Leading United States Central Command - with General Frank McKenzie

Andrew Hammond: Welcome to "Spycast," the official podcast of the International Spy Museum. I'm your host Dr. Andrew Hammond, the museum's historian and curator. Each week we explore some aspect of the past, present, or future of intelligence and espionage. If you enjoy the show, please consider leaving us a five star review. Coming up next on "Spycast."

Frank McKenzie: If you spend a lot of time contemplating the pressure of the decisions, you become McClellan [assumed spelling]. You're frozen. You're in thrall to the moment. You can't afford to do that. You've got to decide. You've got to act. You've got to go and do the next thing because history's going to move. [ Music ]

Andrew Hammond: This week's guest is the former commander of U.S central command whose area of responsibility is the middle east, central Asia, and parts of south Asia. As you can imagine, four star general Frank McKenzie was very busy while in this role between 2019 and 2022. General McKenzie was commissioned into the U.S marine corps in 1979 after graduating from the Citadel military college in South Carolina. And since then he has done everything from command the marine expeditionary unit in war through to being the director of joint staff for the joint chiefs of staff committee. Currently General McKenzie is the executive director of the Global and National Security Institute at the University of South Florida where I am currently a senior non resident fellow. In this week's episode you'll learn about what it's like to be an intelligence consumer at the highest levels of the U.S military, the important of intelligence to central command, how General McKenzie oversaw operations that took out two caliphs of the Islamic state and the head of Iran's revolutionary guards Quds force, and an insider perspective on the final U.S withdraw from Afghanistan during his tenure at CENTCOM. The original podcast on intelligence since 2006, we are "Spycast." Now sit back, relax, and enjoy the show. Well, thanks ever so much for joining me, General McKenzie. It's a pleasure to have you on the show.

Frank McKenzie: I'm delighted to be here this morning.

Andrew Hammond: It would be good to talk about your book obviously, but one question that I think is not asked very often which I think is an important one, you recently completed 42 years in the U.S military and the marine corps. What did that mean to you personally as a member of a family, as an American? I think we often discuss what you did which is very, very important, but I think that the meaning question's important too because you done it for a reason. Right?

Frank McKenzie: That's a -- that's a great question. So I was commissioned in the marine corps in 1979. When I graduated from the Citadel and accepted my commission I had no idea that I would end up holding that commission for 42 years, 10 months, and 3 days. And I don't think anybody that graduated with me thought I would either. No one would have thought I would down the road be where I finally ended up. And I would tell you that I went in the marine corps because I wanted the challenge. It was physically demanding work. It was -- it involved leadership and it involved being around people. And I was drawn to the marine corps because of its sense of purpose, the sense of being part of something larger than yourself with shared values and contributing measurably to the defense of the United States. And I actually believed those things then. I -- as much as I believed them the last day I was in office back in 2022. So, you know, you go in and you find you like it or you don't. My son did six years in the marine corps and left to go into the business world. I found like many people do -- I, on the other hand, found that I -- the work was challenging, but the people were why I stayed in. I enjoyed being around the people. Finest people in the world in the marine corps and the other components of the joint force. It was -- it was challenging to be with them. I enjoyed it. And I got a sense of fulfillment. You know some jobs were more interesting than others, but all gave me a sense of contributing to the mission of an organization that was very important to the United States. And, you know, as you go along you get an opportunity to do broadening things. You get an opportunity to go to school. But you find that and what I found was I liked to lead increasingly larger organizations. And I got tremendous -- you know tremendous pleasure from doing that. And sense of fulfillment. And ultimately leading very large organizations. And that, the marine corps, enabled me to do that. And to do it -- be in the company of just wonderful people while I was taking on that task.

Andrew Hammond: And tell us a little bit more about your book, "Melting Point." So this is a distillation of those 42 years. Where does the title come from? It's quite an interesting title.

Frank McKenzie: Sure. So the title "The Melting Point" is actually taken from Barbara Tuchman's wonderful book "The Guns of August" which talks about how Europe entered the first world war. And in her book she has a passage in there that reads this. "That melting point of warfare, the temperament of the individual commander." And I was always struck by that. And so I -- my book is about my time as a combatant commander in the United States. Really centers around the years 2019 to 2022, a three year period of time that I was in combatant command. And being a combatant commander is unique and combatant commands in the United States are unique organizations. There are 11 of those -- 11 combatant commands in the United States. Seven are geographic. By that I mean they are responsible for a portion of the world. And four are functional. The functional commands are cyber command, transportation command, special operations command, and space command. So there are four of those and there are seven geographic command commands. So my geographic command command spanned that part of the world, 21 nations from Egypt in the west to Pakistan in the east, Kazakhstan in the north, to Yemen in the south. So 21 nations. Headquartered in Tampa, Florida. But the unique thing, and this is not understood perhaps by a lot of people, is in the United States system under our constitutional system a combatant commander works for two people. You work for the secretary of defense and you work for the president of the United States. That's the path that orders flow. No one else can give an order to a combatant commander. The chairman of the joint chiefs while the nation's senior military officer and by law and custom the senior military advisor to both the president and the secretary is not -- cannot give orders. Only a combatant commander can give orders. So and the joint chiefs of staff, the heads of the services, very important people, all of them good friends of mine, they can't give operational orders. They raise the force. They train the force. They equip the force. They maintain their forces. But they present the forces to combatant commanders who execute the strategic objectives of the United States based on orders from the president and the secretary of defense. So it's a very short chain of command. But any time a ship sails, an airplane takes off, an infantry battalion gets on ships to sail away, that's done under the supervision, leadership, of a combatant commander.

