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JOHN SHATTUCK: Good afternoon on this wonderful sunny afternoon on Columbia Point. One of the rare days. And we’re very honored that you would come inside on a day like this. I’m John Shattuck, the CEO of the Kennedy Library Foundation. And on behalf of myself and Deborah Leff, the Director of the Kennedy Library and Museum, I welcome you this evening to the last of our spring 2006 Kennedy Library Forums. I want to thank our lead sponsor, Bank of America, for making these forums possible, as well as our other sponsors for their generous support: Boston Capital, the Lowell Institute, the Corcoran Jennison Companies, and our media sponsors WBUR, which broadcasts all Kennedy Library Forums on Sunday evenings at 8:00, the Boston Globe , and our latest media sponsor, New England Cable News.

On October 28 th , 1962, President Kennedy announced the end of the most dangerous crisis of his presidency. The Soviet Union had begun to remove the nuclear missiles it had secretly placed in Cuba. The U.S. naval blockade around Cuba had worked. Soviet President Nikita Khrushchev had backed down from his confrontation with the American president. The Cuban Missile Crisis was over. A nuclear holocaust had been averted.

What was not known by many Americans at the time, but is now graphically clear from the documents and recordings displayed here in our Museum and at the Library, is that the world survived the Cuban Missile Crisis not only THE PENTAGON AND THE PRESIDENCY 6/12/06 PAGE 2

because Kennedy prevailed against Khrushchev, but also Kennedy prevailed against his generals -- his own generals in the Pentagon -- who had been urging him to conduct a preemptive nuclear attack on Cuba.

A year and a half earlier the new president had learned the hard way to question the military advice he was receiving. The lesson he learned from the Bay of Pigs debacle of April 1961 may well have saved the world from destruction in the Cuban Missile Crisis.

The relationship between the presidency and the Pentagon is probably the most fateful of all in government. Who defines the threats to our national security, devises the strategy for addressing them, and calls the shots in response? Under our Constitution, these powers are given to the President and the Congress, but in reality they are often exercised by top civilian and military leaders in the Pentagon.

In his Farewell Address as President, Dwight Eisenhower, General Dwight Eisenhower, spoke about the dangers of a foreign policy dominated by the Pentagon and the projection of U.S. power through force alone. “The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists,” he warned. “We must never let the weight of this military industrial combination endanger our liberties or our democratic process.”

Nearly half a century after Eisenhower’s warning and Kennedy’s lesson, what’s the role of the Pentagon in our country today? At a time when we’re THE PENTAGON AND THE PRESIDENCY 6/12/06 PAGE 3

fighting multiple wars on multiple fronts and losing influence around the world because of some of this activity, we need to know how decisions are being made about Iraq and Afghanistan and the Middle East and other places in the U.S. government’s open ended global war on terrorism.

We also need to know what we’re doing about humanitarian crises in places like Darfur where genocide is being committed, and why we didn’t come to the rescue of the victims of a genocide a decade ago in Rwanda. How can we learn to be skeptical, as Kennedy was, about military advice? And how can we defend the democratic process as Eisenhower urged from the danger of military control?

These are some of the questions explored by our lead speaker this evening in his monumental new book, The House of War . James Carroll is one of Boston’s most thoughtful writers. He was born in 1943, the year the Pentagon was built, as he points out in his book. And his life has been intertwined with the Pentagon’s history.

His father was an Air Force General and the first Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. The personal interplay between a father who is a lifelong Cold Warrior and a son who questioned the military culture in which he grew up gives The House of War its special appeal and animates its analysis of American military leadership over the last six decades.

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Jim Carroll has been a civil rights worker, an anti-war activist and a community organizer. He was ordained as a Catholic priest in 1969. He served as chaplain at Boston University until 1974 when he left the priesthood to become a writer. He is the author of 15 books, including a number of widely acclaimed novels, and his syndicated column appears weekly in the Boston Globe and in newspapers around the country.

His extraordinary history of the Catholic Church, Constantine’s Sword , received rave reviews and his personal account of his relationship with his father, An American Requiem , received the National Book Award. The House of War is on sale at our bookstore, and I’m sure Jim would be very pleased to sign copies after the forum.

Sarah Sewall served from 1993 to 2000 as the first Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Peacekeeping and Humanitarian Assistance. She now directs the Program on National Security and Human Rights at Harvard’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy. She was the Senior Foreign Policy Advisor to Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell from 1987 to ’93, and she’s also worked at a variety of defense research organizations and has written widely on U.S. foreign policy, military intervention and peacekeeping operations. Her current research focuses on civilians in war and includes facilitating a dialogue between military and human rights leaders on the use of force.

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We will soon be joined by Colonel Douglas Macgregor who left the U.S. Army in 2004 after 28 years of service, most of which he spent in mechanized infantry and armored cavalry formations. I want to introduce him now so that he can join our panel when his plane gets him to the Kennedy Library, or at least the taxi which is bringing him from his plane.

Colonel Macgregor is the author of three books on military strategy, the latest of which America’s Last Victory in the Long War to Liberate Iraq addresses both the 1991 Gulf War and the current Iraq war. Colonel Macgregor has written for the Washington Post , The New York Times, Newsweek, and The Army Times . And he regularly appears as a military expert on the Lehrer News Hour and ABC World News .

And we’re fortunate to have as our moderator tonight Tom Gjelten, a veteran correspondent for National Public Radio who reports on a wide variety of national security issues. From 1995 to 2003 Tom covered U.S. diplomacy and military affairs, first from the State Department, when I’m proud to say I was one of his subjects.

TOM GJELTEN: Several times.

JOHN SHATTUCK: He’s a regular panelist on the television program Washington Week. He’s written for The New Republic , The New York Times , and the Washington Post , and has received many awards over the years, including the Overseas Press Club Award, the George Polk Award, and the THE PENTAGON AND THE PRESIDENCY 6/12/06 PAGE 6

Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award. So please join me in welcoming to the stage of the Kennedy Library, James Carroll, Sarah Sewall, Tom Gjelten, and very soon Colonel Douglas Macgregor. [applause]

TOM GJELTEN: Thank you very much, John. Well, it’s great to be here and let me second John’s comment in appreciating how many of you have turned out on this lovely afternoon. I’m thrilled and flattered, and I’m sure I speak for Sarah and Jim in that regard as well.

John, as you’ve framed this discussion, I think it’s clear that when we talk about the Pentagon and the presidency today it will be in the sense of separate ideas, separate things, separate institutions within the U.S. government, sometimes working in concert, sometimes working at odds. And I think that it’s the dynamic relationship between these institutions that we’re going to be looking at today.

Even, however, with that premise for the discussion, I think, it seems to me, that there are a couple of ways that this could be approached. First, obviously, we can talk about the current presidency and the current Pentagon. Because this is really in many ways a very interesting time to consider that relationship. We have a presidency in the administration of George W. Bush that has asserted executive power and prerogative to an extent, I think, virtually without parallel in modern American history. Your local newspaper, the Boston Globe , recently reported that President Bush has claimed the right to ignore more than 750 laws enacted since he became THE PENTAGON AND THE PRESIDENCY 6/12/06 PAGE 7

President. With respect to the administration’s authorization of warrantless wire taps, the conservative organizer Grover Norquist, who is normally close to the Bush administration, was quoted in the current issue of the New York Review of Books as saying, “If you interpret the Constitution’s saying the President is Commander-in-Chief, to mean that the President can do anything he wants and can ignore the laws, you don’t have a Constitution, you have a king.”

As for the Pentagon, we have another virtually unprecedented situation these days with the so-called “Revolt of the Generals.” Of all the Generals who have commanded divisions in Iraq since the war there began, two have since resigned, meaning that two have become free to speak out. Of course, under the Uniform Court of Military Justice, a military officer is not free to express a personal opinion about his Commander-in-Chief or his civilian supervisors. Once you have resigned, you are free. Of the two Division Commanders who have resigned their commissions since the war began, both of them, two for two, Major Generals John Batiste and Charles Swannack, have in the last few months called for the resignation of Donald Rumsfeld and have issued harsh critiques over the way the war was conceived and fought.

In addition, the Director of Operations on the Pentagon Joint Staff, a three star Marine General by the name of Gregory Newbold, resigned that position essentially in protest during the lead up to the Gulf War. And in April of this year, Newbold wrote an extraordinary column in Time Magazine that many THE PENTAGON AND THE PRESIDENCY 6/12/06 PAGE 8

of you are familiar with titled, “Why Iraq was a Mistake.” And in that column he criticized what he called “the zealots” in the administration who took us to war. And three other retired generals have joined those three in calling on Secretary Rumsfeld to resign.

