Transcript: Webinar – U.S. Military Leaders Reflect on the Morning America Was Attacked
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PANELISTS
ADM Timothy Keating, USN (ret.)
Former Commander, U.S. Northern Command and U.S. Pacific Command; JINSA Generals & Admirals Program Participant
Gen Charles “Chuck” Wald, USAF (ret.)
Former Commander, U.S. Air Forces Central Command; JINSA Distinguished Fellow
Lt Gen Thomas Trask, USAF (ret.)
Former Vice Commander, U.S. Special Operations Command; JINSA Hybrid Warfare Policy Project Advisor
The discussion was moderated by JINSA Senior Policy Analyst Yoni Tobin.
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TRANSCRIPT
Transcript has been lightly edited for flow and clarity.
Yoni Tobin
Good afternoon, everyone. I’m Yoni Tobin, JINSA’s Senior Policy Analyst. Thank you for joining JINSA’s webinar today: 9/11, 25 years later, U.S. military leaders reflect on the morning America was attacked. Tomorrow marks the 25th anniversary of the September 11th attacks. The tragic event of September 11, 2001, changed the course of U.S. and world history. Jihadists attacked the U.S. economic and military centers of power, killing 2,977 people and injuring thousands more. The jihadists also came within 20 minutes of striking America’s political power center in Washington, D.C., an attack foiled only by the brave Americans aboard Flight 93. JINSA will be releasing a digital booklet tomorrow featuring reflections from 16 U.S. generals and admirals reflecting on the events of September 11, 2001. The booklet features reflections on what that day meant for them, our country, and the world. I encourage our audience to check that out tomorrow and read those powerful reflections on JINSA’s website, www.jinsa.org. I am honored to be joined today by three of those former U.S. military leaders. All three were at the site of the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, including two who were inside the Pentagon when it was attacked that morning, and all three helped lead America’s military response to al-Qaeda’s attack. With me today is JINSA Distinguished Fellow General Charles Wald, former commander of the U.S. Air Force’s Central Command [CENTAF], and former deputy commander of U.S. European Command. I’m also joined by JINSA Generals and Admirals Program participant Admiral Timothy Keating, former commander of U.S. Northern Command and the North American Aerospace Defense Command, also known as NORAD, which I hope to discuss with him at length in the webinar, as well as a former commander of U.S. Pacific Command [PACOM]. I’m also honored to be joined by JINSA Hybrid Warfare Policy Project Advisor Lieutenant General Thomas Trask, former Vice Commander of U.S. Special Operations Command [SOCOM]. So, gentlemen, thank you all very much for being here with us today; we appreciate it. I’d like to start first with you, General Trask. So you were not at the Pentagon that day until the evening. You were not inside when it was actually attacked that morning, but you did spend some time at the site that evening. And I know that there was a very moving interaction you had when you arrived at the site, and I’m hoping that you could start us off with your recollection of that day and that incident that I’m referring to.
Lt Gen Thomas Trask, USAF (ret.)
Yeah, sure, Yoni. Thanks so much for inviting me to participate today, and I’m glad to be on, especially with General Keating and General Wald. Everybody has a story about where they were and what they were doing on 9/11 when the attacks happened. As it was that day, I had only been assigned back to the Joint Staff for about a month, returning from Italy, and that was the day that my wife and I were going to the port in Baltimore to pick up our car, which had been shipped. So, I was skipping out of work that day to go pick up our station wagon that was in the port in Baltimore, and it was during the ride around the beltway from living in Burke, Virginia, up toward Baltimore when we started hearing the reports on the radio. Back then, we carried pagers. My pager immediately started going off. I was working in the Joint Staff and the Special Operations Division, and my office was paging me to see when I could get back to the office, and this was before the Pentagon was hit, so it was after the initial strikes in New York. And then, as I was in the waiting room at the POV [Privately Owned Vehicle] lot at the port, I actually watched on TV as the Pentagon was hit, so there was no going back to the Pentagon at that moment because all the roads [were] closed toward the city. I was following along, talking to my office mates about what was happening, and some of them were being split off immediately to go to the alternate site for the Pentagon. Most had been evacuated. One of them was a former pararescueman who was already treating injured around the Pentagon. But most of them got back into the office and back to work. And I got a page that said: “Go back home and wait by the phone.” Going back home from Baltimore to Burke, Virginia, is normally maybe an hour and 20-minute drive; it took six hours that day to drive all the way up into Pennsylvania, out through Maryland, and down back into Virginia just to get home. So, we didn’t get home until about three in the afternoon, and I, shortly after getting home, turned on the TV and was watching the news coverage when I got a call from the Joint Staff saying, “Colonel Trask, we need you to come in and pick up the night shift in the National Military Command Center at 9 o’clock tonight.” And it was a Gunnery Sergeant that called me, and I said, “Gunny, are you watching the news? Do you know that your building is on fire?” And he said, “Sir, I’ve just been told to tell you to be here at 9 o’clock tonight. Report to the National Military Command Center.” And I’m like, “Okay.” I had no idea whether I could get there. I had no idea what the conditions were [like] trying to get in there. I knew the metro was not working, which is how I normally went to work. I’d only been working at the Pentagon for a month, so I only knew one