Andrew Hammond: And one of the things that I love about our podcast, General McKenzie, is the people that listen to it range from people that are working these issues to the average person on the street that just loves a good intelligence or national security story. So I think it would be quite interesting. Could you just tell them where does -- where does this come from? Where does CENTCOM come from? Because 1983 it comes along. You mentioned in the book the Carter administration, how that's important in laying out the groundwork for this. And then also the Goldwater-Nichols Act. So we don't need to get too much into that, but I guess some people would ask, "Well, why is that? Why does it go president, secretary of defense, and combatant commander?" Why? How are the joint chiefs not part of that system? And has that always been the case?

Frank McKenzie: Right. So at one time the joint chiefs were a part of the system and they were effectively in the chain of command. You would really you go back to the second world war that was sort of the way the system worked. But what came out of the second world war was a realization that you needed unified action. You needed some single person in each campaign to actually control the air, the land, and the sea operations. Perfect example of course is Eisenhower in the European theater. And Nimitz in part of the Pacific theater and Douglas MacArthur in the other part of the Pacific theater. They were each supreme commanders in their region. They commanded all of the joint force. So air force, navy, army, and marine elements in those campaigns. So after the second world war over a series of iterative adjustments we got to the current system. And the current system is again the world is divided into seven geographic areas and there's a document that does that signed by the president that actually comes out every two or three years. It makes adjustments as necessary. But the theory is you have one person in there who is responsible for all of the joint force. And now of course not only is it the services I've just discussed. Cyber is a factor. Space is a factor as well. So you now also manage those responsibilities within that geographic area. And so that's -- but the theory is what it allows you to do is bring together the synergies, all the capabilities of the disparate joint force, bring it together to accomplish the task that you're given. And you get your task -- your job assignments come from the secretary. And look. It's not just the secretary. Clearly he's got a huge staff in the Pentagon that advise him, and the joint chiefs and the chairman play a role in this because while they're not in the chain of command they are advisory in nature and they clearly contribute to the way these tasks come down to the combatant commanders. And so that's a -- all of that is above the level of the combatant commander, but the unique thing about the combatant commander is this. Under our system the combatant commander participates in policy debates. So as decisions are being weighed, the combatant commander has a voice in those debates. It is a subordinate voice. It's a junior partner voice. But it's a voice. And then once the decision is made, that political policy decision is made, the combatant commander walks out of the room. He gets his orders and he executes that decision. He's the only person the bridges that divide. There are a lot of people who participate in policy debates. There are a lot of people who execute orders. But only the combatant commander participates and then executes. And that's why I go back to the title of the book. It's a unique perspective to be a combatant commander because you see the interactions at the very highest level of policy, interactions with the president, with the secretary at the very highest level, and then you're responsible for taking those discussions, those decisions, and then turning them into military orders. And then you are responsible for execution of that. And the final point I would make is -- and it emphasizes something I think that is very important in the United States and we need to continue to think about it although I believe we're in pretty good shape on it. Civilian military relations. The final decisions must be made by the civilians. You never want a situation where the military exercises an overweight view on policy. The military's a junior partner here. I can tell you what it will cost to do this. I can argue for a course of action. I can argue strongly for a course of action. But when it's all said and done it needs to be our properly constituted civilian leadership that makes these decisions. And then we execute those decisions.

Andrew Hammond: And just to briefly touch on Carter, on the formation of CENTCOM, in the book you discuss some of the painful birth pangs of CENTCOM where, you know, it has to be on our ships and we control the ships. Or, you know, you're not taking our people to do this. But nevertheless it comes to be and it sounds like it's probably for the best.

Frank McKenzie: So in the late '70s, as you know, Iran deposed the shah, became a revolutionary regime and became a fierce opponent of the United States. President Carter saw that conflict in the region was inevitable and he really had a vision of a separate combatant command that would focus on that region because particularly so much oil then came from that region to the United States. Not so much the case now, but then we were very much dependent on it. And it was divided then between European command and Pacific command. And there's an old saying about the British army. The British army fights all its battles at the junction of four map sheets which is really hard. I'll just tell you when you've got to put map sheets together and all the military nomenclature associated with that, sort of the same thing here. You don't want to fight battles on the boundary of a combatant command because now you've got to coordinate back and forth across. So ultimately we created U.S central command with the countries that I mentioned. It was actually a little larger back then. It had some of Africa in it. The powers that be, and by that I mean the joint chiefs particularly, but also the other combatant commanders, were not interested in ceding authority to a new combatant command. And we went through a period of time where the navy in particular was unhappy about its ships operating in the constrained waters of the middle east if you think about the Arabian gulf, if you think about the Strait of Hormuz, the Bab al-Mandab, the strait that the Houthis are current contesting in the Red Sea. Those are -- that's what we would call narrow waters. Ships are vulnerable when they're up against the land. So the navy was never particularly happy about having to operate in there. So as a result the headquarters had a lot of birth pains and pains actually associated with this creation. And some of those continue to this day where central command has to fight for resources simply because sometimes our focus is on the middle east. Sometimes it's on the Pacific. Appropriately so. I would argue we need to be focused on the Pacific. But at the same time you can't look away completely from the region because it's a vital region to the United States. We have a longstanding relationships there and even more so now that Israel was moved from European command into central command. So a number of things have come together to make CENTCOM still very relevant.

Andrew Hammond: And this is something that you recommended, the movement of Israel from European command to central command?

Frank McKenzie: It was. Back in the summer of -- spring of 2020 under Secretary Esper, secretary of defense Esper's review of -- global review of forces and combatant commands. It was my recommendation. Secretary Esper, to his credit, took the idea, made it his, argued, argued the case. Went over to the White House and ultimately President Trump signed the unified command plan, the UCP we call it in shorthand, that says, "Here's your area, combatant commander." And what it does is it really makes small modifications. But in this case we moved Israel into central command. What that did was it gave us a platform to more fully incorporate Israel into defensive planning in the region. We were already planning with them because even though they were in EUCOM their threats came from the east. They were not in danger of being attacked by Italy, for example. So they looked to the east. They looked to Iran. We always looked to Iran as the principal opponent in the theater. So there was a natural community of interests there. So it was -- I think it was a very smart move, very -- appreciate Secretary Esper supporting it and I appreciate President Trump actually making it happen.

