a company of the eighty second that we
were actually visiting at the time, and uh, you know,
lo and behold. As soon as we got there, uh,
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 faced
down in the dirt, I thought about it for a
few seconds and I thought, I just saw a bunch
of a k's and am mission in this warehouse. You know,
there were cubans for the Grenadans, and I thought, you know,
we could use some of those that we're going to
get shot at and shoot back. So Low crawled over there,
got some game, gave one to my chief of station
and one for me, and battle was over in ten minutes.
But it was an interesting experience.
Speaker 1: 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 Laurent polo
shirt that you've been wearing for a week.
Speaker 2: 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 Kadafi to take American hostages. And before we could
capture him, he had fled to the Soviet embassy. But
we had this chase around Saint George's, the capitol. And Yeah,
toward the the end of the operation that when the
training staff learned that I had been in combat for
ten 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 clothes,
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.
Speaker 4: I'm really surprised you didn't get like a deal with
Ralph Florin after that, and like they didn't develop it,
they didn't develop a new combat line of leisure wear.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there you go.
Speaker 1: So now you finally have the opportunity to go to
the farm and become, you know, a formalized officer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so before that, you know. When I came into
the agency, I had check Russian and SPAN 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
Leven And and then months before that, our embassy had
been blown up by you know what today we know
is his Balla. And so I was called in and said,
the Near East Division wants you assigned to them for
a special counter terrace and 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 and well it's a directed assignment and
they want you. And so that was my introduction to
the to the Middle East to work with our station
there on assets who could report on Hezbala and then
develop various strike options. And then after that I went
to the farm.
Speaker 1: I mean, just to wrap up of Beirute, I mean,
was there any kind of 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?
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, I mean one, you know, Grenada was this great,
exhilarating experience, and it felt like a real extension of
what I'd 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, there 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 chief of station, the late Bill Buckley, and
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
we were very vulnerable and and you know, and as
I said, it was my introduction into the Middle East.
And then later, you know, decades later, when I was
involved in I Rock and others, you know, seeing that
sectarian conflict again and back all those memories.
Speaker 4: 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, a CIA employee. Did that
help you or hurt you? Or didn't Nobody there know
about it?
Speaker 2: Now they knew about it, and it was both, you know.
They the chief instructor pulled me aside. You know, I
got an award for heroism, and 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 metal some more, you know, so he doesn't
think he's too big for his breeches and all that.
But others, you know, we were 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've been trained
to do for ten years, so it's kind of but yeah.
So it was 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.
Speaker 4: But some of them are sort of like, okay, you
can handle grenative, let's see how you handle the seedier
sides of Virginia.
Speaker 2: Sure right, can you man up? Yeah? Yeah? Right?
Speaker 1: And after the form you got what I as I
recall you describing your book as sort of your dream assignment,
you got assigned to a ground branch.
Speaker 2: 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 jobs, which was old hat, but you know, it
was sort of like a Special Forces qualification course again
not as strenuous, but the same basic tactics and techniques.
And then as I came out again and was thinking
about where I would go for an assignment, which the
division or part of the world, you know, Soviet, East
European or Latin America. What today is the Special Activity Center.
Then it was called International Activities because it had counter
terrorism 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 you
can 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. There's a lot of wars going on and
so if you don't mind, I'd like to go to
branch first and then do the case officer stuff next.
And said sure. So I got assigned a 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 Covered 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 thought, you know, instead of just fighting Soviet surrogates
in Central America or elsewhere, now we've got the main
enemy in Afghania. Stand and it, you know, And so
it really seemed like the job of a lifetime.
Speaker 4: Prior to that, though, you know, you're going to volunteering
to go to grand branch tracking studies? Was that a
Did 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
in the wider agency at the time?
Speaker 2: Yes, and no. I mean there were a lot of
paramilitary operations going on that hadn't been before, you know, uh,
Central America and Afghanistan, and so that raised the important
you know, they were the first one since Laos in
a way. But yeah, in those days, ground branch officers
didn't become chiefs of station. Later they would uh integrated
more into the Director 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 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.
