Transcript of Inside the Pentagon on 9/11 | Ambassador Matthew Klimow

Hey everyone, welcome to The Team House. I'm Jack Murphy, here with our guest tonight in studio, Ambassador Retired Matthew Klimeow. He retired as a colonel out of the military and then served in the Senior Executive Staff.

Senior Executive Service.

Thank you. At State Department.

At State Department for over 20 years and was the Deputy Assistant Secretary General of NATO for Transformation. And my other overseas assignment was 5 years as Ambassador to Turkmenistan.

And his book is As the Pentagon Burned. As we're going to talk about, you were in the Pentagon on 9/11. So we'll get into all of that.

Sure. But thank you for coming into the studio. It's a great pleasure, Jack. Admire your work. Thank you.

Thank you.

I appreciate it.

So I ask pretty much all of the people on this show if you could tell us your origin story, like how did you grow up and how did that sort of take you towards military service?

Yeah, thanks for asking. For my generation, it's kind of a typical story. I grew up in Johnson City, New York. It's upstate near Binghamton, Triple Cities. It was an ethnic city, a factory town. All my grandparents were born in Eastern Europe, Slovak, Polish, what's now Ukraine. And my neighbors were Same thing, either first, second, or third-generation Americans. Seemed like all the Slavic countries were represented on the north side of Johnson City. The Irish were on the south side. Endicott, New York, next to us, big Italian-American community. And we had big factories there. Endicott Johnson Shoes, factories dotted the whole valley. And IBM, that's where Thomas J. Watson Interesting. Had his factories, but they were manufacturing things too, not software, but hardware. My mom and dad, I had the perfect match, Jack. My dad was the sweetest man in the world. I mean, everybody just adored him. Didn't have a mean bone in his body. But my mom was a driving force in my life. And that's how I ended up at West Point, I'm sure of it. Dad fought in World War II. He was at the Battle of the Bulge. In fact, I took him back when I was stationed in Germany to retrace his steps through Belgium and Germany because he was not only at the Battle of the Bulge, but he was in the town of Malmedy huddled near the train station hiding when they got word that the POWs were being gunned down by the Nazis.

Yeah.

So he talked about how much fear he had. And he was at Remagen Bridge when it actually fell. So, you know—

Your dad was— he immigrated from Eastern Europe?

No, my grandfather.

Oh, your grandfather did. Okay. Because there are some people who immigrated here and then got drafted into the military and sent right back.

No doubt. But he had an 8th grade education. My mom finished high school. And he worked in a factory for 40 years. But he always dressed well. Here I am in my French cuffs. He didn't talk a lot about the war, but when he did, you pay attention when you're a little boy.

Yeah.

I remember watching the Army-Navy game on television with him and just being so blown away by the cadets in uniforms and the midshipmen. I was a good student, but not a great student. And I never thought I could ever get into an academy. But the typical story, I had a high school history teacher who really believed in me and said, the West Point recruiter's coming next week and I want you to go and meet with him. And I was kind of surprised he said that, but I went and got the nomination from a local congressman and got accepted. And that was life-changing, obviously. But West Point was not to me, this is going to be an Army career. It was a destination itself. I didn't know what was going to come in.

What year was this that you show up at West Point?

1970.

Wow.

So as I explained to somebody recently, talking about the turmoil that we see in our own country right now, I'm a child of the '60s. I went I was a teenager in the 1960s. We saw Washington burn and Detroit burn.

There were race riots on naval ships.

I know our country's had its ups and downs, and I'm a strong believer that we'll see our way through this. But I remember being asked by my political philosophy instructor, a guy named Wes Clark went on to be a 4-star general and—

Yeah, NATO commander, wasn't he?

Yeah. Um, and, uh, he asked me what my career plans were when he was a captain and I was a cadet. And I said, I'd probably just do my 5-year commitment and get out and maybe go to Washington. And he said, politics, that's where the power is. Wes Clark really, uh, believed in that, obviously. But, uh, I had a great experience. My, my first assignment was in Germany during the Cold War, which was great because you're in the field all the time and you had a real training mission. It was also great because I met my wife Edie, who was an Army nurse, and we didn't get married right away. It took me a little while to wake up that this was the one. She's here. Patiently watching just off of camera. But we did get married and So we are an Army family in the richest sense of it.

Speaking of the difficulties the country was going through, I mean, the stories I've heard about the post-Vietnam Army, particularly in Germany, you hear some wild stuff. I mean, were there some leadership challenges for you as a young officer?

Boy, perfect question. And that's not set up because you didn't know the history here, but in 1972, for my summer training as a West Point cadet, I spent a month, maybe 6 weeks in Germany training with an infantry unit, 154 Infantry out of Bamberg, Germany. And our rotation in Grafenwoehr was during my time there. So we had a lot of field time and we had a race riot in the company I was in. And boy, it was an eye-opener and it was rough and tumble. But It was a great experience though. And the young soldiers that I worked with, they, I think, took me under their wing. And I'm not talking about the senior NCOs, that's their job. The young enlisted soldiers, draftees who had no intention of staying in the Army very long, knew that I was kind of a unique kind of thing to have a West Point cadet there. And, um, they didn't hassle me. I think they really tried to teach me. And it was a wonderful experience. So I knew I wanted to be in the infantry when I graduated. And that's, that's what I chose. Um, not that, uh, I was high enough in a class to have a lot of choices, but it was perfect for me.

It threw me in the briar patch.

And so when you got back, you said, you know, the, your unit in Germany had a real-world mission that you were prepared for. Preparing for what we thought was an imminent Soviet invasion.

Well, you went to not only in the field, just training in general, but you actually went to the sites, the exact locations that you would go to, as they used to say, if the balloon goes up. Here's the route you would take. This is where your armored personnel carrier will be. This is where the tank platoon that's supporting you will be. which is pretty remarkable. But we had a great experience because the 2nd Armored Division— I'm sorry, the 11th Cavalry Regiment had to do their rotation at Grafenwoehr, so we took their place. So we had for 2 months border duty on the East German-West German border. And you could just imagine running up and down the fence and seeing the East German soldiers in the towers and a real sense of purpose. And so the Cold War was dangerous in some ways, but it was a great experience for a young lieutenant. And I wouldn't have traded that for anything.

You knew your wife-to-be running around Germany at the time.

I took her up to the border. There used to be a 1-kilometer zone you couldn't go into. Because a lot of the area of the border is not obvious. The fence that the Warsaw Pact soldiers put up was behind the border so they had room to shoot at people trying to escape. So you could easily wander over the West German border into East Germany before you even saw a fence. So they kept American troops away, but I took my bride-to-be up there to show her my border sector. Wander around. We had some good times.

So it sounds like you fell in love with the Army during that, you know, your initial platoon leader experience.

You know, I had a pretty typical infantry career in some ways, in some ways not. Coming out of, for those familiar with the Army, coming out of the advanced course, the the assignment that I got was to the 3rd Infantry Regiment, the Old Guard in Washington, D.C.

Oh yeah.

So I had the distinct honor of commanding the Honor Guard Company, which includes the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and the Presidential Honor Company that marches at the White House and for the official receptions of heads of state and everything, which was Pretty neat. And I was there for President Reagan's first inaugural, actually escorted President Reagan from Capitol Hill after his swearing in. And we marched down to the reviewing stand at the White House during his speech. This is, this is a true story. I sat next to Jimmy Stewart and Johnny Carson, who were watching their buddy Ronald Reagan become president, to their astonishment. And that's another thing I'll never forget. So The Army presented many great opportunities.

But that's a very high visibility posting for you as a commander of that unit because of how, like I said, how visible it is in Washington, D.C., right?

Yeah. And it's also indicative of where I was heading, I suppose, because that Washington bug had bit me and I knew I wanted to come back at some point, but not in a ceremonial position. I knew I wanted to be on some high-level staff in the Pentagon, maybe on the National Security Council, even at that point of being a junior officer. And that's a point I make, Jack, to young, not only young military officers when I was still in uniform, but to people that I mentored throughout my career, 20-plus-year career as a diplomat. young Foreign Service officers is setting goals and knowing where you want to go, managing your own career. And one of the goals, as I mentioned, was I knew I wanted to go back to Washington in a policy position. And because I had that goal, I made a strategic career choice. I was a battalion commander. I was selected for the War College. And you get a choice of not a choice, but you could list your top 3 choices that—

Fort Knox?

Well, no, this is the War College. So you could go to the Army War College, the National War College, or the sister services, the Naval War College, Air Force. But they had maybe 6 or 7 fellowships. Most of them were at prestige places like Harvard, Stanford, the Atlantic Council. But they had one slot at the Center for International Relations at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario. My wife Edie and I had been on vacation to Kingston. It is on the Thousand Islands where the St. Lawrence River meets Lake Ontario, Lake America. It's beautiful, beautiful. And Queen's University campus, I remember as a tourist, seen it, and I said, nobody is going to sign up to make that their first choice. And if I list it, I'm pretty sure I'll get it. And I did. And that changed the whole trajectory of my military career from being a typical infantry officer. Because when I was at Queens at the Center for International Relations as a visiting defense fellow, I was teaching a course on national security. And I invited my old mentor to come and speak to the students there and then give a lecture at the Royal Military College, which was across the way.

And Lieutenant General Dan Crispin came and the Canadian students all had their long knives out for an American general. And he was the smartest guy in the room. He graduated number one in his West Point class and was on had been on the National Security Council and had a career that I envied. And he came up and he spoke to the students and then to the Royal Military College cadets and had a wonderful time. And he said, I don't know where you want to go after your fellowship, but I'm going to take care of your next assignment. And the next thing you know, I was his executive assistant where he was the assistant to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General John Shelly Kashvili. And, um, my first day in the job, um, our office suite adjoined the chairman's and, um, General Shali Kashvili introduced me to the, the directors of the Joint Staff, all the 3 stars, uh, in the room. And the vice chairman at the time was a 4-star admiral, uh, Admiral Owens. And our job was to travel with the Secretary of State wherever the secretary went overseas. So General Crispin and I, uh, for 1 year traveled with Warren Christopher, who was the Secretary State.

The war in the Balkans was raging, and that was our focus along with looking at NATO enlargement. And I was also put on an arms interagency arms control team that was negotiating the START III—

Oh, wow.

Treaty framework and the Conventional Forces Europe, CFE treaty extension. Warren Christopher was a gracious, a real gentleman, just a gracious guy. So I'm a colonel, small fry in this coterie. We're traveling on the old Air Force Ones, which became Air Force Twos when they got the 747. So these are those beautiful 707s.

Mm-hmm.

I remember flying on the same plane that took John F. Kennedy's body back from Dallas. on one of these missions that we undertook. And we went to Berlin for some talks and got to the hotel and I was in my t-shirt and there's a knock on the door and there's Warren Christopher asking me if I'd like to go out to dinner. And so it was a dream job. But after one year, General Crispin left and Warren Christopher left and it was the second term for President Clinton and Madeleine Albright, became Secretary of State. And I wasn't sure if I would fit in, if they would welcome me into her close circle, because when you're on that airplane, you're mixing with her immediate staff, her senior staff. Our first trip was to Brussels when she was a secretary. She was going to give her her first intervention, a speech at the North Atlantic Council to NATO. And my job, Jack, was to review her speech for any military equities and make sure that everything was aligned. Before the trip, this is again when the Balkan War was—

Yep, yep.