Andrew Hammond: In hindsight to me from my, you know, perspective it seems like the -- why was that not always the case? It almost seems like it's like the anomaly of Israel being in the Eurovision song contest. You know, it just make -- it just seems to make geographic sense for it to be in CENTCOM.

Frank McKenzie: It makes geographic sense. It makes -- and it makes military sense for it to be in central command.

Andrew Hammond: And just briefly before we move on, so Egypt is the only African country that's part of CENTCOM and I guess it makes sense if Israel was there. Then Egypt should probably be there. And it makes sense that -- it makes sense to me again, but that's quite interesting like the one country that's part of CENTCOM.

Frank McKenzie: So until about I'm guessing 10 years ago when AFRICOM was stood up, central command had owned much more of Africa. It was split between central command and European command. So when Africa command stood up they took all of Africa with the exception of, of course, Egypt. And the reason Egypt is in central command is it's the Suez Canal which is the principal entry into the theater. Egypt is an Arab country with significant cultural political throw weight in the region. So it made a lot of sense for Egypt to be in CENTCOM from the beginning. But as you know, the real anomaly was the fact that Israel was not in CENTCOM from the beginning and that's now been corrected and I think it's -- I think we're stronger and Israel is in better shape. I think everyone's in better shape because of that.

Andrew Hammond: And I'm just thinking it's interesting that CENTCOM in the book you discussed the painful birth pangs. You discussed the fact that it was sort of seen as a little bit of an afterthought. Europe and the Pacific were, you know, where the action was, quote, unquote. But when you look at the history of CENTCOM and look at the CENTCOM commanders there's probably some of the generals that most people are -- most people would be most aware of. So Norman Schwarzkopf, Anthony Zinni, Tommy Franks, John Abizaid, David Petraeus, former CIA director. And then we've got two that have went on to be secretary of defense, Jim Mattis and Lloyd Austin. So as a launching point to, I don't know, being a household name, or bigger things, so I guess the question is can we expect you to be in a future cabinet at some point?

Frank McKenzie: I certainly don't think so. I certainly don't think so. But I would say the reason you know their names and the reason that CENTCOM figures so large is because what goes on in the region, the events that occur there. It's a cock pit, if you will, of where nations -- where nations challenge each other. You know first of all you've got vast resources there. You've got the world's choke points there, the Suez Canal, the Bab al-Mandab, the Strait of Hormuz. You've got the world's religions come together there. So there are ancient enmities and modern problems that all sort of have a confluence in this region. And so that's why we need to be represented there. United States has interest there in a lot of different dimensions. So I think it's good that we are there. We can adjust our presence up and down. Doesn't always need to be a massive presence there. But we need to be there. And we need to be relevant there because of the resources that go out to the rest of the world. Less to us right now, but still significant resource flow to our partners in Europe and others in the Pacific. [ Music ]

Andrew Hammond: Here is a short interlude to help you place the episode in greater historical context. I would like to discuss the northern tier countries, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran, which were seen by U.S policy makers as a buffer between Soviet expansionism and the Persian Gulf oil fields during the Cold War. In 1979 the U.S embassy in Pakistan was burned down. The U.S ambassador to Afghanistan was kidnapped and killed. And over 50 Americans were being held hostage in Iran after the U.S embassy was stormed. Inside those countries that same year the former prime minister of Iran and the former president of Pakistan were executed, but the year previous the then prime minister of Afghanistan was assassinated during a coup d'etat. It already seemed like the northern tier was crumbling when the Soviet Union invaded the non aligned country of Afghanistan on Christmas day, 1979, ushering in the longest war in the history of the Soviet Union. This invasion led to the Carter doctrine named after Jimmy Carter, the president, which is that any attempt to take over the Persian Gulf by the Soviet Union would be seen as an assault on the vital interests of the U.S and if necessary repelled by military force. It also led however to the establishment of the rapid deployment joint task force to deal with contingencies in the region which would later develop into a separate competent command called U.S central command. Or as more commonly known, CENTCOM. [ Music ] [ Static followed by a beep ] [ Typing sounds ] I want to dig in to intelligence more and the role that that played when you were the commander of CENTCOM, but at a more general level is -- and I know this is not necessarily a fair question, but just because of the nature of the region is intelligence even more of a prominent factor being a CENTCOM commander compared to being the Pacific commander or -- I mean I know it's important in both, but I'm just -- I'm just trying to get a sense of how important it was for CENTCOM particularly.

Frank McKenzie: Well, I can talk to CENTCOM. And I lived on -- I lived with my intelligence. I mean I began the day -- so I'll just tell you briefly. I began the day with a -- I'd get up early in the morning. I'd read classified emails at home early in the morning. I'd go into the office and I'd have an intel briefing. And that my staff would take. And that might take 20 or 30 minutes. And then I'd have a series of other intel briefings that got increasingly classified to the point where I was ultimately the only person in the headquarters who could receive the information. And so that focuses your thinking. But I'll tell you obviously there's a language barrier, you know, in the region. We -- the languages are very different. You know, so you've got to break that. You have to good -- have to have good translations. And you have to have experts that can place what's being said, what's happening, in cultural context and in strategic context. So you spend a lot of time with people like that. And a lot of that's classified, but also a lot of it's open source. I mean the "Economist" magazine's a pretty good source of what's going on in the world. So I made a point always to not only take the classified briefings which probably consumed at least two hours of my day every day digesting those along with reading everything else I could get on the theater that was in an unclassified vein. And we had news -- we had organizations that skimmed unclassified topics, clipped them, and presented them to me. And so I would read that, but I also chose to read four or five newspapers a day, particularly those things that pertained to my region, but also more broadly. I think when you're a decision maker the classified information is seductive. It's fascinating. And you want to listen to it. But at the same time you want to place it in a broader context and that means you've got to look at open source intelligence that hasn't been -- you know, that hasn't been analyzed. And ultimately you've got to process it all in your own mind as you go forward. I found that to be a very useful process for me. Every commander is different. Everybody gets information in different ways. I'm a voracious reader. My great fear in life is being trapped somewhere without something to read. And so it worked for me, but everybody's a little different.