parking lot. And as I drove in on 395 toward the Pentagon, I was shocked first that the on-ramps were open because there were no cars on the road whatsoever going toward the Pentagon at that time, and I expected the highways to be closed and was just going to try to figure out how to get there as best I could. But I got on 395, and as you approach from the south, there’s a rise right before you get to the Pentagon and you could see the glow of the fire as I approached the Pentagon, and I tried to go into South Parking, which was the only entrance I knew, and it was completely blocked off with containers, so there was no way to get to that. So, I ended up crossing into the city, turning around, coming back the other way, and approached the North Parking lot entrance. At that point, is where the incident you’re referring to happened. As I pulled there, that off ramp was being blocked by police. It was a combination of Pentagon police and Metro police that were blocking the entrance, and there were a lot of police cars. And all I could do was pull my POV up, roll my windows down, hold my Pentagon badge out the window, and say, “Hey, I’m trying to get to work” and the cops immediately started pulling weapons and were very nervous about what was happening as they stood outside watching the Pentagon burn. And they came over to me, and I was able to call them down and say, “Look, I’m just trying to get to work. I’m trying to get into the National Military Command Center. I’m supposed to be there for a changeover briefing and work the night shift.” And they looked at me and said, “Sir, don’t you know your building is on fire?” And I gave them the same answer that the gunny gave me, “All I was told is I was supposed to get in there and get to the military command center.” They were so excited to find out that the Pentagon was functioning, that the nation was fighting back, and that there were people inside still working; that was news to them, and they were really happy to hear about that. They immediately cleared the barricades, and I got a police escort. An Air Force colonel, with a police escort right to the river entrance. The admiral and the general know exactly where that is going into the building. It’s the only time I ever got to park there for that assignment that I was there was that night, and I got police helping me drive right up to the entrance, parked my car up there, and got in and made it into the building. And because of that, because I was the only guy in my office who was not in the building and working that day, I became the chief of the night shift for the special operations director for about the next 90 days, as the joint staff and particularly the J-3 staff went into 24-hour operations. But that was my day on 9/11, so I can say I was in the Pentagon on 9/11, but not until after about 2100.
Yoni Tobin
Very, very moving story, sir. We appreciate you sharing that. General Wald, you were actually inside the Pentagon at the time it was attacked, and I think our audience would be very curious if you could share your recollection of that and any particular aspects of that that stand out as you look back on that day, sir.
Gen Charles “Chuck” Wald, USAF (ret.)
Yeah, it’s interesting to hear Tom’s story and all the stories. I was the Ninth Air Force Commander and Commander for the Air Force for Central Command, which was in the Middle East at that time. And I’d been selected to come to the Pentagon to be the Director of Operations for the Air Force, and my replacement as the CENTAF was General Buzz Moseley, who later became Chief of Staff. So, I was stationed at Shaw Air Force Base, South Carolina. I spent most of my time in the Middle East, but I was back in the Pentagon to meet with General Mosley to give him a changeover brief, if you will, give him the insight of what I had for my duties in the Middle East as the Air Force guy. And we were briefing in a room on the river entrance side, which is the opposite side of where the airplane hit. We were talking to each other about what was happening and about the turnover, things that would be interesting to General Mosley. And I think we were in the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force’s office. It was a big office, just the two of us. Had the door to the outer office open. There was a TV on out there, and we were talking and talking about the Middle East, the complexities, and we looked up, and there was an airplane on television that ran into the World Trade Center. And General Mosley and I looked at each other and said, “How can anybody be so stupid on a day like this?” It was a beautiful day in New York, clear as a bell. My first impression was somebody accidentally flew into the thing, and so we kind of lamented over that for a little bit, but it was pretty interesting, so it got our attention, but we went on briefing. Next thing you know, another one flew in there, so we said, “Okay, this is obviously not an accident.” And we started getting ready to do whatever we were going to do, and the alarms went off in the Pentagon, and that was when the airplane, the other airplane, hit the Pentagon on the opposite side of the river entrance. We were on what they call the E ring, which is the outer ring. So, we were five rings plus the center courtyard away from where the airplane hit. Did not hear a thing, did not feel a thing, did not see anything. Just the alarms went off. So, we went outside on the river entrance side and stood and watched the Pentagon burn. And it was ironic that this airplane had hit the building we were inside of and didn’t hear a thing. And so, it became pretty apparent we were going to have to do something, and I was going to have to leave. So, I got an airplane from the South Carolina National Guard, an F-16, two seats. They came up, picked me up at Andrews Air Force Base; this took a little bit, and I flew back to Shaw Air Force Base, South Carolina. Got a KC-10 from Dover Air Force Base with a two-star, General Minimar, who was what they call MARFOR [Marine Corps Forces]. He was the logistics guy for me for our new ops center we had