Speaker 1: 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 onto the program
and working with them.
Speaker 2: 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 Arabian Gulf, the Gulf States in Iraq and
then Iran over to Bangladesh for South Asian Operations, and Gustavraccados,
a veteran case officer in 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. Burt Dunn had just
come in as the chief of Near East Division, and
Bert was one of the founding members of Special Forces
West Virginia lawyer founding members of Special Forces in nineteen
fifty two. And I had been in the eighty second
before that, you know, and 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 two flights over
the Soviet Union out of Peshawar, Gary Powers and all that,
and so it 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 sixties
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, you know, the Special Forces background,
and so we just clicked and they were very good
to me.
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 3: Sticking it to the Soviets in Afghanistan.
Speaker 2: 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 nineteenth
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 sixties and we focused on
agriculture in the South and Helman Province and you know,
up to that period. And then in nineteen seventy three,
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 nineteen
seventy eight 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
govern 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
nineteen seventy nine, 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 and communications support,
and then when the Soviets invaded in force, then three
days after that, President Jimmy Carter signed a lethal Finding
authorizing CI, the third Finding authorizing CIA to support the resistance,
you know, fully with and so within ten days CI
actually had weapons starting flowing to the resistance. But for
the first five years, President Carter's last year and President
Reagan's first term, the program was reasonably big. It was
we had a lot of foreign partners, and Saudi's being one,
obviously Pakistan. The Saudi's matched this dollar for dollar, and
so the US government budget was sixty million, and the
Saudi's matched that, so it was one hundred and twenty
million dollars 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. Very few surfaced air missiles, you know, handful
of them, twenty or so, not a lot of training, munication,
not a lot of intelligence, but they were still holding
their own against the Soviets. And then in the summer
of nineteen eighty four, 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 ten percent budget increase, and Wilson quadrupled the budget,
you know, three hundred percent 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.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we can act.
Speaker 2: Eighteen. Bravo.
Speaker 3: Of course he think, right, exactly.
Speaker 2: How to do with this, you know, and so yeah, yeah,
developing 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 Bowl and Amendment that
suspended aid to the contrast 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 and that Sea Ice management of the program
wasn't very good because we were letting the power. Kistani's
controlled the 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
we're just fighting to the last 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 read? Visit our goals and the
inner what today we would call a paper principles committee meeting.
The NSC staff circulated documents with questions at 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 liked the phrase.
I remembered it thirty years later and you know, made
it the title of my book. But I thought, that's
the one we want to do with all this new money.
And you know, it didn't really have an idea yet
totally how we would do that, but we programmed everything
I could in terms of more heavy weapons, this, more
of 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 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 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 when 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 arms supplier, and Egypt was another. Would they agree
with the escalation and not only escalation and quantity, but
also in more advanced weapons, you know, rocket launchers from
the Chinese surface stair missiles. You know, that would really
make our partners more vulnerable. And you know Pakistan in
terms of subversion and maybe invasion. Uh, you know, the
Chinese with diplomatic repercussions when their weapons are found, you know,
surface stare missiles or shooting down 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 stare 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 a parent.
You know, even if people suspect it, you're not acknowledging it.
And you know, so in paramilitary operations, the ones that
are kind of the most deniable were 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 US weapons,
And within twelve 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 US Stinger. You know, so further escalations in
that regard and so first the Britz 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 get you 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 of years.
And lo and behold, Charlie Wilson came through again that
summer and transferred money from the Department of Defense, and
the Saudi's matched it, and so within less than twelve
months the program had increased by a factor of more
than ten, you know, from like one hundred and twenty
million to almost one point two billion, where it leveled up.