Really ugly, terrible. There was a meeting in the Pentagon and the Vice President's National Security Advisor, Leon Firth, came over for the prep meeting for her first trip to NATO. And he said, we should create a NATO-Russia brigade. And Shali Kashvili, the chairman, said, that's a stupid idea. I don't want to ever hear that again. Just poo-pooed it. I paid attention. So now, 2 weeks later, we're on the flight over the Atlantic Ocean. I always sat next to my buddy who is the speechwriter. Tom Malinowski, who became a congressman. And Tom gave me a copy of the speech and I read through it and everything looked fine to me. And I put my big fat initials in the top corner. And I learned when I started to fall asleep in these arms control meetings overseas that I should pop an Ambien and get my sleep when I could. So I popped an Ambien, closed my eyes so I could be fresh when we arrived in Europe. And Malinowski gets this phone call and the phone's on the bulkhead and it's from Vice President Gore's National Security Advisor. And he says, Tom, put something in there about creating a NATO Russia brigade.

So he doesn't know, he puts it in.

Oh my gosh.

She gives her speech. It's front page news around Europe. And all hell broke loose. Not well received. Everybody in Washington knows, who in the hell is this new secretary think she is?

Wouldn't the proposal was the idea that it's like in cooperation with the Russians?

Yes. But, you know, creating a brigade, it wasn't, you know, you have this sector and we have this sector. It was a totally different concept. So the next morning I'm called in with Tom Malinowski, his speechwriter, into this holding room. And because I later served at NATO, I get to know it well. But it's a big, big room and there's only 2 people in it. It's Madeleine Albright and her chief of staff, William Chokas. And we walk up to her and she said, look, you 2, I screw up enough for myself. I don't need you 2 screwing up for me. Don't ever let this happen. So I said, yes, ma'am. And I did a bow face like a good soldier. And I said, Thank God I had one good year with Warren Christopher because I just got fired. And I went to the hotel and I just put on my workout stuff and went to the gym and worked out and thought, man, I am finished. And then we got on the plane, we're going to Moscow next. And I had already had a dozen, 14 trips to Moscow as part of this arms control team.

And we met with the Foreign Minister Primakov later became Prime Minister of Russia. And Primakov was toying with Madeleine Albright. I could see it. I was a backbencher. I was sitting far in the back as I could get. And she gets fed up with it and she goes, I want a 15-minute break. I team, come with me. So her immediate staff and the ambassador scurry out. And I'm left there and I, there's a big fruit bowl on the conference room table and I'm picking through the fruit bowl and her chief of staff comes out, Colonel, the secretary wants to see you. And I thought, oh my God, not again. And I walk into this, this room where they're meeting and everybody stops talking and looks at me and my heart just sunk. And I said, this has got to be the worst moment of my life. She said, Colonel, I understand you're on this arms control team with Deputy Secretary Talbot. I said, yes, ma'am. She said, well, what's the history here? Why is this— why is he not cooperating? Why is he so adamant? I don't even remember what the topic was. I said, ma'am, I don't know for sure.

I could just give you the history. And I related where we were in the talks. And she said, that's helpful. Thank you. We got on the plane. We're going to Japan. This is around the world trip. And I got as far back in that 707 as I could get. And we got to cruising altitude and Madeleine Albright comes walking down the aisle and she comes right up to me and she sits down next to me and she puts her arm on my, my arm and she says, Klimo, what kind of name is Klimo? And I said, I think it's Slovak. We don't know a lot about my grandfather. And she says, well, you know, I'm Czech. She said, we should go to Prague together. And I said, ma'am, I would love that. That was it. That was her way of saying it's all okay. All is forgiven. And for the next 2 years, I traveled with—

Wow.

Right. All kinds of exciting trips.

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Did you go with her to North Korea?

No, I did not. Um, um, but, um, there's 2 things I want to mention before I forget, Jack.

Yeah, please.

First, for in terms of leadership, um, a lot of People have asked me over the years, I love telling that story about Madeleine Albright. They said, why didn't you defend yourself? Why didn't you say, but it wasn't my fault, I was asleep and that?

Yeah, that's not how you are when you're a soldier. You take responsibility.

Absolutely. I mean, but a lot of people don't realize that. And for West Point cadets, you know, there are the 3 answers. Yes, sir. No, sir. No excuse, sir. So, But, you know, again, junior officers, junior leaders, people just coming in the workforce, that's kind of an eye-opener for them. The second thing I want to mention real quick is after Lieutenant General Dan Christman left, become superintendent at West Point, the guy who replaced him was Lieutenant General Dick Myers, U.S. Air Force. And we clicked, just as I did with Christman. And I love working for him and we had a really good relationship. People who don't understand the Joint Staff wonder how you could work Army, Air Force, but that's the beauty of the Joint Staff, isn't it? I mean, you're bringing all your service traditions and all the pride that comes with it, but you are so much stronger as a staff when all those expertise, all that expertise and all those specialties are looking at a problem together. So the Joint Staff is a remarkable place. So after 2 years of being on the Albright, I got picked up for brigade command. And to my astonishment, when they called me, said, hook up and shuffle to the door.

And I said, what are you talking about? And he said, you're going to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and you're going to command the 18th Airborne Corps Combat Support Brigade.

Whoa.

And I hadn't jumped out of an airplane since I was a lieutenant. Um, in Ranger School.

That's a bit of an odd— uh, it doesn't normally work like that, does it?

Yeah, I was gonna say, how does— how do your assignments in Washington work? If somebody please tell, I don't know. Um, yeah, I had, uh, you know, I fought in the first Gulf War in, in a, uh, heavy armor brigade and expected that that would be my fate, but, um, That was open and that's where they wanted me to go. And of course, that's where I went. And jumping out of airplanes when you're a young lieutenant is a lot different than when you're a colonel. So when I went for my refresher, they were just zooming through it because a lot of people would rotate through, you know, the refresher for—

It's just another day on Fort Bragg.

Yeah. Whoa, timeout. I haven't jumped in 18 years or whatever. You got to go slower than this. And, um, I had a great SAR major. Thank God. He was wonderful. And, um, uh, Edie and I had just a really good time at Fort Bragg. We, uh, it wasn't a typical parachute regiment like in the 82nd. Um, we had a hodgepodge. We had a chemical battalion and a signal battalion and, uh, EOD, um, company and public affairs detachment.

Yeah.

All kinds of hodgepodge things, but we wanted them to feel they were part of a cohesive unit and we did a good job. So near the end of my tour, um, Sergeant Major came in and his eyes were kind of, what'd you do wrong? You screwed up, sir. He said, there's a 4-star general on the phone who wants to talk to you. And that, in my book, is bad news. And I'm thinking, who in the heck could this be? And I It's got to be General Dick Myers, who, when he left the Pentagon, put in his 4th star to be the Pacific Air Force commander and then was the commander of NORAD and U.S. Space Command. And there were rumors he was coming back to Washington. And he said, I can remember it, Clemo, the fun is over. You're coming back to Washington.

He said, Don't ask.

And he said, I need you there in 2 weeks. I said, 2 weeks, sir? I'm still in command for another, I forgot, 2 months. And he says, I already called General Shinseki. It's set up. So he gave me 4 weeks and he became the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the number 2, and by law, the number 2 most senior officer in our pyramid, our architecture. And I got there and the colonel who was holding down the position was Joe Dunford, a Marine colonel who would go on to his 4 stars and become Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff in the future. And we had a 2-week overlap and it was back to the chairman's suite. I was familiar with it, that first year was kind of typical. And from what I remember, we did a lot of international travel. But everybody kept asking me about all the newspaper articles that he was in the running to be the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs. And I felt that was probably a pretty good chance. I had seen him interacting with Secretary Rumsfeld. And I knew that there was enough room for the two of them in one room.

And I knew virtually all of the other 4-star admirals and generals who were listed as being on the shortlist. And General Dick Myers doesn't have that huge ego. He's a Midwestern Kansan. And that Midwest upbringing just, I think, was what— President Bush was looking for, Secretary Rumsfeld was looking for. And he had a good relationship with the current chairman, General Hugh Shelton.

Oh yeah.

So my money was on him.

This is like 2000?

Yeah.

No, it was 2001. And the president, really it was Rumsfeld, I think, they're kind of late in announcing the nomination. So it's a funny story, and if we've got time—

Yeah, please.

Really quick. So I had worked with General— I was General Myers' exec when he was a 3-star. I was his exec again as a 4-star. I knew him. I knew his family. And I knew for a while he really wanted the job. But he was always the last person. mentioned in all these newspaper articles. And also in the running is Air Force General Richard B. Myers. But then there was a front-page story in the Washington Times and it had, um, down to 2, and it had a picture of the Chief of Naval Operations, Vern Clark. And again, this time he got a whole paragraph. Also in the running is Air Force General Dick Myers. And, um, Jamie McIntyre was a CNN correspondent in the Pentagon at the time. He comes bursting in the office, no knock on the door or anything, and he said, we want to be the first to congratulate the general. We got it right from the White House. He's going to be the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs. So I knock on the inner office door and walk in and say, hey, sir, congratulations. You're going to be the next chairman.

I knew by this time he was so fed up with the process. He didn't care. I really knew he went, yeah, I heard it before. He was beyond it, which was kind of healthy. And when McIntyre saw me talking to the general, he realized he doesn't know, which means maybe our scoop is wrong because surely he would've known by now.

You would think.

Yeah, he goes running back to his office, comes running back, says, we verified it with the White House correspondent. He's gonna beat— and then the phone rings and it's Secretary Rumsfeld. And our office secretary, Mary Turner, says, sir, Mr. Rumsfeld wants to see you. So he came back and said, close the door and leave me alone. And he became the nominee to be the next chairman. And which leads me to my book, by the way.

Yeah, yeah. So yeah, let's get into it a little bit. You know what, I mean, you talked a little bit about it. If you can tell us a little bit more detail about this position you had with the Joint Chiefs leading into, you know, September of 2001.

Well, let me take you right up to it, Jack, because that's primarily what I wanted to talk about and hope your listeners are interested in as we approach the 25th anniversary of that tragic event. So, I think all of us were stunned by the brutality and the suddenness and from the American point of view, this senseless attack. The presidential daily brief that became infamous that said Osama bin Laden is intent on attacking America in America, I was privy to read that and just tuck it away and it was well circulated in Washington. But if you don't have particulars, what do you do?

Specifics, yeah.

So on the morning of September 11th, 2001, there were already big changes taking place in the Pentagon. General Hugh Shelton was reaching the end of his 4-year tenure as the chairman, and President Bush had formally nominated General Myers to take his place. And that change of responsibility was to take place in 19 days on 1 October. More importantly, General Shelton was doing his farewell tour. So he got up very early on the morning of 9/11 and went to Andrews Air Force Base and took off for Budapest, Hungary to meet with all the defense chiefs in NATO. By law, the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986, when the chairman's out of the country, the vice chairman is automatically the acting chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. So as events began to unfold on 9/11, General Shelton was in the air over the Atlantic Ocean. General Myers, who was just days away from being sworn in as chairman, was left behind back in Washington. Because he still had to go through his confirmation hearing in 3 days, he was scheduled for a series of courtesy calls with senators on Capitol Hill. Normally I would go with him, uh, for meetings, take notes, and do taskings when I got back.

But he said, I'll just take my aide to camp and you could stay back in the office. So he left for Capitol Hill. And, um, our office was in the E-ring of the Pentagon, um, facing, uh, the Potomac River. So I could see the Washington Monument. Big windows, beautiful, rare privileged to have a window like that in the Pentagon. I always kept the television on mute, and when I looked up from my desk, there was the World Trade Center smoking. So I turned on the sound, and they were speculating that it was a small plane or some air control mishap, or— and I wanted to believe that, Jack. I, um, I, I could— I was in denial. I knew something was wrong. I knew there was more to it than this, but denial prevented me from picking up a phone, from calling either the general or our command center. Um, I just wanted to believe. And, um, I started to get worried about the possibility of flying glass from our picture window, so I asked Mary Turner, our scheduler, to close the heavy draperies thinking just in case there's a bomb that goes off. I couldn't imagine that a jetliner was barreling toward us at that very minute.