Andrew Hammond: And tell me how that all came together, so the intelligence component of all of this. So would a CENTCOM commander have some kind of military intelligence equivalent of a presidential daily briefer? Would you have like one person who would follow you around everywhere or like how did that all shake out?

Frank McKenzie: So as the CENTCOM commander you actually saw the PDB. I saw the presidential daily brief. I had a briefer from the organization that prepares that brief. And that person would come in, spend some time with me. That was one of the briefs I took every day. I also had a very close relationship with my J2, my intelligence officer. And my intelligence officer for all three years of my time at CENTCOM was then a marine brigadier, then major general, named Dimitri Henry who is now a lieutenant general and is the intelligence officer of the joint staff here in Washington. One of the brightest, most intelligent officers I've ever known. I would see him on average 3 to 10 times a day. He would -- he could walk into my office freely if he had something to say. We had a completely open communication. I depended on him. Now okay. So he's -- he's doing that. But yes. I also had a briefing team that would rotate every two or three months because it's good to get new blood in there and it's good for junior officers to be exposed to me. But I enjoyed the interaction with the analysts, the people that would come in that are actually doing the raw processing of information. It's good for them to see the commander. It's good for me to talk to them. So it's a virtuous circle. And you sometimes get things that you might not otherwise get. So I had a -- I engaged the intelligence architecture from the top to the bottom inside the headquarters.

Andrew Hammond: Tell me a little bit more about that architecture. Were there -- obviously there was military elements there, but are there people from CIA, NRO, NGA, DIA? The whole --

Frank McKenzie: Every agency you just mentioned is fully represented within central command. Any combatant command headquarters. Central intelligence, defense intelligence, NGA, the mapping people, all -- NSA. All of those entities -- NSA I mean National Security Agency, basically signals intelligence with them. All of those entities are there. And so the trick is they do a pretty good job of synchronizing their presentation of information, but that was what Dimitri did for me. He was -- at the beginning I said, "Dimitri, you're going to be my guy that is going to give me -- you're going to synchronize all this information for me. I want you to blend it and I want your analysis on it. Is this -- should we believe this? Is there an internal contradiction here?" And I went with him on that and he was so good. Typically that's a two year assignment. I wouldn't let him go. I said I can't conceive being the CENTCOM commander without Dimitri Henry being my intelligence officer. And I'm glad to see that the joint staff has recognized that. He's now the senior, you know, military intelligence officer really of the United States and the joint force.

Andrew Hammond: Wow. And for the intelligence and the way that it flows to you, so you've got Dimitri Henry, but in the book you speak about how you worked for General Mattis at one point and occasionally he would reach down beyond you to people below you and initially it was -- it was a bit discomforting. But then when you became CENTCOM commander you realized that that was actually quite helpful because sometimes you don't want it filtered through someone else or you know obviously you completely trust Dimitri Henry, but some people can filter the information trying to look after their careers or promotion or bureaucratic turf fighting. But if you get that analyst who's sitting immersed in this stuff every day, just talking to them and you're getting a different perspective.

Frank McKenzie: You are. And it's not only in intelligence. It's in operations and other domains in the headquarters. But you're right. I found it useful to reach down and talk to the person who had exhaustive knowledge of the subject. And so when I was -- as we noted just a moment ago, when I was the J5 for General Mattis, the strategy and plans officer, I felt, "Well, you should talk to me about it." And but when I became the commander I realized sometimes I want that information. What I want from the flag officers, from the senior officers, is not necessarily exhaustive knowledge of every nuance. What I want is context because the key for a commander is pattern analysis. What am I seeing? This mosaic that's in front of me, it shift. How has it shifted since yesterday or not shifted? And what does that mean? And so the data, this dot has moved here, I can get that from the analyst and he'll tell me why. He or she will tell me why in great detail. But I need that. But if I want to know why it shifted and what's its relationship to this other piece of information over here, there I back up and that's where I want a more senior appreciation. Someone who can take the larger view. And I found that very useful because I think the art of campaign design, the art of fighting, is to rapidly process what you see, what's changing, make sense of it, and but in order to do that, you know, at the very beginning with your intelligence people you've got to decide what is it we're going to look at. What's important to us? You know, what are those things that we -- we're going to study? Because if you look at the wrong things then you're looking at the wrong things. You may miss key indicators. And so that's -- I spent a lot of time with my intelligence people at the beginning of anything saying, "What is it that we're going to look at here?" And you've got to go back and revisit that frequently. You know we're looking at this, but nothing's changing. Well, is it okay? Is that interesting and important that it's not changing? Or is it not useful to continue to look at it? So you need to constantly review that. And you do that with -- you know, with your intelligence people. You do it with your operations people. You do it with everyone. But the key is pattern analysis. You need to be able to discern the change rapidly and understand what that means.

Andrew Hammond: And for intelligence would you -- so you're the recipient of intelligence. Are you also tasking people? Like I need more information on this. This has to be priority number one.

