Rachel Flor: Good evening. I'm Rachel Flor, incoming Executive Director of the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation. On behalf of Alan Price, JFK Library Director and all of my Library and Foundation colleagues, I thank you for coming this evening.
I would also like to acknowledge the generous support of our underwriters of the Kennedy Library Forums: lead sponsor Bank of America, the Lowell Institute; and our media sponsors, the Boston Globe, Xfinity, and WBUR.
I'm also delighted to welcome all of you who are watching today's program online.
Secretary Carter kindly agreed to pre-sign copies of his new book before tonight's program. And our bookstore will be selling signed copies, if you're interested, after the program.
We thank you all for taking this opportunity to silence your cell phones.
This evening, we are delighted to welcome Ash Carter, the author of, Inside the Five-Sided Box: Lessons From a Lifetime of Leadership in the Pentagon. He served as the 25th Secretary of Defense under President Obama, and served in numerous jobs in the Department of Defense over 35 years. He currently serves as the director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University's Kennedy School, and is also an Innovation fellow at MIT.
I'm also so pleased to introduce our moderator for the evening. David Martin has been CBS News's national security correspondent covering the Pentagon and the State Department since 1993. In that capacity, he has reported virtually every major defense, intelligence, and international affairs story for the CBS Evening News, as well as for other broadcasts, including 60 Minutes and 48 Hours. He has received several Emmy Awards for his reporting.
Please join me in welcoming our special guests for the evening. [applause]
David Martin: Thank you. That bio actually makes me seem younger than I am. [laughter] I started covering the Pentagon for CBS News in 1983. And I had covered it for several years before that for Newsweek. So it's about 40 years that I've been covering the Pentagon. That's what Ash Carter would call a legacy system. [laughter] Something built for the Cold War and repurposed for the wars of the 21st century.
I covered the Pentagon just by walking around the building and talking to people. And I like to think that I hold the world's record for number of miles walked in the Pentagon. But after reading Ash's book, I'm no longer so sure that I'm the record holder because he, too, liked to walk around the building. And with all his security clearances, he could go places I can't.
He at least walked far enough to identify one problem that's been bugging me for years. And remember where you heard this first. The Pentagon has a severe shortage of urinals. [laughter]
Ash Carter: Can I say something about that? That– First of all, to people who have served in the Defense Department – my first job was 1981 – this is the best reporter of the Pentagon. Everybody knows that David Martin is it. [applause]
David Martin: Thank you.
Ash Carter: And I always say that because it's really important, because what we do is serious business and you want it seriously reported. Now, that doesn't always mean comfortably reported, and sometimes as he walked around he got information we wished he didn't have. And he always told the truth even when that hurt, and all that. But I just want to tell you that it means a lot when you're in a leadership position when you have people in the press who are as high quality and professional as David.
Now, the urinals, however… [laughter] you'll remember, because you go back far enough, one of the amazing things about– the Pentagon's a beautiful, splendorous building, and everybody has seen it flying in and out of National Airport, and most of you looked over and said, I wonder what it's like to be inside of that thing which is what the book is about. But one thing you can't see any longer are the wondrously sized bathrooms that it used to have.
When I started working there, I was amazed. There were two on every corridor, and you went in and there were 25 urinals down one side, male side, 25 stalls on the other, and 25 sinks. You remember. And ladies, I presume, same thing; there was certainly one in the same geography on the other side of the hall from every male one.
Now, why? The reason is that this place was built during World War II and it was awash with clerks. And we don't need clerks like that anymore; people have email and so forth. And so, when it was rebuilt – you know all this – but it was rebuilt after the 9/11 attack, one-fifth by one-fifth wedge. We shrank the bathrooms dramatically. Maybe too much. But they were vast, and it was a source of wonder to me when I first– many things were a source of wonder to me my first job in the Pentagon, the size of the bathrooms.
David Martin: So we promised you a good discussion about national security. [laughter] Regardless of who the record holder is in miles walked, there's almost no question that Ash Carter knows more about the Pentagon than anyone alive. As a scientist, he knows how the weapons work, and as an executive, he knows how the building works. And he is the only person to have held the top three jobs [audio drops] Secretary for Acquisition, which is basically the chief weapons officer– the chief weapons buyer.
The book he's written, a lot of it deals with the Obama administration, because that's when he served, but it is as much a tutorial about how the Pentagon works or doesn't work as it is a memoir. So we've got him now for an hour-and-a-half, which is about three hours longer– or three times longer than we ever used to get you when you were Secretary of Defense, so I hope to make the most of it.
And I want to start on the news. On Friday, President Trump pardoned three servicemen who were accused – and in two cases convicted – of war crimes. Before making that decision, he consulted his Secretary of Defense. What would your advice have been to him?