And then suddenly the red switch rang on the left side of my desk. And the red switch is, people would call it a hotline. It's the global secure telephone conferencing system that connects the White House, the Pentagon, and all our major commands around the world. Um, and, um, it's, it's a push-button phone. Uh, the top left is POTUS. So if you punch it, it rings in the Oval Office and it bleats and it started bleating. And I picked up the red receiver and on the other end was General Ralph Ed Eberhart, the commanding general of NORAD calling from Colorado. He said, Colonel, get General Myers on the phone. I said, sir, he's on Capitol Hill. He said, this is urgent. Get him to a phone. I need to talk to him immediately. So I hung up the red switch, reached over to the other side of my desk, picked up my unsecure phone, and called Captain Chris Donahue, an Army Green Beret. Now, Chris was, um, Chris is an unflappable, intense, um, just a tough soldier and, um, had no idea that New York City was under attack. So I said, Chris, get Get the old man on the phone.

Put him on. He says, I can't. I said, what do you mean you can't? He's in with the senator. I said, get in there. He said, you want me to walk in? I said, get General Myers on the phone. General Myers came on the phone. I said, sir, do you know what happened in New York? He said, the senator's staff just informed us. We just turned on the television. I said, Eberhardt needs you right now. Can you get back to the Pentagon? He said, I'll be there in 15 minutes. I'll call General Eberhardt from my sedan. So I hung up the phone. Now, you're a combat veteran like I am, Jack. You know that sometimes things that happen a long time ago still trigger emotions and, um, something you see or smell or hear. And I'm still haunted by the sound of what happened next because the red switch rang again. And unlike the point-to-point red switch call with NORAD. This was a conference call being built by the White House Situation Room. And because you're on a top secret line and you open it to various people, there's an echo chamber. If you were going to make a movie, you would add this sound effect for drama.

So the White House operator said, stand by for a significant event conference. And he started to patch— leaders from around Washington into the call, the head of the FBI, the head of the CIA. And he said, all parties are on the line, stand by. And I thought Condoleezza Rice must be coming on, but it was General Eberhardt from NORAD. And he said, I can remember exactly what he said, we have several airplanes on radar, an unknown number of them have been hijacked. I pulled out my pad and started taking notes. 2 F-15s from Otis Air Force Base in Massachusetts vectored to New York City. American Airlines Flight 11 confirmed hijack. It's headed to Washington. Well, this in fact was erroneous information. Flight 11 had already hit the North Tower of the World Trade Center 45 minutes earlier. That was emblematic of all the chaos and confusion we were going to wrestle through. Sure. Yeah. And Flight 11's misidentification would cause ripple effect throughout that morning. Now, about this time, you know, I'm intensely taking notes and Mary Turner, our scheduler, starts to wave at me. And I'm thinking, can't she see this is important? And she has a phone in her hand and she starts waving it.

She says, it's General Shelton, the chairman. He's calling from his airplane. He wants to talk to you now. So I kept the red switch in my left ear. I picked up the unsecure phone and put it to my right ear. Now, you may not remember General Shelton, but he is a 6-foot-5-inch, square-jawed, hard-bitten character.

Vietnam veteran.

Yes. And he does not suffer fools. And so, what the— is going on back there? And I said, sir, I'm on the red switch with NORAD and the White House. I relay information. So I'm listening, relaying information, focused on these 2 calls when Mary Turner just jumps up and says, the building moved. And suddenly there's pandemonium outside her door, people screaming and yelling, running down the corridor. I said, Mary, close the door. I can't hear. I was just so focused. I didn't feel the building shudder. And finally, after a minute, the watch officer from inside the Pentagon—

The phone lines continued to work even after the—

Yes. So on the red switch from inside the National Military Command Center, which is in the inner rings of the Pentagon, the watch officer broke into the red switch call and said, the Pentagon's been hit by the air, by an airplane.

Wow.

We can see smoke coming. So as calmly as I could, I took a deep breath and relayed the information to General Shelton. I could hear him consulting with his staff on the plane, and then the line dropped. And seconds later, General Myers called. And he was coming over the 14th Street Bridge over the Potomac River. He could see the smoke rising up. He asked if we're okay. And I said, yes, sir. He said, I'm 3 minutes out. Meet me at the river entrance. So I put down both receivers and I grabbed Mary and we made our way into the hallway and people were coming out. But what amazed me, Jack, was in the few minutes from impact, the Pentagon is the largest office building in the world. It's 17 miles of corridors. We were on, um, the north side of the building and, uh, the, the plane hit on the west side, but it was already filling with smoke. So we joined the crush of people coming down the stairs. General Meyer's sedan pulled up. Um, he grabbed my arm. We made our way through the crowds back up the stairs, and 2 uniformed security guards halfheartedly stopped us and said, General, we're not allowed to let anybody in.

It's not safe. We pushed our way past these well-intentioned officers. We made our way into the inner rings of the Pentagon, the National Military Command Center. And this is a Cold War command center and it looks like it. It's a great movie set.

Like something from Dr. Strangelove.

Yes, exactly. It's a rabbit's warren of dead-end corridors and cubicle farms, televisions hanging from the ceiling. There's a 2-story deck you could imagine. And the the watch officer or the chief of operations could stand on the deck and see everything going on below him. Inside, at least as it was configured in 2001, there's a self-contained conference room. It's about the size of a conference room. This is where the deputy director of operations maintained the 24-hour watch. We call it the DDO shack. And it was part of the nuclear node for in the event of a nuclear war. This would be one of the critical nodes in Washington. It had its own circulation system. So when we entered, we walked past all these soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines in the outer portions of the NMCC. It was a haze of acrid smoke filling the NMCC, but they were all at their stations doing what they're supposed to do. When you walk into the DD/Oshack, there must have been a dozen or more television screens all showing the World Trade Center, just like in a TV control room. And then on the far right, there's a huge screen that shows the track of our top secret intelligence satellites.

The center, there's a long conference table with red switch telephones. Miraculously, General Myers had been the NORAD commander just prior to that assignment as the vice chairman. So he understood the air defense scenario better than anybody in Washington. And he began this conversation with the NORAD commander, General Eberhardt. He said, Ed, we don't have ROE to shoot down a civilian airliner, do we? Rules of engagement, ROE. And Eberhardt said, no, sir, we don't. He said, that's first order of business. So what they're doing, and you appreciate this, this is a modified mission analysis, condensed mission analysis. get to the guidance that we need to do.

Did they need the president to weigh in on that?

We're going to talk about that. And what they wanted to do was shorten the decision loop. They didn't want to put the burden of making the decision to shoot on the shoulders of a single fighter pilot, but they didn't want to have that pilot have to go through layers of command leading all the way back to Washington. So they delegated the command authority to a 2-star general, Larry Arnold, at the Northeast Regional NORAD Center in Rome, New York. It's an old Air Force base up there. So he had the authority to give that command. Now, as NORAD began to disseminate the rules of engagement The famous fog of war started to descend on us because unknown to us, the FAA and the Secret Service in Washington had a hotline between the control tower at Reagan National Airport across the Potomac River and the Secret Service headquarters in, in the White House or their, their command center in the White House. And the FAA called the Secret Service and said, we have a flight on radar we know is coming to Washington. We know it's hijacked. Flight 93, which would eventually crash in Pennsylvania. So the Secret Service took the initiative to call the Air National Guard commander at Andrews Air Force Base and tell him, scramble jet aircraft.

Well, Secret Service can't give orders to the military.

Jack. So at the time, he was a Brigadier General, uh, Worley, and he said, I don't take orders from the Secret Service. And they You could imagine what the— I don't know exactly what the agent said. Listen, can't you see what's happening on CNN? This is, this is an attack. And he said, I can't take orders from you. I need someone in authority to give me that, that the authority. And they went back and forth. I don't know how many minutes, but it's documented. Finally, General Worley relented. And, um, unlike the NORAD fighters, which are stationed around the nation on strip alert. These were National Guard fighters, had a mission, but not equipped like NORAD and not on complete strip alert, not armed with the same kind of weapon systems. So now they're spinning up. And General— or I'm sorry, Vice President Cheney was advised by the Secret Service that they've got pilots that are going to be in the air shortly from Andrews Air Force Base. And he gave the authority to go to weapons-free, meaning the pilots could fire at their own discretion.

Right.

Not knowing, of course, that NORAD had different rules of engagement. These were on different radio frequencies coming out of Langley Air Force Base in Southern Virginia in a different chain of command. And these 2 flights coming from different Air Force bases had no idea that the others were Oof. They couldn't communicate. And those communication problems were not solved even when they finally realized that somewhere up above us is another flight of F-16s. Just another kind of example of the chaos. And in terms of leadership, and at the end of each chapter, Jack, of my book, I have leadership observations. At the end of this chapter, I talk about where leaders should be to command and to control, 2 different things. So those fighters coming out of NORAD's Langley Air Force Base control center did exactly what they're trained to do. And that's what we like to say. Fight the way you train and train the way you intend to fight. They took off. and headed due east over the Atlantic Ocean. And they kept going for 60 miles over the Atlantic Ocean because that's what they were trained to do. Even though they all knew that the World Trade Centers had been hit by commercial aircraft.

But they were told and they were trained to always get out of the busy north-south commercial airline corridor. You never break the sound barrier barrier over land, get over the ocean, and your threat is to look for Russian-launched cruise missiles. When they had their after-action review, the pilots really couldn't articulate why they didn't click. You know, things click and they head to Washington. Yeah, I think there's another reason, and this is my own supposition, which I talk about in the book. 2 F-16s were on strip alert, but 3 F-16s took off from Langley Air Force Base. Now, 2 or 3 jet fighters better than 2. In this case, I'm not sure because the 3rd fighter was piloted by the supervisor of flight whose job was to be in the NORAD control center.

Mm-hmm.

He was the only commissioned officer in the control center. But he wanted to lead his jet, his fighter pilots on a real mission. And I don't blame him. That's what I wanted to do as an infantry officer. That's what the firefighters wanted to do, to be at the point of impact, the point of action. But I wonder if he had stayed in the control center, his place of duty, would he have the situational awareness to say, okay, Hit your afterburners, get to Washington now, um, instead of wandering out over the Atlantic Ocean. So those are the kind of leadership questions, you know, I pose at the end of each chapter. Now, at 9:58, the World— South Tower of the World Trade Center collapsed, and I can remember watching it on these big screens that were in the DDO shack, and I was mesmerized. It was, I realized what was happening in real time could change the world. And I don't know how many seconds or minutes, it seemed short. I was watching this.

Yep.

I'm fixated on it. Now, unlike everybody else in the National Military Command Center, I didn't have a job. Everybody else had specific duties. My only job was to be with General Myers as his exec. And when I turned around from the television screens, he was gone. And it's the only time during the day that I panicked. Um, I couldn't imagine where he was. I screamed out of the DDO shack, through the NMCC, out into the main quarters of the Pentagon. The evacuation siren and recording was still blaring. It's just so annoying and just filled with this acrid smoke. I ran to our office and I— some things, if I hadn't taken notes, I wouldn't remember, but some things I remember. I remember standing in the center of our office. It was empty. And I thought, where is he? And then it hit me. Rumsfeld. He must have been looking for Secretary Rumsfeld. So I ran up the staircase outside our door and he was— General Myers was coming out of Secretary Rumsfeld's office. And he said, he's not here. And I said, sir, we've got to get back to the NMCC. There's nobody in charge.

So we jogged back down to the NMCC. And now the fog of war was hitting us again. These false reports of a bomb blast at the State Department.

And I should mention that, you know, this is a command and control issue also, is that your TOC, your operations center, so to speak, is there in the Pentagon. But the Pentagon has come under attack. And that has to be pulling everyone in 2 directions as well.