So a discussion in this current context of the Pentagon and the presidency would undoubtedly lead us in some interesting directions. But we can also approach this forum from a historical perspective, looking at the relationship between the Pentagon and U.S. presidencies over the last 60 years, as long as the Pentagon has been around, from the days of Harry Truman and through the 11 presidencies since then. And for that purpose we have as our textbook James Carroll’s provocative book, House of War , which I think is fair to say is now the definitive work on the history of the Pentagon as a driving force in U.S. foreign policy.

So what I’d like to do in the scholarly tradition of the JFK Library is to do both of these things. Talk about the Pentagon and the presidency in the current context, but also in the historical context. And for that purpose I think we have three ideal people up here on the stage with me. I’m not going to call them panelists, because we’re not going to approach this really as a panel. I’d like to approach it more as almost like a dinner party, where we don’t give speeches; we don’t give presentations; we just have a conversation about issues. We’re going to have different opinions, different perspectives. But I think it will be really wide ranging and, I hope, THE PENTAGON AND THE PRESIDENCY 6/12/06 PAGE 9

provocative. And we’re going to leave, of course, a half hour at the end for your questions and answers.

What I’d like to do to begin with is just to maybe set the terms of this discussion a little bit. And I’m going to begin with you, Jim. When you talk about the Pentagon as an independent force in the making of U.S. foreign policy, what really do you mean? Do you mean the building? Do you mean the uniformed military leadership? Do you mean the civilian and military leadership of the Defense establishment? Or do you mean a metaphor perhaps for an idea, the idea of militarism perhaps?

JAMES CARROLL: Well, that’s a very provocative way to begin the discussion, Tom, and I welcome it. And I’d like before I say anything further thank you and you, Sarah, for joining me in this panel, and John and Deborah for hosting it. Thank you so much, ladies and gentlemen.

Actually, perhaps betraying my background, the first analogy that occurs to me to respond to your question about what is the Pentagon is to draw an analogy with the Church. And the thing about the Church that strikes me as useful right this minute—relax, it’s the only thing I’m going to say about the Church—is that we use the word Church with a capital “C” and a small “c.” And when we say small “c” we refer to the building. And capital “C” refers to the larger entity, whatever it is, whatever it means to you. And it’s an imprecise word, except for a certain brand of Roman Catholics who think it only refers to their the truth, the Church. THE PENTAGON AND THE PRESIDENCY 6/12/06 PAGE 10

Lenny Bruce said, “We know there’s only one, the Church.” But that’s not true, there’s a lot that we mean by Church, capital “C.” I would suggest that it wouldn’t be too harmful if we actually used the word Pentagon in this way, if we had a small “p” pentagon referring to the building and a large “P” Pentagon referring to the general set of associations that we’re referring to by that. And I think there’s an interplay between them.

When Constantine turned his palace into the form of the Church, which we know as the Basilica, the Imperial Palace became the building that changed what the entity of the Christian Church was. The building affected the larger and more abstract entity. So the building matters.

So the first answer is the Pentagon refers to the building. Roosevelt warned the people who were planning the building that the building itself could set in motion dynamics that we didn’t want. Therefore, Roosevelt wanted the building inside of the boundaries of Washington, DC, “in the seat of government” he said. He didn’t want it apart. He wanted the War Department to be integrally integrated into the structures of government, the balance of powers: Congress, the Executive Branch, all of that inside the government. So, “No, don’t put it in Virginia,” Roosevelt said. He was disregarded in that first impulse of his.

The other thing he said was, “Make sure, since it has to be so big to meet the emergency of World War II that was just beginning then, (the ground for the THE PENTAGON AND THE PRESIDENCY 6/12/06 PAGE 11

Pentagon was broken on September 11 th , 1941, at almost exactly the moment 60 years before the airliner crashed into the building) it is not in Virginia; Roosevelt did not want it in Virginia. He also wanted the building to be temporary, a temporary structure to be torn down. After the Army began the creation of a permanent structure, Roosevelt said, “Well, at least it has to be designed in a way to accommodate civilian use, because it will not be given over to the War Department permanently,” which is one of the reasons why among the other civilian uses imagined for the Pentagon in the early days was that it might be turned into some kind of hospital, or perhaps a depot for records.

So the building mattered. And Roosevelt saw that there was something about a huge building that could establish a dynamic that was beyond what people expected. And lo’ and behold it happened. When I say the Pentagon, I actually am referring metaphorically to a dynamic that is generated in this building, a dynamic that runs under the surface of American life. Henry James warned of the Niagara current leading to the outbreak of World War I. There’s a Niagara current that is generated inside the Pentagon, I’m arguing. That’s what I mean by the Pentagon.

And what’s the Niagara current? It’s what followed from the three great events that took place simultaneously to the dedication of the Pentagon in January of 1943. Three things happened that week. And they set something in motion that’s still in motion. One, Roosevelt declared that the allied aim from then on was the unconditional surrender of the access powers. He could THE PENTAGON AND THE PRESIDENCY 6/12/06 PAGE 12

not imagine what that commitment would lead to in the last five months of the war, especially in Japan when the insistence upon unconditional surrender led directly to the American slaughter of a million—historians debate the figure—it’s at least six or seven hundred thousand, and it may be as many as a million, two hundred or three hundred thousand civilians: Japanese, old men, women and children. Unconditional surrender.

The second thing that happened that week was Roosevelt and Churchill agreed at Casablanca on the joint launching of the first bomber campaign to be carried out together by the Royal Air Force and the American Army Air Forces against German cities. The bombing of German cities by the American Air Force, which led to the erosion of the American refusal to embrace the British bombing method of area bombing. Americans insisted, as a matter of morality, General Arnold, General Echer(?), that American bombing has to be precision bombing. We can never let go—even if it’s largely mythical, we can never let go of this distinction. And, of course, as a result of this joint bomber campaign, Operation Point Blank, the distinction was soon enough lost so that by the end of the War, what Roosevelt had condemned at the beginning of the War was a routine part of the American war making strategy, the bombing of civilians.

So unconditional surrender, Operation Point Blank. And the third thing that happened that week was the full up and running of Los Alamos. The Manhattan Project having begun the previous autumn, Los Alamos really gets going in January of ’43. And the person who built the Pentagon, and THE PENTAGON AND THE PRESIDENCY 6/12/06 PAGE 13

here’s the metaphoric connection, was General Leslie Groves. And he was immediately put in charge of the Manhattan Project. Nuclear weapons, the bombing of civilians, a spirit of total war represented by unconditional surrender generated something unprecedented in American life. And the argument I’m making in this long and labored book is that what it generated is still running, and we haven’t examined it full enough. And all of it is what I call “the Pentagon.”

Now, Tom’s comment reminds us not to use the word in a simplistic way. We’re not talking about people in uniform versus people who are civilians. Many, many, many times it’s the uniform people who are less inclined to use military force carelessly. Dean Atchison wanted to go to war over Korea. Omar Bradley, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, did not. From one end of the story to 1991, Dick Cheney wanted to go to war in the first Gulf War, 1991. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Colin Powell, did not. You often in between get military people reluctant to use military force, civilians anxious to. So it’s not as simple as saying we’re talking about the brass against the civilians. No. It also isn’t as simple as saying, we’re talking about the Department of Defense against other entities of government. Because the Pentagon ethos, in fact I would argue -- and this is what Eisenhower was warning us of -- could take over essentially the government itself, which is why the State Department for most of the last 60 years has really been an annex of the Defense Department, which is one of the reasons that many of the most militarist, belligerent people driving American foreign policy have been Secretaries of State. They’ve been doing the work as if THE PENTAGON AND THE PRESIDENCY 6/12/06 PAGE 14

their office was in the Pentagon. So you get Dean Atchison at one end, Madeleine Albright at the other end complaining about the reluctance of uniformed officers, especially Colin Powell, to use military force.

So it’s the Pentagon ethos that is what I’m talking about. And, finally, I’ll just say it’s perhaps what your former boss—Were you still in the Defense Department when Secretary Cohen was Secretary of Defense?

SARAH SEWALL: No.

JAMES CARROLL: Well, Secretary Cohen told me that he thought of the Pentagon as Moby Dick -- and he meant that in a serious way -- the Great White Whale who was beyond the control of any individual human agency. And who is illusive. And who finally, in the American myth, does represent a kind of evil. And Cohen wasn’t being only self denigrating or ironic when he said that he himself realized soon enough that he himself was Ahab, strung to the back of the Great White Whale with the lines of the harpoons that had fruitlessly been thrown at him.