Ash Carter: I’m guessing– now, I have to judge from the outside looking in, but I believe my advice would have been the same that I think the current Secretary of Defense's was, which was to stick up for the military justice system. It's very hard from the outside in to know in a particular legal case what the right outcome was. So unless you have a problem of principle with the law being applied, which I don't in this case, or you believe that there was some violation of proper process and protocol, and so forth, you have to let the military justice system work. It worked in this case, and I would not have interfered. And I certainly wouldn't have advised the President to interfere with it.
David Martin: One thing these cases all had in common was that their supporters took to Fox News to argue that these men were being persecuted for decisions they made in the heat and chaos of combat. So now that they've been pardoned, what is the message that sends to the troops?
Ash Carter: Well, it's a message of disrespect for the justice system. And you know, David, I always used to tell people I make no apologies for the fact that the United States takes its values to the battlefield. It's part of what we represent as a country, but it's also part of the ethos of the troops. And so, when we make a mistake, which we do– and I remember getting on the airplane – which you traveled with me numerous times, on the E-4B out at Andrews Air Force Base the morning the– I'm not sure you were on this particular trip, but we were attacking a hospital, a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan; by mistake, obviously, but there– I mean, just hammering it for a whole hour; it was awful.
And, you know, that's the kind of thing that, were we the Russian military or the Syrian military, you might sweep under the rug. That's not the way we behave. And in that case, there's no conceivable excuse you can give, and I accepted responsibility for it, the President accepted responsibility. We found the people who made the mistakes and they were punished appropriately.
But that has to be done in front of the world. It also has to be done in front of the force itself, because these kids want to feel that they're on the right side of things, that they're proud of what they do and that they have given themselves to an honorable pursuit, which is the protection of their country and making a better world for their children. And they really buy that. And their moms buy it. And their spouses and their kids buy it. And we've got to stand for that whole thing.
So the message it sends is not the message that the leadership sends, but it's also not the message that their families are sending to them, and it's not the message that their heart is sending to them either.
So I know how this happened. And I think it's very unfortunate. They were charged with something that is against everything we stand for. And by a legal system that behaved the way we built it to behave, they were found guilty. Period. And this is one of these things, David, that we shouldn't be messing around in.
I'm getting a little ahead of the story here. One of the points I make in the book is, when you're running, in this case, the largest institution in the world, you have essentially two responsibilities. One is to lead it forward into where it may not want to go. And people can be stodgy, they can be used to doing things a certain way, they can be unwilling to face the future, they can be frightened, and so forth, and you have to drive, in this case, the military so it's not living in the past and it represents the best of modern technology and all that kind of stuff.
But the other thing you have to do is stick up for what it's really good at. And I only say that because we live in a society in which there's so much demolition going on of things that took a long time to build. It's so hard to build things in public life, and it's so easy to take them apart.
David Martin: You mentioned the size of the Defense Establishment. That's the one thing I never get used to in covering the Pentagon, is just how big the Defense Establishment is. After 40 years, I am still going to bases that I've never been to. And in some cases, I'm going to bases that I've never heard of. And that doesn't count all of the combat outposts that were set up in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. I saw one figure; there was an audit released Friday evening. The Pentagon's inventory – that's just the stuff sitting on the shelf waiting for somebody to come and requisition a spare part – is six times the size of Walmart's, which is the largest, of course, retail operation in the world.
So continuing on current news: The current Secretary of Defense, Mark Esper, has just been to Korea. And one of the things he was charged with doing while there was beginning negotiations with the Koreans over who will pay what for the cost of stationing American troops there. And he was told by President Trump to increase the South Korean share from roughly one billion to roughly five billion; 400% increase. What kind of message is that?
Ash Carter: The message to the South Koreans is that "we value having you as an ally less, and so need more in the way of money." That may be what you're getting at; that may be the message the South Koreans take. Let me go back to the basics – why are we there in the first place? And do we value having them as an ally? And this is a basic question that is being questioned by President Trump and other people.
And there seems to be this idea around that allies and alliances are favors that we do for foreigners. That's not the way it is. Alliances are force multipliers for us. They contribute forces and they contribute real estate that is geography from which we can jump off. It would otherwise be much more difficult for us to have the same capability.
So let me remind you, for example, if you want to get out of Syria or you want to get out of Afghanistan, I remind you that the way we got bin Laden was we had a friend in Afghanistan. If we couldn't have mounted the bin Laden raid out of Jalalabad – which is what we did – we would have had to do it somewhere– I don't see how we could have gotten in there. Certainly, we couldn't have gotten in there by helicopter unless we were that close. Likewise, Baghdadi, whom we got a few weeks ago, we were able to do that operation actually from Northern Iraq. But the same thing.