And then lots of you know, we went from twenty
surfaced air missiles some of which didn't work, you know,
damn near two thousand, and increased our training by factor
of and you know, all sorts of other things, and
so the temple 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 in the cobble,
you know, all that just increased dramatically. And at the
same the same time, Mikhyle Gorbachev came to power in
the Soviet Union in March eighty five, just as we
were beginning on this escalation path all of eighty five,
took us top general from Eastern Europe East Germany and
put them in charge. It got two years to win
the war. We'll give you twenty five thousand more troops
to the one hundred and five that the Soviets had
there already. So we had this dual escalation, you know,
ours covert and there's over. And within twelve months we
had won that battle of the surges, and Gorbachev started
looking for the exit.
Speaker 4: Mike, I just out of curious when you're going around
and selling, you know, partner nation is on the idea
of increasing their investments, increasing the weaponship to Afghanistan, things
like that. Do you need a different pitch for each country,
Like because Afghanistan isn't like necessarily strategically necessary for anybody.
Is it just the idea of bleeding the Soviet Union.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it differed in each case. So, you know,
with China, they had had a border clash in nineteen
sixty nine 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 their 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 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, searching,
destroy missions right up to the border, and so it
was a little different 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 meant I should have mentioned Saudi Arabia to another one,
you know, 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 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 down more aircraft, and
same for the US decision. So yeah, you know, the
pitch was tailored to their own interests in Afghanistan in
each case.
Speaker 1: 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 interfaced directly with the Chinese intelligence apparatus.
Speaker 2: 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,
but and Dung Chaoping actually approved it 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
a KS or is it combined arms and stuff which
I was pushing and more, you know, win 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, you know, they're saying
to me, look, we really know guerrilla warfare, you know,
we we we we over to our own government this way,
and and I'd say, well, yeah, I know something about
it too, and here's why I think we need to
do this, and 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 make 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 thirty minutes and they didn't want any interruption,
you know, if I'd say, well, okay, you want me
to elaborate on this or something, they don't 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 at an airport lounge with drinks and stuff.
Was the head of armaments for the play.
Speaker 5: Okay, read everything better late than never, But yeah, it was,
you know, and I I imagined myself when I was
in spe Forces, you know, in the tenth Group, where
we had this World War three 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.
Speaker 2: Lawrence and all this great stuff. But I also thought
I'd read, you know, about World War two and Oss
and China and others, and I knew about the the
border conflict that they had had in sixty nine. 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. You know,
I didn't have the imagination to think about that.
Speaker 1: But yeah, 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?
Speaker 2: Really in sort of early nineteen eighty six. Gorbachev gave
this open speech in February eighty six about bleeding wound
and we've got to extricate ourselves from this, and our
escalation was just starting. I mean, we had we had
flows of stuff going there through nineteen eighty seven, 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, ten thousand 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,
ten thousand 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 mountain, and so, you know,
it really was pretty clear in eighty six, 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 US 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 sense 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 tactic shifted
there once we started shooting down so many aircraft, they
start and flying above surface the era Michial range, which meant
they couldn't do close order support very well. They didn't
do offensive operations as much anymore. You know, they just
kind of hunkered down to their bases, and uh, 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
the communist Afghans are going to do the fighting and
the Soviets are going to support them but not do
the combat. And and you know, so we saw all
that and that that kind of you know, led to
the led to the end game. What was important was
holding their feet to the fire, you know, really sustaining
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 uh, you know, bring breakthroughs
in diplomacy, we kept the heat on in Afghanistan, pressure
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.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the as we kind of get towards the end
of part one of our interview with you, I wanted
to ask a couple of 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 Mujahadeen in Afghanistan. At the same time,
there were paramilitary programs supporting Yunida in Angola and the
FDN or the Contras in Nicaragua. I wonder if you
could talk a little bit about these three anti essentially
anti Soviet covert operations around the world and what was
the global strategy behind them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and there was also a brief period of supporting
Cambodia 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
inn l Salvador, and you know, so we were counterinsurgency
and essentially dealing there. And then the country 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 in 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
them in Nicaragua and at least in our backyard, you know.
So it starts off fairly modest, and then as you
move to nineteen eighty four when the country program becomes
politically controversial and has this hiatus and it's you know,
it's doing so. So we had a lot of success
and counterinsurgency in Al 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 changed between this is hopeless too, maybe we can
win there, and if we win here it really matters.
