March 8, 2025 • 43 mins
In this episode, we sit down with statesman and Ambassador David Miller, who shares his expansive and storied career, starting from his early days surveying economic impacts in Vietnam to his intricate experiences with the National Security Council and various international postings. We’re joined by Glenn Corn, who spent a career, much like Amb Miller, in service to the United States, but on the CIA side of the house and you get to hear what it’s like when Chiefs of Station and Ambassadors truly work together.
Ambassador Miller recounts tales of working closely with influential figures such as Nelson Mandela and Brent Scowcroft, and discusses his involvement in developing the Diplomatic Studies Foundation, which is a fascinating approach that brings wargames to Country Teams with a different outcome: Peace. Miller reflects on the challenges of delivering unvarnished intelligence and narrowly avoiding any involvement in what he could sense was a scandal that was later Watergate!
Ambassador Miller also helped start the Special Operations Fund which directly supports some of America’s most important families, those of fallen Tier 1 Special Operators, which I know people who listen to this show will appreciate.
With that, please enjoy this wide ranging and interesting discussion with two very storied leaders and patriots.
EXCLUSIVE NordVPN Deal ➼ https://nordvpn.com/combatstory Try it risk-free now with a 30-day money-back guarantee!
Check out our Combat Story Newsletter at www.combatstory.com/newsletter
Find Ryan Online:
🎙️ Connect with Ryan & Combat Story:
🔗 Ryan’s Linktree: https://linktr.ee/combatstory
🛒 Merch Store: https://www.bonfire.com/store/combatstory/
📸 Instagram: @combatstory https://www.instagram.com/combatstory
📘 Facebook: @combatstoryofficial https://fb.me/combatstoryofficial
📖 Learn more about Ryan: https://www.combatstory.com/aboutus
🎵 Intro Song: Sport Rock from Audio Jungle
Show Notes:
00:29 Introduction
00:48 Meet Ambassador David Miller
02:20 Early Career and Vietnam Experience
05:22 Insights on Military Intelligence
07:26 Navigating Bureaucratic Challenges
12:16 Watergate and Its Aftermath
15:48 Diplomatic Studies Foundation and Peace Games
21:53 Understanding the Country Team
24:29 Spec Ops Recruiting and Ambassador's Role
26:43 Embassy Dynamics and Teamwork
27:23 Current Affairs: Ukraine and Diplomatic Security
30:10 Special Operations Fund and Personal Stories
33:28 USAID and Development Programs
39:45 Memorable Meetings and Reflections
42:06 Conclusion and Final Thoughts
42:26 Sponsor Message: Delete Me
00:48 Meet Ambassador David Miller
02:20 Early Career and Vietnam Experience
05:22 Insights on Military Intelligence
07:26 Navigating Bureaucratic Challenges
12:16 Watergate and Its Aftermath
15:48 Diplomatic Studies Foundation and Peace Games
21:53 Understanding the Country Team
24:29 Spec Ops Recruiting and Ambassador's Role
26:43 Embassy Dynamics and Teamwork
27:23 Current Affairs: Ukraine and Diplomatic Security
30:10 Special Operations Fund and Personal Stories
33:28 USAID and Development Programs
39:45 Memorable Meetings and Reflections
42:06 Conclusion and Final Thoughts
42:26 Sponsor Message: Delete Me
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
There was a time when John Deanasked me if I could set up a
safe house for the president.
And even at that tender age, I knewthere were people like him who could set
up safe houses with their eyes closed.
And so I said to John, that's crazy.
And John said, well, the presidentdoesn't want them involved in this,
(00:22):
which gave me a really fine sense thatsomething was going to go terribly wrong.
Welcome to Combat Story.
I'm Ryan Fugit, and I served Warzonetours as an Army Attack Helicopter Pilot
and CIA Officer over a 15 year career.
I'm fascinated by the experiencesof the elite in combat.
On this show, I interview some ofthe best to understand what combat
(00:43):
felt like on their front lines.
This is combat story.
In this episode, we sit down withStatesman and ambassador, David Miller,
who shares his expansive and storiedcareer starting from his early days,
surveying economic impacts in Vietnamduring the war to his intricate
experiences with the national securitycouncil and various international
postings and ambassadorships were joinedas usual by Glenn corn, who spent a
(01:06):
career much like ambassador Miller.
in service to the United States,but on the CIA side of the house,
as opposed to the diplomatic.
And you get to hear what it'slike when chiefs of station and
ambassadors truly work together.
Ambassador Miller recounts Tale's workingclosely with influential figures such as
Nelson Mandela and Brent Scowcroft, anddiscusses his involvement in developing
the Diplomatic Studies Foundation,which is a fascinating approach that
(01:27):
brings war games to country teams, witha different outcome in mind, peace.
Ambassador Miller reflects on thechallenges of delivering unvarnished intel
and narrowly avoiding any involvement inwhat he could sense was a scandal that was
coming and was later known as Watergate.
It's a great story.
You're gonna love it.
And then Ambassador Miller also helpedstart the Special Operations Fund, which
(01:50):
directly supports some of America'smost important families, those of the
fallen Tier 1 Special Operators wholost their lives in combat or training.
Which I know people who listen to thisshow will deeply appreciate with that.
Please enjoy this fun and wide rangingand interesting discussion with two
very storied leaders and Patriots
(02:13):
ambassador Miller.
Thank you so much for taking the timeto sit down with us and share some of
your stories from your storied career.
Thank you.
But, uh, it's a question of how muchyou want that's factual and how much is
storied, uh, but, uh, let me stick tothe facts, at least at the start, uh,
and, uh, of relevance, I think, to thisdiscussion, uh, most importantly, was
(02:40):
to getting out of law school and going,uh, essentially directly to prison.
And, uh, begin to, uh,wander around the Vietnamese
countryside 6 months before TET.
And then 6 months after, um, was witha group of Harvard and MIT professors
(03:00):
that had been assembled by ARPA atthat point without the D to offer
sort of a independent intellectualassessment on what was going on.
Interesting.
Um, when I say that, thatalmost sounds like humor to me.
Uh, but, uh, and I was, uh, it was avery, very good group of folks and,
(03:23):
uh, my thesis advisor, uh, was amacro guy, economics, and, and, and
I'm, I'm a Mac, uh, micro person.
And so he was looking at thebig economy and I was trying to
understand if the, if on the ground,the economy was actually working.
(03:45):
Which got us into the Hamlet evaluationsystem and so looking at the system
and reporting on economic activitywas sort of my 1st chance to take a
look at the effects of kinetic energy.
On, uh, components of, uh,economic development and, uh,
(04:07):
so that was, that was the 1st 1.
yeah, basically, like, what collegesends their thesis students to
Vietnam, like, their semesterabroad during an active war.
What is that Harvard?
Harvard always expectsbig financial gifts.
Just a shout out to my friends up and up.
(04:29):
And since I didn't have enoughmoney to do that, I said,
I'll send the kid to Vietnam.
Okay.
So what it's like the guy that the parentsthat had the money, they went to like,
the sore bone and you went to Vietnam.
Yeah, I know you, sir. Yeah,so there so there was that.
I, I think that the, there, there area lot of takeaways, obviously from that
(04:53):
situation, uh, one is that this was, uh,some of Bob McNamara and the, and the
Ford motor company was kids and so on.
And they, they had theability to take garbage.
And accumulate it and polish it.
And it looked like data by the time itgot to Mac V, we had won the war last
(05:17):
week and all the bombing that was stillgoing on was really wasted ordinance.
Um, and it, it taught me animportant lesson and that is.
The, the uniformed servicesas an intelligence agency when
evaluating their own actions.
(05:38):
They're not wildly good at that.
They by instinct followan orderly structure.
You can't get people to go over abeach if everybody stops and says, I
think the tree line is too far away.
I think we should go back inthe water and start over again.
If you ask the military to do a big,big study of how they're doing, it's
(06:00):
very likely to be, they'll be okay.
So the important part ofintelligence that the army needs
is, is tactical intelligence.
And that's where civiliansare, are uniquely not capable.
If you talk to, to some breacher whosays, I want to know the details of the
(06:24):
door behind you, ambassadors are liableto say, it looks like it's made out of
wood to me where any decent breachersbeginning to say, how many hinges set in
what kind of concrete rebar and so on.
I don't want to kill the people inside,but I only get to blow the door out once.
(06:47):
And so I think one of the things I tookaway from the Vietnam experience was the
value of, in those days, the CIA tryingto say, we think this is reality and
the army saying, no, this is reality.
I got exposed to that ata young intellectual age.
(07:10):
Which we ran in Afghanistan again, right?
I mean, there were differentassessments and a lot of arguments
about how well we were doing.
Yes.
And it's probably a value to have,that's why we have the communities
kind of divided, so we have differentview, different points of view.
No, exactly.
Sir, were you brought in there to, tokind of refute some of the, the polished,
(07:33):
as you said, garbage that was going out?
Was that part of ARPA'smission at that time?
Not necessarily to refute.
It was to validate lots of, uh,lots of issues that we actually
got things like, uh, KIAs.
What did the other side lose?
During the day, somebody wants a bodycount, the guy you send up to get a
(07:56):
body count is going to get killed.