It's not so bad for us to have, if we need to deter and, if necessary, destroy North Korea, South Korea's a good foothold for us. It's not bad geostrategically for us to have a foothold in Asia. Of course, the Chinese dislike that. And the South Koreans are a good fighting force. They weren't always that way, as you know, but they've gotten a lot better.
And as far as basing our forces there, in addition to it being more efficacious, let's suppose you took the forces that were in South Korea and you brought them home, we could do that – put them in Colorado – you've still got to pay them. I mean, the lion's share of the expenses you've got anyway. And sometimes the cost– and what generally we ask foreigners to do is pay the marginal cost of having them deployed in their country rather than in the United States. But unless we're going to reduce the force overall, it's better for us to have them there and they offset some of the expense. So it is just functionally– I'm just saying as the person who has to win the wars with the amount of money we're given, allies are helpful.
And number two has to do with values. We fight for our own protection, but we also, in the long run, have to fight for our own values, also, or we're going to have to do more and more protection of ourselves. And so, our allies are also people that see the world and see security the way we do. And there aren't that many anymore in the world. That's valuable. That's another source of strength for the United States. So it's not a gift we give to foreigners. In the brutal calculus of winning wars on behalf of Americans, it's a good thing to do.
And you've got to be careful about disrespecting people. South Korea's a democracy, Germany's a democracy. If we Americans seem to be disrespectful of another country – it's okay to do hard dealing in a respectful way; that they'll understand – if you seem to be disrespectful of people and the other country's a democracy, which most of our friends are, then the leader of that country can't do what you want him or her to do, even if it makes sense. Because it will be too unpopular. You've made doing the right thing by America politically impossible for leaders in their own country.
You do that in a dictatorship. You do that with China. That's fine because Xi can turn 180 tomorrow and will tell the people one thing one day, and they'll go, fine, and then they'll tell them the opposite of that the next day and they'll go, fine. That's not true with Germany or South Korea. So people are stung.
So these things, since they're good for us, you have to tend them properly. And disrespecting people is not good caretaking.
David Martin: He mentioned the bin Laden raid, and that reminded me of a point I neglected to make at the start. When you hold these top jobs – Secretary of Defense, Deputy Secretary of Defense – the decisions you make have consequences for decades after you have left office. In the book he writes about the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter which was just starting to come into the force on your watch. Well, the F-35 is going to be around until 2050. So that's how far his reach in these matters extends.
But in a more newsworthy vein, the unit that got al-Baghdadi was a unit that he sent to the Middle East. So they were there because of a decision he made in, what, 2015?
Ash Carter: '15.
David Martin: 2015. Sticking on Korea for just a second. Another thing that happened as a result of that trip of the Secretary of Defense to South Korea was an announcement that they are going to suspend a planned exercise so that they don't tick off North Korea and scuttle any chances of any further negotiation. Do you think giving up the exercise was worth the chance?
Ash Carter: No, that was a mistake.
David Martin: Or did we just give away something for nothing?
Ash Carter: That's a mistake. We have from time to time in the course of my professional lifetime, but for the first time in '94, then in '99, then in 2005, '6, Condi Rice, Colin Powell gave it a stab. It was not done by President Obama at all. He's the first one who didn't try negotiating with the– he thought it was not useful. And this President has decided to negotiate with him – and I'm not arguing with that at all – but one thing we never, ever offered them was our exercises. And here's why: The exercises are the way that we and the South Koreans polish and demonstrate our ability to defeat the North Korean armed forces.
And if you've ever thought about war on the Korean Peninsula, think about it in the following way: It takes place in the suburbs of Seoul – we used to think Seoul would change hands twice. That is one of the most densely populated urban environments on earth. This isn't out in the middle of nowhere. This is in a very densely populated area. – with an intensity of violence the likes of which the world hasn't seen since the last Korean War. So it is an ugly baby.
And we will win, and we will go to Pyongyang, and we will destroy the North Korean armed forces, and we will destroy the North Korean regime, I'm absolutely certain of that, 100% confident in that. But that's not a war I want to have.
And one of the ways that we try to prevent that is to make what I've just said absolutely crystal clear to Kim Jong-un – don't try it, you will lose. And one of the ways you do that is by conducting exercises. And one of the things– that both shows him and it improves your and the South Korean's capabilities so that you really can do it.
We need that whether they go forward with their nuclear program or not, David. They still have a conventional military. There can still be a war on the Korean Peninsula. Deterrence is still important anyway. So we never, and I never recommended, I never saw any of my predecessors recommend that we put exercises on the negotiating table. I don't mind other things being on the negotiating table, but we did not put exercises. And it's hard for me to believe that my successors would have recommended that either, although I cannot speak for them for the reason that the exercises constitute the heart of deterrence. And we can talk to these people, that’s fine, but you can't relax on deterrence. Otherwise you get a war that is really a grotesque war.