I’m sure Secretary Cohen wouldn’t second most of my remarks. But I’m sure what he was pointing to there is that there is something embodied in the Pentagon now that should be of concern to all of us. It’s still beyond us. And what I welcome tonight is the chance for us to think directly about it; that’s the point.

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TOM GJELTEN: Jim, before I move on to Sarah, bring presidents into this. This theme of the tension between the presidency and the Pentagon runs throughout your book. One of the most interesting characters to me was Harry Truman, who relieved General MacArthur of his command when he was criticized by him. And this other anecdote, which I had never heard before, where in the beginning of the Korean War when the President is asked about whether he’s willing to use an atomic bomb, he first answers that that is up to the Commander—that decision is up to the Commander in the field, which is a comment we’ve heard from President Bush often when confronted with a difficult policy decision.

And then it sounds like, within the same press conference, or very shortly thereafter, he realizes he shouldn’t have said that, and his Press Secretary puts out a point of clarification saying, “That’s not what he meant.”

JAMES CARROLL: Yes, well, Truman and the atomic bomb is an incredibly important interesting American tragic story. The dynamic I was describing to you, of course, the first person to get hit by this dynamic was Truman. General Leslie Groves was the person who briefed him on the Manhattan Project. Truman didn’t know about it until he became President, and Groves told him about it.

Groves later said that … You know, Truman has been criticized by lefties down through the years, people like me, for the decision to use the atomic bomb against Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I myself have concluded with those THE PENTAGON AND THE PRESIDENCY 6/12/06 PAGE 16

historians that it was a terrible mistake and shouldn’t have happened. Leslie Groves defended Truman by saying he was just getting on a toboggan that was already halfway down the hill. The decision was really no decision. It was a dynamic that Truman was at the mercy of.

And there’s a way in which that’s true. The dynamic was set. And by 1950/51, when Truman is confronted with decisions over Korea, it’s set again. And the thing you draw our attention to is the first answer to the question: the bomb is actually—that’s a weapon for commanders to decide whether to use or not. Truman realized, partly from the reaction, I mean there were screaming headlines around the world in reaction to Truman’s press conference. But, partly that, I also think that Truman, having been the only person ever to order the use of the atomic bomb, and despite the fact that he defended his decision to do that right to the day he died, still he understood at some basic level that it was not something he ever wanted to do again. And he quickly took back his cavalier definition of the bomb as something belonging to Commanders.

TOM GJELTEN: Just another weapon.

JAMES CARROLL: Yeah, just another weapon in the arsenal, which was, of course, a violation of the way strategic intellectuals were beginning to think about the bomb. It was the absolute weapon. It was a weapon that had changed the meaning of warfare. That’s the way the bomb was being talked THE PENTAGON AND THE PRESIDENCY 6/12/06 PAGE 17

about. So for Truman to dismiss it as just another weapon was a shocking thing.

But then something else happened, which was Truman was actually presented with the decision, a crucial decision, a heartbreaking decision, because you remember when MacArthur first, after the great victorious landing, when MacArthur began to win the war in Korea, another great triumph for Douglas MacArthur, pushing the North Koreans north, farther north, north, and MacArthur wanted to push them all the way back. And there was a question of whether MacArthur was going to go right into China. And that was the beginning of Washington’s terrible unease with MacArthur.

But then, of course, the unexpected thing happened. It shouldn’t have been unexpected, but it did, it struck them as unexpected, which was the Chinese crossed the border and came into the war in force. Tens, hundreds of thousands of Chinese soldiers suddenly an onslaught before which the American Army fell back in disarray, retreat. Down the Peninsula we began to lose. The worst humiliation in the history of the American military was in the offing. The American forces were pushed to the bottom of the Peninsula. It looked for a time like we were going to have to evacuate our Army in a terrible disgrace as the Chinese kept pushing back. MacArthur at that point sends word to Truman, “I need the atomic bomb to use against the Chinese forces.” And Truman didn’t respond at first. And MacArthur was emphatic about it. And this begins the standoff, the famous standoff between THE PENTAGON AND THE PRESIDENCY 6/12/06 PAGE 18

MacArthur and Truman. Although in the story, in the telling of this, this element is never emphasized. This is the most important decision Truman made. He said “no” to MacArthur. He risked an American Dunkirk. Let me repeat that. Truman risked an American Dunkirk in Korea rather than use the atomic bomb. Why? I believe it’s because he knew what a horrible weapon it was. And do you know what the rest of that was? Number one, the American Army valiantly, courageously, heroically fought its way back. They didn’t need the atomic bomb, as it turned out. Although as we all know, the War ended in stalemate, shameful enough.

But Truman in that decision established the taboo against the use of the atomic bomb. The taboo, it’s the greatest triumph of the Cold War, both sides. The statesmen, they were almost always men, on both sides, but especially I would say in America, refused to use the atomic bomb. Again and again, Presidents were presented with the option to use it. Eisenhower was; Kennedy was; Nixon considered it seriously. Nixon probably would have used it, I would argue, if it weren’t for the taboo. The taboo was in place.

And because of Truman’s decision establishing that taboo—and by the way, he wasn’t opposed … He was deathly opposed by MacArthur. I wouldn’t say he was opposed by the Pentagon; he was opposed by elements of the Pentagon. Curtis LeMay, the strategic Air Force, the bomber Generals, they would have welcomed the use of the bomb in Korea. But not everyone in the Pentagon felt that way. Because Truman made that decision he established THE PENTAGON AND THE PRESIDENCY 6/12/06 PAGE 19

this taboo. And the world, I would argue, has been spared a nuclear holocaust because of it.

TOM GJELTEN: I’m going to turn first to Sarah. You know, Sarah, when I covered the Pentagon, one of the things they used to -- was kind of a pet peeve of mine -- was when -- and this is the reason I asked Jim this question at the outset -- when people made generalizations about the Pentagon it always bothered me. Because especially in 2001-2002, the tensions around the Pentagon made it very difficult for me as a reporter to make generalizations about the Pentagon.

You were in the Pentagon. How do you identify? When you hear Jim talk about the Pentagon, what are the thoughts that go through your mind? What went through your mind back then? For you the tensions between the presidency or the State Department and the Pentagon were a very real thing, right?

SARAH SEWALL: They were. And I was very glad that Jim used the word “metaphor” because I want to take that and go back to the church— [laughter]. Because I think there’s a risk when we use the term “Pentagon” as a metaphor that we do, what really I think the Old Testament did, which is take in poetic license and prosaic extreme a position that when interpreted literally can actually undercut the righteousness of the basic point.

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So what I want to suggest, in answer to the question, is that I think for Americans today, having the historical background is critically important. And even just the vignettes you just gave us are really important, because I think Americans are so fundamentally ahistorical. But to me the more interesting questions now about this metaphor do have to do with questions of where does the responsibility for civilian decision making lie? And where does the line for uniform military advice lie? And who owns the buck? Does anybody dare own the buck today?

I think the question of whether the power that’s inherent in the United States is necessarily a bad thing is something that we can become confused about if we just focus on the metaphor of the Pentagon. And I think it’s really important for us to think about the policies, not just the power. Because the power in and of itself is a tool to be used towards ends. But to imply, and I’m not saying that you mean to imply this, but if we just stick with this metaphor of the Pentagon that might obfuscate the meaningful distinction in my mind between a decision to commit U.S. forces to a peacekeeping operation in Bosnia and a decision to launch a preemptive war in Iraq. Similarly, it might confuse us about conflating a decision in one administration to support a comprehensive test ban and a decision in this administration to again start thinking about nuclear weapons as usable weapons in the form of a bunker buster to solve an immediate perceived problem.

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So to me I think this dissection and distinction between power and the policies toward which it is put is really important. I think the question of institutional checks and balances is also one that’s important. It’s important in a bureaucratic sense. It’s important in a political sense. And it’s also important, I think, in terms of a rule of law sense. And that’s why Tom’s initial points about this aggregation of power in the form of an imperial presidency raised some fundamental questions about what the source of our concern ought to be.

And then I guess my final point about this metaphor is that it, I think, runs the risk of externalizing a problem that is actually internal. And let me try to unpack that. If the Pentagon, as a metaphor, has power, and if the Pentagon is a building, is the nub of something about which we ought to be concerned, we Americans are responsible for not bounding that power and not focusing on that nub about which we ought to be concerned.