Frank McKenzie: Absolutely. So inside of combatant command headquarters one of the things you do is establish PIRs, priority information requirements. There are a number of other acronyms I could throw at you, but I won't. But you say, "Look. These are the 15 things that are really important to me." Some of those are what we call blue force information about us. Things I need to know. And then some of them are about potential opponents. What are they doing? You know, what's the status of the Iranian missile force? How many missiles have they moved out of storage? That's -- that might be a key indicator for me. I want to know that. And to do that now I might have to then make a -- I might have to either make a decision on apportioning resources for that or go ask for more resources from the broader intelligence community. So you can go up on -- some things I can achieve within the command. Some things I've got to go outside to ask for. And so that -- that's part of an ongoing discussion you have with your J2 and Dimitri goes forward and argues that. I argue it as necessary.

Andrew Hammond: And I just wondered if you could take a moment to reflect on the evolution of how you used the intelligence over the course of your career. Obviously as you go further up the ranks it changes and it shifts, but I just wondered if you could reflect on that.

Frank McKenzie: Yeah. So I -- I've always been a student of military history and I have found that organizations that devalue intelligence or that place a priority on operations over intelligence in the long run tend to do poorly. I think there's no better example of that than the German army where you had a -- under the German staff system the operations officer was primary. The intelligence officer often worked for him and was secondary. Organizations that tend to not pay attention to intelligence ultimately I believe pay a very high price for that organizational failure. So the marine corps as a culture and as a service has always placed a premium on intelligence. And so I grew up in that culture. And I always -- it's like this. Your intelligence officer is going to be -- you're going to have to listen to him eventually. Probably at the start is better because he's certainly going to be there at the end. Just like your lawyer. If you want the lawyer to help you at the end, he needs to be there at the beginning. And so what that leads you to is really intelligence paints that picture and it describes the operational environment within which you can operate. So here's the risk. If you're an aggressive commander, and I would consider myself an aggressive commander throughout my entire career -- if -- sometimes you -- there's a temptation to lean on intelligence to tell you what you want to hear. Shape the information so that I can do this operation. Same thing with logistics. You can -- you can destroy your logistics if you're so intent on the operation that you don't listen to his concerns. I've -- so I matured over time. I got -- my approach was very different as a three star general and a four star general than it was as a lieutenant colonel when I was a battalion commander. I think I listened to my intelligence officer when I was a battalion commander, but I was a lot more sensitive to it as a more senior leader. For one thing the amount of information is so much vaster that you've got there. But you have to -- you have to begin with intelligence and you have to continually listen to it. At the same time in the back of your mind you need to recognize you can't go into it with a -- with what I would call confirmation bias. You can't go into it with a preconceived notion. We all -- you know, the human mind always wants to look at a problem and find a construct that will give it sense. And I'm very -- I have to watch that because once you've found that construct you have to be talked off the construct. And so I'm very careful now in later years about building that intellectual construct until I have all the facts because my bias is to act. That's just my nature and I control it. So I've learned to control that over time.

Andrew Hammond: And I think just before we move on to some of the things that happened when you were at CENTCOM which some of them were exceptionally significant historically, I just wondered if you could tell me because the vast majority of listeners and in fact the vast majority of military officers or people in the military will never get one star, never mind four stars. So I just wonder if you could tell me a moment what was it like that moment when you found out that you were going to be a general? Was it like a -- like your first star. Was it like a sigh of relief like, "Oh." You know, yeah. Tell people what that was like and was one of the stars sweeter than the other one? I mean obviously getting the fourth star is -- must be --

Frank McKenzie: You know the fact of the matter is there are a lot more good people than there are opportunities. And for everybody who makes -- becomes a general officer or flag officer, there are 10 people that could have been that. There's an old saying about the marine corps. It's apocryphal, but they pick -- marine corps picks 7 to 10 generals a year. And when the commandant comes in to see them and says, "Look. If we put you 10 guys on an airplane and it crashed and all of you died, we got 10 more that we can bring up here and do it." So when you become a general you need to be humble because you got there in a profession where chance plays a huge role. General Sherman once said the profession is too full of chance to be a calling of the first order. And he's right. I mean you can do everything right and still you're not going to progress because someone loses a rifle, someone flies an airplane into the ground. You know you -- something that you don't have direct control over affects the organization for which you're responsible. And that's it. You know, a ship runs aground, particularly in the navy, and so the consequences are profound because the stakes are so high. It's a mortal responsibility and that's probably the way it should be. When I found out that I was going to be a general I was humbled. I was probably a little surprised because you know you never think -- you never think it's going to happen, and then it happens and there you are. I will tell you, though, the biggest promotion was three to four stars. That's uniquely different. That is bigger actually than colonel to brigadier general. The promotion from three to four stars is unique particularly if you're going to be a combatant commander because who you talk to changes. The circles that you move in change. The weight your advice carries is now profound and the responsibility is absolutely complete. Now it's complete for any commander at any level, but particularly for a four star because of who you are advising and who is giving you direction it is uniquely different. It's a very rarefied atmosphere. There are not a lot of four stars out there. Certainly not in the marine corps there aren't. But, you know, you think all the time -- I think of all the people that could have done the job as well or better than me that didn't. And that's a humbling experience and look. With four star generals there's no inner monologue of inadequacy. No concern about -- no worries about, you know, answering questions, stuff like that. So you gain profound confidence. But at the same time you recognize the stakes of a wrong decision are pretty profound. So I -- so you tend to be -- you tend to make sure you've got all the information you've got before you make decisions. You can't delay the decision because then that becomes a decision in and of itself. But you just you begin to -- you know and understand the scope of your decisions.