David Martin: So for those who don't follow this on a daily basis, the exercises were originally suspended after the first Singapore summit between President Trump and Kim Jong-un. And they were then reconstituted in a less visible way. And people I talked to didn't have a problem with just reconstituting them in a less visible way because there was a lot of show-and-tell with nuclear bombers flying at low level over Korea, which they would never do in the real world. So is it all right to dial them back?
Ash Carter: That was pure symbolism. That was not military functionality. The flying the bombers was, I think, part of the negotiation. And you can ask whether that's an effective negotiating tactic. But you're right, it really didn't demonstrate anything. Everybody knows that we can fly bombers low; so, what does that show? But it was part of the symbolism of a negotiation. I guess I can understand doing that. I wasn't a big fan of that as a negotiating tactic, but I don't think it did any harm.
But that's different, David, from not having us and the South Koreans out on maneuvers together, figuring out how, if the North Korean army pours through one of those three north/south running valleys that connect North Korea and South Korea, how we're going to stop them. That's a functional exercise, it's different.
So, the way you describe it, it sounds innocent, like we're only stopping the stuff that doesn't matter anyway; how can I be against that? But if it does matter, I'd be very cautious about throwing it into the negotiations.
David Martin: The two big annual exercises have now become what the military calls command post exercises, where you don't have troops out in the field maneuvering, but you've got all the chain of command in front of their computers acting as if the troops were maneuvering. And every time a commander of US Forces in Korea testifies before Congress and he gets asked, Has readiness been degraded by these exercises, they say no. Are they just telling the party line?
Ash Carter: I don't want to explain why they're doing it. It's not ideal to not do full-scale training. We've always done it. We've always said that was important. And it is. The officers can get together in a command center. It's not the same as the troops running the terrain. So if you're asking me whether I would have recommended it, I would not.
David Martin: Let me broaden it out a little bit here. More than one person has said you would be wise to watch what President Trump does, not what he says. And there are lots of examples of that, and the most recent is the pullout from Syria. Twice, last December and just this past month, he has said, "I'm pulling all US troops out of Syria." We still have several hundred trips in Syria. And we are likely to have several hundred troops in Syria for the foreseeable future.
So if you take away his rhetoric, how different is his policies – let's say in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria – how different are his policies from President Obama's?
Ash Carter: David, I'm going to push on you a little bit about if you take away what someone says and only look at what they do – I don't know why you're going there – but saying is doing in part when you're President of the United States. And so, the question parses being President in a way that I don't accept. It does matter what you say, as well as what you do. So I'm not going to go down that road.
David Martin: Then don't accept the premise.
Ash Carter: So let's take Syria, for example. Why are we in Syria in the first place? We went into Syria in the first place, in this instance in small numbers, in order to defeat ISIS. And we largely did; we largely had, as of two years ago or so. Except that there's some remnants that are still running down the lower Euphrates valley, and a few leaders and so forth are running around. But eventually we'll get them and kill them, also, I think. That was always our natural thinking, the thinking as part of the plan.
Our approach to the war was that rather than send Americans in to take Raqqa– which, remember, was the so-called capital of the so-called caliphate, from which they were planning to kill Americans. And so we had to take Raqqa. We could have done that ourselves, but that's not the path we took; that's certainly not the path I recommended, and the President took my recommendation. Instead, it was to recruit a local infantry and then bring down atop them the might of the American tornado – air power, other kinds of firepower, intelligence, logistics, advising – and so supercharge a local infantry.
That is preferable to doing the infantry fighting ourselves for a few very good reasons. One is that to put an American infantryman in a Middle Eastern city where he or she doesn't speak the language and, naturally, however well trained, isn't going to fit right in, puts them in a tactical situation where they're fighting on the enemy's battleground, on the enemy's terms. I don't like to do that if I can avoid it. I would prefer to be on our terms than on their terms.
Second, if you put Americans in there, rather than getting locals, many of the local people would have come to view our action against ISIS as an occupation or somehow against them. And some of them who fought with us might have fought against us or stood on the sidelines. And that was undesirable.
And third, if we had done it ourselves and conquered it, then we would have had the experience we already had in 2003 in Iraq of having conquered a foreign population, which proved complicated.
And so, for all those reasons we went with using a Syrian force. That's why we're in there. And that is why fairly small numbers of Americans in situations where they were not suffering casualties anything like, David, what they were at the height of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars of the decade previously, that's why a small group of them, not dying in large numbers, could be very effective at achieving something we had to do to protect the country.
So that's the reason why we're there in the first place. And Erdogan and the Turks complained to me many, many times about us working with the YPG. And I said, "I'm sorry, but I've got to do what I gotta do to protect my own people. And therefore, I'm going to work with the YPG. I'm going to make sure they don't attack you. I know you don't like it, but we're going to have to agree to disagree."