Uh, you look at the rice paddy and,and we said, okay, there are 30 left
feet sticking up in the rice paddy.
How many dead hostile people are there?
We sent a message back to the WhiteHouse and said, you can't do this.
But we actually tried for a week.
Were you independent enough to say that?
(08:18):
How hard was that at that age for you?
Honest to goodness, sir,that's never been that hard.
I was part of that little groupthat briefed Governor Romney because
I'd gone to Michigan Law School.
But we had the opportunity to sit downwith the governor and say, look, this is
reality as the civilian community seesit, leading to the governor's response
(08:43):
of his being brainwashed and so on.
But no, we were just there tryingto validate what happened and post
10, for example, we spent 6 monthsgoing back to hard points that we had
reported on before the offensive tosay, pretty good and battery district
and province not so good here.
(09:05):
Uh, out in district 10, where we prettymuch lost control of district 10.
You may remember it.
It was obliterated.
Um, that's where I learnedthat tanks do not need roads.
Um, they just sort of drovewhere they want and, uh, it, it
does ruin the real estate andjust makes a mess out of things.
(09:26):
So, but to Ryan's question, like, how didthe military respond if you keep saying
things that they didn't want to hear?
Was there pushback?
I i subtle things like, Hey, we'regoing to drop you off in Vietcong
territory and see working way back.
I mean, what was the, well, uh, youand your rotary assets had head to get
me out to countryside so I could lookaround, which generally speaking was a
(09:51):
pain in the behind for them and so on.
So the only pushback I got wasthey tried to terrorize me in
the insertion effort, which, uh.
It turns out, frankly, I think helicoptersare a lot of fun, but they would rock
back and forth over the canals with skidssort of hitting the top of the palm trees.
(10:11):
And I think they were waiting for me toscream and jump out the door and and we
got shot at and all that kind of stuff.
When you say terrorized duringthe insertion effort that reminds
me of my high school years.
Anyway, let's move on Hey glenn, maybequestion to you You were also on you
were on that same end of having todeliver probably less than desirable
(10:33):
information during a war over the past20 years um in the post 9 11 war I mean
How did you deal with that when youwere about to deliver information that
you thought might not be well received?
Well, I would say thatlike within the agency.
I never had any Push back onasleep people, the leadership
was pretty good about it.
Uh, some other parts of the governmentdidn't want to hear the story sometimes,
(10:55):
and there would be bureaucratic battles.
But I would say that generally this, theleadership in the agency always had our
backs, like, when I was responsible for anissue, and you have to deliver bad news.
And I was thankful for that.
I, you know, I can't, I can'tthink of too many examples where,
like, we were thrown under the bus.
(11:16):
I was too junior for some of the,you know, the more famous cases now,
like weapons of mass destruction.
And, you know, I was just an operatorthen collecting and out on the
street and thankful for that as well.
But when I got more senior,generally, we got a lot of support.
And I never, I was never threatenednot to say something, right?
(11:36):
The opposite.
I was encouraged.
Ambassador is, as you came out ofthat year in Vietnam, um, clearly
you go on to a very storiedcareer in the diplomatic service.
Was there any concern there or thoughtto go into the military after that?
I ended up in the WhiteHouse fellows program.
And, uh, so, uh, spentessentially three years around
(11:59):
the attorney general's office.
Mr. Mitchell for most of thattime, and then on and off with John
Dean, and then it seemed prudentto not be there and I missed.
The number of years of free food upat Lewisburg, or why was it prudent
to not be there when you say that?
Well, there's, there's some of this inthe public record, but fundamentally,
(12:22):
there was a time when John Dean askedme if I could set up a safe house
for the president and, uh, even atthat tender age, I knew there were
people like him who could set upsafe houses with their eyes closed.
And so I said to John, that's crazy.
And John said, well, the presidentdoesn't want them involved in this,
(12:44):
which gave me a really fine sense thatsomething was going to go terribly wrong.
So no, so that's, I ended up working,uh, in a very large corporation.
So how'd you handle that when yourboss said, I want you to set up.
Basically do something that is illegal.
And this is Nixon, right?
This is under the Nixon administration.
, I mean, yeah.
(13:04):
You know, I mean, that's dumb.
Okay.
So yeah, yeah.
Sort of your question considerationis, that's really stupid, right?
Um, uh, you quit, you, you know, I, I meanthere, there are times in your career and
it's, it's advice I always give to youngerpeople, always have a parachute on.
(13:25):
If you think this town is a niceplace to work, you haven't been
working hard enough, because youwill come across things that will be
very difficult, and you've got to behappily married to a co conspirator,
uh, who cares about the country.
Primarily, so I've, I've always had thesupport to, uh, walk out the door and
(13:49):
say, I can't, I can't do this responsibly.
And that ended up leading that waspart of Watergate later on, sir. Yeah.
Yeah.
I, I, I went out to avery large corporation.
And, uh, I had an opportunity to,to talk with the chairman there.
And, and before Watergate, I, I looked at,uh, at Mr. Kirby and I said, the president
(14:15):
will not serve out his second term.
And the chairman, uh, of thecorporations looked at me and
said, what are you talking about?
And I said, he, he will notserve out the second term.
It won't work.
Yeah.
If, if you were there.
There were a lot of fine people thatgot caught up in this, led by, by Bud
(14:39):
Crow, who's one of the finest guys I'veworked with, uh, in, in government.
When it all blew up, he was convicted.
He went up to Lewisburg, and thenAllenwood, and I used to go up and see
Bud, and, uh, when it was all over,he got his bar membership back, uh, I
think out in the state of Washington.
But those, those were unusual times.
(15:00):
This is something Glenn and I had talkedabout before, which is just, um, as you
have these changes in administration,you get people in the military.
I saw this clearly in the military and,you know, very low level at the agency,
not where you were by any means, Glenn,but just people on one side of the
aisle or the other who get frustrated bywhoever's the newly elected leader and.
(15:21):
Can be very vocal about it andthere's, I've, I've had to have
pointed discussions, certainly whenwe were downrange in the military,
just we don't make the Troy.
I mean, we have our vote, butour job is to execute the mission
and certainly if it's somethingillegal, that's very different.
What you just described aside fromthat, it's our job to execute and
do what we were brought here to do.
(15:42):
And it's not easy.
It's certainly not easyon junior officers.
I will say trying to lead from the front.
That's really how the diplomaticstudies foundation came about.
And that is, we were, we, a bunchof old guys are sitting around
saying we're not doing as wellinternationally as we should.
(16:03):
So you can argue about strategy forever,but tactics, you can sort of look at.
The deployment of national assetsversus the objective and say, what
we began to say to ourselves, we'vegot to be able to do tactics better.
So, the diplomatic studies foundationsort of got together at Tom Pickering,
(16:27):
Chet Crocker, Randy Pierce, Steve Kappas.
These are all legendsfor people listening.
If these names aren'tfamiliar in this community.
Yeah.
Uh, and so we first did a study ofthe national security council, which
has emerged as the driving engineof this activity and testified for
(16:48):
the house foreign affairs committee.
And then they said, Oh, you coulddo a study of the state department.
So we Through a series ofconversations with Debsak, John
Sullivan, and so on, we said, we'regoing to do education and training.
Uh, that's the, the key to longrun success is competence of the
(17:13):
officers involved in pursuing tactics.
And so we have.
Uh, developed, uh, this little countryteam training game, which there go
back and forth between the militaryand the civilian community war games.
Want to give you totalbattle space awareness?
(17:36):
Civilians don't have a game like that.
And, uh, so I'd spent 4 years inAfrica on a very large project.
That is, it was essentially totalbattle space awareness over for
the private sector for the, forthe, for the private sector.
And, uh, so we did this, uh,country team training game so that
(17:58):
civilians could learn the samething that uniformed services do.
And that is, what's the threat?
What is my response capability?
What don't I know if I know everythingand hopefully do I have a response
package capable of handling that andhonest to goodness when when we call
(18:22):
this a peace game, everybody said,well, we must have a peace game.
I mean, surely we must trainembassies how to work together.
And the answer was no, no,this is Johnny Carson McMahon
trying to do a handoff here.
Are you also correct?
So you're right.
(18:42):
Oh, no.
So we Johnny, you're the best series.
No, the, uh, yeah, thepeace games, um, and DSF.
Very, very unique, you know,investor Miller when I met him
and he told me about this project,you know, I said, Ryan, I, we, you
know, we did training with the FBI.
We did training with thespecial operations command.
(19:02):
We did training with other elements, theUS government on the security side, but we
never did training with State Department.
Right.
We never did training withUSA, which is amazing.
Yeah, right.
Because you're out in the fielddoing stuff, you know, in the field,
you're thrown together with them whenyou're a junior officer, you just,
you just socialize them with themat the, you know, the club or maybe,
(19:23):
you know, in your different sections.
But when you're in leadership positions,you're for the 1st time, you're
sitting across from someone fromstate, someone from treasury, whatever,
and you have to get along with them.
And there's no program that wasdesigned to, like, meld people
back here in a non, uh, how tosay a non threatening environment.
(19:44):
Right.
And so, uh, this, this program that theambassador developed and the team at DSF
developed is pretty impressive becauseit's basically a war game designed for
the outcome to be not war, not kineticaction, but peace, like success diplomacy.