Andrew Hammond: How do you deal at that level? How do you deal with the voice on your shoulder? You know because at one level that you say the risks and the consequences are quite profound. So if you do something right it's great, but if not then that could be -- there's lots of like excellent military officers who've made one mistake and that's all they're remembered for. How do you -- how does that not become incapacitating? So like somebody like Grant, for example, was just, you know -- just marched to the sound of the guns and, you know, keep it -- what's his quote? Like just keep attacking and keep going until we get to the end. Whereas McClellan had this great reputation, but he was so incapacitated by like what if I do this and what could happen, etcetera, etcetera. So how do you -- how do you keep your kind of confidence or your aggressiveness up?

Frank McKenzie: So one point is this. If you've got to be -- so let's take Grant and McClellan. That's a great -- that's a great -- that's a great principle. If you're going to be effective, you've got to -- so you control this vast machine. Many, many tens of thousands of people. In order to wield it, you have to accept that it might be destroyed. Many people are going to die. And so McClellan could never come to terms with that. And that may make him a better human being. Grant could come to terms with that which is why he continued to press the attack in the Spotsylvania battles in the summer of 1864 and then fought all the way down to Richmond and never stopped because he knew. So I'll put it in -- being an effective commander is like playing quarterback in the NFL. You run a play. Play's over. Line up and play the next play. You have to ruthlessly compartment. You cannot -- you cannot take counsel of your fears. Doesn't mean that you don't think about it. But you -- in the moment you've got to go to the next. You've got to go to the next problem. I mean I'll give you an example. When we struck Qasem Soleimani it was a profound moment for me in a lot of different dimensions. But the second that strike happened it was behind me and I was thinking about the consequences. What did we need to do? I had phone calls to make. I had orders to give. So you don't have -- the marine corps and I don't think any service tends to produce introspective senior leaders. Most senior leaders are introverted and I would describe myself as an introvert, not an extrovert. And you learn to be extroverted because you've got to be extroverted to do the job. But not introspective. If you spend a lot of time contemplating the pressure or the decisions, you become McClellan. You're frozen. You're in thrall to the moment. And you can't afford to do that. You've got to decide. You've got to act. You've got to go and do the next thing because history's going to move. Events are going to continue to occur. If you want to try to control those events, you have to anticipate and you have to be ready to act. And you can't do that if -- you know if you're doing some teeth sucking and if you're worried about what you just did. Because that's behind you forever and no act of yours will ever change that. But you've got people out there in the field that are depending on you to make good decisions now and you've got to make those decisions.

Andrew Hammond: The Soleimani example's quite a good one because you said that as soon as that happened you were like, "What's the next play?" And I guess the difference with the NFL is there's no -- 90 minutes never comes really or the -- it doesn't culminate in the Super Bowl. It's like I know you're a big reader. It reminds me of that Willa Cather book "Death Comes for the Archbishop" where there's no -- there's no beginning, middle, and end. It just it just continues on.

Frank McKenzie: Yes. Yes. The dang goes on. And of course the stakes are much higher than in football. So, you know, I always hesitate to use football as an analogy except that the idea that event happens and the next event's coming, it's going to come in 20 seconds and you've got to be ready for it. And so you're right. When that happened I was -- now I went home that night some hours later, sat down, talked to my wife, decompressed a little bit. Now you have an opportunity to reflect on it. But at the moment you owe more to the people that are down range that are in harm's way. You don't have the luxury of reflection. You can reflect later in your own time, but even then there's something always on your mind. [ Music ]

Andrew Hammond: In the last interlude I mentioned how the collapse of the northern tier countries was connected to the formation of CENTCOM. And that one of those countries was Iran. In the spy museum collection we have a framed photograph of Tony Mendez talking to President Carter. Tony was a CIA officer who helped orchestrate the exfiltration of six American diplomats from Iran who had been hiding in the Canadian embassy after their own was overthrown by Islamic revolutionaries. Tony went to Iran and helped spur them out under the pretense of being Canadian filmmakers who were in Iran to scout for locations for a bizarre science fiction movie called "Argo." If this rings a bell, it's because Ben Affleck turned the exfiltration into a movie called "Argo" which won three Oscars in 2012. We feature the story of the so-called Canadian caper here at the International Spy Museum where you can see artifacts from the actual operation up close in our exhibit space. [ Music ] [ Static followed by a beep ] [ Typing ] So tell us a little bit more about that. So I mean some of the things that happened when you were there, so Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the caliph of Islamic state, October 2019, Qasem Soleimani, January 2020, the withdraw from Afghanistan, we can talk a little bit more about that. The next leader of Islamic state in February 2022. Iraq is going on there. Then just to make things a little bit, you know, even more difficult for you, COVID happens during this whole period. So I mean I guess just before we dig into each one of them did you ever think, "This is just my luck." All of these things unravel. I've been carrying water for these four stars for years and now I get to the top and everything unravels on my watch, but it's not my fault. It's part of a like historical process that I'm just at the end of.

Frank McKenzie: So --

Andrew Hammond: I'm being playful obviously.

Frank McKenzie: One of my former bosses, General Jim Mattis, he always decried what he called the fallacy of historical presentism. The idea that, well, now I'm here and it's so bad because I'm here. You know people tend to think the world revolves around them. No. The world doesn't revolve around you. And I would tell you I was so busy in the moment and found the work so rewarding it never crossed my mind. I'm being absolutely candid with you when I say that. I mean anyone who is a theater commander and decries their fate shouldn't be a theater commander. And I don't think any -- I don't think any theater commander ever said that to be honest with you.

Andrew Hammond: I guess I didn't mean in the sense that, you know, it's all about me. It's my fault. Just more like of I've taken over.

Frank McKenzie: A bummer. It's a bummer.

Andrew Hammond: Yeah. Almost like when Churchill takes over in like May 1940. I mean it's like the worst possible time. Right? France is being, you know -- it's like a terrible time to really take responsibility. But he stepped up to the plate anyway.