And when you think about—particularly in the context of September 11 and the ...(inaudible) almost that it’s triggered in terms of American foreign policy and our emotions as a population, I think what Walter Russell Meade has written about is the Jacksonian tradition in terms of the emphasis on hard power, reluctance to think about non-military tools as forms of strength, a desire for other people to solve their own problems, but for us to focus on ourselves. I think the whole view that we have of our tools and our role in foreign policy has left us with this tool of a hammer so that every problem looks like a nail. And that’s a larger problem than just the Pentagon, even as THE PENTAGON AND THE PRESIDENCY 6/12/06 PAGE 22

a metaphor. So the Pentagon is us, in essence. We don’t want to scapegoat an institution for which we’re ultimately responsible as citizens.

TOM GJELTEN: Sarah, were you an advocate within the administration for military intervention in Bosnia, in Somalia, in Rwanda? And how did you feel about, you know, within the Pentagon, the uniform military leadership, for example, versus the State Department. We know that famous exchange between Madeleine Albright and Colin Powell over that very issue. How did you see it from your post?

SARAH SEWALL: Well, Tom, that’s precisely my point about the difference between the power and the uses to which it is put. I was among that category of persons that believed in the fundamental possibility of goodness of the American use of military power and wanted to try to find ways to use it appropriately and responsibly. I’m much more chastened about our ability to do that as a nation now, sitting where I sit today. At that point in time, I think it’s fair to say that the military was hardly the warmongering force for intervention, but was instead recalcitrant and needed to be dragged into these purposes, which raises a different variation on the theme of the policies toward which power is handled.

[COLONEL DOUG MACGREGOR HAS ARRIVED]

TOM GJELTEN: I want to say something about Doug Macgregor. You missed the introduction, so you don’t know that John said some very THE PENTAGON AND THE PRESIDENCY 6/12/06 PAGE 23

complimentary things about you. I met Doug Macgregor in late March or early April 1991 in southern Iraq. He had just led troops of the Second Armored Cavalry Regiment on the advance into Iraq. And troops under his command were the first to come into contact with the Iraqi Republican Guards during the ground war. In fact, under his command two Cavalry troops of the second ACR defeated a full strength Republican Guard Brigade in less than 30 minutes on 26 February 1991.

As a reporter for NPR, I tracked him down in the desert. And the question I had for him is why he then let the Republican Guard get away? Because they retreated to the north and then came back and put down a Shiite uprising in southern Iraq very brutally. And that it was totally unfair to ask a Major, you were a Major at that time, Doug, to justify …

DOUGLAS MACGREGOR : It’s very unfair.

TOM GJELTEN: … to explain or justify a decision that was made way above his level. But what he did, and what impressed me, is he explained it to me without justifying it. And I get the sense that you have since thought about that a lot, and it’s probably going to be part of the book that you have just finished. Am I correct? So I’m curious about that. That was clearly an example where a decision was made in the civilian levels that had a lot of meaning for you as a soldier.

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I also wanted to ask you, you’re from the post-Vietnam generation of Army officers. There’s a book that I know many of you have taken almost as a Bible, called Dereliction of Duty by HR McMasters, who I think is actually commanding a brigade in Iraq now, or was.

DOUGLAS MACGREGOR : He just got back.

TOM GJELTEN: He just got back. But for those of you who aren’t familiar with this book, HR McMasters, the title basically says it all, The Dereliction of Duty. He charged the uniform military leadership during the Vietnam period of not having had the nerve to stand up against their civilian superiors with respect to that war. Am I correct, Doug, that that actually became a very important book for young Army officers in the post-Vietnam generation. Maybe you can talk a little bit about what the lesson of that was for officers of your generation.

DOUGLAS MACGREGOR : Well, first of all, when I was a Major I gave you the scripted answer. The answer I gave you was exactly what we were expected to say. And at the time, the interesting part is that there were large numbers of us who were extremely frustrated with the conduct of that offensive, because the Generals had held us back so long that the Republican Guard was allowed to escape. I did not single handedly allow the Republican Guard to escape. I want to go on the record and say that right now. In fact, I was almost relieved over that whole thing. And that’s why I’ve written a book about it. THE PENTAGON AND THE PRESIDENCY 6/12/06 PAGE 25

Can I back up before I talk about The Dereliction of Duty and just say a couple of things about James’s books, as I missed some of the early things? When I first received James Carroll’s book I was instantaneously shocked and intimidated. I was reminded of Winston Churchill’s statement during the Second World War when he was handed a very long paper, and he said, “You know, this paper defends itself against being read by its very length.” And the last time I was compelled to read something this long and important really, was Quincy Wright’s A Study of War . If you’ve read that volume it compares favorably with what James has written. But in contrast to Quincy Wright, God bless him, this book is actually an excellent read. And I say that without hesitation. We already know he’s a distinguished author. But to take the material he has and distill and present it in the way he has, I think is spectacular.

To me this book is enormously important, not just because of its timing, but because it sets forth the idea that there are patterns of behavior and thinking in the United States military and in its political leadership that have roots in the Second World War. And quite frankly, over the last 50, 60 years have not changed very much. And I happen to subscribe to that fully. And I’m surprised at my colleague on the right a little bit, because I think she should sign up for that thesis. And I was one of the officers in the strategic planning cell of the army staff who was writing all of the reasons why we should not intervene in Bosnia Herzegovina as a Lieutenant Colonel.

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I was also involved in Haiti. And I was subsequently involved in the Kosovo air campaign. So I actually see what’s happening today as a perfect extension of everything that was done under the Clinton administration. In fact, I can’t see any difference at all in the foreign policy and the mentality that ultimately has caused this terrible counter-productive, stupid, pointless and destructive occupation of Iraq, which is one of the reasons that two years ago I left. I thought the occupation was never necessary. And I found that I was up against all the same kinds of people that I learned to dislike in the 1990s: Madeleine Albright, Strobe Talbot and the rest, Sandy Berger, and the rest of the crew, because I was always someone very uncomfortable with exporting any concept of American culture, democracy at gun point under any circumstances. [applause]

One person who figures prominently in James’s book, who has always been one of my favorite people for different kinds of reasons -- he deserves some criticism as we all do for whatever we do in life, but at the same time, he’s a brilliant man -- is George Kennan. And George Kennan was writing in the 1960s about our conduct of operations in Vietnam. And he was trying to understand how it could be so confused and so destructive and so ineffective.

And what he pointed to then, and what I think James has pointed to, is a certain pattern. This pattern of thinking in the American military establishment is powerful. It’s a pattern that I’ve tried to distill. And James THE PENTAGON AND THE PRESIDENCY 6/12/06 PAGE 27

talks about it, and I call it essentially destruction, conquest, occupation and transformation.

And it’s very important, because in that whole sort of paradigm your senior military leaders based on what they think happened during World War II— because what really happened in World War II is not exactly as we imagined is the case most of the time with things that happened 50 or 60 years ago. But they imagined that we won by flooding the other person’s country with troops. That we won by reducing the other person’s country to ashes. And that then we marched in and were gratefully welcomed, and that we brought them something they never knew before called democracy. That’s not true. But, unfortunately, that’s very strong.

So when I was dealing with, for instance, the Bosnia Herzegovina, for that matter even Haiti, the thing that was striking to me were my superiors, the Four Star Generals, “Well, we’ll need 100,000 troops. We’ll need 150,000 troops.” And it was very reminiscent of Vietnam, “What do you need?” “More troops.” Let’s flood the place with troops. Let’s use lots of fire power. And we can be victorious.

And this is a very counter-productive and destructive pattern, but it is a product of the sort of war mobilization citizen/soldier paradigm that we’ve had in this country during World War I and World War II. And what Kennan was trying to say in the 1960s and 70s was these things were anomalies, they THE PENTAGON AND THE PRESIDENCY 6/12/06 PAGE 28

don’t apply. World War II was irrelevant as a war fighting paradigm the day the war ended. So why are we doing these things?

And when you move forward to Dereliction of Duty by my good friend HR McMasters, what he presents to you is a very similar paradigm. We’re going to bomb and bomb and bomb and flood the place with troops. There is absolutely no attention paid to the unique circumstances of the environment in which you are being asked to operate.