just set up in Saudi Arabia at Prince Sultan Air Base. Fortunately, two weeks earlier, we opened it, and the next day we flew to Prince Sultan and started planning. And about eight days later, we briefed President Bush at the White House via video teleconference. Tommy Franks was commander at CENTCOM [U.S. Central Command], and we had the plan ready to go, to retaliate against the Taliban, and we briefed him. It was President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secretary Colin Powell, or General Colin Powell, Dick Myers, who was his chairman, Condoleezza Rice, and I think one other, in the White House. And my aide was a major at the time; he later became a two-star, but he was setting up a briefing room at Prince Sultan Air Base so Franks and I could brief the president. And it was supposed to be at 6 o’clock in the evening, Middle East time, and my aide was in the room getting it set up. It was just going to be an austere room with a TV and a screen and the video teleconference. And he was there; he was maybe 10 minutes before the time, and the next thing he knew, he had his back to the screen, and he’s hearing, “Hello, young man.” He turned around, and it was the President of the United States. And so, my aide was getting ready to brief the President and the senior leadership of the United States on his own because Franks and I still weren’t there, so he got a couple of minutes with him. Anyway, we were late then. And we got in. I briefed the President; Franks did, then I briefed him on our plan, and nobody said anything except at the end, President Bush said, “Okay, I’ve got three things to tell you, Wald. First of all, we’re going to fight through Ramadan. Two, we’re not going to hit any mosques. And three, this is your fight to fight; do it as you see fit.” Best guidance I’ve ever gotten from a leader in my life. But anyway, we could talk about this for hours. But that’s enough. I’ll let Tim tell his story.
Yoni Tobin
Yes, please do, Admiral. And I’ll preface that by saying that you were also in the Pentagon that day at the time of the attack. I want to also ask you, psychologically, what it was like for the Pentagon to be attacked and to have such devastation inside a building that was supposed to be the most secure in the country, almost as if a building like that could not be hit as akin almost to the Titanic. I think a ship that was meant to be impervious to sinking, and then it sank. I wonder if you could share your experience that day, but also just psychologically perhaps what that attack meant for you, sir.
ADM Timothy Keating, USN (ret.)
Yeah, thanks, Yoni. And it’s a privilege to follow with Tom and Chuck Wald, guys I’ve known for most of my career. Got up that morning. At the time, I was a three-star; I was the Ops Dep, Operations Deputy for the Chief of Naval Operations, and as such, was responsible for global operations for the United States Navy. Drove in the Pentagon, got out of the car, 6:15 or so, and as Chuck mentioned, looked up and it was azure blue sky, not a cloud in sight. And as an aviator, I was thinking, nice day for flying. Walked in, went up to the office. We had just gone into the new wedge of the building, which opened that Monday morning; now it’s Tuesday. So, we spent the weekend moving out of a different part of the building down, as Chuck described, to the opposite side of where all the principals are from SecDef [Secretary of Defense] and the service chiefs, overlooking pretty much the south parking. So, I went up to the office, went through the morning message traffic quickly, and we had a brief every morning at 0800, and this was the second day we were in our new command center, brand spanking new. Walked down, sat down at the table. There were 40-some people around the table and on the walls and in the anterooms just outside the command center. Took the normal brief and then, as Chuck described, that someone walked in. We didn’t have CNN or anything up on the screens, and it said there’s a report of an airplane having flown into one of the World Trade Towers. Incredulous, just like Chuck said. He said, “One, what’s the weather in New York City?” And they came back, and it’s the same as it was in Washington. “How could anybody be so lost as to hit the World Trade Center?” And then, what, 10 minutes later, we had the cameras on by then and saw the second airplane, and realized immediately now it’s 8:45 or 8:50, realized that something serious was afoot. So, we began to try and determine who could have done this and why would they have done it. And we talked for, I don’t know, 10 minutes about potential bad actors, but there was no intelligence on the feed. We had all manner of sources and methods right there in the center. So, we went on with our business. Our hosts were at the command center, and that’s where we were. I had orders to join Chuck in the Central Command AOR [Area of Responsibility]. My wife and I were going to leave Washington and move to Bahrain in a couple of months. And I had an appointment at 9:30 with the gentleman who was the ambassador-designate to Yemen, which is in the AOR for Central Command. And so, at 9:29, not to put too fine a point on it, but I got up, excused myself, but the brief continued, and went up four ladders and down about six offices in the new ring and met with the ambassador about 9:30. So, I got up there at 9:33, 9:34, was a little late, apologized to him, we shook hands, sat down, had a cup of coffee, and contrary to what Chuck just described, at about 9:35 or 9:37, whenever it was, the building shook violently, and there was this very loud, muffled roar. It wasn’t a sonic boom sort of thing; it was a rolling kind of thunder. And at that exact moment, the ambassador and I looked at each other and just said, “We are at war.” And he said, “I’ll get out of here,” and I never saw him again. A couple of us, immediate staff guys with me, jumped up and tried to get down the way we had just come up from the command center and opened the door, and smoke and heat – didn’t see flames yet, but heat emanated from the stairwell. So, we weren’t