Yeah, I'm going to talk about that in a second. That's a really, really strategic point. Secretary Rumsfeld came into the NMCC about that point. He had initially rushed out to look at the damage to the Pentagon. There's an iconic picture of him. There's a great book by a guy named Graff called The Only Plane in the Sky. And there's a picture of Rumsfeld carrying a stretcher out of the burning Pentagon. Very dramatic. Just like that fighter pilot wanted to lead from the front and the firefighters, you know, he wanted to be there. But for 30 minutes, he was out of communication. Our Secretary of Defense, a member of the national military chain of command, could not be reached. His security detail, you know, with their earpieces, could hear people calling for them, but the communication systems were overwhelmed and no one could hear their replies. I remember he described the fiery scene and what had happened, but he was calm and cool as everyone was. And we got down to business. General Myers updated him on the rules of engagement, and he called Vice President Cheney. And I got to work for Vice President Cheney after this assignment in the Pentagon after a year and a half.

And I asked the Vice President what had happened that day because I had seen the other half of it.

Yeah.

And he told me about the confusion. He actually told me about the rules of engagement and knowing what I knew about the rules of engagement we issued, I finally put 2 and 2 together and understood, you know, they were talking past each other.

Right, right.

He said when, um, the Secret Service got that call from the FAA, his protective detail burst into his office, reached behind him, picked him up by his belt, and half carried him down to the PEOC, the P-E-O-C, the Presidential Emergency Operations Center.

Was he in the White House?

Yes.

Okay. And President Bush That's right.

President Bush was in Florida when the first plane hit. So they pretty much carried him down to the bunker underneath the White House. And now President Bush is getting very frustrated. We had all these assumptions that Air Force One is the flying White House, but the communication links were not as good as they could have been. Television reception. So he landed initially at an Air Force base in Louisiana, and then they decided the safest place to go, smartest place, would be Offutt Air Force Base, our Strategic Command headquarters. There they've got great communications and they've got an underground bunker. It's in the center of the country, far from any overseas threat. So when he landed, President Bush asked to speak to key leaders in Washington. So we had to leave the DDO shack and go to a SCIF, a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, which for your viewers is simply a soundproof room. And it's just big enough for 6 or 7 people, but it's part of the NMCC architecture.

Okay.

It's just not in the DDO shack. So when we walked out, that haze of smoke is still there. There's our sailors, soldiers, airmen, Marines, still at work. So proud of him. Um, it was Secretary Rumsfeld, General Myers, um, the Chief Counsel, uh, of the Department of Defense, uh, Torrey Clark, the spokesperson for the Defense Department, uh, my counterpart, Vice Admiral Ed Giambastiani, who was the military assistant to Secretary Rumsfeld. And I remember closing the door to the SCIF, which is about this thick, and sealing it. And I got in the back of the room next to the Admiral, and it was a remarkable conversation with the president. President Bush came on, he was at his best. And I remember his exact words were, I want everyone who could hear my voice on this call to know that no faceless thugs will hold our country at bay. I want you to find out who did this. I want you to track them down, and I want you to destroy them. Of course, we assumed it was Osama bin Laden, but we weren't sure. Now, someone on the conference call outside the Pentagon said, well, fuck bin Laden.

And President Bush came right back on. He said, now wait a minute. First, get the facts. Second, clean up your language. And that's exactly what happened. It broke the tension on the call. Bush's instincts were And perfect. And, you know, we all cracked a smile and chuckled. But as the phone call went on, I got sick. I thought I was going to pass out. And my head was foggy and I had a headache. And to make things worse, Admiral Giambastiani was just yapping in my ear. And I just thought, I can remember thinking, will you please shut up? He finally grabbed my arm. He said, Colonel, Colonel, he says, you don't understand. I'm a submarine captain. There's no oxygen in this room. It's filled with carbon dioxide. And I said, are you sick? He said, yeah. He said, come with me. So we skirted around the table. We got out of the room. He said, look, we got to get to an alternate command site. He said, well, let's go to the Navy, get everybody out. We'll go to the Navy Operations Center. And I said, Admiral, that's where the plane hit and they lost everybody.

Um, all the Navy casualties, um, that day were from the Navy Operations Center. I said, sir, I've been on the phone several times with the Army Ops Center. It's in the basement. He said, okay, we better make sure we can get there. I'm going to do a recon, he said, and I want you to go find an air monitor and see how bad the air quality is. So he takes off and I'm standing there thinking, An air monitor. I may have air monitors in submarines, but where am I going to find an air monitor in the Pentagon? So I did what every good infantry colonel would do. I called for my captain. Cap Donahue, go find an air monitor. And Chris Donahue looks at me and didn't ask, what's an air monitor? Where can I find one? Do it. He said, yes, sir, and took off. A few minutes later, the admiral comes back shaking his head. He said, We're trapped. They're trapped in the basement. The corridors are blanketed with the thickest black smoke you can imagine.

You know, jet fuel.

Yeah. And the burning of things inside the Pentagon.

Yep. Yep.

Um, so we turned around and here comes Captain Donahue with the Arlington County Fire Department air quality expert. He not only found an air quality expert reader, he found the guy who could use it. And so he sent him to work. The firefighter came back and said, look, in the outer portions of this command center, you're at 33% oxygen, but in that little soundproof room, you're at 16%. You can't survive at 13%. You need to leave. So he said also, I remember he said the corridors are filled with carbon monoxide, not carbon dioxide, which is what we were suffering from, carbon monoxide and heavy metals.

Right.

So we were in danger. Now, again, the fog of war. The fire chief, the incident commander, the deputy fire chief of Arlington County had been told the Pentagon was evacuated completely of anybody alive. So with the fires raging, and they would burn for 3 days, he shut down the air handling units. But we didn't know that. So the Admiral and I went back in a skiff and interrupted Secretary Rumsfeld and General Myers and said, sir, the air quality is bad. The fire department told us we need to evacuate. And General Myers, like a good troop commander, you know, said, we probably got up to 20 people in here. Mr. Secretary, they're not going to leave until you do. And Rumsfeld shook his head and said, we cannot leave. This is the symbol of America's military power. We have got to stay. And then he looked at the admiral and me, said, you two, get the word out. Tomorrow is a workday at the Pentagon. Everybody reports for duty as normal at 8:30. Wow. A fire chief knew the fire was not going to be out.

Yeah, yeah.

The next day. And the FBI considered the whole building a crime scene.

Crime scene, yeah.

But Rumsfeld would not be denied. So the admiral said, sir, we've got an alternate place in OSD, Office of the Secretary of Defense, We could move there. We still got comms. We need to get out of this room. So something significant happens here. So we're leaving the SCIF and the 6 of us are walking through the NMCC and Rumsfeld stops us in our tracks. What haven't we thought of yet? What can the enemy do next? And General Myers said, NBC, nuclear, biological, or chemical attack. and he ordered the CBRIF units down Camp Lejeune to be prepositioned outside of New York and Washington. So at the end of this chapter, I talk about a leader's instincts. We were getting lethargic. Maybe it was from the carbon dioxide, lack of oxygen, but we were sleepwalking, and Rumsfeld had the sense to wake us up. Now, you can't write that in an SOP. And you get to this point, Shout out something. It's just what a leader instinctively knows has to be done. And so I ask people, leaders, to think about that and tuck that away. So we went to a different part of the command center and secretary says, we need to raise our alert level.

We raised our force protection level. already, but he said we need to go to DEFCON 3, which is a dramatic decision. And some historians have questioned the wisdom of it because that put all of our—

That was done to put our air defenses on like full alert, right?

Yes. But when you go to DEFCON 3, it also alerts our nuclear forces.

Yes.

And the Russians were conducting drills in the Bering Sea area near Alaska, which made things a little dicey. The Russians did agree to stop. I should point that out. But, um, another interesting thing here, because someone, just as you said, you know, what has to be decided by the president, the general counsel for the Defense Department, Jim Haynes, said, whoa, whoa, whoa, I don't know if you have the authority to do it. And this is the days before digitization and smartphones So a colonel in the command center picked out a 3-ring binder and flipped through it, and it was all there, and said, Mr. Secretary, you have the authority to raise the DEFCON level. And he did. And that put all of our military forces around the world at a higher level. About 4 PM, we went outside. to look at the crash site. And I could remember my heart beating, um, just thinking about what I was going to see when I rounded that last corner. And when I came around the corner, the first thing I saw was the debris field. Just, someone said it was like confetti. It was just bits and pieces of American Airlines Flight 77 on the ground.

Um, just one big piece I could see. The rest was shreds.

And were you guys aware Flight 93 by this point had gone down in Pennsylvania? And I don't know if there's ever been like an official weighing in on it, but I mean, we suspect that they were headed to the White House, right?

I don't think anybody knows. I think everybody agrees it was headed to Washington. That's a great question, Jack. 2 things I want to point out. First, Around 10 AM, the— there was an alert that went out from the FAA, um, unknown aircraft approaching 5 miles from Washington. So when that alert went out because of Flight 93, um, the incident commander, Chief Schwartz, pulled all of his first responders out of the building to get them away from the Pentagon. And a group of soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines who had left the Pentagon Watch this. And they were indignant and said, we're going in. And they got together and started marching to get back in the building and rescue their comrades. If the firefighters weren't going to do it, they were going to do it. The firefighters stopped them. And there's a great quote from one of them. I've seen a video of it. He said, there's no place for you in there. You don't know what's in there. You're not equipped. You're not trained. You will be a victim in minutes. So now there's this standoff, and I call it the clash of cultures. You know, here are soldiers.

They're used to taking orders from authority, and the firefighters are clearly in the authority in this situation. But these are young men and women trained with the ethos of never leaving anybody behind. risk-taking. And they were going to go in. And then finally, you know, the alert kept coming. Airplane approaching, airplane approaching. And everybody realized they needed to get back. But those were blips on radar from the helicopters, part of the COG, the Continuity of Government plan, the COG. And they were coming in to ferry key leaders from Washington to alternate command sites.

Right, right.

For the Pentagon, it's Site R, well outside the Beltway.

Where is it? Raven Rock?

Yeah. So Raven Rock. And so a lot's been written about this. First, it worked the way it was planned in terms of the launch. Steve Hadley was the Deputy National Security Advisor, triggered the COG. The helicopters are coming out of Andrews, maybe also out of Fort Belvoir. They had the routes. Tragically, one of those routes that was practiced was the, that 2024 helicopter that hit that commercial airliner.

The Black Hawk?

Yeah, Black Hawk that hit that airliner coming in to Reagan National Airport in 2024. But that's what they were rehearsing. And the thing that that didn't go according to plan, and I didn't say didn't work because I have a different opinion about this than some people, was none of the key principals wanted to leave.

Right.

The only one in the chain of presidential succession who did was Dennis Hastert, who was then Speaker of the House. He got on a helicopter and went to where the House has their alternate command site. And everybody else refused to leave and they sent their deputies. There is a great quote from Rumsfeld's autobiography, Knowns and Unknowns, where Paul Wolfowitz, his Deputy Defense Secretary, comes in. And I remember him walking in. I could see it clearly. And he said, you know, Mr. Secretary, you're supposed to leave and go to Site R. And he said, I'm not going to Site R. That's what deputies are for. You're going to Site R. And he put him on the helicopter to go out there. So there's a reporter who bemoans the fact, and he wrote a great book called On That Day, really good book. He said, you know, we failed in that regard. But I think leaders made the right decision. Rumsfeld, in hindsight, you know, it's easier to say airplane could have hit the Pentagon and we could have lost Rumsfeld as well. But But the comms aren't as good. You're— everything's better inside Washington. So it seemed at the point that he made that decision.

So let me take you back outside.

Yeah, please.

Dr. John Baxter, U.S. Air Force colonel and physician, who was General Meyer's physician and mine, came up and described the triage his team had been providing. And it was remarkable. Um, and I remember very well, he described the horrible burns of a woman, um, whose hands and face were, were severely burned. And, um, he pumped her with morphine, put her on a helicopter, took her, they took her to the Washington Burn Center. I couldn't know it at the time, of course, but, um, uh, 4 days later, my mom and dad called me from upstate New York, and that was my high school classmate.