So when you turn to this issue of military advice, most of the advice that I’ve been listening to over many, many years from my superiors to their civilian counterparts was actually very bad, because it was always the same. Send thousands and thousands of troops, and all will be well. And, of course, when the point was made in 2002 and 2003 that Muslim Arabs might not be thrilled to death to have a Christian European in U.S. or British uniform on every street corner, it fell on deaf ears, “Oh, you don’t understand.” That perhaps we bombed this country for 10 years, and we could probably drive to Baghdad without dropping any bombs. And people looked at you as though you were out of your mind. What I’m trying to tell you is that what James is pointing to is a pattern of behavior, a way of thinking, that is counterproductive, inappropriate and unsuited to modern warfare.

And the second aspect that he points to that I think is very important is on the civilian side we’ve reached a point where we have very few people that have any real experience with the military. And we got in the habit all THE PENTAGON AND THE PRESIDENCY 6/12/06 PAGE 29

through the Cold War, and James touches on this as well, of sort of treating the Pentagon—I know that’s a metaphor you don’t like—but the Pentagon as this sort of perpetual spending machine that has to be fed. “Well, General, you know, what do you think? It’s 1979. Sure, the Russians have a new tank. We need a new tank.” “Well, General, you’re going to get your tank.”

And General Dynamics and everyone else is delighted, and they hand him the money, he gets his tank. Well, this ended, as James points out. It stopped. And at some point in 1990/91/92, someone should have stood up and said, “Wait a minute. Not only do we not need to spend as much as we used to, but we need to go back and reexamine this whole apparatus. Do we need this enormous bureaucratic structure in its current form? Do we need new forces?” And this is what led me to the demise of my military career, because I began looking at what might be much more useful for the American people in the aftermath of the Cold War. But there was no real willingness to do that. As James points out, we went immediately into the search for new enemies. And, of course, the Generals and the Admirals, who are always opposed to going anywhere unless you’re prepared to send hundreds of thousands of troops, were quite willing to find a new enemy.

And if you begin to read the intelligence assessments, whether it’s China or Russia—I mean, some of the things I read before I left about Russia I thought were absolutely ludicrous. But the intelligence assessments built up these new enemies against which you can then plan to use your existing and future forces. And by the way, the forces never really change; they’re just THE PENTAGON AND THE PRESIDENCY 6/12/06 PAGE 30

new versions of what you’ve already got, which is why this thing called “transformation” is a bust.

So the bottom line is, I think what James has done is an enormously valuable service to the American people. And I don’t want to have to be the guy that writes the 5,000 word synopsis of the book, because that man is going to get a Pulitzer Prize. But someone needs to do it, because you and I know that not everybody will read it the way they should. But it is a brilliant work, and I am delighted to be associated with it. [applause]

TOM GJELTEN: Thank you, Doug. Jim, from what Doug Macgregor and Sarah Sewall both said, I think it just underscores how difficult it is to make generalizations, which is a point that you recognized in the beginning. And yet I sometimes got the feeling reading your book that sort of presidents are the good guys, and generals and admirals are bad guys. And to the extent that there was a morality play, it was sort of the president fending off the generals and admirals when they wanted to do something bellicose. You’ve already addressed it, but isn’t that sort of unfair and maybe simplistic a little bit to present the theme in that way?

JAMES CARROLL: Well, Tom, if I left you with that impression I didn’t write it well, I didn’t write it the way I meant to, because that’s not something I would want to be understood as saying. Let me lift up one anecdote that does involve a president trying to do what I would have regarded then and regard now as very much the right thing and not being THE PENTAGON AND THE PRESIDENCY 6/12/06 PAGE 31

able to. And I think it embodies the tragedy of presidents in this. Because I think presidents are the people … The buck doesn’t stop with presidents. And, therefore, presidents are the ones who have to step into the Niagara current. And they’re either willingly drifted along with it …

Richard Nixon was elected president in 1968 on an anti-war platform. His promise to the American people was he was going to end the war in Vietnam. It continued until 1975. Why? Not just because Nixon was wicked; it was because this current kept it going. And he had no particular impulse to fight that current. But that’s an instance.

Here’s another one. In 1976 Jimmy Carter is elected. In January of ’77, so he’s the President Elect, he has a meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Blair House, the traditional meeting of the president to get his first National Security Briefing from the brass.

One historian compares that president’s first National Security Briefing from the brass to “trying to take a drink out of a fire hose.” The generals and admirals told him all the problems that America faced around the world, the national security threats. They had their pointers, their slides, their flip charts; it was astounding. Everything that the world was going to do to the United States if the American military establishment wasn’t supported.

And Carter listened to this, and at the end of the briefing, “Mr. President, Mr. President Elect, do you have any questions, sir?” “Yes, I do have a THE PENTAGON AND THE PRESIDENCY 6/12/06 PAGE 32

questions. What would it take to get the nuclear arsenal down to a few hundred?”

General Brown, the Chairman said, “I beg your pardon, sir?” Jimmy Carter, God bless him, said, “Well, down to say 200.” Now, Jimmy Carter understood, he was a submarine officer, he was a man with firsthand experience in nuclear reality. He understood that we could maintain our nuclear deterrence posture very well with a few hundred weapons, that we could continue to threat anyone, including the Soviet Union, with utter destruction with that few weapons. And he also knew that the upward mobility of the arms race was insane. It was irrational; it was terrifyingly dangerous. In 1976 we were on the way to 50,000 nuclear warheads and weapons. We were somewhere over 40,000 that probably peaked at – no one knows these numbers for certain -- but it probably peaked at around 50, the low 50s in the early 1980s.

That’s Jimmy Carter as the President stepping into this dynamic against the generals and the admirals. But it’s much more complicated than that. And the Carter story, of course, exemplifies it. Jimmy Carter’s Inaugural Address, I encourage you to read it, it’s a great, a great Inaugural Address. And he defined his central purpose as President, that he was going to turn the arms race back against itself. He identified nuclear arms as the greatest danger. And he was going to turn the arms race back against itself.

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Four years later he left office, not only not having turned the arms race back against itself. Do you know how many nuclear weapons were eliminated under Jimmy Carter? Zero. Jimmy Carter added to the nuclear arsenal. He approved the proposal for a new weapon -- some of you may remember this -- the neutron bomb. Jimmy Carter was the person who gave the first order to deploy cruise missiles in Europe, what would become associated with Reagan. Reagan’s military buildup actually began under Jimmy Carter. Jimmy Carter left the presidency fully in line with the dynamic, the Niagara dynamic. And that tells you it isn’t good guys against bad guys. This isn’t evil. Jimmy Carter’s a good man. If there was ever a good man as the President of the United States, it was Jimmy Carter. This makes the point, not even Jimmy Carter could stop this dynamic. I mean, it did stop, that’s another story, another president, Ronald Reagan, hawk of hawks, anathema of the Left. We liberals hate him, right? Ronald Reagan is as close to a hero as there is in the book I’ve written, House of War . Because he gave Mikhail Gorbachev what he needed to do to turn the arms race around and to begin to destroy these weapons instead of to add to them.

So you’re right to lift up that dynamic, presidents and Pentagon, it’s a powerful dynamic. And it’s been a rare president—John Kennedy was one, Ronald Reagan is another—who’ve actually been able to redirect, if not stop, that Niagara current that we’re talking about.

TOM GJELTEN: But, as we said in the beginning, we have right now—I know from covering the Pentagon in 2001 that there was tremendous … it THE PENTAGON AND THE PRESIDENCY 6/12/06 PAGE 34

was almost the reverse of that dynamic. There was tremendous unease in the part of the uniform military leadership about what they were getting into with respect to Iraq. And a feeling of the bellicosity was coming from the White House as opposed to the Pentagon.

JAMES CARROLL: Indeed so. And the interesting dynamic to unpack now is what’s the relationship between Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and the White House? One of the things that’s interesting about the present Pentagon—and this goes back to the metaphoric character of it—and I actually fully acknowledge and affirm the problems you suggest about the metaphor. If we over-metaphorize the Church or the Pentagon, we get into big trouble. We should look at policy. And one of the things if we look at policy, we discover -- and I came upon this insight first, I think, in James Mann’s book The Rise of the Vulcans -- if you look at the National Security establishment -- let’s call it that instead of the Pentagon, because that includes the National Security Council, it includes the State Department. Let’s call it the National Security establishment. It’s a big crowd of people. I would argue it’s still centered in the Pentagon. But the National Security establishment, I think it was Mann who pointed out that in the early days of the Cold War, right after World War II, the National Security establishment’s leadership was defined by Wall Street, the law and business. The so-called “wise men.” Acheon, obviously, but Forestall, Dillon, Kennan—well, not so much Kennan, but Paul Nitze, Kennan’s other half. These people came from Wall Street, the law, the great law firms, the great businesses. THE PENTAGON AND THE PRESIDENCY 6/12/06 PAGE 35

In the Kennedy years a shift takes place. This is the period of not the wise men, but “the best and the brightest,” as Halberstam referred to them. Academics especially come into power in the National Security establishment in that period. Intellectuals. Intellectuals begin to define strategy. And it’s at this point that the intellectual discipline of National Security Strategy takes off, and it finds a home in academia. So there’s a new way in which the National Security establishment is defined.