going to get down that way, and then we went back further away from the command center portion of the Pentagon further toward what would be the metro station – not all that way – and got down and tried to head back, reverse course to get back to where the command center was. And by now, the flames had engulfed that portion of the building, so we knew we weren’t going to get back to the command center and decided to get in a car and go across the river to the Navy Yard. I lived there, and we had a red switch in our home. We didn’t have communications with the CNO [Chief of Naval Operations] or the vice chief; everything was kind of shut down. Though, as Chuck said, that part of the building, thank God, wasn’t hit. But we made the decision: let’s get away from the scene of the crime. Got in a car, drove across the 14th Street Bridge, [and] went to our house. By that time, I was in touch with the Chief of Naval Operations and Gordon England, Secretary of the Navy, and he said, “Find us an office to work somewhere over there in the Navy Yard that has a red switch and a telephone.” So, we fanned out and went to one of the Navy buildings there. It’s now 10:15 or 10:30. No idea what, well, we knew what had happened: we were hit by an airplane, but as to the state of the command center and survivors, heaven knows the people in the airplane weren’t going to live. But we began, and the Secretary of the Navy and the CNO eventually showed up, 11-ish, and we had tested a red switch and had comms and were dialing up down to Norfolk to the fleet command down there and checking on status of forces throughout the Navy. And the CNO and the Secretary came in and said, “Well, what happened?” And I had to tell them, “The only thing I can surmise is the third airplane had been hijacked, and their target was us, the Pentagon, and they came in from the west, and that they were at about 500 bills, they were moving pretty quickly, and they smacked into what was the brand new wedge of the Pentagon that included Ground 4, the Navy Command Center.” So, it was a couple hours before we could get a reasonable estimate as to how bad was the damage. And this is relying on eyewitnesses who were. There’s a helipad out there, and they were able to survey from the outside into the mess that was now the Pentagon. It hadn’t collapsed yet – the four floors above our command center, but there was a terrible fire, and we then made some decisions as to get what elements of the fleet could get underway. We were talking to the National Military Command Center. They were, as you know, launching fighters out of Andrews that were armed with very interesting orders; more on that later if we get around to NORAD, but we spent the afternoon trying to determine: A, how many casualties did we have? And B, how do we go about beginning the process of notifying next of kin, which is always what we do with casualty affairs officers. Stayed there till 9 or 10 o’clock. Drove home that night. Came back the next morning. Thankfully, the Marine Corps offered us an alternate command post up in the Navy Annex up the hill, which was untouched, and we eventually moved up there that next day, Wednesday, and began coming up with a fairly rudimentary but active command center because ours was gone, and began establishing comms, both verbal and on SIPRNet [Secret Internet Protocol Router Network] and NIPRNet [Non-Secure Internet Protocol Router Network], talking to fleet headquarters and determining who’s getting underway, what’s the command, what does the president want us to do. Didn’t talk to the president but was in constant contact with the CNO and the Secretary of the Navy. And we operated out of that alternate command site for a good while. It was a full day and a half before we could get an accurate muster to the CNO. He was not pleased with the delay, understandably, but as everybody here on the call knows, cell phones were just jammed. There was almost no way of communicating other than line of sight, and establishing who was, in fact, in the command center at the time of the impact and did they get out. We were checking with hospitals and trying to find ways to check on people at home, but it took us a full day and a half. We lost 42 folks with me that morning in the command room; 42 of them didn’t make it out. 64 people on American Flight 77 died. Interestingly, the pilot of that airplane was a classmate from school. Went through flight school with him, Chic Burlingame, who was a great guy but had a mean streak a mile wide, and if you cornered him, he was ferocious. So those terrorists would have had a fight on their hands, but pardon me, they were able to take control of the airplane and fly it into the building. Not a lot of folks realize, but more Army people perished in the crash than did Navy: 75 Army soldiers, civilians, and contractors died as the building collapsed. So, it was a total of 125 or so of us in the Pentagon, 64 occupants of American Flight 77 that didn’t get to go home to their families that night. We think about him every day. Good friends, captains, wonderful sailors, contractors. There’s a famous guy, Jack Punches, who lost his finger because his ring caught him; he was climbing down a ladder of a P3. Contractor, wonderful folks, who died on watch, which is where they should have been, sadly, but that was their post, and they were manning their post.
Yoni Tobin
Thank you, sir. Very, very powerful. I want to turn from the attack itself to the U.S. response, and as I’m reflecting back on the immediate response, I want to turn to General Wald, sir, because you were immediately involved, literally within that day, in determining how the United States would respond. Obviously, the initial salvo of that campaign came in Afghanistan against the Taliban. I’m hoping you could share some reflections on that, as well as some of the historic firsts that the U.S. military exhibited in that campaign, including those involving our strategic bombers and [how] our ability to project power was on display, really in a unique way as well. So, hoping you could shed some light on that, sir.