You know, this is the main enemy in the in
the big Enchilada, where if you win in Nicaragua, you know,
you move upon on the chessboard rather than a queen.
And then Angola picks up, I think in eighty six
or so, and you know, the Cubans had sent a
big proxy army into a goal of twenty some thousand troops,
and that kicks in as well, and then President Reagan
gives the Reagan Doctrine speech, which is will support anti
communist insurgencies. And I want to say that's early eighty
five 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 at 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 built up you know
that they really can't match this defense, yeah, and that
you know, missile defense. And then since the late seventies,
we started shifting our strategy or conventional strategy in Europe
to deep attack. You know, we knew we really couldn't,
you know, Up until say nineteen seventy six, 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 one seventeen, the Army tactical missile system,
you know that's finally getting to Ukraine today, the Joint
Surveillance and Market Acquisition JSTARS that really worried the Soviets
about their strategy that you know, all the second echelon
forces would be vulnerable, you know, rather than having a
tank battle right up in front, those reinforcing forces could
get hit. And that's what the Soviet general staff back
garbage off because as they looked out, you know, ten
twenty years, they thought, we're just going to fall further
behind the United States and technology, and we got to
do something to revitalize our system to catch up. And
so all that weighed them down.
Speaker 4: Do you think that all of the and I would add.
Speaker 2: Two support for Solidarity Poland you know, that was keeping
them alive?
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: Do you think that all these 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 the
indigenous peoples that that you 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 eighty nine we saw the fall of the Berlin
Wall like that. Do you think that we basely defeated
the Soviets through these even if we didn't win in
the specific places, all the time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I think. You know, in Nicaragua the result
was a little more ambiguous because the sandin East has
got defeated an election in nineteen ninety, 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 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.
Speaker 3: You know, another sort of like big picture.
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so that's a question that's been debated over the decades.
You know, should see, I just focus on intelligence and
not covert action, and 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, and peace time
presidents overwhelmingly for the 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 CI 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 CI for that, and then there's
no reason not to use your military, you know, for that,
and then all these other missions counter terrorism and you
know that require real surgical skill and everything that's properly
the military, you know, and those things occur in peace time.
But you know, so there's this kind of division of
labor based on you know, the politics of it and
whether covert or over 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 do od 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 there So I think
it serves the country. It gives the president more options,
and it serves the country well to have both, but
you got to know the limitations of both.
Speaker 4: 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 or is it just
sort of whomever?
Speaker 2: 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 twenty years.
You know, the differences in general about aggressive foreign policy
have differentiated the parties until recently, you know, when you
know you've got all this isolationism strain creeping in. But
you know, 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 it rather than military
or CIA, I think it's more how aggressively you use
either one. There's still nuances, And like I said, you
know what Carter started, Reagan continued, and then Reagan escalated,
but it took a while, right and and then you know,
after nine to eleven, President Bush, for the invasion of Afghanistan,
went with essentially a CI led plan because it was
very rapid, and you know, of course the military was
going to fold in on that. You know, see, I
wasn't going to fight the Afghan War by themselves, but
you needed airpower 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 airstrikes or massive invasion,
and President Bush didn't want to you know, air strikes
were too little and massive invasion too late, you know.
So you know, so that's what kind of drove it.
Speaker 3: Do we have any questions?
Speaker 2: And then the other thing that drives it is our
foreign partners. You know a lot of times for their
own risk, they'll want to deal with CI or and
intelligence channels because they think it provides them more more protection,
and you know, and then it's it's also flexible, like
we can, uh, you know, if CI needs certain capabilities
that the Department of Defense has, we can loan them
to them, you know, so you know, and so then
it's just a question of what authority do you want?
Speaker 3: Right I think we have a few of youwer questions.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we have some great questions. First off, Rory, thank
you very much for the donation. I didn't see a question.