And it's kind of important to mentionthis right now, because we just came
out of a very, let's say, tense pressconference in the White House for meeting
(20:07):
between the Ukrainian president andthe US president and vice president.
And one of the things thatJD Vance said is like, you
know, we want to get to peace.
And I think we all want that.
Right.
But how do you get to peace?
You have to have this diplomatic skillsand tactically be able to operate as a
team to use all the tools that the U.S. government has at its disposal to
(20:28):
get victory without having to go to war.
So it's an open objective,and it's something that the.
The peace games and the DSF, uh, hasbeen working to help State Department and
other parts of the U. S. government, theforeign affairs community, accomplish.
Just a quick word from oursponsor, Mint Mobile, and we'll get
right back to this combat story.
I don't know about you, but I likekeeping my money where I can see it.
(20:50):
Unfortunately, Traditional bigwireless carriers also seem
to like keeping my money too.
After years of overpaying for wireless,I finally got fed up from crazy high
wireless bills, bogus fees, and freeperks that actually cost more in the
long run and switched to memmobile.
Memmobile is what I use formy Combat Story account.
It's worked flawlessly when I'mat home and when I'm traveling.
(21:12):
Say goodbye to your overpriced wirelessplans jaw dropping monthly bills.
And unexpected overages.
MIT Mobile is here to rescue you.
With premium wireless plans startingat 15 bucks a month, ditch overpriced
wireless and get three monthsof premium wireless service from
MIT Mobile for 15 bucks a month.
If you like your money,MIT mobile is for you.
Shop plans at mit mobile.com/combat story.
(21:34):
That's MIT mobile.com/combatstory upfront.
Payment of $45 for three month fivegigabyte plan required equivalent.
15 per month, new customer offer forfirst three months only then full
price plan options, available taxes andfees, extra cement mobile for details.
And now.
Back to this combat story.
Yeah, I love this this concept and glenn.
(21:56):
I might just put this question to youUm, we we hear this term the country team
which makes sense to the those of us whohave been in those communities overseas
Could you just explain to listeners?
What is the country team and thenmaybe ambassador after after glenn
explains that How would you seesomething like this playing out right
now with russia and ukraine in reality?
Like how would this work properly?
(22:18):
Yeah, great question.
And, uh, uh, a country team.
So every embassy, every diplomaticmission abroad is run by an ambassador
who is the president's specialrepresentative to what to the country.
So country X. And then you havedifferent agencies and departments
that are represented there.
They have their personnel there.
So, you have a state department.
You have may have treasury.
(22:39):
You may have some places.
We had NASA.
We had, uh, you know, thedefense intelligence agency.
So, you have defense.
So, you go down the list sometimesnow, many more places homeland security
and FBI, because we're trying tobring the fight to the enemy down
range right outside our borders.
And the ambassador is in chargeof all those people that are
(23:00):
under the ambassador's authority.
And the country team is basicallylike the leadership team, or
maybe like the corporate boardthat meets usually once a week.
I, when I was in positions ofauthority, tried to avoid those
meetings, like the plague.
That's the joke, right?
Isn't it that we wouldn't sayanything in those meetings?
Yes.
Well, either that, or I had oneambassador tell me that he said,
(23:21):
Glenn, you're always the grumpy guy.
He always had bad news.
I'm like, sorry.
I got an image to uphold.
But, uh, but, but the, the country team,if you have a country team that functions
well, it can be super valuable becauseeveryone knows what the synergy is,
what, what capabilities you have, whataccess you have, who you're talking to,
you know, what you can bring to bear.
(23:42):
And if you have an experiencedambassador that they know how
to make a country team gel.
Uh, but of course, one of thegoals of DSF is to train people to
be better on country teams beforethey even go into the life, life.
Right.
And I'll turn it overto, uh, Johnny Carson.
Here's Johnny.
Uh, yes, see, we've been practicing thisfor an hour or 2 before you came on.
(24:06):
It's clear.
Yeah.
Generally speaking.
That's a good description of thecountry team and the fact that a
good ambassador then takes thatcountry team and does two things.
And that is, if you're a good manager,you can make two and two equal five.
That's Vince Lombardi.
(24:26):
Uh, that's all great coaches.
They, they take people, uh, it'sthe spec ops recruiting issue.
You start off with 100 young peopleout at buds and you end up with 5
people learn how to play over theirhead when they're well coached.
So, the ambassadors doing 2 things.
(24:47):
He's looking at the assets that arethere and getting in the play better.
And then.
He's the only person at post that canidentify gaps and try to fill them.
So if you play this peace game, yousay the 95th Civil Affairs guys are
like the, uh, development missions,but the 95th stores uniforms and
(25:13):
the other aid programs don't.
Oh, okay.
And, uh, then if you see gaps in yourAuthorities, you're the only guy that
pick up the phone, call back to the NSC.
And say, I got a problem.
I can't do this.
And I'm not even sure Ihave the legal authority.
(25:35):
So, would you tell me, can I do this?
And if we practice that here, beforethings are going wrong down range.
It's theoretically possiblethat we could actually do better
downrange if we practiced here.
So, that's, that's reallywhat we've been up to.
It's scrimmaging.
(25:56):
Yes.
Right?
It's scrimmaging.
So, for those of us that playfootball, American football,
not that other strange football.
No.
I just alienated half your audience.
I'm sorry.
Yeah.
You mentioned Vince Lombardi.
You mentioned Vince Lombardi,the greatest American leader
ever, maybe after Ronald Reagan.
I don't know.
Someone.
Maybe.
And Ambassador David Miller,who's the president of the
(26:18):
Diplomatic Studies Foundation.
Yeah, I pay him 2.
50 for every inject like that.
Which, by the way, nowadays doesn'teven get me a cup of coffee.
Yeah, but you gotta say it more.
I mean, that's how you get the coffee.
That's right.
You want coffee.
That was five bucks right there.
Oh man, I'm making a killing here.
Let me tell you somethingI wanted to say about that.
(26:41):
Just a little exchange.
This is how an embassy ought to run.
There's a, there's, this friendshipat an embassy is absolutely critical.
If the COS and the ambassador don'twork together, you have a huge gap.
We, we ought to be a reinforcing teamand it's like everything else, trust
(27:06):
comes from getting to know each otherand laughing together and they're going
to be good days when bad things, uh,are put off and then they're going to be
bad days when bad things occur and, andyou gotta, you gotta like each other.
With, um, with what we're seeing withUkraine right now, just, uh, can you
(27:27):
give an, not, not even an example,but for both of you who have been
on the front lines of dealing withpressing issues from the NSC globally
partners, um, should we imagine a, uh.
A country team is being convened right nowin Ukraine or pick your country for this.
(27:47):
What are they talking aboutin those sessions right now?
Who are you mobilizing in the,in the embassy community to try
to get ahead of what's happening?
And this is all in light ofdiscussions between president Trump
and Zelensky, as you alluded toearlier, Glenn, uh, public affairs.
For sure, because you're going to have thewhole press piece, you know, you imagine
a lot of people in Ukraine have a lot ofquestions and people around the world.
(28:09):
I'm sure embassies around the world,you know, they have to get their talking
points to try and explain what, what,what physician us position is your
political officer is going to talkto people in the ministry of foreign
affairs, you know, another in the,maybe the presidency, the ambassador is
going to be doing a lot of engagement.
Maybe the ambassador is actually herewith President Zelensky in a lot of cases.
That's what you do.
(28:30):
You send your with the principal.
Uh, you know, you're going to have,which we get a shout out to our,
our friends and diplomatic security,because you may have increased threats.
To an embassy, or of course, youalso have to do all the security
for, for the, the VIP traveling here.
Um, you know, uh, well,everything, you know, the defense,
(28:52):
like the military industry.
Gotta go talk to MOD, gottatalk to the different services.
So, and of course, behind the scenes, wedon't know what's what's being discussed,
but we may be making new agreements.
We do have this new mineralagreement, which has been achieved.
And so there's going to be I'm sure, like,treasury is going to have to get involved.
You're setting up visits.
A lot of people from Congressare going to want to go out.
(29:13):
And talk to the Ukrainians.
Yeah.
Uh, Ukrainian delegations aregoing to want to come here.
So there's a lot of logistics, logisticalcoordination, which is very difficult.
And it also often takes up my experienceoverseas, but it took up over half
the time of an embassy all visits.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So there's a lot and of course, theambassadors try to manage all this.
(29:37):
It's like, it's like thechief of protocols job.
If, if two heads of government gettogether and the meeting ends at the
White House, they've gotten along.
Everybody says.
What great people they are.
Right.
And then if you have a meeting and itdoesn't work, everybody looks at the chief
of protocol and says, boy, that was dumb.
(29:58):
You know, you sat them in the wrong place.
How did you do that?
It is a job that, that never wins.
Yeah.
It's it's hard.
There's a lot of churn right now.
Yeah.
I was, I was going to ask, I'm going topivot just slightly in the interest of
time to the special operations fund, sir.So obviously you spent a year in Vietnam.
(30:19):
You have.
Long time career at the NSC, um, as anambassador in private sector, but you
took the time to stand up and supportthe special operations community.