Gen Charles “Chuck” Wald, USAF (ret.)
I was enthralled with Admiral Keating’s description. You forget how many people we lost, and we’ve lost 18 in the current conflict with Iran, and of course every one of those is a tragedy. But I mean, 100 and something alone in the Pentagon is major. But yeah, so we flew into Prince Sultan. Buzz and I had been standing on the river entrance, a little more comfortable than Tim’s description, watching the Pentagon burn, and we actually were able to use cell phones, but was able to get over to Andrews and then fly back to Shaw, and then fly over to Prince Sultan Air Base. We had a team of 50 people with us. We had about 85 or so in the ops center at Prince Sultan already. So, we had a team of about 130-150 folks in the ops center. We planned the mission. Took us about eight or nine days. General Franks flew into Prince Sultan, reviewed the plan, agreed to it, and then, as I mentioned earlier, we briefed the president, and he said, “Okay, you’re going to be able to do this, but we got to do some diplomatic work prior to that.” So, we were delayed to attack until October 7, which is ironic; that’s the same date that Israel got attacked [by] Hamas on the calendar. But the planning went well. We had some of our allied friends with us. Some of the Brits and we had mainly Brits were in there helping us in the command center. The command center was fantastic. It was just like a giant theater with about five giant screens. I’d gone around the area of responsibility on behalf of Franks to meet with the commanders of the Gulf Cooperation Council states militaries to tell them generally what we were doing, not specifically. Talk to them about what they thought, get some support. They were all very supportive, and we eventually had a few of those allies in the command center with us. But anyway, we were approved to fight and start the campaign on October 7, 2001. And the first aircraft we had planned were the B-2s. Recently, [during Operation] Midnight Hammer, the B-2s flew into Iran and did a great job. This was the first time the B-2s had ever been used in combat. On October 7, 2001, they flew out of Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri. The Saudis wouldn’t let us fly over Saudi Arabia with bombs on, so they had to go west. So, they flew out of Whiteman Air Force Base, six of them, three two-ships of two B-2s each. I’d flown the B-2 about three or four months prior to that. Fantastic airplane, but not very roomy in the cockpit. Big enough for the pilot on the right side, and, well, it’s actually the pilot on the left side, the co-pilot on the right side, were probably three feet apart from each other, a ways apart. And we had put a laptop in the cockpit of the B-2, kind of like Ding, you got mail that show that you used to see, but anyway, it was on the pilot side, so we communicated via SATCOM [Satellite communication] with the pilot en route. And they refueled on the way to Afghanistan six times each, went all the way across the Pacific through the South China Sea, etc., and it took them 36 hours to get to the target. Now, the latest attack on Iran was 36 hours round trip, so it saved quite a bit of time. They flew into Afghanistan: six B-2s. Each one was carrying 22,000-pound bombs, for a total of 120 total JDAMs, Joint Direct Attack Munitions. They flew into the target area. They all dropped their bombs on time, exactly on target. We could tell from satellite imagery that the bombs were hitting where they were hitting. We had space guys in the command center with us. En route, I had a bomber – we called the bomber desk, but we had a separate area with bomber expertise and some of the Brits – and I asked them just to contact the pilot every once in a while, just to make sure they understand the mission is still on. 36 hours is a long time to go without getting reassurance that you’re still supposed to drop your bombs. And they did; they communicated with them. So, when they landed after hitting the target, they flew to Diego Garcia, which was another eight hours south of Afghanistan. By the way, the Navy guys were in the Gulf during the campaign on carriers, and they were flying eight-hour round-trip missions too in fighters, which is a little more difficult. But anyway, they landed at Diego, and I called the lead pilot, which he was a captain of all things, the first largest combat mission in history, and I was talking to him in Diego, and I said, “Hey, were there any issues on your flight?” He said, “Yeah, we kept getting these emails. Some idiot kept sending us these emails.” And I had told the guys to contact them once in a while just to make sure they realized the mission was still on, the problem is, and the B-2 guys that actually this is literally true, they they’d gotten a Kmart lawn chair and put it behind the pilot’s seat, so they could swap off resting in flight and if the left seater, who was the email guy, was asleep, he’d have to get up and out of his sleeping bag and lawn chair to go answer the mail, and it was all pretty piffy trivia other than just the mission still on. So, I talked to the guy, and he said, “Yeah, some idiot kept on” I said, “I know exactly who it is. I’ll take care of it.” And so anyway, that was a pretty interesting thing. I’m a big carrier fan, by the way. Tim, I think they’re probably strategically as good as anything there is. B-2s are pretty fantastic too, and so are our special ops guys. But we’ve got some fantastic capabilities. We do things. Our military does things. We’ve heard about the Navy in the Middle East, and recently what they’re doing. We just have a fantastic, both personnel, but also just capability, in our military that nobody else can do. And anyway, that was impressive to me. We [had] Navy guys flying off carriers in the Indian Ocean, flying eight-hour missions nonstop into Afghanistan, had special ops guys riding around on horses in northern Afghanistan, I mean which was amazing. So, a lot of good things happened there. Politically, it’s been looked upon as kind of a negative overall issue, but the first part, the first response, I think the first few months by the United States military was fantastic, and anyway, I couldn’t be more proud of them.