Frank McKenzie: It's a great opportunity. You've got to see the opportunity in it. And so senior commanders, you need to be positive. You need to be a glass half full guy, not a glass half empty guy, because when you're in command everybody's looking at you. Everybody looks at the commander all the time. His moods. His body language. What he says. What he doesn't say. So your own George Patton once told his son, "You're always on parade." And that's true. You're always being watched. And so you need to -- you need to take that into account when you're in command. And so everything you do needs to message the purpose you want to set for the headquarters. And I was -- I tried to do that. Sometimes I was -- some days I was better than others, but every time I -- every day I would recognize that people were looking at me and they depend on me to be right. You know there are people out there that are actually in harm's way. I'm not, but I am responsible for them. So they deserve the very best I can give every moment of my life.

Andrew Hammond: And let's talk a little bit more about the Afghanistan withdraw. So in the book you talk about the Trump administration and Doha. You talk about the Biden administration and the final execution of it. So there's plenty of blame to go around. You also -- you also discuss a couple of congresspeople who come and visit the theater of terrible times before. So I guess I'm just wondering like a lot of people out there will be thinking, you know, all of this money that we spent, the people that we lost, and so forth. Like how did -- how did it all unravel so badly? You know, you're a student of history. You were there at the end. Like what went wrong? I know that that's a long -- that's like a 10 volume book. But if you were to summarize it like what kind of happened?

Frank McKenzie: Sure. So let's begin at the beginning. In 2001 we're attacked by Al Qaeda operating ultimately from bases in Afghanistan.

Andrew Hammond: And you were in the Pentagon.

Frank McKenzie: I was in the Pentagon that day. I was in the building when it was struck. I was the executive assistant to a three star marine general. So very immediate -- very immediate history from me there. It changed my life that day. So we went into Afghanistan because the Taliban wouldn't give up Al Qaeda. And so we invaded Afghanistan. And we made a number of choices at the very beginning of the first two years of occupation of our occupation of Afghanistan that played directly into the end. First of all we had an opportunity to kill Bin Laden in the fall of 2001. That was a military error. We did not take advantage of that. Had we actually captured or killed Bin Laden up in Tora Bora in the fall of 2001, the campaign might have gone a very different direction. So we should just -- counterfactual. Who knows? But that was an opportunity that we lost. The form of government that we established in Afghanistan through the Bonn conference, another problem perhaps. And then we had mission growth. We went in there to, you know -- to ensure Al Qaeda didn't attack. Eventually we decided over a period of time incrementally that we were going to rebuild Afghanistan. And my theory is Afghanistan is not ungovernable. It is governable. It is not governable in a western model. And we never fully recognized that. So the other thing was so the Taliban -- it's important to note the Taliban have no intentions of attacking the homeland of the United States. They're all about imposing medieval repressive, cruel, ugly sharia law in Afghanistan. But we were fighting the Taliban and we never got rid of the sanctuary in Pakistan. So all our counter insurgency doctrine, all the pounds and pounds of paper that talk about counter insurgency doctrine, all emphasize you've got to cut off external support. We never did that. So I don't know that we could have put in any amount of forces into Afghanistan and prevailed in that conflict as long as they had a safe place to go across the border into Pakistan. There are many more factors that played into it, but I think those are -- several others. We had the opportunity right after 2001, early 2002 perhaps, to either crush the Taliban completely or bring them into the government. We elected not to do that. And then of course our invasion of Iraq. I think a grave strategic error. Took our focus off Afghanistan. And so Afghanistan lingered in the shadows. Never got the support. Our campaign there never got the support that it needed until it was too late to do that. The proximate cause of the end, though, what brought us to horrific scenes of August 2021, were -- was this fact. You had two American presidents as unalike as any two presidents in American history, President Trump and President Biden, who both shared an overarching policy objective of getting out of Afghanistan regardless of the consequences. And so, as you know, the transition from the Trump to the Biden administration, there was no policy continuity at all except in one area, Afghanistan. They both wanted out. And so what you had was the Doha agreement which President Trump approved in 2020 actually provided a road map to go forward to leave Afghanistan. Required both sides to take actions. We took actions. The Taliban didn't. They didn't do any -- with one exception. They stopped attacking us and doubled their attacks on the Afghan military. But what you got was we had -- we -- both administrations view the Doha agreement as a schedule to leave. So do the Taliban. In fact the Doha agreement was designed to be a series of agreed upon decisions and checklists that if conditions weren't met we wouldn't proceed. We proceeded regardless of the fact the Taliban didn't meet their obligations under the agreement. That's how you got to the point where election day -- inauguration day 2021 there's 2,500 more or less U.S forces left and more than that in terms of over 4,000 NATO troops in Afghanistan at that period of time. President Biden ultimately made the decision to go to zero. And but at that time that decision was made which was in April of 2021 we did not make a decision at that time to bring out our embassy, our citizens, and the at risk Afghans. And, in fact, we delayed and delayed and delayed on that decision as the Afghan government collapsed because our support left. We get into the summer of 2021. Then early August 2021 we don't actually declare an evacuation until the 14th of August. That's very compressed. All our combat forces had left. We had to bring them back in at great, great cost. And it was of course tragically American lives were lost in that -- in heroic execution of that withdraw. But there was a fatal flaw in the decision to leave in that we did not decide to bring everything out. It was foreseeable. It was knowable. And we decided to -- I think we decided to believe that the laws of history don't operate against the United States. Choosing to leave a fight brings certain consequences even against the United States. And I think we felt that against the odds we could maintain an embassy there. Life would go on. Well, life couldn't go on. The Taliban were taking over and, you know. And so the Afghan government collapsed. And it became untenable to remain. But we recognized that way too late in the process. And that was not -- that was not a military mistake.