Whoa.

Louise Rogers. And, um, the tragedy is not only, of course, her, her injuries, but it was her first day working in the Pentagon. She just got a new job as a civilian working in, um, HR. And, um, they were listening to the radio with her, her officemate when the plane hit. Um, she survived, um, you know, life-changing wounds. Um, my wife Edie and I visited her at the Burn Center. Just a strong woman. And she's living in upstate New York again. Um, but, um, just a reminder, this is not just, you know, tragedy for a nation. It's a tragedy on such an individual human scale. The fire chief and the, um, um, chief of security came up to us. And I remember being shocked that the windows on either side of this deep gash Which were still smoking, were still intact. And the security chief, John Jester, said, you know, we were very lucky, Mr. Secretary, because out of the 5 wedges of the Pentagon, this is the only wedge that had been remodeled. The other 4 are slated for remodeling. But because of that, you could see through the wreckage, there are steel girders.

There are no steel girders on the other 4 sections. They held for 32 minutes. and allowed many people to escape. But every action has its unintended consequences. Those were reinforced ballistic glass windows this thick. And I actually have a piece that I can tell you how I got it. It's from the embassy, actually, when we replaced our embassy glass. It's about 8 inches thick. And They saved untold damage, debris flying, but because those windows held in place, that kinetic energy was trapped. So all that explosive force shot towards the outside, bounced off those ballistic windows and back inside the Pentagon, and they raced as fireballs through the corridors and the passageways of the Pentagon. The firefighters arrived and they could not break the windows to Rescuing people. The smoke and the heat. Uh, we went back inside and there was a major, Army major, bloodied uniform, bandaged, you know, arm in a sling. And he described the, the blackness, um, and trying to help people escape. And the soles of his shoes had started to melt. The fire was so intense. Now, about this time, my counterpart, General Hugh Shelton, the chairman's exec, called. We had served together before.

I knew him well. Doug Lute, Army colonel at the time, retired as a 3-star like me, became the United States ambassador. He was our ambassador to NATO. So we've got quite a history. And he called from General Shelton's airplane, still over the Atlantic Ocean. He said, Matt, we finally got permission to come back to Washington. I said, I thought you'd be here by now. He I said, it's just, everything's closed, all the airspace. He said, where do you want General Shelton to go? So I saw Rumsfeld and Myers conversing and I interrupted them and I said, sir, I've got General Shelton's exec on the phone. Where do you want him to go? He's coming back to Washington. And they turned to me and in unison said, SADR, which surprised me. I said, SADR? They said, SADR.

SADR.

I said, Doug, sidearm. I was very sheepish when I said this. He said, sidearm. I said, yes, sir. And I hung up and I knew General Shelton would not be happy.

He's going to hit the roof.

He's still the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for 19 days. He's a warhorse. But it raises an interesting question. You know, where do you want everybody to be? You got Rumsfeld and Myers there. Myers had been in charge all morning. He had the continuity of what was happening. More importantly, he had been the NORAD commander until recently, and he understood the air defense scenario better than anybody in Washington. And in 19 days, he'd be the next chairman. On the other hand, do you want Shelton, Myers, and Rumsfeld there at the same time, or do you displace Myers as CIDAR? It was a tough decision.

As I understand continuity of government, it was It can be used for different things as it was on 9/11. It could be used when there's a pandemic, for instance, but it was designed really to keep the United States government functional during a nuclear exchange. But this wasn't that, right? So America was under attack, but to take all those key leaders and to sequester them in Site R, I think would've been a huge mistake. Yeah.

Well, of course we have the benefit of hindsight.

Yeah.

For sure. In my book, I could tell you the exact time, but at one point General Myers turned to me and said, Matt, call Offutt Air Force Base Strategic Command and have them launch the NAOC, the National Airborne Operations Center. That's the big—

The doomsday plane.

That's what they call it. Yeah, the doomsday plane. And there's more than one, and one was sitting at Andrews Air Force Base and was launched. Why? We didn't know what would happen at that point in the morning. But there's also, in addition to COG, the COG, the Continuity of Government Plan, there's the COOP, the Continuity of Operations Plan that every federal agency has for emergencies and crises below existential threat to the nation.

Yeah, right.

So the COOP plan is is different, very similar in some ways, but different. But yes, the COG is part of that survival of the nation plan, very much so. So things are starting to quiet down around 6 or so, as I remember, and the adrenaline's starting to fade. And there's still, you know, a little buzz in the National Military Command Center. I look up And there standing in the door is General Hugh Shelton. He did not go to Site R. I knew he wouldn't. And talk about leadership again. So when a leader walks into a room, the chemistry should change, the whole dynamic. And for an awkward few seconds, Shelton's standing there because nobody sees him. So in my best command voice, I said, Gentlemen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. And everybody turns around and looks at me like, what are you talking about? You're standing next to Myers. Myers has been in charge all morning. And then General Shelton strode in the room, that big iron jaw set. There's this look of reproach, even anger on his face. And I remember he looked, the whole room is just silent, standing at attention.

And he went to Vice Admiral Tom Wilson, who was the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. He said, Tom, did we have any squeaks on this at all? And Admiral Wilson, who interestingly was on Navy Hill, for those familiar with Navy Hill at the time, it's been demolished now, but it sits above the Pentagon, or did. And in his office up there, he watched Flight 77 plow into the Pentagon. That's an aside. So Admiral Wilson said, General, you know, we did have some reports of some suspicious possible bad guys taking jumbo jet training a few months ago. Stunning. So we had bits and pieces. I think there's an FBI agent, a woman, who pieced this together and tried to get the attention of people, but You know, we had failed. So, um, President Bush, after Condoleezza Rice and Vice President Cheney saying, please, Mr. President, don't come back to Washington yet, said, I'm coming. And, um, landed, um, I think before 7 PM at Andrews Air Force Base and was going to make an address to the nation at 8:30 PM. So General Shelton and Secretary Rumsfeld went to the White House for that event.

And before he left, General Shelton told General Myers, when I get back, I want the directors of the Joint Staff to gather in my office, or not my office, in our conference room. We're going to have a meeting. Directors of Joint Staff are 3 stars, plus the vice chairman is 4 4-star. And I think we all remember bits and pieces of President Bush's address to the world, not just the nation. General Shelton came back and going back to that chapter in the book and the leadership observations I make, Jack, everything changed. It's just remarkable. That's what you as leader must do when you're the leader. When he walked into that room, At about 10 PM, um, the whole dynamic changed. You don't want to go to sea with a ship captain who's afraid of rough waters, or fly in an airplane with a pilot who's afraid of turbulence. And you don't want to go to war with someone who's not ready to fight. And Shelton was ready for a fight. He was positive. He was brimming with confidence. He said, we're going to war, and this is not going to be any pinpricks. And we were just pumped.

And it's just a turnaround. It just turned everything around from being on our heels, back heels from—

Right, feeling helpless.

The events of the day until he came back and we were ready to look to the future and take the initiative. So, you know, we met for a couple hours. After that, it was around midnight. General Myers and I went back to the office. He sat down at his desk and he said, we got a big day ahead of us. He said, let's go home. So Edie and I, and I haven't talked about Edie and I should do that. We lived in Arlington, Virginia at the time, just a few minutes from the Pentagon. Our son was in middle school. Um, and The students had been told that the Pentagon was under attack, and he had images of terrorists with machine guns roaming the corridors of the Pentagon and wasn't sure what had happened. But panicked parents in the area were picking kids up.

Yeah.

Edie is a retired Army nurse. She knows her way around the Army. She thought when she heard the news on the radio, I'll go to Fort Myer next to the Pentagon where General Myers had his quarters because she was good friends with Mary Jo Myers, his wife, and she would get the best information. But unlike the friendly military police at the gates, they were bristling with armed weapons and they were geared up. And when she said she wanted to go to Vice Chairman's house, after she showed her ID card, they just put her over there. They were very tense and suspicious. And she said, I think I should leave. So she went to her son's middle school. And when he saw Edie in the hallway, our son, you know, thought the worst. So I talk a lot in the book about, you know, what do you do?

Had you called your wife by this point?

Yeah, it's an obvious question. You know, when the— after the World Trade Centers were hit, I called her and said, turn on the news, I don't have time to talk. But Mary Turner, um, our scheduler, got on one of the helicopters to CIDAR And, um, had the good sense to call everybody on our staff, including Mrs. Myers and Edie. And so she knew we were safe. So when I got home around midnight, you know, the house was dark, but I opened the door and Edie was standing right there. We just embraced and she said, you stink of smoke. So the next morning, um, it's just remarkable. I, I got there You know, in the book, Jack, I describe a typical day on the Joint Staff, at least for high-level staff. You know, I was in my desk at my seat at 5:15 every day, not driving to work, not getting coffee. You know, I was going through the message traffic from overnight, arranging desks for General Myers with all the key cables. He arrived at 6:15. Um, he, we went through the Traffic, talked about the day to come. 6:30, the CIA briefer arrived with the president's daily brief, the PDB, same briefing given in Oval Office.

That lasted for 30 minutes. At 7:00 AM, the directors of the Joint Staff came to the conference room. We had an hour meeting with the Joint Staff directors. At 8:00 AM, Secretary Rumsfeld met with the vice chairman and chairman for an hour. So by 9:00 AM, It was an old Army recruiting TV commercial said, by 9 AM, you've done more as a soldier than most people do in an entire day, which was absolutely true. But when I was sitting at my desk at 5:15, 2 teams of hijackers were leaving their motel rooms, one in Laurel, Maryland, and one in Herndon, Virginia. And they were driving to Dulles Airport. And, um, when General Myers was going at 8:15 to Capitol Hill, um, they were boarding Flight 77. So I describe in the, in the book, I just juxtapose the hijackers and what we were doing at those different points of the day. And, um, so the next morning when I got there, I got there at a little before 5 and, um, you know, it was less than 24 hours and there were no police barricades, no yellow tape, just a black corridor. And I started walking down the corridor and it got blacker and blacker and blacker.

I didn't have a light and it just spooked me. Finally, I couldn't go any farther. I couldn't see. It was wet. And, um, I just knew there were probably my comrades down there. And went back to the office. General Myers came early at 8:30 like everybody was supposed to. They wouldn't allow anybody to park in the Pentagon parking lot. So all the Pentagon employees parked downtown and came over the Potomac River bridges. It was a great story. And I'm going to tie this all together now with 2 vignettes. First, I think it was the day after, maybe it was 2 days after, we got all these maps out of Afghanistan and we were talking about basing rights. And with the J5, General John Abizaid, and the J3 and the Vice Chairman, and somebody said, well, you know, Kyrgyzstan. And it was Uzbekistan. And I knew about Pakistan and I knew about Afghanistan and I knew very little about Central Asia, the 5 Stans. And there's this 500-mile border with Turkmenistan. So I naively said, well, gee, what about Turkmenistan? And General Abizaid looked at me and said, are you fucking crazy, Matt? That place is an enigma.

He said, it's run by this egomaniac whose statue rotates with the sun, made of gold. And he says, no way we're gonna go there. And that's the first time I ever heard of Turkmenistan. 18 years later, I was the ambassador. So that's one way of wrapping this up. That's 3 ways. The second is my wife Edie, not only a retired major in the Army, but she was a community health nurse.

Wow.