If there is one, police art and 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. It seems like s after the Diplomatic Service
would be a bit of a culture clash.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I don't know how funny they are. But
you know, when I was dealing on the counter terrorism
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 chiefest station and
they were all they were in high thread areas, so
they were supportive of having the military and 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 inner agency 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
so generally I wouldn't say all ambassadors, but lots of
ambassadors welcome all the help they can get, you know,
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 it's
more for their empire and more more ability to do
good things, you know, in in their particular country. So yeah,
I didn't I didn't really have that experience.
Speaker 4: They didn't look at you as outavis knuckle driggers who
should like sit in a corner and only come out
when you know, breaking.
Speaker 2: They'd laugh like, you know, like the 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 to 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 you
were being held in your bathroom. We're going to want
to know how to get in there.
Speaker 4: Spencer Devns, thank you very much. From your perspective, What
does the United States need to address the PRC going
into the rest of this century? When does your recommendation
need to be done by.
Speaker 2: 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
is 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
twentieth century that had more than fifty percent of our
so we had this economic escalation dominance. You know. World
War two 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 may not be as true in the twenty first
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.
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 US military
more than any other country in Desert Storm. 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 US 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 stay to Africa or somewhere, you know,
the US would dominate, and we'd like to keep it
that way. So we have undersea dominance, you know, we
have really more and longer and 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 deterrence. But then you got
to win this Cold War, which might be from proxies
and influence and a lot of the covered 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 too the way you know you otherwise would,
and so that means you got to get at your
adversary through more devious ways. And you know, we've got
our work work cut out for us for there.
Speaker 4: And Cormoran, thank you very much, if possible, any commentary
on the lasting impact of the ISI. Director General ahamdul.
Speaker 2: Ah So uh, he's funny question. So he he came
in late in the Soviet Afghan War and was a
conventional armor officer and wanted to shift uh the insurgency
into conventional battle essentially, and ordered assaults on cities which
played right into Soviet and common 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 US
and so over time, you know, supported the Taliban and others.
Over time, really became an agitator for uh, you know,
essentially not partnering with the US and everything else. So
he's he's not my favorite Pakistani.
Speaker 4: Spencer day devins, thank you very much. He has a
couple of questions coming up. He's in a meeting, so
he's going to get to these later. H 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.
Speaker 2: 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 as we think, but
you know, they could, they could recover. And you know,
the genius of Eisenhower was to recognize that the Cold
War would be fought hopefully short of conventional war because
of nuclear weapons. And in fact, you know, he emphasized
nuclear weapons very dramatically in his strategy, the National Security Strategy,
the New 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 Two 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 if you had one. But also
all these innovations in you know, after Sputnik, in the
space race, NASA and DARPA was created, and then the
NRO and and so you know, it was a and
then used COVID action, you know, to compete in the
Third World, and so it was a pretty effective grand strategy,
you know. And then even on the economic side, you know,
the interstate highway system, you know, and so it's a
good model for you know. 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
you know, 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, 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.
Speaker 4: Great answer also from Censor. If it's possible, how would
you seek to make COVID action programs immune to the
holes of the US domestic domestic political theater.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure it works like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So you know, Intelligence emphasizes our republican form of government,
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 COVID action program is,
you know, it ought to be consistent with broader US
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, 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?
Speaker 1: Right? Uh?
Speaker 2: Uh, you know, and so and so we've had both
over decades, and uh, you know, hopefully we've learned how
to do that. You know, the answer is not to
do COVID 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 Pigs and others.
You just got, you know, got to avoid the dumb
ship and do the smart ship.
Speaker 4: Right and unfortunately, sometimes you don't know if it's dumb
shit or smart shit until it's already yeah, right, I
mean sometimes that's right. How involved or aware should the
average American be about national security topics? And how would
you amend current engagement?
Speaker 2: Well, I think we're very affected by what goes on
in the rest of the world, and you know, it's
incumbent about 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 and and others, all of
that that matters. It's also the reach of weapons, you know,
and the destructiveness of weapons, so beginning with nuclear weapons,
but also now 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 happens overseas matters to us. And
it's the same thing, you know, as terrorists go from
a local regional problem to ones with global ambitions or
extra regional you know, it affects our interests more. And
so you know, generally, when we've disengaged, we've paid a
price for it down the road. Now that doesn't mean
over engagement. It just means you can't completely disengage. You know.