And I'm just curious where that came from.
Uh, Brent Scowcroft.
Interesting.
No, that's a single, single word answer.
(30:40):
General Scowcroft and I became friendswhen we were both in the private sector.
I was back for being an ambassador.
He was in between tours asa national security advisor.
And, um, we'd gotten to know eachother and, uh, uh, he got, he got a
call from the The incoming presidentasked him if he could come back
as a national security advisor.
(31:01):
And we were right along ina, in a taxi here in town.
And he looked at me and he said,uh, President Elect just phoned
me and asked me to come backas a national security advisor.
And I said, I hope you said yes.
And he said, I think I did.
To which I wanted to say, you shouldknow the answer to that clearly.
And then he said, yeah,but you're coming with me.
(31:22):
And I said, well, that's, that's cute.
Um, what, what are youthinking I should do?
And, uh, he said, we'll have breakfastnext week, whatever I'll tell you.
Uh, at breakfast he said, I wantyou to, to take the counterterrorism
drugs and thugs account, ifyou will, hostages and so on.
And I said, so what doyou want me to, to do?
(31:45):
We cannot have another Ollie North.
We cannot afford to havepeople pick up the phone and
say, this is the White House.
As Brent would say, the WhiteHouse doesn't call anybody.
There are people that workthere that call people.
And so his big question to me was,tell me what you think of these guys.
(32:06):
I, I, I don't want to.
Back on anybody by, by name, butthere are famous seal six commanders
and so on, who had a great deal ofhutzpah, like breaking into the CNO's
house and little things like that.
So we didn't want to see that happen.
So I got to know these guys andthey're, they're extraordinary people.
(32:26):
And I had a background in, in investing.
And so when I left.
I, I knew widows and kids and so on andso forth, and I said, well, I'll, I'll
put money together to try to take care of.
It's a relatively simple idea.
It's been going almost 35 years and,uh, we cover all the tier 1 units
(32:48):
and anybody out with a tier 1 unit.
Amazing.
Yeah, it's been the most wonderfulthing I've done in my life.
Wow.
Amen.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Thank you for doing that, sir. Imean, we have many people on here
from those communities on this show.
Um, we don't often talk to the familymembers, but almost to a person,
(33:08):
each individual I interview willsay that the hardest part was on the
families and what happens afterwardsand taking care of spouses and kids.
And we, we often refer tothem as gold star families.
And I know you're, you're talkingabout them in the tier one context.
So thank you for what you do there.
And I know the people listening tothis show will greatly appreciate that.
I wanted to ask, um, you had mentionedobviously your time in Africa, sir, not
(33:32):
just as an ambassador, but time that youspent there outside of that international
development and aid is a key part of that.
Obviously, some of the things we'veseen in the news recently, uh,
changing USAID's posture is probablyforeign to most Americans, honestly.
Like if you didn't.
Spend time in the diplomatic community.
You might not be aware.
(33:54):
I'd be curious from your take given yourtime in Africa What do you see with USAID?
How how would you encourageAmericans to think about USAID
as a program what it gets right?
What it gets wrong?
Well, let me open up with a Republicantest, which I always applied, and that
is, my dad was an active rotarian,and I always pictured myself at a
(34:18):
rotary club in Cleveland saying, Itook 20 from you, and we invested
it in maternal and child health carein Tanzania, because it will make a
better world for your grandchildren.
Now, if you can't Ask that and come upwith a satisfactory answer, then you ought
to rethink how you're spending the money.
(34:40):
But generally speaking, I'mvery comfortable with aid
programs that have promotedagricultural development stopping.
The spread of malaria over and overagain, um, there's, there is a very
important role for carefully rundevelopment dollars that are in,
(35:03):
expended in the interests of the UnitedStates and of the recipient countries.
That's, yeah, you know, I wouldsay Ryan, this is my perception.
The American people need abetter explanation of how
their money's being spent.
They have every right to that.
I think we've gotten so big as agovernment and maybe so isolated
here in the beltway that peoplejust assume that everyone is behind
(35:26):
what they're doing with the money.
Uh, some of the programs, to my knowledge,what I saw were not really reflective of
what the American people's values are.
And that was a mistake,but most of them are.
We've always been a very generous nation.
You know what pri the privatesector, private communities, uh,
have always given to help others.
(35:49):
During, during the Russian, uh, civilWar, we gave millions of dollars of
aid to the people of Russia who arestarting from a ate Southern Russia.
Uh, you know, during the, duringthe, after the second war, sorry,
after the first World War, we hadeight programs all over Europe.
Uh, we, we had the Marshallplan, which was probably the most
effective aid program you couldever think of in advancing U.
(36:10):
S. security.
And that's the thing.
I think Americans need to understand.
Many of the programs are designed toadvance our national security interests
and protect them, keep problems awayfrom the shores of this country.
But I do think we, as a, as a country,we, as a government need to do a much
better job explaining to Americans,educating them on why their tax
dollars are being used for that.
(36:32):
Uh, and I. All the Americans I know,they're great people and they're,
they want to help other people.
They just wanna make sure that the money'snot being wasted and they wanna make sure
that the money's not being, uh, siphonedoff by some corrupt officials somewhere.
And that's their, I haveevery right to ask that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And, and ambassadors don'tdo enough taking the time to
(36:56):
explain to American citizens.
Where their money is goingand why it's important.
That's my old rotary test.
I can, I can picture folks in Clevelandlooking at me and saying, we, we
don't have enough money for X andyou're taking money outta my pocket.
Yeah.
And uh, they have every right to ask that.
(37:18):
Uh, and when you don't answer it,you get what's happened today.
And that is a, a sweeping effort torebuild US development assistance
that's part of the country team dynamic.
I was curious how much.
Sway does the ambassador have indirecting that aid or in adjusting
it on the ground sometimes When, forexample, 1 of my favorites was the,
(37:45):
the president of Tanzania, uh, was,was opposed to an aid program that we
were sponsoring with the Canadians.
That was dry land agricultureat which they are good.
That's heavily mechanized.
If you will, so President Nurerisaid, now, Ambassador Miller, let's
(38:06):
see, you want me to do dry landagriculture with big equipment
because that's the modern way to farm.
And he said, I have no foreign exchange.
So I can't buy equipment andI have no money for fuel.
So I couldn't run the equipmentif I bought and I have
people that need employment.
Oh, so let's see, you're goingto put people out of work.
(38:29):
Modernizing agriculture.
That was really dumb.
Now, we, we solved that by working witha guy named Bob Rodale, who's in organic
farming, was in organic farming here.
And, and my dear wife, uh, got meto Bob Rodale's organic farming.
(38:50):
We bought a gazillion books on organicfarming, got them to Julius Nereri.
And then the magic sauce was putin, and that is the Americans
endorsed organic farming.
Now, as Julius Murray said, that's whatthe Maasai have been doing forever.
They pick up animal dung.
They put it inside an enclosure at night.
(39:12):
Oh!
Yeah, but now it's at Whole Foods, so.
Yeah, yeah.
And it costs you a dollar and eight.
I was going to say, we canadd a two dollar markup.
Yeah, exactly.
So, uh, if you're, ifyou're a good ambassador.
You, you try to keep your aidprogram within 10 points on either
side on a, on a true headache,unless things are really bad.
(39:37):
And so, between my wife and Julius,we, we, we improved the aid program.
High five.
That's a great one.
I'm going to ask one more question,then I'll let you get out of here,
sir. You just have mentioned inthis short conversation, you know,
being in the car with the NationalSecurity Advisor, being on the ground
in Vietnam with other very importantpeople meeting with heads of state.
(40:00):
As you look back on your career, isthere a particular meeting that you had
that still stands out a very memorableengagement encounter with a world
leader, just a very important personthat you could not have predicted?
Really, you remember fondly NelsonMandela, by far the most remarkable
human being I've ever met.
(40:21):
We were in Vindhook, uh, Secretary Baker,uh, uh, was meeting with Mr. Mandela
for the first time after his release.
And, uh, the, the talks.
Uh, went okay, uh, but, uh, we weregoing to go on to South Africa, and
the, uh, anti apartheid activitiesin the States, and Mr. Mandela said,
(40:45):
I wish you wouldn't go to SouthAfrica until apartheid has ended.
So, after their meeting, uh, wewent out into a little garden area,
and, uh, there was a lot of pressthere, and, uh, Secretary Baker.
Uh, was, was getting a lot of toughquestions about Mr. Mandela doesn't
want you to go to South Africa.
Why are you doing this?
(41:08):
And when you're the bag carrier,you're sitting there holding
two bags and saying, oh,
those, those, those are bad questions.
When I suddenly felt some pressureon my back and I turned around and
there's Mr. Mandela and he's walking up.
To secretary Baker, and heputs his arm around him and
(41:29):
he said, you've got it wrong.
This is my new friend, Jim Baker,and we're going to be fine.
I mean, you could have pushedme over with Mr. Man, Mr.
Mandela was an astounding human being.
I was the note taker in the ovaloffice and to, and to watch him work.
(41:50):
He was great.
A great, great man.
Sir, thank you for this short discussion.
This is fantastic.
Glenn, thank you for making this happen.
Any, any last words to,to listeners right now?