Andrew Hammond: That's what I was going to ask. So even the most cursory look at the Soviet Afghan war from '79 to '89 would tell you that if there's a safe haven in Pakistan then it's going to be almost impossible to achieve your objectives. But I'm assuming it's not like the CENTCOM commander that's making these decisions. This is politicians that are saying this is what we're going to do and the military have to basically work around that and try to somehow rescue the situation. Is that correct?

Frank McKenzie: It's certainly not any of the series of CENTCOM commanders that were responsible for that. No.

Andrew Hammond: Yeah. Yeah. And just I think just finally on Afghanistan so it's fascinating to me that in maybe the past 200 years probably the 3 biggest powers longest war in history of the United States, Afghanistan, longest war in history of the Soviet Union, Afghanistan, probably three of the most bruising encounters for the British empire, Afghanistan. I mean it's obviously just a coincidence, but like why? Like it's uncanny really, isn't it?

Frank McKenzie: It is. And, you know, I've spent a lot of time in Afghanistan. My son's gone to Afghanistan twice. So my family has a lot vested in Afghanistan. Afghanistan's a beautiful country. Iraq looks like upcountry California. High desert California. There's nothing in the world that looks like Afghanistan except Afghanistan, particularly in the east and in the north. It's an area -- it's an area of stunning beauty, particularly early in the morning and late in the afternoon as the sun comes up and the sun goes down. It's absolutely beautiful. Where it is is certainly a part of it. I mean the Russians have -- Russians and then the communists and now the Russians again threatened by the revolutionary movements that come out of Afghanistan and go north. You know we went in there because of the terrorist threat that emanated from there. And, by the way, that threat is now regenerating and we should expect to be attacked again from Afghanistan in the future. I think that's likely. Ask the Russians. They just took -- absorbed a very brutal attack in Moscow that was launched by adherents of ISIS K, ISIS Khorasan. So I think we're not finished in Afghanistan. I don't think we're going to go back in, but a more appropriate way would be to say the forces that are in Afghanistan are not completely finished with us despite our desire to turn the page. It's not always easy to turn the historical page. History sometimes resists being manipulated like a business plan.

Andrew Hammond: And two final questions. I know that you're leading the Global National Security Institute. And that's actually one of the ways we got connected. I'm a non resident fellow there. So could you just tell our listeners a little bit more about that please?

Frank McKenzie: Sure. So the Global National Security Institute is affiliated with the University of South Florida. It's a think tank that just turned two years old. I'm the executive director of it. And what we want to do is we want to provide actionable, usable, policy recommendations and policy options to decision makers at the state, the national, and the international level. And we're just getting off the ground. We -- you know what we do is we right now we use a methodology of studying difficult problems, bringing in experts to look at it, and producing short cogent recommendations to policy makers as a result of that. And so we think, you know, we're excited about the future. I think we've got a great future ahead of us and I'm glad that you're part of it.

Andrew Hammond: And final question. One of the people that or one of the connections between us is Dave Oakley [assumed spelling] former U.S army officer, and I was speaking to him the other day just telling him that we were going to be having a chat. And he was saying that in the interview you said to him the first sort of substantive question was, "What are you reading?" So my question to you is just like what are you reading? I think I would be interested to know.

Frank McKenzie: Sure. So I'll tell you. I just finished the book on the Challenger disaster, "Heroism and Disaster at the Edge of Space." It just came out about three weeks ago. That's a very good book. And it's well written and I enjoyed it. And I just finished "The Trader and the Spy" by Higginbotham I think that talks about the Oleg -- gosh.

Andrew Hammond: Gordievsky?

Frank McKenzie: Yes.

Andrew Hammond: Ben Macintyre.

Frank McKenzie: Yes. Ben Macintyre. What a great book. I read his earlier book, "A Spy Among Friends." Really enjoyed it on the Philby thing. So I enjoyed -- I enjoyed both of those books. Really, really liked them. I'm rereading "The Allure of Battle" by a historian. I think his last name is Cathal. I read it about five years ago, but I'm rereading it now. It's a great book. He makes the argument that battle is overemphasized. That, you know, we overemphasize the importance of individual engagements and warfare. I'm not sure he proves his case, but he's a lovely writer and it's a great book. And so I recommend that. I also just went back and reread the Rabinovich book on the 1973 Arab Israeli war because of the intelligence failures that he highlights in there. And that's -- I actually brought him to lecture at CENTCOM while I was a CENTCOM commander because of the parallels between the intelligence failures of '73 and the intelligence failures of October of last year. So I've just sort of -- I've just sort of reread that. I've typically got five or six books open at any time. I read them on -- you know I typically have all tuned up on my iPad. And again my fear is I'll have to sit down somewhere and I'll have to actually not be able to read. So I love to read. I'm a voracious reader. I'm never -- I'll read anything. And but those are the ones that I've just sort of -- that I've just sort of finished right now. And I've got several others in the hopper lined up.

Andrew Hammond: And I've just finished reading General Frank McKenzie "Melting Point."

Frank McKenzie: Well, I encourage you to recommend it to your friends and everyone listening please buy two.

Andrew Hammond: Well, thanks ever so much. It's a pleasure to speak to you.

Frank McKenzie: And the same here. Thanks so much.

Andrew Hammond: Thank you. [ Music ] Thanks for listening to this episode of "Spycast." Please follow us on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you have feedback, you can reach us by email at spycast.spymuseum.org or on Twitter on intlspycast. I'm your host, Andrew Hammond. My podcast content partner is Erin Dietrick. The rest of the team involved in the show is Mike Mincey, Memphis Vaughn the Third, Emily Coletta, Emily Rens, Afua Anokwa, Ariel Samuel, Elliott Peltzman, Tre Hester, and Jen Eiben. This show's brought to you from the home of the world's preeminent collection of intelligence and espionage related artifacts, the International Spy Museum. [ Music ]