Instead, the President in a phone call with Erdogan came out of it, anyway, saying that he had promised that we would withdraw troops from Syria. I don't know what he was thinking. But I don't want our troops withdrawn from Syria; I want them to continue to be there in those small numbers in order to make sure that ISIS doesn't come back. Because if you don't want to be in never-ending wars, don't unwin the wars we've just won. [applause]
David Martin: You were Secretary of Defense when Russia annexed Crimea, correct?
Ash Carter: No, no. No, I think I was Undersecretary. Maybe have been Deputy. I wasn't Secretary.
David Martin: Okay, sorry.
Ash Carter: But I was agin' it, if that's where you're going.
David Martin: The annexation of Crimea kindled a renewed interest in NATO. And that included spending a lot more money and sending a lot more troops over there. President Trump badmouths the NATO alliance all the time. But has anything changed in terms of the money spent and the troops sent?
Ash Carter: Well, we did, we introduced some additional forces into Europe. Let's go back to the reason for that. The reason for that is Putin's Russia. Now, I was around when the wall fell and the Soviet Union broke apart into 15 countries. And we had war plans for fighting against the Warsaw Pact. And then we didn't have war plans for 25 years, David. We didn't have a Russia war plan until I was Secretary of Defense. I thought that was– now, war plans are how we think through how we would accomplish what we needed to do – in this case, defeating Russia – if, god forbid, that became necessary.
Now, I want to hasten to add that I don't consider that at all likely. And it's certainly not a pleasant duty, but it is a duty.
But for 25 years we didn't have a war plan. And so, for the first time– and this was, again, in 2015 when I became Secretary of Defense. I said we need a Europe war plan– I'm sorry, a Russia war plan. And we began to build that plan. And it called for some additional forces – two more brigades in Europe and some different configurations of armor and so forth, all units that had been in the United States that were the forward deployed that were a piece of this larger war plan. We need to keep doing that. That's one of the things that we do with NATO, is deter Russia.
Putin's Russia, which is trouble– I've known Putin since 1993. When I went with Clinton to summits with Yeltsin, Vladimir Putin took notes in the back of the room.
David Martin: And you're taking notes on the other side.
Ash Carter: No, because I wasn't KGB of the United States. [laughter] I was actually sitting at the table. That's the difference between him and me. And he's trouble for reasons we can go into. We have to do many things about him, but one of them is to make sure that we have a modern war plan for NATO. And that's one of the things we do with NATO because it is mutually beneficial.
Now, more generally with NATO, what else do they do with us? They came to Afghanistan with us and they performed extremely well. They went to Bosnia; we did Bosnia together. The day aircraft came crashed into our buildings is the only time the NATO treaty has ever been invoked, was on 9/11. It was invoked for us, an alliance that was designed to protect them. The first ever instance of that was in response to an attack on the United States.
So NATO has a utility to it. Again, it's made up of democracies. And so, you have to be careful about how you deal with it. Again, you do worry about money and how you split money when it comes to putting forces over there. I, like every one of my successors– every one of my predecessors, has screamed at the Europeans to spend more for their defense. They should. I'm glad that our President is complaining about that to them, but that's in a long tradition of complaining to the European allies.
David Martin: Has there been any weakening of NATO?
Ash Carter: I think by talking disparagingly of it, it has, as I understand it, undermined some support in those publics for it. And again, it can be hard to win that back later. These are democracies, so we need the people to be broadly, at least, supportive of what we want their governments to do. Which we want them to do because that is in our interest for them to do it. And I– That's the reason not to talk too casually about our friendship with them.
David Martin: So I want to test market a line on you, see if you agree or disagree. For all his fire and fury rhetoric, President Trump has proven himself to be a very reluctant warrior.
Ash Carter: Well, he says that. He says it all the time. He wants to end wars.
David Martin: "Watch what I do, not what I say," though, right?
Ash Carter: Well, that's your theme. It's commendable in an American President not to want to get us into wars. And if we're in wars, to want to get out of them. I don't have any problem with that. And you're right, the bark is much bigger than the bite.
David Martin: So why is everybody tearing their hair out and screaming that he's going to lead us off the cliff?
Ash Carter: Well, I don't know, you live in Washington and the Pentagon. Why don't you ask me something about the Pentagon and not Donald Trump? You sit there all day; I'm here.
David Martin: How about I ask you something about President Obama? You said that he made no disastrous miscalculations during his time in office. What about the decision to withdraw combat troops from Iraq, which–
Ash Carter: Well, I made it quite clear in the book. I would not have recommended that, I was not his Secretary of Defense. I think that was a mistake. So, that was a mistake on President Obama's part, in my judgment. Obviously he disagrees with that. But, that was in 2013. I think it was one factor that led to ISIS. Not the factor, but a factor. History tends to be complicated in that way. And therefore, I think it was unfortunate.