But under the Bush administration something new has taken place. And it’s people whose ethos is not in the law or business as such and not in academia; it’s in the National Security Enterprise itself. Rumsfeld especially, Cheney especially, their most important advisor and thinker, Paul Wolfowitz. These are people who come into mature power in the Pentagon. Rumsfeld and Cheney’s earlier services: Secretaries of Defense under Ford and George Bush, Sr., important emblems of this. But Wolfowitz, a lifelong … I mean, a man who comes into the National Security establishment as a protégé of Paul Nitze in the late 60s when he’s still a graduate student.

Wolfowitz is formed by the National Security enterprise. These people, I would argue, are defining something new in American life. And it’s coming to full fruition, in a way, of the Pentagon ethos that these are the people -- and I would argue that’s one of the reasons that things have gone so awry, because those other centers of influence have little or no influence. The practical lessons, the pragmatism, the intellectual sharpness of academia -- THE PENTAGON AND THE PRESIDENCY 6/12/06 PAGE 36

not always dependable, but often essential to this enterprise. Where are the intellectuals who are offering criticism in the Pentagon today on the decisions being made about U.S. law? Where are the lawyers, people with real experience in the real world of law, telling Pentagon policymakers about how laws apply, how do the Geneva Conventions apply to the United States.

TOM GJELTEN : You know, the Kennedy Library just gave a Profile in Courage Award to Alberto Mora …

SARAH SEWALL: The irony, I think, is that the truest dissent on that very issue is within the Pentagon. It’s the Jag core that says we have a professional ethos here, it’s being violated. Which just gets to this difficult question of what is the beast that we’re wrestling to the ground here? Because there it’s the civilians that are complicit, if not driving, the abrogation of …

DOUGLAS MACGREGOR : Except the Judge Advocate Generals Core is not the military. These are lawyers in uniform. The military is represented by the generals who command the forces. And any general officer who suggests, as some have privately, that the Secretary of Defense, or the President, or anyone else, has the authority to arbitrarily suspend the Geneva Convention as an excuse for why people are being brutalized and mistreated is simply not telling you the truth.

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Worse than that, he’s complicit in this whole enterprise. And your general officers who command the forces are the people that absolutely must stand up and make it perfectly clear that that’s unacceptable. And if it’s not acceptable, to their civilian superiors indicate that they will resign. I think it’s very important that people understand no one has resigned, and no one has been fired. That was also the case during Vietnam.

TOM GJELTEN: Greg Newbold resigned.

DOUGLAS MACGREGOR : But not over this. It was his time, and he said he’d had enough and left. But he did not walk into the Secretary of Defense and formally voice opposition. He did not write a letter of opposition or anything else. I’ve been down this road with these characters, and they are not standing up under any circumstances. There’s no incentive to. It’s not part of the culture.

TOM GJELTEN: You’re a soldier, and you saw the Geneva Conventions, not from a legal standpoint, but you saw the Geneva Conventions as a matter of protection for your own soldiers.

DOUGLAS MACGREGOR : Well, yes, but it’s also … You know, when you are an officer commanding troops in a foreign country, the reputation of your country is in your hands. If you were willing to brutalize people, then you have destroyed the reputation of the United States. What is astonishing to me was that from the time we went into Iraq this time, we treated people THE PENTAGON AND THE PRESIDENCY 6/12/06 PAGE 38

badly. I mean, the average prisoner was taken and treated badly. We did not put bags over people’s heads. We did not handcuff people, force them down to their knees, and put a rifle butt into them. This was this mentality that everyone is a potential enemy, instead of recognizing that you actually had very few enemies and about 90% of what you were dealing with was either neutral or friendly.

SARAH SEWALL: That’s the legacy of Vietnam. I mean, it’s the product of having denied the possibility of ever having to fight again an unconventional war and not being prepared. And having people not … there’s no, I mean, the whole process of revising the counter-insurgency doctrine that’s underway right now is one of reinventing the wheel. But it’s because we’ve been—with all due deference, Doug—really sort of praying at this altar of air power and technology and the quick fix and not necessarily dealing with the true costs and risks of counter-insurgency, which is what we have now in Afghanistan and what we have had in Iraq. So there’s a piece of this that actually is back to the future in terms of reencountering some of the same dilemmas that we didn’t handle so very well in Vietnam, but have been loathe to grapple with because we’ve been so eager to put it behind us.

TOM GJELTEN: Sarah, do you think there were some missed opportunities during the Clinton administration and the immediate aftermath at the end of the Cold War to sort of re-conceptualize national security?

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SARAH SEWALL: Absolutely. And here’s the irony. I think you can fault the Clinton administration, and you can fault President Clinton in particular for a variety of things. But a conspiracy to retain sort of the dominance of a Pentagon ethos, I don’t think, is the right explanation. I think it’s almost as base as sort of politics and power and a confluence of small infringements and smaller decisions, and a cumulative weight of the man’s ability to maneuver. And you chronicle it very well, how he narrowed his space to maneuver over time by the decisions that he made personally vis-à-vis social issues, gays in the military.

There was definitely an opportunity missed. And ironically, it was ground that was paved, to some degree, I think by the first George Bush, who I don’t think fought Desert Storm in order to reassert American militarism. I do think there were a variety of reasons that came together to prompt him to make the decisions that he made. I think he was closer, probably, than anyone we’ve had in the last two decades to being cognizant of the ability that the United States had to create different terms of reference, if you will, for world order. He wasn’t able to fulfill that; Clinton didn’t come close. Obviously, the Clinton administration missed huge opportunities.

TOM GJELTEN: Well, judging by the number of people who came out for this event tonight, I’m sure a lot of you have questions. We do have 20, 30 minutes, whatever Amy gives us and John gives us. So there are two mikes set up here in the aisles. And just why don’t you come forward and THE PENTAGON AND THE PRESIDENCY 6/12/06 PAGE 40

maybe make a line. We’re not, obviously, going to have a chance to let everybody ask, but at least we can open this up a little bit.

Q: When you say that the Pentagon is us, I agree. And I would include the president in that metaphor. Kinzer’s book provides a different Niagara. And I wonder if the Niagara of capitalism’s drive to have international extension with sometimes foreign governments and powers and people and not allowing us to do what we want everywhere at every time, has actually driven presidents to think that they were doing things that were morally correct because we were helping these people is really the real substance of the problem rather than the Pentagon itself, which I believe actually has been a force trying to hold down the president. So I wonder what your point is on that.

TOM GJELTEN: Jim, we’re back at this point again.

JAMES CARROLL: Well, you draw our attention to the larger context within which every discussion should take place. Mine doesn’t for obvious reasons I couldn’t publish …

SARAH SEWALL: Long enough already.

JAMES CARROLL: Yeah, long enough already. But the larger context, of course, is the place of America in the world, and especially the impact of American economic policy in the world. And what the free market economy THE PENTAGON AND THE PRESIDENCY 6/12/06 PAGE 41

is doing, has done, and is doing to the world. Of course, that is the larger context. And within that context you have to ask, what is the purpose of American military power? And to what extent is the rhetoric of American military power actually disguising some cruder, perhaps blunter efforts to really just shore up the open market that serves the benefit of American economic interest. That was clearly the story at the end of World War II when the economic engine driving the world economy, at that point, was the United States economy. And that was a benign and kind of glorious phenomenon at one level, looked at very clearly at one level. I mean, the recovery of the world from World War II, from the devastations of World War II, Europe and Japan in particular, is a great human triumph. And that economic—they called it a miracle in Germany—triumph was generated by America, American economic ingenuity.

Now, there’s a dark side to American economic powers, we all know. There’s a dark side to capitalism. And we all long for a more humane capitalism. And the fact that America was obsessed with communism in those crucial years meant that the influence of socialist ideology, which was a benefit in Europe, socialist non-communist ideology, a benefit in Europe, a benefit to justice, a benefit to social infrastructure. Why did the dikes in Katrina fail? They failed because for three generations basic infrastructure in this country has taken second place to military force. We’ve been neglecting the real security needs of this country in the name of fantasy security needs, I would argue. And that’s part of the Katrina story, too. [applause]

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The economic question is the larger question. And that’s very important to have our attention drawn to it.