Uh, Glenn or Ambassador Miller?
I just want to wish yourlisteners a great weekend.
Yeah.
Yes.
America.
Yes.
(42:11):
May they have something to drinkwhile they're watching this.
It'll go down better.
Fruit juice.
Yeah.
Fruit juice.
Yes.
Remember juice.
Yes.
Remember Katniss onlydrinks lemonade prune juice.
Thanks gentlemen.
Just a quick word from our sponsorto leave me having spent many
years in the security space.
I'm very aware of how much personalinfo is out there and what determined
(42:35):
people can do with it from identitytheft to phishing, harassment, doxing.
Unwanted spam calls and more I've beendoxed in the past and it's something I
do not want to experience again That'swhy I personally choose to leave me
delete me as a subscription servicethat removes your personal info from
hundreds of data brokers Delete me sendsyou regular personalized privacy reports
showing what info they found where theyfound it and what they removed Delete
(42:58):
me isn't just a one time service Delete.
me is always working for you,constantly monitoring and removing
the personal information youdon't want on the internet.
I got my most recent reportearlier this month and it
reviewed over 1, 800 listings.
To put it simply, Delete.
me does all the hard work of wipingyour and your family's personal
information from data broker websites.
(43:19):
Take control of your data andkeep your private life private
by signing up for Delete.
me.
Now, at a special discount for ourlisteners, today get 20 percent off
your Delete Me plan by texting combat to64000, text combat to 64000, that's combat
to 64000, disclaimer, message and datarates may apply, see terms for details.
There was a time when John Deanasked me if I could set up a
safe house for the president.
And even at that tender age, I knewthere were people like him who could set
up safe houses with their eyes closed.
And so I said to John, that's crazy.
And John said, well, the presidentdoesn't want them involved in this,
(00:22):
which gave me a really fine sense thatsomething was going to go terribly wrong.
Welcome to Combat Story.
I'm Ryan Fugit, and I served Warzonetours as an Army Attack Helicopter Pilot
and CIA Officer over a 15 year career.
I'm fascinated by the experiencesof the elite in combat.
On this show, I interview some ofthe best to understand what combat
(00:43):
felt like on their front lines.
This is combat story.
In this episode, we sit down withStatesman and ambassador, David Miller,
who shares his expansive and storiedcareer starting from his early days,
surveying economic impacts in Vietnamduring the war to his intricate
experiences with the national securitycouncil and various international
postings and ambassadorships were joinedas usual by Glenn corn, who spent a
(01:06):
career much like ambassador Miller.
in service to the United States,but on the CIA side of the house,
as opposed to the diplomatic.
And you get to hear what it'slike when chiefs of station and
ambassadors truly work together.
Ambassador Miller recounts Tale's workingclosely with influential figures such as
Nelson Mandela and Brent Scowcroft, anddiscusses his involvement in developing
the Diplomatic Studies Foundation,which is a fascinating approach that
(01:27):
brings war games to country teams, witha different outcome in mind, peace.
Ambassador Miller reflects on thechallenges of delivering unvarnished intel
and narrowly avoiding any involvement inwhat he could sense was a scandal that was
coming and was later known as Watergate.
It's a great story.
You're gonna love it.
And then Ambassador Miller also helpedstart the Special Operations Fund, which
(01:50):
directly supports some of America'smost important families, those of the
fallen Tier 1 Special Operators wholost their lives in combat or training.
Which I know people who listen to thisshow will deeply appreciate with that.
Please enjoy this fun and wide rangingand interesting discussion with two
very storied leaders and Patriots
(02:13):
ambassador Miller.
Thank you so much for taking the timeto sit down with us and share some of
your stories from your storied career.
Thank you.
But, uh, it's a question of how muchyou want that's factual and how much is
storied, uh, but, uh, let me stick tothe facts, at least at the start, uh,
and, uh, of relevance, I think, to thisdiscussion, uh, most importantly, was
(02:40):
to getting out of law school and going,uh, essentially directly to prison.
And, uh, begin to, uh,wander around the Vietnamese
countryside 6 months before TET.
And then 6 months after, um, was witha group of Harvard and MIT professors
(03:00):
that had been assembled by ARPA atthat point without the D to offer
sort of a independent intellectualassessment on what was going on.
Interesting.
Um, when I say that, thatalmost sounds like humor to me.
Uh, but, uh, and I was, uh, it was avery, very good group of folks and,
(03:23):
uh, my thesis advisor, uh, was amacro guy, economics, and, and, and
I'm, I'm a Mac, uh, micro person.
And so he was looking at thebig economy and I was trying to
understand if the, if on the ground,the economy was actually working.
(03:45):
Which got us into the Hamlet evaluationsystem and so looking at the system
and reporting on economic activitywas sort of my 1st chance to take a
look at the effects of kinetic energy.
On, uh, components of, uh,economic development and, uh,
(04:07):
so that was, that was the 1st 1.
yeah, basically, like, what collegesends their thesis students to
Vietnam, like, their semesterabroad during an active war.
What is that Harvard?
Harvard always expectsbig financial gifts.
Just a shout out to my friends up and up.
(04:29):
And since I didn't have enoughmoney to do that, I said,
I'll send the kid to Vietnam.
Okay.
So what it's like the guy that the parentsthat had the money, they went to like,
the sore bone and you went to Vietnam.
Yeah, I know you, sir. Yeah,so there so there was that.
I, I think that the, there, there area lot of takeaways, obviously from that
(04:53):
situation, uh, one is that this was, uh,some of Bob McNamara and the, and the
Ford motor company was kids and so on.
And they, they had theability to take garbage.
And accumulate it and polish it.
And it looked like data by the time itgot to Mac V, we had won the war last
(05:17):
week and all the bombing that was stillgoing on was really wasted ordinance.
Um, and it, it taught me animportant lesson and that is.
The, the uniformed servicesas an intelligence agency when
evaluating their own actions.
(05:38):
They're not wildly good at that.
They by instinct followan orderly structure.
You can't get people to go over abeach if everybody stops and says, I
think the tree line is too far away.
I think we should go back inthe water and start over again.
If you ask the military to do a big,big study of how they're doing, it's
(06:00):
very likely to be, they'll be okay.
So the important part ofintelligence that the army needs
is, is tactical intelligence.
And that's where civiliansare, are uniquely not capable.
If you talk to, to some breacher whosays, I want to know the details of the
(06:24):
door behind you, ambassadors are liableto say, it looks like it's made out of
wood to me where any decent breachersbeginning to say, how many hinges set in
what kind of concrete rebar and so on.
I don't want to kill the people inside,but I only get to blow the door out once.
(06:47):
And so I think one of the things I tookaway from the Vietnam experience was the
value of, in those days, the CIA tryingto say, we think this is reality and
the army saying, no, this is reality.
I got exposed to that ata young intellectual age.
(07:10):
Which we ran in Afghanistan again, right?
I mean, there were differentassessments and a lot of arguments
about how well we were doing.
Yes.
And it's probably a value to have,that's why we have the communities
kind of divided, so we have differentview, different points of view.
No, exactly.
Sir, were you brought in there to, tokind of refute some of the, the polished,
(07:33):
as you said, garbage that was going out?
Was that part of ARPA'smission at that time?
Not necessarily to refute.
It was to validate lots of, uh,lots of issues that we actually
got things like, uh, KIAs.
What did the other side lose?
During the day, somebody wants a bodycount, the guy you send up to get a
(07:56):
body count is going to get killed.
Uh, you look at the rice paddy and,and we said, okay, there are 30 left
feet sticking up in the rice paddy.
How many dead hostile people are there?
We sent a message back to the WhiteHouse and said, you can't do this.
But we actually tried for a week.
Were you independent enough to say that?
(08:18):
How hard was that at that age for you?
Honest to goodness, sir,that's never been that hard.
I was part of that little groupthat briefed Governor Romney because
I'd gone to Michigan Law School.
But we had the opportunity to sit downwith the governor and say, look, this is
reality as the civilian community seesit, leading to the governor's response
(08:43):
of his being brainwashed and so on.
But no, we were just there tryingto validate what happened and post
10, for example, we spent 6 monthsgoing back to hard points that we had
reported on before the offensive tosay, pretty good and battery district
and province not so good here.
(09:05):
Uh, out in district 10, where we prettymuch lost control of district 10.
You may remember it.
It was obliterated.
Um, that's where I learnedthat tanks do not need roads.
Um, they just sort of drovewhere they want and, uh, it, it
does ruin the real estate andjust makes a mess out of things.
(09:26):
So, but to Ryan's question, like, how didthe military respond if you keep saying
things that they didn't want to hear?
Was there pushback?
I i subtle things like, Hey, we'regoing to drop you off in Vietcong
territory and see working way back.
I mean, what was the, well, uh, youand your rotary assets had head to get
me out to countryside so I could lookaround, which generally speaking was a
(09:51):
pain in the behind for them and so on.
So the only pushback I got wasthey tried to terrorize me in
the insertion effort, which, uh.
It turns out, frankly, I think helicoptersare a lot of fun, but they would rock
back and forth over the canals with skidssort of hitting the top of the palm trees.
(10:11):
And I think they were waiting for me toscream and jump out the door and and we
got shot at and all that kind of stuff.