David Martin: One of the most consequential decisions you made was to open up all combat units to women.
Ash Carter: Right.
David Martin: That means basically women in tanks, women in the infantry where physical strength, upper body strength really is something of a factor. Two people who I know, you think highly of, Joseph Dunford, who you nominated to be Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and your successor, James Mattis, would both be opposed to that.
Ash Carter: Joe did. Joe did. In the case of the Marine Corps he wanted some continuing exceptions.
David Martin: So those two arguably knew more about combat than everybody in this room combined. Why did you not–
Ash Carter: Well, I don't want to speak for Jim because I don't know exactly what Jim said. But I know perfectly well what Joe said. And what Joe, Joe Dunford, who was coming out of the Marine Corps at the time, was alone among leaders. I asked the chief of staff of the Army, the chief of staff of the Air Force, chief of naval operations, the Commandant of the Marine Corps, the Secretary of the Army, the Secretary of the Navy, the Secretary of the Air Force, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the head of special operations. I said, everybody write to me and give me their advice, and if you request additional exemptions, tell me why. And they took some time to do that.
And we being the Pentagon, we studied it very carefully, we did studies, we took surveys. We looked at other militaries, like the Israeli military and others in which women were able to go into all military operational specialties, things like SWAT teams and NASA crews, and all kinds of things. So we studied it very hard.
And the only exception– everybody else came back – special operations command, Navy, Air Force – and said fine, said, "We can do this and we recommend it because there's some real advantages to it." The advantage being that you put on the table half of the population. Remember, we have an all-volunteer military. And so I can't make people serve; I have to get the best people.
So you're right that men have more upper body strength, on average, than women. Which is I think your artillery example. That is true. However, not all men have more upper body strength than all women. And so, if I'm looking for somebody and I want the best person, if that is a female– that was the upside of making this decision. And against that, you have to balance the downside, which is some disruptions having to do with bathrooms and training, and things like that. So that was what everybody was doing.
Joe came back on behalf of the Marine Corps and said, "I would still like some positions. Some I go with everybody else, but there are some that I don't." So that was what I was faced with.
And, so it was only the Marine Corps and it was only a sliver in the case of the Marines. That's what you're referring to. I just want everybody to be clear about that. They weren't objecting to the whole thing. And they weren’t– they were talking about a piece of the United States Marine Corps. Okay?
And so, then I had to make a decision. And I made a decision to not accept their advice in that case because I wanted to make a joint decision, and I thought that the problems that they identified were tractable ones that could be overcome in the course of implementing this. And so, in that case, I overrode him. And I think that was the right thing.
Now, Joe later– just so you don't think that I don't respect Joe Dunford, I made him Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He was by far and away the most capable officer I've dealt with. And I've been around for a long time. And just a spectacularly decent person. And by the way, he lives in Boston. [laughter] But I didn't agree with him in this particular case, and I'm the boss so I decided no. And so, that's the way it is.
David Martin: So at one point in the book you say one of Joe Dunford's contributions was that he could remember everything that was said in a meeting. So you didn't have to take notes and thereby become suspected of gathering material for your memoirs. [laughter] So first, really?
Ash Carter: Well, it's sort of half tongue-in-cheek, but, no, really. I would look around the Situation Room and there'd be those of us sitting at the table, the President at the end of the table, and I'd look around, and there were all these people, these White House people sitting around the quarters. And if you want to know– now, maybe since you've covered the Pentagon, your sources are mostly in the Pentagon, but for White House reporters and other CBS reporters and so forth, you bet your bottom dollar that their sources on what was said in that room come from those people sitting around the edges; probably sometimes from people sitting at the table. And that was not Ash Carter. And I wanted that clear to President Obama.
So the very first time I went in as Secretary of Defense to the Sit Room I put my hands on top of the notebook. And he noticed. And I wanted him to notice. I'm not sitting there writing all this down so that I can later write a different book. The book, if you read the book that is out there at the bookstore, it's not a memoir. I would never write a memoir like that. I would never write about what he said. And if anybody who worked for me did that to me, I would consider it a betrayal. Because you can't function as a leader if you can't sit down and discuss things with people and you're worried that what somebody said was going to show up in the newspaper.