And so dealt with Army families on a one-to-one basis, and she volunteered to work for Lieutenant General John Van Alstyne, who was a remarkable leader. And they set up banks of phones and meeting rooms to welcome— to help the families of those who lost um, their loved ones in the Pentagon attack. And Edie worked phone banks and met with people, um, and, um, you know, it was a tough, tough duty, but she was well equipped to do it. I'm really proud of her. And then the final story. So to bring this all full circle, um, I was the ambassador to Turkmenistan in 2021 when Kabul fell. And was testimony to my staff, the embassy staff, the diplomats, and our defense attaché team that we had built a relationship with Turkmenistan. It had changed a lot in 18 years. So when the planes were evacuating people out of Kabul, I went to the foreign minister on a Sunday afternoon and said, can we get landing rights and overflight rights? and refueling rights and the ability to transload people so the planes could leave fully loaded and refuel and cross-load people inside Turkmenistan. And without hesitation, the relationship I had with him was so good, he said, yes, no publicity.

I want it quiet, but yes, you can do it. You know, it's a crisis. The remarkable thing is, you know, I sent my defense attaché team, my political officer out to this little airport near the Afghan border. Actually, it was a brand new airport for civilian use. And they allowed us to set up there. And we were able to do the things that we asked to do. And I'm really proud of the team. The last flight out of Kabul, of course, is All chaos. And the commanding general of the 82nd Airborne Division was famously the last man to get on that plane and fly out. Major General, later to become 4-star General, Chris Donahue.

Who was your captain in the Pentagon.

Chris Donahue, who was there at the beginning of this, who fetched General Myers, who found the air quality expert to give us the readings in the SCIF. He was there at the beginning. He was there at the end.

And I mean, what was it like in the subsequent, like, weeks and months at the Pentagon after the attack for you?

I write about that too, Jack, because, you know, I write about in the spirit of being a resilient Army family and now having brought in my experience 20 years as a diplomat. 30 years as a soldier. Resilient diplomatic families too. Our diplomats overseas face challenges and dangers that most people associate only with the military. After 9/11, anthrax. Remember, we were—

Yep.

People in Washington were not only receiving anthrax in the mail, they were dying from it. People forget people died. And then there were the The Washington Snipers.

Oh yeah, DC Snipers.

DC Snipers. So I remember we had a Volkswagen camper van pop-up. Wish we still had it. Remarkable vehicle. And at that time, $300 seemed like a lot of money. And I— so we put $300 in the van and kept the van gassed up at all times. And I told Edie, something bad happens, don't wait, grab Daniel from school and head to Tennessee where, you know, her family's from and get safe. Second thing that happened was General Myers had been the Pacific Air Force commander as a 4-star, and they invited him back on that dramatic day of 7 December to commemorate Pearl Harbor Day. And we got on a U.S. Air Force G5, Gulfstream V corporate jet, and we're flying out to Hawaii so he could deliver that speech. He was then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. And we were over the Pacific Ocean and flight crew came back and said, hey, Colonel Kaye, you got a, you got a phone call from Washington. And I picked up the phone on the bulkhead and it was General John Abizaid who had become from the J5, the director of the Joint Staff.

He became commander over Iraq.

He became 4-star CENTCOM commander. Um, and I had served with him before too, Army general.

Matt!

And he sounded real cheery, which is not good. And I said, yes, sir, right back at you. He said, listen, I don't want you to worry about anything, but Oh God. We tested all the post office boxes in the Pentagon Post Office for anthrax, and yours came up positive. And I said— he said, don't worry. He says, we got a doctor waiting for you at Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii. He's going to give you Cipro, and we're going to get you all pumped up, and it's going to be okay. And I said, General, I'm not worried about me. My son Daniel, we kept him out of school this morning. He's running a fever. He's probably got anthrax. Can you call my wife? He said, I'll take care of everything. So, you know, parents' worst nightmare, your kid's sick, maybe in danger. And so they tested the post office box again and it was negative the second time, but they made us go through SIPRO, the whole thing of it. The sniper killed this beautiful FBI agent, a woman.

Yep.

Not more than a mile or 2 from her house. I mean, just everything seemed to be—

Yeah. Spiraling.

Yeah.

One of the things that I try to bring to the surface in some of these interviews sometimes, especially because I know younger people watch these a lot of times and people who are thinking about joining the military. And one of the things I try to communicate to people who are younger than I am, is just how afraid everyone was at that moment in American history. And I don't think people today who didn't live through it really understand what that feeling was like.

I remember the gratitude of people in Los Angeles had when, right after, shortly after General Myers was sworn in, the public affairs people made a plan for him to travel around America. I guess you could say to rally support, not that it needed to be done. But the— I forgot. I wish I could remember the venue, but there's like a world council, people interested in international affairs and just community-spirited people have guest speakers come in. And we flew out to Los Angeles. He gave a speech there. But what I remember was how much gratitude they expressed because they felt kind of left out being so far from New York and Washington.

Right.

But, you know, to go to your point, the whole country was affected by this and they didn't want to be forgotten. They didn't want their emotions to be ignored. And of course, now people talk about, you know, how the country came together. And somebody said, you know, is that still possible today? And I say, absolutely, yes. You know, the right— not because of tragedy alone. I mean, that could happen. Um, the, the right leaders, the right moments, um, the right vision. You know, I, as I said right at the beginning of our talk, you know, I'm a child of the '60s. Not that I look like a child anymore. I used to have a full head of hair. On 9/11, you could find pictures of me. You won't recognize me. I had a full head of hair. But yeah, I just believe in this country and our ethos and our values. One of the great things about being a United States ambassador is every 4th of July, you host the biggest party. Biggest ass party you can host. And you just, we had 400 people at our 4th of July events in my 5 years there, except for COVID.

And boy, I just love talking about the Declaration of Independence. And we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. And it means something in a country like Turkmenistan. They have— they're not an Islamic Republic, they're not in a dictatorship, but it's an authoritarian government. And all those hidden messages in the Declaration of Independence, they understand, they get it, they want it. And, um, it just makes me so proud to be an American. And, uh, so the more we talk about those values and things, I think the greater opportunity we have to be the nation that still is that beacon on the hill.

How long after 9/11 did you retire from the military?

I had a great opportunity. I was General Myers' exec for the first year of the war on terror. We traveled extensively. I've been mentioning name-dropping generals, I just wrote a letter and sent a copy of my book to General Buster Hagenbeck, who commanded the 10th Infantry Division, the first full division in Afghanistan. I think they got there in 2001, maybe early 2002. General Myers and I went and visited him. I was a battalion commander under him when he was a brigade commander. And I wanted him to have my book. And Uh, so we, you know, had these experiences of— we went to Afghanistan 2001, 2002, um, traveled all around the region. And what didn't completely click with me, because even though you're the chairman's exec, you don't know everything, is we, we started to make visits in the region, um, in preparation for the invasion of Iraq. And almost always General Myers would have me in meetings. I was in meetings with heads of state taking notes and a couple meetings just one-on-one. And that's what it was about. We started to lay the groundwork for the invasion of Iraq. And then in the summer of 2003— I'm sorry, yeah, summer of 2002, General Meyer said, you know, you've been going almost 24/7 for a long time.

I just had a meeting with the Vice President and he's looking for somebody to set up a Homeland Security section within the Office of the Vice President. And I think you'd be perfect for it. You're interested in national security affairs. He's looking for someone with your credentials. So I was detailed as a colonel wearing civilian clothes every day to work for Vice President Cheney, which was absolutely stunning, remarkable experience.

And this was part of standing up DHS?

Good question, Jack. I can't say with certainty, and Vice President Cheney's died, and I don't remember if it's in his memoir, but it was pretty clear to me he was not in favor of establishing a Department of Homeland Security.

Interesting.

I'm almost— I'm much more than 50% sure that he was not in favor of it, but that's what the powers that be, to include his boss the president, wanted. And when the decision was made, like a good soldier, not that he was one, but he said, okay, that's what we're going to do. And so he wanted a little cell, there were 3 of us, to work Homeland Security issues because he had Ambassador Eric Adelman, who's a friend of mine, and later Ambassador Toria Nuland as his national security advisors. We were his Homeland Security advisors, but we didn't participate in particularly standing up DHS. But I worked on 2 very significant projects, which were the privilege of a lifetime at that point. One, we had, no kidding, very credible, not rumors, there was going to be a terrorist attack on subway system in New York. And he called me in, the Vice President called me in and said, I want to know everything you could tell me about Aum Shinrikyo and the—

The Japanese cult.

Yes.

The attack on the Japanese subway system that took place in, I forgot what year.

Yeah, 1990s.

So there's a, for those of you who've never had the honor of serving in the White House, the Eisenhower Executive Office Building adjacent to it has a beautiful library, just most beautiful library you can imagine. And I went to the librarian there and said, I got a project for the VP and I need to know everything I can possibly know about Um, the Anshinrikyo attack on subway system. And, you know, they did all the gathering of all the research, and, um, next thing I know, I'm getting a tour of the subway system with the chief of, um, uh, subway police. Uh, what is that, Metro? No, not the Metro.

We have the MTA here in New York.

Yeah, yeah. Um, the New Jersey-New York The Port Authority.

Yeah, yeah.

And the Washington Metro system, I got a tour of that. It was just— briefed the Vice President. And that was just really, really neat.

And they got word of a pending Al-Qaeda attack, planned attack.

Obviously didn't happen.

Yeah.

And I can't tell you why it didn't or if we shut down that cell or what. I really didn't know, but, um, that was one of the projects I worked on. Um, the second one was really interesting, was, um, if you remember during this time, 2 SA-7s were launched at a commercial airliner in Africa. It was a—

1977, Rhodesia.

Well, no, this was, um, current, you know, a current 21st century. They launched 2 missiles. They missed because they didn't superelevate or did superelevate. It was an Israeli charter jet, 737. And so they stood up a task force in Washington and the vice president said, you're my rep on that task force. You could speak for me. This is a leadership lesson. And I learned this when I joined the vice president's staff. When I left that meeting, my comrades, my colleagues came up and said, you heard what he said? I said, what'd he say? What'd he say? He said, you could speak for me. You don't use your boss's name unless you tell him. You don't say, the vice president wants me to do this.

You got a get out of jail free card from Dick Cheney.

Yeah. That's BS. Well, you use your own skills. With discretion, yes. And you never use the boss's name unless he says you can.

Did you have to pull that out?

I didn't even realize he said that until my colleague said, yeah, that's a big deal. He doesn't say that often. So here's another leadership lesson. I had no idea I was going to tell this story, but you're good at drawing stories out of people. So I went to the task force meeting, and this is interagency, and there must have been 60, 70 people in the room. And I don't want to cast aspersions on anybody in particular. I don't even know this woman's name, and it's a long time ago, and the agency is a famous one, and they've, they've changed radically since then. I hope for the better. I think so. But it— this is a lesson about bureaucracies and how we are locked in our lanes.

Right.

So The meeting started. I don't remember who chaired the meeting. Probably it had to be someone from the National Security Council on the president's staff. And I'm sitting in the room with 50, 60 other people. And just as the meeting started, some woman jumps up and she says in a very indignant voice, my name is Jane Doe. I'm from the FBI. That stands for the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

FBI.

We investigate things. We don't prevent things. I don't know what anybody else thought in the room. This is a year, a year and a half after 9/11, and she's, for all intents and purposes, said, we're not in the prevention of a 9/11.

I'm pretty sure FBI is in the anti-terrorism business.

It was just stunning. But, you know, it was just We get locked into these things.

Yeah.

The third thing that I didn't realize was significant until I came back, my colleagues from the White House after I had retired from the Army and started working at the State Department invited me over to the White House mess and they said, you know, you've got a lasting legacy. And I didn't realize it. And he said, here's what it is. You put that matrix together for the vice president. And what I did was I looked at every major city— Chicago, LA, Denver, New York, you name it— and what equipment, NBC equipment, they had in first responder vehicles.

I see.

What's in the trunk of police cars? What's in the fire engines? And of course, it's all different because they're local. And we then, we met with the experts on what would you want a typical fire engine, police car, ambulance to carry. Can't carry everything. So we— and, you know, and then we funded that. Vice President went to Congress and got the funding for it. And so something tangible happened from something I did in Washington. Those things actually ended up in the cars and trucks of first responders.