Yoni Tobin
Thank you, General. Speaking of special ops guys, General Trask, I want to turn to you. Obviously, you were the Vice Commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, [and you] also held a number of other senior positions in our Special Operations Forces. I want to get your reflection on sort of the hidden battle that often took place out of the spotlight. A lot of Americans are not familiar with our Special Operations Forces that fought in a number of missions. Whatever you can say about that, I think will be very interesting to our audience, and then I also was wondering if you could weigh in on what General Wald alluded to, which is where we are in this fight today against a global threat which remains, which is Islamic extremism. We obviously see it in many manifestations, including Iran and elsewhere. Hoping you can weigh in on that, sir.
Lt Gen Thomas Trask, USAF (ret.)
Yeah, sure, Yoni. Those first weeks after 9/11, as General Wald kind of alluded to, [were] really a remarkable response. And even looking back on it by today’s standards, how quickly we were able to turn and move forces into that theater, the decisive nature of our national leadership at that moment, from both sides of the aisle, from the administration, from everybody in the department, it was remarkable. We were able to move helicopters and Special Operations 130s into Uzbekistan and Pakistan literally within days after 9/11. We had set up the ability to take the first folks that would go in on the ground, which would actually be CIA operatives, but were being inserted by U.S. Special Operations Forces with Army helicopters out of K2 in Uzbekistan and Air Force Special Ops helicopters out of Pakistan, and support them. The only reason it took as long as it did was because the weather ended up being horrible during about that second week after 9/11. So, it was around two weeks later before we got the first CIA operatives in. If you’ve seen the movie, most of us have, of 12 Strong, and that story, you know, that was one little piece of that whole operation that was going on to support the Northern Alliance, which became the force that we would ally ourselves with and build those very early relationships with. So, it was CIA operatives, along with special operations forces on the ground, all put in by helicopters from these places. And I’ll tell you, as a former helicopter guy myself, that getting into the Hindu Kush Mountains in northern Afghanistan was a real trek. It was at the extreme limits of the capabilities of our machines; flying in over those mountains in bad weather and in snowstorms in the early winter months was really challenging flying. And yet we got folks in and got connected to the Northern Alliance in multiple locations across northern Afghanistan, literally within about two weeks after 9/11. And so, as General Wald talked about, the airstrike started first. Those connections and that communication started next, and then it was about five weeks, I believe it was around October 19, where we actually put significant U.S. forces on the ground in Operation Rhino. And I’m sure General Wald remembers it was supported by the Air Force and the air component. There was the Third Battalion Rangers, which dropped onto an airfield [and] began putting boots on the ground in significant ways, a military presence there, and all of that was set up with AC-130s. The airdrops were done by MC-130s. Both of those are variants of the C-130 for special operations with Joint Special Operations Forces. Immediately, we set up a number of special operations task forces. And though we kind of think a lot about how Afghanistan ended for many years, and particularly in those early years the work that we did and the relationships that were built, which I still think someday will have an impact, and there’s a generation of people in Afghanistan that had those relationships that went to school for those 15 years that we had control over the government there, and that’s going to make a difference as those people kind of grow up and grow into power in that part of the world, so even as negative as the final pullout of Afghanistan was, there was a lot of good things happening there, a lot of support from people, a lot of understanding that those relationships were important, not just in Afghanistan but even in some of the neighboring companies. I have friends who did foreign internal defense missions, who are godparents to Pakistani kids because of the relationships that they built working with the Pakistanis or even Afghanis or even the Uzbeks around there because relationships are so important. And there’s been, to follow up on your second question there about where we stand, there is a recognition always that counterterrorism and the extremists around the world may wax and wane, but it’s always there, it’s always percolating, and it’s just a matter of time before it comes back to the fore. My biggest concern over recent years was during those early years, our special operations forces were extremely well funded. We grew them as fast as we could, without trading standards away through the 2000s. But then the budget started to wane, and then once we had come out of Afghanistan for the last time, SOCOM’s budget in particular has been whittled away significantly, and the challenge with that is when you need special operations forces, you can’t build them quickly. The key to a special forces A team is that 10-year sergeant who has 10 years of experience. And how long [does] it take to build guys like that? 10 years. And so if you’re cutting the budgets, cutting the force structure away, and then all of a sudden you need them again, because that counterterrorism piece is going to come back up, we see it percolating in different places in Africa and in South America where you’re going to need that again, you can’t just call and say we’ll ramp it up and double the number of special operations forces. Give me twice as many Green Berets. It just doesn’t work that way. It takes a long time to build that skill set. And because it’s built around relationships, that part takes a lot of time as well. So, we continue to kind of bang the drum, and hopefully some of the increased defense spending that’s being discussed now, some of that, will be focused on that. Obviously, you have to think about peer competitors, and there is also a significant role for special operations in that potential fight. But the need for that capability and those forces really became apparent, and it’s a great example of what the next call for that type of force will be in the future.