You get 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.
Speaker 4: 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 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 US government should start viewing certain types of cyber
attacks as actually offensive military or acts of war or
acts of terrorism and treat them as such.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a great question. So so one, you know,
cyber is this unique weapon that it uh, 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 a lot of different attributes.
And so where a lot of supposedly non governmental cyber
actors or operate 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. You know. So mainly a problem right
now in Russia, but it's also China, 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, ab Cake and 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 thirty thirty thousand 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, and
it has been you know, cyber has been around now
for a couple of decades and we're still struggling with
what does it mean and how is it 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, you know, 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, you know, 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, right,
given massive gains they've made economically from taking intellectual property,
it looks like crime.
Speaker 4: Pays right, so right, And it's also tough because we've
had people on the show when the counter intelligence 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 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, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, So, I mean, you know, the FBI's job
jar has grown dramatically with this ology problem and the proliferation,
you know, the traditional counter intelligence problem of I've got
you know, one hundred intelligence of hostile intelligence officers working
in this country has changed pretty dramatically, and then you've
got you know, still international terrorist extremists and domestics. So
they got that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe we'll do well one more before we let Mike,
we have we.
Speaker 4: 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 nineteen seventy eight you went to over to
Harefair in UK and completed a British SASUQB course. How
did you get that opportunity and how was that experience
for you?
Speaker 1: It's also in the book By All Means Available, which
I hope you guys would go and take a look at.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so, you know, we were just starting to develop
precision counter terrorism capabilities in the late nineteen seventies, you know,
after the Munich massacre in seventy two 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 Tolt's
part of the tenth Group, and I got selected to
go to this training early on, and you know, and
not only gave me some new tactical skills this close
quarter battle and they had a lot to teach us.
Then you know today, you know, we're we're the best
force in the world in those areas, but and have
been for the past couple of decades. But you know it,
it started me really on this counter terrorism 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 counter
terrorisms and operations and all that goes into it and stuff.
So it's a great experience.
Speaker 4: So we have four questions. Off, I'm only going to
ask one of them and then we'll to get the
other three next shows. We don't want to keep it
too late. We know you're on a timeline. Mohammed Sabani,
thank you very much for the very genest nation love
the show is always y'all. What actions, if any, can
be taken for America to compete and hardware chip production
with the entire rare Earth process and the supply chain
being owned by Chinese. Also, how can America protect its
infrastructure from cyber attacks?
Speaker 2: 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 of 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
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 it's 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 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 the de risking of supply chains. Now
that I think there's more we're discovering more rare earth's 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 with with some foreign governments
to compete in that area. And then you know where
we're dependent in pharmaceuticals as we saw and many you know,
in COVID and medical supplies. You know, you got to
de risk. That doesn't mean decouple completely, but you have
to have alternative sources to supply and assured sources to supply.
Doesn't mean everything has to be in the United States.
Just can't all be in China, right. And then on
cyber security, 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 sense that
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 the 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 partner that field or if if
he can if he can target the attack or 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. He got a challenge with that.
And so you know, and I 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 you know, attention to this and and and
you know, if quantum computing comes around in the next
decade or so. So yeah, I mean it's great. Those
are both really strategic questions and it's not something national
security councils typically are trained or you know, kind of problem.
Speaker 1: Well, Mike, I really appreciate you, you know, 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.
Speaker 3: I read it. It was terrific.
Speaker 1: And we will have Mike back next Friday for part two,
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 Solick
and also headed up USDI. 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.
Speaker 4: Also, real quick, make sure you check out Jack and
I being interviewed on the Cleared Hot podcast for Andy Stump.
He was generous enough to invite us out to Montana
and it's out there now, sat around and shot the
shit for a while. So and Mike, thanks so much.
We will see you on Friday.
Speaker 2: Okay, take care. Thanks