And the one thing I promised Obama was that I wouldn't leak on him. And I told him that I would be happy to speak first. And I did. Because the other thing people do, they wait because nobody wants to be the first one to say something; they want to hang back and see where everybody else is. That doesn't help the President. He's sitting there; this is a guy who's doing a million things of which foreign policy and defense policy is just one. And I'm supposed to be helping him. So I was always willing to throw the first pitch. Didn't bother me at all. I’d sit there and he’d say– He'd open the topic and then he'd look around and people would look down like this, waiting to see what somebody else would say. And sometimes I'd say, "Mr. President, I'll take a shot at it." And I'd say, "One way you might think about this is X, and one way you may get to where you want to go is Y." And I'd try to offer him something.
By the way, Joe Dunford was excellent at this, excellent at exactly that. And I wouldn't sit there and scratch down everything he said. So I was doing all that for a very good reason. And so I wouldn't have written a book like that. It also happens that I couldn't have written a book like that, David, because I don't remember things that well. I'm a physicist, which means I remember the meaning of things and not the words of things. And so, I remember what the President concluded and kind of what his intent was, but I didn't remember the words.
And Joe had a better memory than me, so every once in a while I would say to him, "Hey, Joe, do you remember exactly how he phrased something," and Joe would invariably be able to reconstruct.
But it's part of an environment of trust. And I thought the President was entitled to that. I don't think you can really function. Otherwise, the natural reaction of Presidents, or leaders anyway, is to take things into smaller and smaller decision circles. I don't want that, and I certainly don't want myself to be excluded from his decision circle because I think I can help him. And I want to help him. So I want him to trust me. And I worked hard that he would. He didn't always like what I said, but at least he trusted that it was coming from a good place, that it wasn't going to show up in the newspaper the following morning. To me, that's just– take a job in public service, you're supposed to do it right. And that's doing it right. [applause]
David Martin: Joe Dunford did have the most amazing recall of the most casual conversations. I couldn't tell you the first time when I met him was, but I bet you if you walked up to him cold on the street and asked him when was the first time he met me, he'd not only tell you, but he'd tell you exactly what each of us said. It's just an incredible recall.
Ash Carter: But you know what he can also do? If I just put in another pitch for Joe, Joe was one of these people that I tried to be to the President, but Joe, it just is in him. When he offered a solution or a recommendation, David, it was so whole. Sometimes you have people, advisors, and they will only advise from their narrow little perch, or they will not have thought through all aspects of it and they'll just tell you one little phrase or something. And then you're left at the end of the meeting; you're the guy in charge– let's say this isn't a National Council meeting, it's a decision meeting in the Pentagon. So I'm sitting there at the end of the table – "Will somebody please help me? This is a difficult problem, I'd like somebody to put themselves in my shoes and, what do I do?" And I can't do pieces of it. They're all pieces. I can't do pieces; I have to do everything. And I'd like for someone to put themselves in my shoes. Joe Dunford does that so beautifully. And he'd give you something you could really go with that was a sophisticated, grownup solution to something you were grappling with. He's truly amazing.
David Martin: Let me get back for a moment to women in combat. When James Mattis became Secretary of Defense, he said that his number one priority was to increase the lethality of American forces. And he said, maybe not on the record because he knew it was unpopular, but he made it very clear that he did not appreciate social engineering in the military that would reduce the lethality of forces. And he was talking specifically about transgenders and he was talking specifically about women in combat. So, how do you balance lethality with–
Ash Carter: Well, you're talking about two different things. Maybe he was talking about two different things, David. You've got two different things going there. Lethality is good, I'm sorry to say. That's our job and so I'm all for it. So if he's for that, that's fine. What matters– But now you get on to personnel issues. We have an all-volunteer force. One of the most important responsibilities you have to the future as Secretary of Defense is to make sure that you populate it with people who are as excellent as the people who are there now. And that's not a birthright. We compete in labor markets for qualified people. It's an all-volunteer force; people have to want to come to us. I don't have a draft. I could tell you why I don't want a draft. And so, I need the best qualified person.
And that, the preeminence of military qualifications is the basis on which I made the decision about women in service. To do other than make a decision on personnel policy on the basis of the most qualified people for our military, that would be social policy. So you not only have it wrong, you have it upside down.
David Martin: Other than that, what did you think of it?
Ash Carter: Other than that, it was a great lead-in. [laughter]
David Martin: His point was – take transgender – that–
Ash Carter: Wait, that's different. Transgender, in all seriousness, this is a serious thing, you can't lump transgender with gender; that's an error already. They're completely different things.
David Martin: I know when I'm licked.
Ash Carter: Can I say something else about people? You mentioned women, you mentioned transgender people. One thing you haven't mentioned, which is probably more important even than the women in service thing is our geographic issues. We have a very large fraction of our recruits who come from only six states. They're great people. And you might say, why is that? It's the states where we have the most bases. So naturally they are more exposed to military life. But to me, that means that there are 44 other states where we are not having a good enough shot at getting good people. So it's another talent management thing. In today's world you have to get the very best.