Yoni Tobin
Thank you, General. I guess in a nutshell, it’s better to have those capabilities and not need them than need them and not have them. I want to invite our audience, at this point, to submit any questions they may have for our panelists using the Q and A function on Zoom, which you can find at the bottom of your screen. In the meantime, Admiral Keating, I promised you we’d get to NORAD, and I want to go there now. I think it may be interesting for our audience to shed some light on what NORAD is and, particularly, the history of U.S. Northern Command, which you commanded at the same time, that was actually stood up in response to 9/11 in 2002 to protect the continental U.S., and I think that’s a very interesting bit of history. Something that I’m not sure everyone is familiar with. As you reflect on that as well, I’m wondering also if you could shed some light on perhaps what the threats are today to the continental U.S., the American homeland. Is there a possibility of another 9/11 attack? Have we done enough in response? There’s always more to do, perhaps, and what might that look like?
ADM Timothy Keating, USN (ret.)
Thanks, Yoni. As you state, Northern Command was stood up in the wake of the 11 September attacks, and it caused a reorientation of a standing command at the time. Headquartered in Colorado Springs, and it’s an interesting combination of commands with somewhat dissimilar but related responsibilities for Northern Command and NORAD North American Aerospace Defense Command, responsible for protecting our airspace and Canada’s, and it’s a joint command shared with Canadian officials in our headquarters, and we have some in Canadian headquarters. The responsibilities of the Northern Command were a surprise to me when I got out there, in that, as we saw in the hours after the attacks on 11 September, Northern Command had the responsibility for protecting our airspace, and one of the attendant burdens, if you will, was the authority to authorize fighters, and we had standing combat air patrols or airplanes all the time, or on hot alert at various airstrips. Some Air Guard, some active Air Force, and some, not so much, but Navy. And those guys and girls were flying with armed missiles, and were waiting on word from either the president, the Secretary of Defense, or yours truly to engage. Let’s say the 737 was acting erratically, and we couldn’t determine if there was a reason why, and one of the things that we were authorized to do was give them clear to arm, clear to fire, which was a very, very sobering responsibility. Never had to do it; didn’t come close. But that was one of the tricky things about being in Northern Command. NORAD was slightly less frantic, but you don’t mistake for a second the fact that the Canadians weren’t as committed as we were to keeping our airspace safe and protecting it with the assets that they had. And they were flying; they had guys on alert with their F-18s out of various facilities up north. The likelihood of an attack like that again, I think, is very small. Tom mentioned that there’s always a threat growing out there, and they will seek any number of ways to come after us. I’d be very surprised and disappointed; a whole lot of things have to fail in consecutive order for them, the bad guys, to A, get command of airplanes, and B, terminate their flight in another attack on any of our buildings in Washington or New York City or L.A. or wherever. Interestingly, in the immediate aftermath of 11 September, we got word that there were five crop dusters manning up in Mexico to go launch and fly into Houston and spray poisonous gas into a baseball stadium down in Houston. So, there are all methods of attacking. We’re working, we Northern Command NORAD, air, land, and sea avenues to protect our homeland, and I’m confident that we’ll be able to do so. I think it’s very unlikely that anything close to 9/11 could happen again, and the burden of going through TSA every time you want to fly to Honolulu with American Airlines, let’s say, the price has been worth it in my view, and the inconvenience is the price we’re going to have to pay maybe the rest of our lives. The reason not to is not outweighed by the reasons to continue those sorts of impositions on our civil liberties, but it’s a price we have to pay.
Yoni Tobin
Thank you, Admiral. Sticking with you, you also commanded U.S. Pacific Command, now INDOPACOM, where you dealt with the whole, the full suite.
ADM Timothy Keating, USN (ret.)
It’s gone back to PACOM, by the way, which that’s okay with a lot of us.
Yoni Tobin
In that capacity, you dealt with China-related defense issues, and I’m wondering if you want to weigh in on that as we reflect [on] 25 years since 9/11, how our other adversaries or competitors – China, Russia, others – viewed all this in the interim, what they see from us in terms of our resolve, our response, and our staying power in conflicts abroad.
ADM Timothy Keating, USN (ret.)