When you say terrorized duringthe insertion effort that reminds
me of my high school years.
Anyway, let's move on Hey glenn, maybequestion to you You were also on you
were on that same end of having todeliver probably less than desirable
(10:33):
information during a war over the past20 years um in the post 9 11 war I mean
How did you deal with that when youwere about to deliver information that
you thought might not be well received?
Well, I would say thatlike within the agency.
I never had any Push back onasleep people, the leadership
was pretty good about it.
Uh, some other parts of the governmentdidn't want to hear the story sometimes,
(10:55):
and there would be bureaucratic battles.
But I would say that generally this, theleadership in the agency always had our
backs, like, when I was responsible for anissue, and you have to deliver bad news.
And I was thankful for that.
I, you know, I can't, I can'tthink of too many examples where,
like, we were thrown under the bus.
(11:16):
I was too junior for some of the,you know, the more famous cases now,
like weapons of mass destruction.
And, you know, I was just an operatorthen collecting and out on the
street and thankful for that as well.
But when I got more senior,generally, we got a lot of support.
And I never, I was never threatenednot to say something, right?
(11:36):
The opposite.
I was encouraged.
Ambassador is, as you came out ofthat year in Vietnam, um, clearly
you go on to a very storiedcareer in the diplomatic service.
Was there any concern there or thoughtto go into the military after that?
I ended up in the WhiteHouse fellows program.
And, uh, so, uh, spentessentially three years around
(11:59):
the attorney general's office.
Mr. Mitchell for most of thattime, and then on and off with John
Dean, and then it seemed prudentto not be there and I missed.
The number of years of free food upat Lewisburg, or why was it prudent
to not be there when you say that?
Well, there's, there's some of this inthe public record, but fundamentally,
(12:22):
there was a time when John Dean askedme if I could set up a safe house
for the president and, uh, even atthat tender age, I knew there were
people like him who could set upsafe houses with their eyes closed.
And so I said to John, that's crazy.
And John said, well, the presidentdoesn't want them involved in this,
(12:44):
which gave me a really fine sense thatsomething was going to go terribly wrong.
So no, so that's, I ended up working,uh, in a very large corporation.
So how'd you handle that when yourboss said, I want you to set up.
Basically do something that is illegal.
And this is Nixon, right?
This is under the Nixon administration.
, I mean, yeah.
(13:04):
You know, I mean, that's dumb.
Okay.
So yeah, yeah.
Sort of your question considerationis, that's really stupid, right?
Um, uh, you quit, you, you know, I, I meanthere, there are times in your career and
it's, it's advice I always give to youngerpeople, always have a parachute on.
(13:25):
If you think this town is a niceplace to work, you haven't been
working hard enough, because youwill come across things that will be
very difficult, and you've got to behappily married to a co conspirator,
uh, who cares about the country.
Primarily, so I've, I've always had thesupport to, uh, walk out the door and
(13:49):
say, I can't, I can't do this responsibly.
And that ended up leading that waspart of Watergate later on, sir. Yeah.
Yeah.
I, I, I went out to avery large corporation.
And, uh, I had an opportunity to,to talk with the chairman there.
And, and before Watergate, I, I looked at,uh, at Mr. Kirby and I said, the president
(14:15):
will not serve out his second term.
And the chairman, uh, of thecorporations looked at me and
said, what are you talking about?
And I said, he, he will notserve out the second term.
It won't work.
Yeah.
If, if you were there.
There were a lot of fine people thatgot caught up in this, led by, by Bud
(14:39):
Crow, who's one of the finest guys I'veworked with, uh, in, in government.
When it all blew up, he was convicted.
He went up to Lewisburg, and thenAllenwood, and I used to go up and see
Bud, and, uh, when it was all over,he got his bar membership back, uh, I
think out in the state of Washington.
But those, those were unusual times.
(15:00):
This is something Glenn and I had talkedabout before, which is just, um, as you
have these changes in administration,you get people in the military.
I saw this clearly in the military and,you know, very low level at the agency,
not where you were by any means, Glenn,but just people on one side of the
aisle or the other who get frustrated bywhoever's the newly elected leader and.
(15:21):
Can be very vocal about it andthere's, I've, I've had to have
pointed discussions, certainly whenwe were downrange in the military,
just we don't make the Troy.
I mean, we have our vote, butour job is to execute the mission
and certainly if it's somethingillegal, that's very different.
What you just described aside fromthat, it's our job to execute and
do what we were brought here to do.
(15:42):
And it's not easy.
It's certainly not easyon junior officers.
I will say trying to lead from the front.
That's really how the diplomaticstudies foundation came about.
And that is, we were, we, a bunchof old guys are sitting around
saying we're not doing as wellinternationally as we should.
(16:03):
So you can argue about strategy forever,but tactics, you can sort of look at.
The deployment of national assetsversus the objective and say, what
we began to say to ourselves, we'vegot to be able to do tactics better.
So, the diplomatic studies foundationsort of got together at Tom Pickering,
(16:27):
Chet Crocker, Randy Pierce, Steve Kappas.
These are all legendsfor people listening.
If these names aren'tfamiliar in this community.
Yeah.
Uh, and so we first did a study ofthe national security council, which
has emerged as the driving engineof this activity and testified for
(16:48):
the house foreign affairs committee.
And then they said, Oh, you coulddo a study of the state department.
So we Through a series ofconversations with Debsak, John
Sullivan, and so on, we said, we'regoing to do education and training.
Uh, that's the, the key to longrun success is competence of the
(17:13):
officers involved in pursuing tactics.
And so we have.
Uh, developed, uh, this little countryteam training game, which there go
back and forth between the militaryand the civilian community war games.
Want to give you totalbattle space awareness?
(17:36):
Civilians don't have a game like that.
And, uh, so I'd spent 4 years inAfrica on a very large project.
That is, it was essentially totalbattle space awareness over for
the private sector for the, forthe, for the private sector.
And, uh, so we did this, uh,country team training game so that
(17:58):
civilians could learn the samething that uniformed services do.
And that is, what's the threat?
What is my response capability?
What don't I know if I know everythingand hopefully do I have a response
package capable of handling that andhonest to goodness when when we call
(18:22):
this a peace game, everybody said,well, we must have a peace game.
I mean, surely we must trainembassies how to work together.
And the answer was no, no,this is Johnny Carson McMahon
trying to do a handoff here.
Are you also correct?
So you're right.
(18:42):
Oh, no.
So we Johnny, you're the best series.
No, the, uh, yeah, thepeace games, um, and DSF.
Very, very unique, you know,investor Miller when I met him
and he told me about this project,you know, I said, Ryan, I, we, you
know, we did training with the FBI.
We did training with thespecial operations command.
(19:02):
We did training with other elements, theUS government on the security side, but we
never did training with State Department.
Right.
We never did training withUSA, which is amazing.
Yeah, right.
Because you're out in the fielddoing stuff, you know, in the field,
you're thrown together with them whenyou're a junior officer, you just,
you just socialize them with themat the, you know, the club or maybe,
(19:23):
you know, in your different sections.
But when you're in leadership positions,you're for the 1st time, you're
sitting across from someone fromstate, someone from treasury, whatever,
and you have to get along with them.
And there's no program that wasdesigned to, like, meld people
back here in a non, uh, how tosay a non threatening environment.
(19:44):
Right.
And so, uh, this, this program that theambassador developed and the team at DSF
developed is pretty impressive becauseit's basically a war game designed for
the outcome to be not war, not kineticaction, but peace, like success diplomacy.
And it's kind of important to mentionthis right now, because we just came
out of a very, let's say, tense pressconference in the White House for meeting
(20:07):
between the Ukrainian president andthe US president and vice president.
And one of the things thatJD Vance said is like, you
know, we want to get to peace.
And I think we all want that.
Right.
But how do you get to peace?
You have to have this diplomatic skillsand tactically be able to operate as a
team to use all the tools that the U.S. government has at its disposal to
(20:28):
get victory without having to go to war.
So it's an open objective,and it's something that the.
The peace games and the DSF, uh, hasbeen working to help State Department and
other parts of the U. S. government, theforeign affairs community, accomplish.
Just a quick word from oursponsor, Mint Mobile, and we'll get
right back to this combat story.
I don't know about you, but I likekeeping my money where I can see it.
(20:50):
Unfortunately, Traditional bigwireless carriers also seem
to like keeping my money too.
After years of overpaying for wireless,I finally got fed up from crazy high
wireless bills, bogus fees, and freeperks that actually cost more in the
long run and switched to memmobile.
Memmobile is what I use formy Combat Story account.
It's worked flawlessly when I'mat home and when I'm traveling.
(21:12):
Say goodbye to your overpriced wirelessplans jaw dropping monthly bills.
And unexpected overages.
MIT Mobile is here to rescue you.
With premium wireless plans startingat 15 bucks a month, ditch overpriced
wireless and get three monthsof premium wireless service from
MIT Mobile for 15 bucks a month.
If you like your money,MIT mobile is for you.
Shop plans at mit mobile.com/combat story.
(21:34):
That's MIT mobile.com/combatstory upfront.
Payment of $45 for three month fivegigabyte plan required equivalent.