What were the— what kind of equipment did you— like protective masks?

Yeah, I'm sure it was Detectors, detection. Yeah, I really don't remember, but yes.

So tell us about retiring from the military and moving into diplomacy.

Yeah, I guess it goes to another leadership lesson I have for junior officers and young leaders. Lifetime goals. I wrote down at a young age that I wanted to go to Washington. work in a policy arena. That's how I ended up going into that War College fellowship instead of a regular War College slot. But when you travel with the Secretary of State, Warren Christopher for a year, Madeleine Albright, it's not just a Secretary of State, she was a Secretary of State. You do that for 3 years, boy, that diplomacy bug just bites you. And I learned as much from General Myers as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff as I did from the Secretaries. He is a statesman, not just a Chairman. I had the privilege in 3 years with the Secretaries, 1 year with General Myers as Chairman, and another year when he was Vice Chairman, really 5 years of sitting in this close to heads of state, kings, prime ministers, countless foreign ministers. So I felt I was well equipped to become a diplomat and I knew my Army career wasn't gonna last forever. And I was in the Sit Room working for Vice President Cheney in the Situation Room in the White House.

And Warren Christopher's former chief of staff, Maura Hardy, was there. Ambassador Hardy was the assistant secretary of state for Counselor Affairs. And she said, Matt, I haven't seen you in years. What are you doing? She said, listen, you got to retire from the Army at some point. I got a job for you. You have to qualify for it. It's in the Senior Executive Service, but I know you'll qualify. So why don't you apply? And then there's a whole rigmarole and it's not easy and you go through it. So yeah, that's how I ended up there. It was the biggest— it was the biggest, uh, is the biggest bureau in the Department of State. I was the executive director for Consular Affairs, and it was a significant job at that point because that's when we were going to, um, change our entire visa system to biometric passports, biometric visas, different criteria for taking fingerprints at the visa line.

Mm-hmm.

So I was there to oversee all of that. But I wanted to be an ambassador and I had goals. And I don't know, you never know how you're going to reach your goal. You're foolish if you try to map it out. I just knew that off in the distance when opportunities arose, I would avail myself of those. And here's a big difference, Jack. You've been in the Army and No self-respecting Army officer would openly campaign to be a brigade commander or a division commander. I mean, okay, yes, you maybe drop a hint, but it's just beyond the pale. But at the State Department, and I admire this, I want to make it very clear, you got to ask. You got to campaign. You got to put yourself out there.

They want to see who wants it.

Yeah. Army command positions are centrally selected. You don't ask for it. They just put your name in the hopper and then the board meets in Washington and they look at everybody's file and they whittle it down and they draw the line and everybody above that line gets selected. The State Department, you can't even know what diplomatic positions are open unless you ask for the list. Usually about 30 embassies are coming open every cycle. And so you even have to have enough courage to say, can I see the list of ambassadorships that are coming open in this cycle? And I got the list, there are about 30. And I'll try to make this short because it took me 3 tries. And my dear wife said, you're not going to try a 3rd time. And I said, yeah, I want to do this. And I saw a couple of countries I thought really as well qualified. And so then you knock on doors, you see every assistant secretary. I saw every undersecretary who was willing to meet with me. And I made an appointment to meet with the deputy secretary. And I attributed this to my Army training, not to me personally.

But when I was done, the number 2 person, deputy cabinet secretary, she said, that's the best interview. I have ever had with anybody for any job. And it's just Army training of, you know, being ready for any question that comes, anticipating, being open and honest, having EQ, emotional intelligence, reading body language and people. And then when you don't get the question you want, being able to kind of twist it till you get your points in. So this is a great story. I had an undersecretary who was kind of my champion, and he said, it looks good, looks good. And I was working on a secret project involving the Korean Peninsula, and I had to give a briefing at a military headquarters in Hawaii. So I flew out to Honolulu. I was feeling pretty good about everything. And I was the First briefer in this conference we were having. I forgot which, which of the outposts, our Army posts, we're doing this at. I didn't know Hawaii very well. I'd been there a few times, but I had GPS in my car. And I got up in the morning, looked at my phone, and then, call Washington, call the undersecretary.

Where are you? Call me now. And I said, oh my God. I picked up the phone and it's the undersecretary, and he said, the deputies committee is going to meet in 2 hours. You're hanging by a thread. You need 2 more ambassadors or former ambassadors to weigh in on your behalf. So I get in the car and I got the GPS set and I'm driving and I'm calling people in Washington. I find 2 ambassadors who— can you call the deputy secretary? Get out of the briefing, And I look at my phone and my undersecretary said, done, exclamation point. And I thought, hallelujah. So I was slated to go to a small African country, which is fine. I didn't care. I wanted to be captain of my ship. And don't forget to ask me about that. I wanted to lead and to be out there on the front lines and in the field. So when I got back to Washington, undersecretary said, you don't want to go to that little country. You could go here, you could go here, you could go to Turkmenistan, you could go here. And I said, Turkmenistan? 700-mile border with Iran, 500-mile border with Afghanistan where we're fighting, former Soviet republic.

Wow. But I don't speak Russian and the Russian speakers will elbow me out and then I'll be left with nothing. happy, just leave it alone. I'm happy going to Africa. 2 weeks later, after I've been studying Portuguese, you're going to Turkmenistan. And, um, so, uh, I was just thrilled beyond belief. A country with that kind of geographic significance. And, and of course, everybody, you know, there was a British adventure tourist writer. Adventure tourism was big for a while, and he went to Turkmenistan and wrote about it and said it's a cross between North Korea and Las Vegas because it's a white marble city, all white cars, all white buildings. But at night, because it's all white marble, it's a light show. Everything's lit up with neon and colored lights and laser beams. It's It's like Las Vegas. It just lights up the desert.

So in addition to that and the geographical location, tell us about Turkmenistan and how our relationship evolved with them from when you first heard about the country. It sounded like it was on 9/11 or close to it, to what, 18 years later when you're the ambassador?

It's when official visitors come to Washington or came from Washington, The first thing I would say is Turkmenistan will surprise you almost always in a positive way.

Why?

Well, first of all, it's enigmatic and it is a very closed country relative to other countries. But as I immediately reminded them, this is not North Korea. And I resent people who try to characterize it like that. They don't make bombs. They don't threaten their neighbors. They're a neutral country by constitution. And they walk that talk. They really practice it to the extent that it's to my advantage and disadvantage. It's to my advantage as the American ambassador because as a former Soviet republic, Putin wants to draw them in.

Sure.

But they have a legitimate reason to say, we're happy to cooperate, but only this far because we're a neutral country. And I could very legitimately tell them, you don't have to play to Russia all the time. We're here too. And by the way, you're neutral, so you have to play. You have to play fair.

Right.

And they did. It's positive neutrality. That's what they call it because they want to be engaged. They don't want to be a little Switzerland minding their own business. They want to be a regional player in terms of conferences and talks and to be at the table when Central Asia is being discussed.

But they're not going to weigh in on the conflict in like Afghanistan or Iran or Ukraine.

Very hard to get them to make a political statement. Yeah, but I'm going to—

Come on.

I had a When I got there in 2019, it was just, it was a friendly relationship, wasn't frosty at all, but it was just perfunctory. And I was just determined to turn on the charm and to use what, and I think people now maybe look, cast aspersions on soft power, but to use everything I had in my toolkit to, to draw them in to look to the West, America in particular, but to the West in general, not just to the East. Geographically and politically, because of their former Soviet ties, that's where they naturally would look. Now, this is the Silk Road. They're natural entrepreneurs. It's in their DNA. I mean, my wife Edie created the Women's Economic Society of Turkmenistan. Started with 7 women who wanted to trade their handicrafts or code and learned. By the time she left, uh, 5 years later, 2,000 members in all the provincial capitals because they're, they're traders. They're, they're, they're, they're perfect for capitalism, frankly. Um, so I did a lot of work in an area I knew nothing about. business relations. And there's an American, uh, U.S.-Turkmenistan Business Council, USTBC. Um, a guy named Eric Stewart runs out of the Washington area, and, uh, big companies are there.

Boeing, General Electric turbines just power that country, uh, all the Turkmenistan air fleet Boeing. Um, there's a Jack Nicklaus golf course there. Jack Nicklaus has been there 17 times. No kidding. So big companies, yes, but I was drawing in smaller companies. It's the 4th largest natural gas reserves in the world. And I campaigned hard to get them to make more inroads to send natural gas to Europe rather than have the Europeans buying gas from Russia.

Right.

And before Nord Stream 2 was blown up, That was important. When Russia invaded Ukraine, um, everything changed dramatically. Uh, one of the things that I think it's fair to say Turkmenistan values, um, as much as neutrality is stability. And Ukraine starting a war not only with Europe, in Europe, but on the margins of Eurasia, or part of Eurasia, was extremely uncomfortable for the Turkmen. Stability, that's what they're looking for. So there was no doubt in my mind they would hew towards being a stable— I'm sorry, a reliable neutral country. But it was starting to shade towards the West.

Because they were uncomfortable with what Russia was doing.

When there's a big celebration on the 9th of May to celebrate the end of World War II, and in the Soviet days, it was the biggest ceremony on Red Square you can imagine. Now, all the former Soviet republics had soldiers who fought in that war. So in Ashgabat, the capital of Turkmenistan, on a hilltop, there is the most amazingly beautiful, emotional tribute to those who lost their lives in the Great War. And on the other side, by the way, is a beautiful tribute to those who lost their lives in the 1948 earthquake. that devastated the capital city of Ashgabat. Tens of thousands of people died.

Oh my God.

So on 9 May, all the diplomatic corps lines up to lay wreaths and flowers, and it's a somber occasion and it's dramatic. And, um, in a lot of people who aren't diplomats don't realize it, but most countries you line up by order of rank as diplomats. And the rank is determined by how long you've served in country. So, um, the— by chance, the Russian ambassador had been there for well over 12 years on 9 May 2022 and was therefore at the far right of this row of ambassadors. And we're all holding bouquets of roses. And, um, president pulls up 4 and a half months after the invasion of Ukraine, he walks by the Dean of the Diplomatic Corps, the Russian ambassador, and walks straight to the Ukrainian ambassador and embraces him. I knew then that the world had changed in that part of the world.

It's really fascinating, I think, with those Central Asian countries that because of where they are geographically, They have to play the game with Russia to some extent, but they're not puppet states. They're independent countries and they have a will of their own. And there's a great book called Great Games, Local Rules.

I never heard of it.

Alexander Cooley wrote the book and he makes the point in it that these countries in Central Asia actually very shrewdly determine their own destiny and play Russia and America off against one another.

Being a neutral country constitutionally puts them in a much better spot than their neighbors. Because their neighbors like to say, oh, we don't wanna pick sides, but they could say, it's in our constitution, and they mean it. The other thing that happened was that we made these inroads economically with American businesses. Geopolitically, you know, I, I really think, um, the Europeans were, were much more reluctant to deal with a country like Turkmenistan with a very, uh, spotty— and I'm being generous— human rights record than we were. And, you know, I had to be very careful not to reward them for bad behavior, but I I found it frustrating when Washington wouldn't reward them for good behavior.

Mm-hmm.

There were 19 political prisoners that were eventually released during my time as ambassador, and the Deputy Foreign Minister came up to me and said, we're releasing them because of your insistence. And that's the kind of good diplomacy that we practice as Americans. But you just can't use a stick.

Mm-hmm.