That’s a question that we could spend at least as much time as we’ve spent on this particular topic, Yoni. I got to visit China six or eight times, looked many of their very senior leaders eye to eye, just as we’re looking at each other right now, only in person, and they will lie right to your face. We had proof that they shot down a deteriorating weather satellite with one of their surface-to-air missiles, and they denied it right to my face. So, we proved to them beyond a reasonable doubt that we knew they did it at the time, who launched it, and so on. So, they’re a formidable force. They’re getting bigger. They’re not as close to as good as we are. There are any number of things that we do that they can’t do. I’m convinced that every day we wake up and China hasn’t undertaken some kinetic military activity is a day closer to some sort of solution to the cross-Taiwan Strait issue; it bubbles, for sure. China is aggressively flying air patrols and using their surface forces [and] naval forces to harass [the] Taiwanese, Philippine, Singapore, [and U.S. navies]. But so far, there has been no damage done, no fatalities, no injuries to my knowledge. But Sam Paparo, who’s got the command now, he’s as tough as they come. He doesn’t suffer fools gladly, and we’re working very hard. Pacific Command continues to work very hard to make sure China understands that if they do undertake kinetic military activity, it will be a very bad day for them.
Yoni Tobin
Thank you, Admiral. I want to now again welcome anyone to submit questions for our panelists to the Q and A function, but I want to go around and give all of you a chance to give closing remarks about that day, September 11, 2001, its legacy for our country, for the world, for your personal life. Any thoughts you want to add at this stage? Thank you. General Trask, we’ll start with you.
Lt Gen Thomas Trask, USAF (ret.)
When I think about the response after 9/11, it was maybe the last great example of our nation being unified and coming together. And one of the things that disturbs me the most is the disunity. And there’s a million reasons why things are the way they are today. And whether it’s just purely the fact that we didn’t have social media in a way that we did then, you know, perhaps that has had an impact. But the way the country came together. There was plenty of political debate and plenty of partisan opinions prior to 9/11. But it was an example that when things are most dire and when it’s most needed, the country will come together, and that we are a single people and a single country with a single purpose, and it comes back together. Some of the things that we argue about now, to me, are the perfect example of first world problems that we have time to argue about. Some of the things that, when things are really important, we will put those things aside and come together as one. And the examples of how that happened during that time are still something I think is important that people remember going forward.
Yoni Tobin
Thank you, General. General Wald, if I could turn to you, any thoughts you want to share?
Gen Charles “Chuck” Wald, USAF (ret.)
No, I think Tom put it well. I sit here, and I reflect on [it]. I think the thing is, first of all, just exactly from the standpoint of unity and how you put things aside during a crisis, and what’s really important, [what’s] kind of important, and what isn’t important, you don’t worry about it. It still amazes me the collaboration we had. We’ve always had pretty good relationships with other services, but there’s always a little bit of competition, not much, just a little bit here and there. That was totally gone. Everybody would have done anything they could as a teammate and a partner, and you build lifelong friends like Admiral Keating and General Trask in those moments. I’ll never forget it. And you know we’ve got a great military. There’s no doubt about it. There’s a political side to everything. I think our military is doing a fantastic job. As I’ve told everybody before, I probably couldn’t have been a special ops guy. I probably don’t have the talent. I’m a Navy advocate and enthusiast, and we could use about 10 more carriers and another 10,000 special ops guys, and I’d be happy as a lark. But I respect these two individuals at the highest level, and I thank them.
Yoni Tobin
As do we here at JINSA. Admiral Keating, any closing thoughts?
ADM Timothy Keating, USN (ret.)
I think it’s tough to get our head around the advances we’re enduring from the socialist movement in this country, and I hope that our elections, both midterm and presidential in 2028, make sure that those folks don’t get any further than they are right now. I think frequently of the statement uttered by a guy, a gentleman I worked for, Admiral Bill Crow, who was the smartest guy I ever knew in uniform, and he’d say, “Timothy, it’s important to remember that at times like these, there have always been times like these.” And that’s a little bit glib, but as Chuck mentioned, and Tom, that life goes on, and the sun comes up in the same direction every day, and we have extraordinarily talented men and women who are wearing the cloth of our uniform. They’re working hard. They’re at it constantly, and any threat that arises, they’ll be more than ready to overcome that threat, and I’m immensely proud to have worn that same uniform that Chuck wore and that Tom wore. And I keep telling guys, if you’re suffering from manpower shortages, I’ll come back in a minute. I don’t need to go to flight school; just give me a couple of FCLP patterns, and I’ll be okay, and I gave them my phone number. They haven’t called yet, but I’m ready, and I’m rested. Thanks for the opportunity to spend some time with you, Yoni.
Yoni Tobin
Thank you, Admiral. Thanks to all of you. We appreciate your time. Thanks to everyone that tuned in today. I want to again remind our audience that tomorrow morning JINSA will be releasing the full digital booklet with all the reflections from the full 16 generals and admirals that were interviewed for this project, including the three who spoke so well on our webinar this afternoon. We thank you again, all of you, for participating in that and for participating in our webinar. For everyone that tuned in, thank you again. We hope to see you on the next webinar. Have a nice afternoon.