Q: There’s a Moby Dick whale, and not even a President such as Jimmy Carter is able to go against the Niagara force of that whale. Then it sounds like there’re intelligence advisors who are kind of stupid, like not using law or business the way they could be, because they don’t really exist in terms of where the influence is actually influential. And I’m really taken by Sarah’s comment that civilians could be more effective in terms of influencing the true internal power of the Pentagon. But I feel very strapped in terms of how would that actually look.

SARAH SEWALL: I have to be careful because Doug just got through criticizing those of us who haven’t served for coming in to direct military power. And I think he has a fair point.

The flipside of what civilians did in rationalizing the nuclear deterrent logic could certainly go either way in the role that civilians play. There’s no good and no bad civilian; there are wiser and less wise policies, and there’s some plain crazy ones. But I firmly believe that the question of democratization of national security policy is one that goes beyond the question of service, of civilians within the Pentagon. It really has to do with being willing to look at broader definitions of national security and to not fall prey to the fear that has been used only to narrow the way Americans understand security in a post-9/11 context. We have become cowed as a nation. We’re the strongest THE PENTAGON AND THE PRESIDENCY 6/12/06 PAGE 43

nation in the world, and we have become cowed into thinking that the only tool we can use is our military power.

If you look at the early post-World War II phase and the relative percentages of the tools in the tool kit, if you will – I talked before about we’ve now allowed the hammer to be the only tool that we have, so everything’s a nail. Well, in the early post-World War II phase, we had a broader array of tools, and we understood the power. You have to acknowledge that it’s complicated, but the power of economic engagement, the power of ideas, the power of cultural exchange, the power of a whole host of tools that are basically non-existent for all intents and purposes in American foreign policy today.

So to me the question of civilian influence isn’t just a question of civilian influence on the Pentagon; it’s a question of civilian courage to demand more from our definition of national security and those who execute it. And that requires big changes in the debate, big changes in resource allocation, and big changes in the moral imagination of our leaders.

TOM GJELTEN: And Doug, you called for more military courage as courage within the military leadership for the same reasons.

DOUGLAS MACGREGOR : I think it’s important to understand, it’s not a question of criticizing civilians who don’t have military experience. The criticism is the civilians who are placed in charge are afraid to confront the THE PENTAGON AND THE PRESIDENCY 6/12/06 PAGE 44

generals. They’re easily cowed, to use your words. And that’s a serious problem. I mean, we’re a Republic. There’s nothing in the Constitution that says, thou must have served in order to be a Secretary of Defense, absolutely not. And we have a serious problem with civilians that I think some of this has to do with Vietnam, undoubtedly. But someone like Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz would under no circumstances challenge any of the generals on anything. That was one of the big problems. There was no willingness to remove people for anything. And you know, you have to go all the way back to Eisenhower. I mean, this was a problem under the Johnson administration during the Vietnam War. There was this fear that if you fired someone, you would take political heat from your opposition on the Hill.

TOM GJELTEN: We talked about Truman firing MacArthur.

DOUGLAS MACGREGOR : Truman, of course, is famous for what he did. But Eisenhower fired Ridgeway. I mean, we haven’t had much of that. And I think certainly not since Vietnam.

SARAH SEWALL: But we had Shinseki.

DOUGLAS MACGREGOR : No, General Shinseki was never fired. He finished his four year term of office.

SARAH SEWALL: But in terms of the point that you’re making, it’s a very different dynamic that’s at play right now, which is the civilian THE PENTAGON AND THE PRESIDENCY 6/12/06 PAGE 45

leadership shutting up the uniform military who have the temerity to exercise their constitutional responsibility to answer questions about …

JAMES CARROLL: Let me just tell you a quick story on this very point, a wonderful story. It actually isn’t Eisenhower; it’s the Kennedy administration. When John Kennedy became President, the most powerful military figure in the United States was Curtis LeMay. He was the heroic and legendary Commander of the Strategic Air Commands. He was named the Vice Chief of Staff, the United States Air Force, and lived next door to me and my family. And I used to stand at the car port shooting baskets. And when General LeMay came out of the house with a briefing folder under his arm like a football, he looked like a fullback. I never took a shot at the basket; I was so afraid I would miss. [laughter]

And I would look at him; he had a cigar in his mouth always, always. He was mean, everybody was afraid of him. It was only in researching this book that I learned that his cigar was to disguise a palsy he had, a facial palsy. His lips trembled, and he was terrified he would be taken for weak. He always had a cigar.

Well, Curtis LeMay was the person who presided over the nuclear arsenal. In 1950, 200 nuclear bombs, right. 1960, when Kennedy takes office, almost 19,000 nuclear weapons in the American arsenal. Hello? 19,000? I mean, there’s the madness right there. It’s already gone.

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And Curtis LeMay presided over it. And McNamara told me one of his first acts was he asked the Commander of the Strategic Air Command, General Powell (sp?), to come in and report to him on the strategic war plan. He wanted to know what this nuclear arsenal was going to do.

And the General said to McNamara, “We don’t show that to anybody, sir.” [laughter] And McNamara said to him, “I’m not anybody; I’m the Secretary of Defense, and I want to see it.” No civilian had ever seen the Strategic War Plan. Under Eisenhower, the General, no civilian had ever seen the Strategic War Plan. It was (inaudible) secret. It wasn’t even coordinated with the Navy’s war plan. That was one of the things that was insane about this. You could have the Navy and the Air Force blowing each other up with this thing.

And McNamara knew that if he didn’t do anything else as Secretary of Defense, he had to rationalize the Strategic War Plan. He got the White House to back him up. He saw it. He was appalled and horrified at what he saw. It was an orgasm of letting loose everything we had. Every city behind the Iron Curtain was going to be hit.

Kennedy said to LeMay at one point, “General, why are we attacking Albania if we’re having a conflict with Moscow? Why are we attacking the targets in China if the war is with Moscow?” To which LeMay said, “That’s the plan.” [laughter]

THE PENTAGON AND THE PRESIDENCY 6/12/06 PAGE 47

This is serious. And in 1961 LeMay put before John Kennedy a proposal to launch a preventive, preemptive strike against Soviet bomber and missile sites because we could do it at that moment without a reasonable—the reasonable expectation that they wouldn’t be able to strike back. The last chance to avoid a savage war, arms race with the Soviets. We could take away their ability to attack us. And LeMay proposed it seriously. And Kennedy considered it seriously enough to put Carl Kaysen in charge of drawing up a realistic—he couldn’t trust the military to do it—to draw up a realistic plan of what it would actually involve.

And when he saw that the best case scenario that we could do it probably, and it would only kill at best case 10 or 20 million people, which General Power (sp?) would have regarded as acceptable. And Kennedy and McNamara did take control, although finely not complete control, of the War Plan bag. And it’s one of the great stories of the Pentagon. It’s the one aspect of the McNamara story that’s not sufficiently appreciated. LeMay was defeated finally by McNamara and Kennedy. And that was preparation for Kennedy’s ability to say no to LeMay. It was LeMay that Kennedy was saying no to during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

At one point LeMay presumed to say to the son of Joseph Kennedy, about his strategy in response to Moscow during Cuba, he uttered under his breath the word “appeasement.” Now, imagine what the word “appeasement,” the word that destroyed Joseph Kennedy’s political ambitions, what the word “appeasement” meant to John Kennedy. LeMay said “appeasement,” to THE PENTAGON AND THE PRESIDENCY 6/12/06 PAGE 48

which Kennedy—read the transcripts; it’s one of the great moments in the Cuban Missile Crisis transcripts -- to which the President says, “What did you say?” To which LeMay says, “Nothing, sir.”

Q: I’m 82 years old. I was a World War II veteran, a medic in the European theater. I’m also a member of the Veterans for Peace. I’ve been an anti-war activist my entire life. When the Resolution came up back in, what was it?, 2000, before October 2000 -- I should say also that I have worked in the campaigns of John Kerry and Martin Meehan, Martin Meehan is my congressman. When the Resolution came up, anti-war activists, that is against the Iraq War, met with both Kerry and with Meehan. I should also say that I was on the march with Meehan and the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, from Concord to Bunker Hill.