That, you know, my predecessors had tried to get those prisoners out, but I was trying to use both carrot and stick. And luckily I had leaders in Washington who granted me that leeway. And so, you know, by the time we left, we had made some real progress. The signature Initiative for my wife Edie and me dealt with women and expanding their opportunities. It's not an Islamic Republic, they're not veiled, you could wear blue jeans, but women are definitely in a patriotic— patriarchal society. Women ride in the back seat of a car, And in general, there is no rule, no law, but that is what is expected, just as an example. But by the time we left, we had made some real inroads, and I had this thing about women driving licenses. We had over 300 locally employed staff at the embassy, and I found that at some point there was Something happened in the country and young women were no longer being able to pass their driving test. We had a few women in the embassy who had driving licenses, but they had gotten them years earlier and now they were having trouble renewing them.

So I didn't— that didn't sit well with me because, and this is what I used as my excuse, some of the women could not get promoted in our embassy hierarchy without a driving license. So I use that as leverage to say, I'm not trying to tell you how to run your business here in Afghanistan, I mean Turkmenistan, and who could get a license. I'm not trying to tell you how to treat women. I'm just trying to get my women on equal footing so they could get the next promotion. That's all it's about. Of course, they knew what I was all about. I was about women's rights and trying to get them something that they deserved. You take the test as a young man, maybe 4 or 5 times you pass. You take it as a woman, we had women in the embassy took it 55 times.

That's crazy.

They couldn't pass. So, you know, I have a favorite saying, a good diplomat never loses his or her temper unintentionally. Get it? It's okay to lose your temper intentionally. So I went to the driving testing station. with 5 of my embassy employees, Turkmen women. And we had practiced the test with them dozens of times. And, and then, you know, my American staff picked these 5 gals out and said, you know, they're ready. And, um, first one came out and I said, you passed? She said, no, I knew I screwed up in the parallel parking. Second one came out, I'm not sure. And third one came out, she says, I passed, I passed, I saw it, I saw it, but he changed it. I want to talk to who's in charge here. Oh my God, I raised a fit. And, um, calm down, come. They called the Foreign Ministry. The desk officer, the American desk officer came flying down the road. Mr. Ambassador, please calm down, please calm down. I made a big scene. And the next day, the Deputy Foreign Minister called me. He said, let's talk. Give me a list. Tell me who you want to pass.

Jeez. He said, Mr. Ambassador, he says, this is our culture. You know, it changes slowly. Give us time. So I went to my deputy and we made a tactical error. You know, I was thinking we will give her our best drivers and my deputy said, let's give her— we got 44 women. Let's give them all 44 names. Nothing happened. So a year went by and I kept beating the drum and went to the foreign minister. He rolled his eyes. He said— I'm good friends with him. I had a great relationship. He says, you really want to talk about driving licenses? There's a whole list of things we need to talk about. And I said— I got back to the embassy and there was a note said, give him a list. And so this time we chose 5 women. And, um, to finish this story, uh, when I hit the 5-year mark, my successor still hadn't been confirmed by the Senate, but I told everybody, 5 years in Turkmenistan, it's enough. I'm in my 70s, it's time to retire. And, uh, We had a 4th of July celebration you couldn't beat, and that was my farewell as well.

And when we got back a week later, a week after I left, I got the sweetest note and photograph from one of the 6 women that were on the list. And she said, I pass. And on it was a handwritten note that I put on my personalized stationery to her saying, You are a woman of courage. You have never given up. You have a big heart. I know that whatever you do, you will be successful in, something like that. Picture that note and a picture of her driving to the place. It's the sweetest thing I ever got.

Do you feel like Turkmenistan is generally heading in a positive direction or is it backsliding in some ways?

I've been gone for 2 years, so I have to give you that caveat.

Sure.

But absolutely, the trajectory is definitely positive. They're more engaged. Their economy is stronger than it has been. We still get notes from entrepreneurs. What I would like them to do is diversify more, not only in different sectors, but as I said—

Mostly natural gas?

Yes, and textiles. But the 4th largest natural gas reserves in the world should be going to Europe. And what they need is a pipeline under the Caspian. Azerbaijan is on the other side of that. It's a little of them, a little of Turkmenistan. But this excuse that we've heard for years that the Russians will stop it, I don't think that holds anymore. I think if they really wanna do it, they could do it. Their biggest seller is 80% of that natural gas goes to China. And I think China views them as a good provider and they think China is a good supplier. They're not in debt to China. The debt trap you've heard so much about doesn't apply to them in Turkmenistan. But I think Diversify, look to the West, not just to the Far East or to the Near East. And they do have a pipeline they're making to Herat with the plan to go to Pakistan and on to India.

Interesting. So can I travel there without diplomatic immunity?

Glad you asked. As I said before, Turkmenistan will surprise you. For anybody who's got an ounce of adventure in them, Go to Turkmenistan? Yes, you could go. But it's the but. They welcome tour groups. So if you want to go by yourself, you're probably not going to get a visa. But it's very simple to go online and find these tour groups. And when you go in a tour group, you're not constrained. You know, you can't go here, you can't go there. They'll set up— first of all, it's probably wise because the road network, the the transportation network is not set up for tourists, and, um, so you need that kind of help anyway unless you're the biggest adventurer. Um, but, um, when you're, when you're there, you have the freedom to look around and to, to experience the culture of Turkmenistan, which is extraordinary. This is the Silk Road. Um, they have the Seljuk archaeological, uh, 11th and 12th century Seljuk archaeological sites that are being excavated. Some of them are being renovated or excavated with the help of American taxpayer money through the Ambassador's Fund for Cultural Preservation. They are extraordinary.

Is it going to be like a UNESCO site?

Um, it's a little different than UNESCO. Um, you know, it's a pittance of money, but, um, that big plaque that says from the people of the United States of America is on these archaeological sites. And they're dramatic. The Silk Road caravanserais, where the camels would come in, the traders would camp in the center of these beautiful caravan sites, and the camels would be on the outside, and they're spaced throughout the Silk Road. The city of Merv was once the largest city in the world until Genghis Khan came and killed everybody. And Genghis Khan killed every man, woman, and child in the city, and it never fully recovered. But the ruins of Merv are dramatic because they're superstructure. So you're not just looking down into an archaeological pit. The superstructure is still there.

Wow.

And intact. And to think tens of thousands of people lost their lives there in the 12th century is just haunting and moving. People are warm, they're generous. This is the Silk Road generosity you read about. If there is some anti-Americanism that we encountered, looking at my wife here, no. I mean, Just a great country to visit.

I'd be interested to hear what I'm taking away from this conversation with you is that you're a big advocate of soft power and diplomacy and the idea that America can do good around the world in a cooperative sort of framework. Could you make the case for folks out there for soft power in the 21st century from the United States?

Absolutely. It's inexpensive, number one. It doesn't cost much. We had 5 cultural centers in Turkmenistan. They were the most subscribed in the world of any American embassy, and we have embassies around the world. Why? Because they restrict internet use in Turkmenistan, and at the cultural center in Ashgabat, there are no restrictions. So So kids, of course, love to come there, but they have 3D printers, American movie night. It's just wholesome. It's giving kids an opportunity to practice their English. So in this world that we not only live in now, but for our children and our grandchildren, do you want them learning Russian? Do you want them learning Chinese? Do you want them learning English. I know what I want them to learn, English. It makes it much more natural to look to the West than to the East. And any good soldier will tell you that going to war is the last resort, not the first. So we need people who, when things go wrong, we could pick up the phone and call and call in our chips, ask for favors, or ask them to not do something when regionally, not necessarily in their country, we need that kind of support.

And I go right back to the evacuation of Kabul when we were desperate for overflight rights and landing rights. And we had built the kind of relationship where I could go to the foreign minister and ask for that kind of help.

And they were cool with it as long as you kept it low key. So you finish your time as the ambassador. You have a second retirement, I take it, at this point.

Well, you know, you're good at drawing out stories. So let me go right back to the first question you asked me about my upbringing. I told you my dad was the sweetest man you ever know. When I retired from the Army, I was working in the White House for Dick Cheney. And at my retirement ceremony, Cheney loved the military and I actually went with him to the battlefield of Chickamauga to walk the battlefield where his great-great-grandfather fought.

Wow.

And I had taught military history and had spent 2 days in the battlefield teaching history there. And So we went. So he said, you know, Colonel, you have been driven all your life by goals and military promotions and setting your sights on one assignment after another. What are you going to do in retirement? I mean, what is your goal? And without knowing he was going to ask me that and without thinking, I said, my goal is to be more like my father. sweetest man in the world. And I still haven't gotten there. So when I retired from, uh, 20 years as a— over 20 years as being a diplomat, um, I was really anxious to do— I wanted to keep doing. And I'm— somebody's big compliment to me, I overheard someone said nobody can out-energize the ambassador. I got up every morning at 5:15 and I ran or swam at the embassy pool. My bodyguards, when I first got there, could not keep up with me. These are big, hulking guys.

The DS guys?

Yeah. I embarrassed them so much they got buff, they got in shape. Then I would have breakfast and I would still be at work at the embassy before anybody else. That's the kind of life I led. And, um, so I, I wanted to be, um, I wanted to write. I wanted to, uh, write that book because I've been thinking about it. I wanted to be on some boards, advisory boards, and maybe teach. And, um, so I'm on one advisory board now, the Caspian Policy Center in Washington. Uh, I've got my second book in train. It's about my— our 5 years in Turkmenistan.

I can't wait to read I love that.

And I've got a 3rd book concept and taking notes for on leadership, but they'll all be leadership books. But I'm, you know, I am trying sincerely and not in jest, I'm realizing that I don't need to do all this stuff. And so, yeah, I purposefully want to cut back and And we built a retirement home in Tennessee on a high ridgeline overlooking the Cumberland Mountains. It's a spectacular view. And I sit on the deck, watch the wildlife.

Drink some coffee.

Yeah, it's just incredible.

In the book, As the Pentagon Burned: Leadership and Human Excellence in the Face of the 9/11 Attack, where can people go to find this?

Thanks for reading the full title. The subtitle, Leadership and Human Excellence in the Face of the 9/11 Attack, because I wanted to emphasize human excellence in the face of crisis. It's on amazon.com, Barnes& Noble online, you could order it. Some local bookshops in the Washington area, Politics and Prose in the Washington area carries it. Oh yeah. But I think mostly through amazon.com is where I'm getting big sales. And it did hit top 3 Amazon.com.

That's great. I'm excited to actually read your book about Turkmenistan because that's— it's just a country that it's hard to parse information out of.

Yeah.

Do we have any alibis from your wife?

Yeah. Tell me what I got wrong, Edie. Any embarrassing stories you want to tell? The people of both of them. Oh my gosh, Edie was so beloved. We were walking in a bazaar once in one of the provincial capital cities, and there were a few young girls there, and I could see them looking at us and whispering, and I thought, oh, they want to come say hello. They walked right past me and went right up to Edie because they knew she created the women's economic system. And the girls just looked up to her. I mean, and in a familial society like that, they—

Everything's about relationships.

They honor their parents and grandparents. And so we were grandparent figures for them, I guess you could say. The Women's Economic Society has continued now that Edie's gone. We were worried it might fizzle out, but yeah, it's still there.

That's amazing.

Yeah.

Wow.

That's great.

And any final thoughts?

No, I want to thank you for bringing me in, but thank you for the work you do.

Yeah, thank you.

really given people a voice and a place to turn to. I know a lot of people are out there with similar approaches, but I think yours is special, Jack, and really appreciate it. Appreciate Don behind the scenes. And it's great to be in New York City on the eve of the 25th anniversary of 9/11 to really take that in. Yeah, absolutely.

And you know, I'm really glad you reached out and I'm really glad that we'll be able to— this will essentially be the podcast's 9/11 anniversary show. I think it's a good time to take a pause and just remember that. Yeah. So folks, you can go and find As the Pentagon Burned by Ambassador Retired Matthew Kleemhau.

Kleemhau.

It is out now. And thank you for joining us. We'll see all you guys Uh, actually later this week.

I just noticed the claymore. Yeah, you like that? Jeez, who would have thought of this?

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