15 per month, new customer offer forfirst three months only then full
price plan options, available taxes andfees, extra cement mobile for details.
And now.
Back to this combat story.
Yeah, I love this this concept and glenn.
(21:56):
I might just put this question to youUm, we we hear this term the country team
which makes sense to the those of us whohave been in those communities overseas
Could you just explain to listeners?
What is the country team and thenmaybe ambassador after after glenn
explains that How would you seesomething like this playing out right
now with russia and ukraine in reality?
Like how would this work properly?
(22:18):
Yeah, great question.
And, uh, uh, a country team.
So every embassy, every diplomaticmission abroad is run by an ambassador
who is the president's specialrepresentative to what to the country.
So country X. And then you havedifferent agencies and departments
that are represented there.
They have their personnel there.
So, you have a state department.
You have may have treasury.
(22:39):
You may have some places.
We had NASA.
We had, uh, you know, thedefense intelligence agency.
So, you have defense.
So, you go down the list sometimesnow, many more places homeland security
and FBI, because we're trying tobring the fight to the enemy down
range right outside our borders.
And the ambassador is in chargeof all those people that are
(23:00):
under the ambassador's authority.
And the country team is basicallylike the leadership team, or
maybe like the corporate boardthat meets usually once a week.
I, when I was in positions ofauthority, tried to avoid those
meetings, like the plague.
That's the joke, right?
Isn't it that we wouldn't sayanything in those meetings?
Yes.
Well, either that, or I had oneambassador tell me that he said,
(23:21):
Glenn, you're always the grumpy guy.
He always had bad news.
I'm like, sorry.
I got an image to uphold.
But, uh, but, but the, the country team,if you have a country team that functions
well, it can be super valuable becauseeveryone knows what the synergy is,
what, what capabilities you have, whataccess you have, who you're talking to,
you know, what you can bring to bear.
(23:42):
And if you have an experiencedambassador that they know how
to make a country team gel.
Uh, but of course, one of thegoals of DSF is to train people to
be better on country teams beforethey even go into the life, life.
Right.
And I'll turn it overto, uh, Johnny Carson.
Here's Johnny.
Uh, yes, see, we've been practicing thisfor an hour or 2 before you came on.
(24:06):
It's clear.
Yeah.
Generally speaking.
That's a good description of thecountry team and the fact that a
good ambassador then takes thatcountry team and does two things.
And that is, if you're a good manager,you can make two and two equal five.
That's Vince Lombardi.
(24:26):
Uh, that's all great coaches.
They, they take people, uh, it'sthe spec ops recruiting issue.
You start off with 100 young peopleout at buds and you end up with 5
people learn how to play over theirhead when they're well coached.
So, the ambassadors doing 2 things.
(24:47):
He's looking at the assets that arethere and getting in the play better.
And then.
He's the only person at post that canidentify gaps and try to fill them.
So if you play this peace game, yousay the 95th Civil Affairs guys are
like the, uh, development missions,but the 95th stores uniforms and
(25:13):
the other aid programs don't.
Oh, okay.
And, uh, then if you see gaps in yourAuthorities, you're the only guy that
pick up the phone, call back to the NSC.
And say, I got a problem.
I can't do this.
And I'm not even sure Ihave the legal authority.
(25:35):
So, would you tell me, can I do this?
And if we practice that here, beforethings are going wrong down range.
It's theoretically possiblethat we could actually do better
downrange if we practiced here.
So, that's, that's reallywhat we've been up to.
It's scrimmaging.
(25:56):
Yes.
Right?
It's scrimmaging.
So, for those of us that playfootball, American football,
not that other strange football.
No.
I just alienated half your audience.
I'm sorry.
Yeah.
You mentioned Vince Lombardi.
You mentioned Vince Lombardi,the greatest American leader
ever, maybe after Ronald Reagan.
I don't know.
Someone.
Maybe.
And Ambassador David Miller,who's the president of the
(26:18):
Diplomatic Studies Foundation.
Yeah, I pay him 2.
50 for every inject like that.
Which, by the way, nowadays doesn'teven get me a cup of coffee.
Yeah, but you gotta say it more.
I mean, that's how you get the coffee.
That's right.
You want coffee.
That was five bucks right there.
Oh man, I'm making a killing here.
Let me tell you somethingI wanted to say about that.
(26:41):
Just a little exchange.
This is how an embassy ought to run.
There's a, there's, this friendshipat an embassy is absolutely critical.
If the COS and the ambassador don'twork together, you have a huge gap.
We, we ought to be a reinforcing teamand it's like everything else, trust
(27:06):
comes from getting to know each otherand laughing together and they're going
to be good days when bad things, uh,are put off and then they're going to be
bad days when bad things occur and, andyou gotta, you gotta like each other.
With, um, with what we're seeing withUkraine right now, just, uh, can you
(27:27):
give an, not, not even an example,but for both of you who have been
on the front lines of dealing withpressing issues from the NSC globally
partners, um, should we imagine a, uh.
A country team is being convened right nowin Ukraine or pick your country for this.
(27:47):
What are they talking aboutin those sessions right now?
Who are you mobilizing in the,in the embassy community to try
to get ahead of what's happening?
And this is all in light ofdiscussions between president Trump
and Zelensky, as you alluded toearlier, Glenn, uh, public affairs.
For sure, because you're going to have thewhole press piece, you know, you imagine
a lot of people in Ukraine have a lot ofquestions and people around the world.
(28:09):
I'm sure embassies around the world,you know, they have to get their talking
points to try and explain what, what,what physician us position is your
political officer is going to talkto people in the ministry of foreign
affairs, you know, another in the,maybe the presidency, the ambassador is
going to be doing a lot of engagement.
Maybe the ambassador is actually herewith President Zelensky in a lot of cases.
That's what you do.
(28:30):
You send your with the principal.
Uh, you know, you're going to have,which we get a shout out to our,
our friends and diplomatic security,because you may have increased threats.
To an embassy, or of course, youalso have to do all the security
for, for the, the VIP traveling here.
Um, you know, uh, well,everything, you know, the defense,
(28:52):
like the military industry.
Gotta go talk to MOD, gottatalk to the different services.
So, and of course, behind the scenes, wedon't know what's what's being discussed,
but we may be making new agreements.
We do have this new mineralagreement, which has been achieved.
And so there's going to be I'm sure, like,treasury is going to have to get involved.
You're setting up visits.
A lot of people from Congressare going to want to go out.
(29:13):
And talk to the Ukrainians.
Yeah.
Uh, Ukrainian delegations aregoing to want to come here.
So there's a lot of logistics, logisticalcoordination, which is very difficult.
And it also often takes up my experienceoverseas, but it took up over half
the time of an embassy all visits.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So there's a lot and of course, theambassadors try to manage all this.
(29:37):
It's like, it's like thechief of protocols job.
If, if two heads of government gettogether and the meeting ends at the
White House, they've gotten along.
Everybody says.
What great people they are.
Right.
And then if you have a meeting and itdoesn't work, everybody looks at the chief
of protocol and says, boy, that was dumb.
(29:58):
You know, you sat them in the wrong place.
How did you do that?
It is a job that, that never wins.
Yeah.
It's it's hard.
There's a lot of churn right now.
Yeah.
I was, I was going to ask, I'm going topivot just slightly in the interest of
time to the special operations fund, sir.So obviously you spent a year in Vietnam.
(30:19):
You have.
Long time career at the NSC, um, as anambassador in private sector, but you
took the time to stand up and supportthe special operations community.
And I'm just curious where that came from.
Uh, Brent Scowcroft.
Interesting.
No, that's a single, single word answer.
(30:40):
General Scowcroft and I became friendswhen we were both in the private sector.
I was back for being an ambassador.
He was in between tours asa national security advisor.
And, um, we'd gotten to know eachother and, uh, uh, he got, he got a
call from the The incoming presidentasked him if he could come back
as a national security advisor.
(31:01):
And we were right along ina, in a taxi here in town.
And he looked at me and he said,uh, President Elect just phoned
me and asked me to come backas a national security advisor.
And I said, I hope you said yes.
And he said, I think I did.
To which I wanted to say, you shouldknow the answer to that clearly.
And then he said, yeah,but you're coming with me.
(31:22):
And I said, well, that's, that's cute.
Um, what, what are youthinking I should do?
And, uh, he said, we'll have breakfastnext week, whatever I'll tell you.
Uh, at breakfast he said, I wantyou to, to take the counterterrorism
drugs and thugs account, ifyou will, hostages and so on.
And I said, so what doyou want me to, to do?
(31:45):
We cannot have another Ollie North.
We cannot afford to havepeople pick up the phone and
say, this is the White House.
As Brent would say, the WhiteHouse doesn't call anybody.
There are people that workthere that call people.
And so his big question to me was,tell me what you think of these guys.
(32:06):
I, I, I don't want to.
Back on anybody by, by name, butthere are famous seal six commanders
and so on, who had a great deal ofhutzpah, like breaking into the CNO's
house and little things like that.
So we didn't want to see that happen.
So I got to know these guys andthey're, they're extraordinary people.
(32:26):
And I had a background in, in investing.
And so when I left.
I, I knew widows and kids and so on andso forth, and I said, well, I'll, I'll
put money together to try to take care of.