So we met with our representatives and we tried to dissuade them not to vote in favor of the Resolution. When the Resolution was voted on, Meehan voted in favor of it, Kerry voted in favor of it, I think Markey also and Lynch out of the 10 members of our delegation. So the only thing I can conclude is either having been in Washington as long as they have and being in politics as long as they had, either they’re stupid, which I find difficult to believe, they’re excessively ambitious, which is very possible, or they’re simply captives of the ethos that you speak about. And my question would be, as a citizen working actively on a 24 hour basis to try to prevent wars like Iraq, what can I as a citizen do? And how do you judge these congressmen? [applause] THE PENTAGON AND THE PRESIDENCY 6/12/06 PAGE 49

TOM GJELTEN: Rather than put that question to panelists, you know there’s an opportunity for you to give your perspective. You know, I think it’s also true that a number of people came to the decision to support, that the war was justified, on the basis of their own principles and convictions and not necessarily because of cowardice or opportunism. But it sounds like you know very well what to do, and you have been doing it for a long time.

I’m going to go on to the next. We want to get as many people as we can.

Q: My question is similar. And that is, in the current climate of political dissent to feel that any dissent is un-patriotic as we’re told by so many people in the administration, what is the Pentagon’s approach or how do they view dissenters? And is there a voice for peace?

DOUGLAS MACGREGOR : The principle lesson that the generals learn from Vietnam is to shift blame as much as possible to the civilian leadership over them, to escape accountability for everything.

So if you’re looking for someone who is openly advocating peace inside the Pentagon, you’re in for a very long wait. I haven’t seen any evidence for that. Are there senior officers that would like to withdraw? Yes. I’ve talked with them. But beyond that, once again we’re back to the really core issue, which is who stood up and said, “This is it. I oppose this. I won’t support it.” Whatever, and resigns. There’s nobody there. THE PENTAGON AND THE PRESIDENCY 6/12/06 PAGE 50

Q: I have two questions. The first being, how do we people hold the Pentagon accountable for one day of an outrageously failed defense of the United States on 9/11. That our nation’s capital, it wasn’t even a cap gun fired in defense. What if that plane had an atomic bomb. Most importantly, the people. I saw no defense even mustered. It’s just outrageous. And how do we hold the Pentagon accountable for that day? I don’t think that I have heard a clear explanation of why there was no defense of our nation’s capital. Well, first and foremost, New York, but most importantly the capital of the United States of America by this massive …

TOM GJELTEN: You mean a tactical defense in the sense of actual missiles on the ground prepared to intercept something like that?

Q: Not necessarily …

TOM GJELTEN: Because you’re not talking about intelligence failures which …

Q: No, I’m not talking about intelligence. I’m talking about some defense against an erring vehicle, a plane that was off … What if that plane had had an atomic bomb? And so I’m saying I have not heard from anyone in the Pentagon a clear explanation for any type of plan. And secondly, I only heard this one time on that day, 9/11, one of the media people said that the plane had targeted an area of the Pentagon that had been newly constructed THE PENTAGON AND THE PRESIDENCY 6/12/06 PAGE 51

with some type of material that could have withstood massive force. And I only heard that once. And I thought that was rather ironic that the plane went into that part of the Pentagon. And I never read or heard afterward if that were true information.

And then thirdly, it’s just a comment. I’d like to thank you, James Carroll, for the op ed piece in the paper today which reminds us all that amidst all of this heartbreaking circumstances that we all live through throughout the world, to remember the summer solstice and to remember when our hearts are full. And I did do that this morning. Before I read your op ed piece, I had been in church. And coming out I smelled the lilacs and it reminded me of growing up. And then this evening I thought the talks, the lecture, the discussion started earlier at 5:00. So I got here earlier and I was able to go out and enjoy this magnificent, magnificent setting that the Kennedy family and Foundation has afforded all of us. So thank you, Mr. Carroll.

TOM GJELTEN: I think Jim has something to say, but let me just say on a personal note that it’s just tremendously fortuitous that the plane struck that side of the Pentagon, because the casualties would have been far, far higher if they had struck on the riverside, which is what I understand was their original intent. In fact, I was on the riverside of the Pentagon on 9/11 in the offices of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. So I’m one who’s here today because that plane didn’t get to attack on that side. Jim, you had some …

THE PENTAGON AND THE PRESIDENCY 6/12/06 PAGE 52

JAMES CARROLL: I did want to just make an observation. I strongly encourage you, ma’am, to read the 9/11 Commission Report if you haven’t read it. It actually tells you in great detail what the Defense Department did in response to the alarms that were rung that morning. And the bottom line of it is, it’s a morality tale in a failed national security strategy stuck in the Cold War. We responded to the threat as if it were a Cold War threat, literally. F16s were scrambled from Langley Air Force Base, two of them. And they were on immediate program to defend the nation’s capital from attack. And they defended the nation’s capital from attack—as one of the pilots put it—because they were headed out, according to the program, this is what they were told to do, out over the Atlantic Ocean. They were 10 minutes, more than 10 minutes out over the Atlantic Ocean.

Meanwhile, the plane over Pennsylvania is heading to Washington. And the alarms were that there was yet another plane. They thought there was yet another one coming to Washington. They thought there were two; it turns out there was only one.

The F16 pilot was the one who radioed back and said, “Do you really want us out here? We’re on the mark looking for Russian incoming.” That’s what he said. It’s in the 9/11 Commission Report . “We’re looking for Russian incoming. Is that what you want us to be doing?” And they said, “No, come back.” And they came back. And before they got back to Washington, the plane hit the Pentagon. It’s a perfect case. It was the Cold War. Where was President Bush that day? He was in Curtis LeMay’s bunker at Omaha, the THE PENTAGON AND THE PRESIDENCY 6/12/06 PAGE 53

strategic Air Command headquarters. It cries out to be taken as a metaphor. It was World War III, it was the Russians. And the lady reminds us, where are we today? We still have Trident Submarines prowling the oceans, loaded to the gills with ICBMs, most of them nuclear tipped. What are those doing to protect us from a whacked out, deracinated, nihilist, mad terrorist coming into Manhattan with a dirty bomb. What is the Trident Submarine protecting us from exactly? Hello? [laughter]

TOM GJELTEN: You know, they actually deployed the Atlantic fleet along the East coast too. [laughter]

Q: There’s a school of thought which holds that had the Gulf War been allowed to continue for 48 hours, or even just 24 hours, the Republican Guard would have been destroyed. It would not have been necessary for us to go to Baghdad or get involved in a quagmire of occupation of the whole country. I was wondering if this tactic was considered? And if so, why was it thwarted?

TOM GJELTEN: You’ve got to read Doug Macgregor’s book, I guess, right?

DOUGLAS MACGREGOR : Well, the Republican Guard core of about 80,000 troops, including several hundred tanks and so forth, began its withdrawal early on the 25 th of February. I say that because that information was passed to the generals who were commanded forces in the field, THE PENTAGON AND THE PRESIDENCY 6/12/06 PAGE 54

particularly to the 7 th Core Commander. He had 110,000 troops. He had 1,200 tanks, the largest tank force anyone had seen, certainly since the Second World War.

He chose for 24 hours to do nothing. And I was the lead element in that core, and we sat and we knew that something was going on, because we could see that in the vast distance, which we were not allowed to attack, we were held back, there were forces leaving. We were finally allowed to advance a specific distance in fits and starts on the 26 th of February starting at 4:16 p.m. We were moving rather quickly, because I was very frustrated. And ultimately we made contact and advanced much further than we were supposed to. Ended up fighting this large battle, only to discover after it was over that we had destroyed the Rear Guard of the Republic Guard Core because it was already largely gone.

There wasn’t much direct fire combat during the Gulf War. And this fraud that we fought this major war and major battle, unfortunately, was promoted by the generals for obvious reasons; you don’t want to stay up and say, well, we stood around and waited long enough for the enemy to leave and declared victory. And for political reasons, the politicians were equally interested in that.

Now, would it have worked if we had simply advanced at high speeds starting on the 23 rd of February? Probably. And had we destroyed that THE PENTAGON AND THE PRESIDENCY 6/12/06 PAGE 55

organization, would he have not had the means to suppress the rebellions of the north and the south? Probably.

TOM GJELTEN: I think that we’re going to have to wrap it up here. I know still some of you have questions. But I don’t think any of us are taking off. And particularly James Carroll is willing to sign copies of his book. Amy, is that going to be out here?

Speaking for myself and Sarah and Colonel Macgregor, I think we’d be willing to hang around as well. Again, thanks so much to everyone for coming out. [applause] And you know, that applause should be heard for the JFK Library which has sponsored such a series of intellectually important forums including this one. So thanks, John, and Amy. We really appreciate you being here. And we’ll continue the discussion if you want.