It's a relatively simple idea.
It's been going almost 35 years and,uh, we cover all the tier 1 units
(32:48):
and anybody out with a tier 1 unit.
Amazing.
Yeah, it's been the most wonderfulthing I've done in my life.
Wow.
Amen.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Thank you for doing that, sir. Imean, we have many people on here
from those communities on this show.
Um, we don't often talk to the familymembers, but almost to a person,
(33:08):
each individual I interview willsay that the hardest part was on the
families and what happens afterwardsand taking care of spouses and kids.
And we, we often refer tothem as gold star families.
And I know you're, you're talkingabout them in the tier one context.
So thank you for what you do there.
And I know the people listening tothis show will greatly appreciate that.
I wanted to ask, um, you had mentionedobviously your time in Africa, sir, not
(33:32):
just as an ambassador, but time that youspent there outside of that international
development and aid is a key part of that.
Obviously, some of the things we'veseen in the news recently, uh,
changing USAID's posture is probablyforeign to most Americans, honestly.
Like if you didn't.
Spend time in the diplomatic community.
You might not be aware.
(33:54):
I'd be curious from your take given yourtime in Africa What do you see with USAID?
How how would you encourageAmericans to think about USAID
as a program what it gets right?
What it gets wrong?
Well, let me open up with a Republicantest, which I always applied, and that
is, my dad was an active rotarian,and I always pictured myself at a
(34:18):
rotary club in Cleveland saying, Itook 20 from you, and we invested
it in maternal and child health carein Tanzania, because it will make a
better world for your grandchildren.
Now, if you can't Ask that and come upwith a satisfactory answer, then you ought
to rethink how you're spending the money.
(34:40):
But generally speaking, I'mvery comfortable with aid
programs that have promotedagricultural development stopping.
The spread of malaria over and overagain, um, there's, there is a very
important role for carefully rundevelopment dollars that are in,
(35:03):
expended in the interests of the UnitedStates and of the recipient countries.
That's, yeah, you know, I wouldsay Ryan, this is my perception.
The American people need abetter explanation of how
their money's being spent.
They have every right to that.
I think we've gotten so big as agovernment and maybe so isolated
here in the beltway that peoplejust assume that everyone is behind
(35:26):
what they're doing with the money.
Uh, some of the programs, to my knowledge,what I saw were not really reflective of
what the American people's values are.
And that was a mistake,but most of them are.
We've always been a very generous nation.
You know what pri the privatesector, private communities, uh,
have always given to help others.
(35:49):
During, during the Russian, uh, civilWar, we gave millions of dollars of
aid to the people of Russia who arestarting from a ate Southern Russia.
Uh, you know, during the, duringthe, after the second war, sorry,
after the first World War, we hadeight programs all over Europe.
Uh, we, we had the Marshallplan, which was probably the most
effective aid program you couldever think of in advancing U.
(36:10):
S. security.
And that's the thing.
I think Americans need to understand.
Many of the programs are designed toadvance our national security interests
and protect them, keep problems awayfrom the shores of this country.
But I do think we, as a, as a country,we, as a government need to do a much
better job explaining to Americans,educating them on why their tax
dollars are being used for that.
(36:32):
Uh, and I. All the Americans I know,they're great people and they're,
they want to help other people.
They just wanna make sure that the money'snot being wasted and they wanna make sure
that the money's not being, uh, siphonedoff by some corrupt officials somewhere.
And that's their, I haveevery right to ask that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And, and ambassadors don'tdo enough taking the time to
(36:56):
explain to American citizens.
Where their money is goingand why it's important.
That's my old rotary test.
I can, I can picture folks in Clevelandlooking at me and saying, we, we
don't have enough money for X andyou're taking money outta my pocket.
Yeah.
And uh, they have every right to ask that.
(37:18):
Uh, and when you don't answer it,you get what's happened today.
And that is a, a sweeping effort torebuild US development assistance
that's part of the country team dynamic.
I was curious how much.
Sway does the ambassador have indirecting that aid or in adjusting
it on the ground sometimes When, forexample, 1 of my favorites was the,
(37:45):
the president of Tanzania, uh, was,was opposed to an aid program that we
were sponsoring with the Canadians.
That was dry land agricultureat which they are good.
That's heavily mechanized.
If you will, so President Nurerisaid, now, Ambassador Miller, let's
(38:06):
see, you want me to do dry landagriculture with big equipment
because that's the modern way to farm.
And he said, I have no foreign exchange.
So I can't buy equipment andI have no money for fuel.
So I couldn't run the equipmentif I bought and I have
people that need employment.
Oh, so let's see, you're goingto put people out of work.
(38:29):
Modernizing agriculture.
That was really dumb.
Now, we, we solved that by working witha guy named Bob Rodale, who's in organic
farming, was in organic farming here.
And, and my dear wife, uh, got meto Bob Rodale's organic farming.
(38:50):
We bought a gazillion books on organicfarming, got them to Julius Nereri.
And then the magic sauce was putin, and that is the Americans
endorsed organic farming.
Now, as Julius Murray said, that's whatthe Maasai have been doing forever.
They pick up animal dung.
They put it inside an enclosure at night.
(39:12):
Oh!
Yeah, but now it's at Whole Foods, so.
Yeah, yeah.
And it costs you a dollar and eight.
I was going to say, we canadd a two dollar markup.
Yeah, exactly.
So, uh, if you're, ifyou're a good ambassador.
You, you try to keep your aidprogram within 10 points on either
side on a, on a true headache,unless things are really bad.
(39:37):
And so, between my wife and Julius,we, we, we improved the aid program.
High five.
That's a great one.
I'm going to ask one more question,then I'll let you get out of here,
sir. You just have mentioned inthis short conversation, you know,
being in the car with the NationalSecurity Advisor, being on the ground
in Vietnam with other very importantpeople meeting with heads of state.
(40:00):
As you look back on your career, isthere a particular meeting that you had
that still stands out a very memorableengagement encounter with a world
leader, just a very important personthat you could not have predicted?
Really, you remember fondly NelsonMandela, by far the most remarkable
human being I've ever met.
(40:21):
We were in Vindhook, uh, Secretary Baker,uh, uh, was meeting with Mr. Mandela
for the first time after his release.
And, uh, the, the talks.
Uh, went okay, uh, but, uh, we weregoing to go on to South Africa, and
the, uh, anti apartheid activitiesin the States, and Mr. Mandela said,
(40:45):
I wish you wouldn't go to SouthAfrica until apartheid has ended.
So, after their meeting, uh, wewent out into a little garden area,
and, uh, there was a lot of pressthere, and, uh, Secretary Baker.
Uh, was, was getting a lot of toughquestions about Mr. Mandela doesn't
want you to go to South Africa.
Why are you doing this?
(41:08):
And when you're the bag carrier,you're sitting there holding
two bags and saying, oh,
those, those, those are bad questions.
When I suddenly felt some pressureon my back and I turned around and
there's Mr. Mandela and he's walking up.
To secretary Baker, and heputs his arm around him and
(41:29):
he said, you've got it wrong.
This is my new friend, Jim Baker,and we're going to be fine.
I mean, you could have pushedme over with Mr. Man, Mr.
Mandela was an astounding human being.
I was the note taker in the ovaloffice and to, and to watch him work.
(41:50):
He was great.
A great, great man.
Sir, thank you for this short discussion.
This is fantastic.
Glenn, thank you for making this happen.
Any, any last words to,to listeners right now?
Uh, Glenn or Ambassador Miller?
I just want to wish yourlisteners a great weekend.
Yeah.
Yes.
America.
Yes.
(42:11):
May they have something to drinkwhile they're watching this.
It'll go down better.
Fruit juice.
Yeah.
Fruit juice.
Yes.
Remember juice.
Yes.
Remember Katniss onlydrinks lemonade prune juice.
Thanks gentlemen.
Just a quick word from our sponsorto leave me having spent many
years in the security space.
I'm very aware of how much personalinfo is out there and what determined
(42:35):
people can do with it from identitytheft to phishing, harassment, doxing.
Unwanted spam calls and more I've beendoxed in the past and it's something I
do not want to experience again That'swhy I personally choose to leave me
delete me as a subscription servicethat removes your personal info from
hundreds of data brokers Delete me sendsyou regular personalized privacy reports
showing what info they found where theyfound it and what they removed Delete
(42:58):
me isn't just a one time service Delete.
me is always working for you,constantly monitoring and removing
the personal information youdon't want on the internet.
I got my most recent reportearlier this month and it
reviewed over 1, 800 listings.
To put it simply, Delete.
me does all the hard work of wipingyour and your family's personal
information from data broker websites.
(43:19):
Take control of your data andkeep your private life private
by signing up for Delete.
me.
Now, at a special discount for ourlisteners, today get 20 percent off
your Delete Me plan by texting combat to64000, text combat to 64000, that's combat
to 64000, disclaimer, message and datarates may apply, see terms for details.
Popular Podcasts
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Therapy Gecko
An unlicensed lizard psychologist travels the universe talking to strangers about absolutely nothing. TO CALL THE GECKO: follow me on https://www.twitch.tv/lyleforever to get a notification for when I am taking calls. I am usually live Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays but lately a lot of other times too. I am a gecko.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.