So to me, if I were still there, I'd be working on that. Now, if you want to call that social policy, you go ahead, David. But to me, it's getting the best people in our military.
And all these things are different. By the way, another one is getting the right skill sets. We need cyber people. Do you want to call that social policy, getting cyber people to serve in the military? I'm looking for the best qualified people I can get that field the best volunteer force for America I can, so it is the most lethal. So, that's what I'm up to. If you're up to something else, then that's social policy. I'm not talking to you; I'm talking to whoever uses that – social policy, that's a baloney argument.
David Martin: So, we've got about a half hour left, and we've reserved that for questions from the audience. I have trouble seeing you out there; I don't know if I can call on you, but somebody will come to you with a mic. Okay. And we just ask for questions, not speeches.
Ash Carter: We also can't see a thing.
Q: That's okay, here I am. Thank you, Secretary, appreciate it very much that you've come here to speak with us. I have a question about Russia. Russia's been an adversary of ours going back a long time. And it looked for a while that it was hopeful that we would if not be friends, at least we could ratchet down the adversarial relationship. And today, with the aggressiveness of Russia, their annexation of the Crimea, and their meddling all over the place including in our elections, and, most importantly, what I want to ask about, is their development of these so-called super weapons, under-the-sea torpedoes that can go forever undetectable, and these hypersonic weapons that they're developing.
First of all, are these real or are these propaganda? And second of all, are we in a position to deter that type of a threat to this country?
Ash Carter: They are real. They've been around for actually a while. Yes, we're capable of doing what we have always been capable of doing, as long as the Russians, as long as Moscow's been able to destroy the United States, which has been since the late '50s. And that is to threaten and destroy them back.
Now, these things are a little fancier. And I know Putin goes on TV and stuff. From a purely nuclear deterrence point of view, they don't add a lot. Now it comes in a torpedo, an undersea torpedo; a pretty expensive way to deliver a bomb since he has hundreds of ballistic missiles that can do the same thing and do it in a half an hour and are a lot less expensive. And I have no way of protecting us; I wish I did, but we don't. We've worked on missile defenses as long as I have been in defense, and we can do a good job against, say, North Korea. But we don't know how to protect ourselves against the Russians, except by threatening to destroy them back. And if he has some new gizmo, it doesn't really change the game very much.
What does change the game – I just need to say this – and more concerning to me is the little green men; it's called hybrid warfare, which you see in eastern Ukraine and in the Baltics – people showing up who pretend not to be Russians or pretend to be locals and who aren't. And I'm not confused by that, but many people get confused about whether that's a Russian invasion or not.
And so, in democracies like ours it becomes harder to argue for what is actually going on. And similarly with cyber, where people get confused. Where they start arguing among themselves rather than arguing with the Russians about what is essentially an assault upon our country. That's what happened in 2016. He attacked our country. And we fought with one another rather than fighting back.
And that’s– the reason that he could get away with that is that people make a category error. They don't look at that as an attack. It becomes something else because it's cyber and they get all confused. And likewise, the little green men allows some people who maybe don't want to believe it anyway or don't want to take steps.
So those, little green men and cyber in Putin's hands I worry about more than these gizmos, which are not fundamentally different in what they can do to us than things he already has. Now, what they can do is fearsome, but it doesn't add that much to it. I don't think they create a qualitatively new threat from Russia.
And then finally, you're right, Russia didn't turn out the way we wanted. For me, that was clear around 2000. By the way, China didn't turn out the way we wanted either. [laughter] But they turned out the way they turned out.
If you want to know what Putin thinks, listen to what he says. And if you want to know what Xi Jinping thinks, listen to what he says. Neither of these guys is particularly concealing of their ambitions and what they regard as the reasonable way to lead their country into the future, is a way that is, in certain respects, inimical to our interests, and we need to protect ourselves.
Q: Thank you very much and I'd like to thank you so much for your service to the country, Secretary. I have two quick questions. One of them, as you know, we've pulled out of the Iran peace deal. How long can we go and what can we do to stop Iran now that we're not a part of the deal for continuing to build nuclear weapons?
Ash Carter: Well, I was a supporter of the Iran nuclear deal, let me make clear, and I can say later why that is. But remember, the Iran nuclear deal was not a grand bargain. It was purely a nuclear deal. In all other respects, Iran's behavior didn't have to change and was, in my judgment, not going to change. And Iran is trouble in many, many ways. It didn't change what we did, the agreement, in the Defense Department because the morning after it was signed I sat down with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who asked me what his instructions were and I said, Don't do anything differently. I want to continue to have the ability to destroy the Iranian nuclear program ourselves, if we have to, if they change course. And I still want to have 64,000 US troops in the Gulf. All the stuff we've traditionally done. Because all this does is remove one little headache, if they abide by it.
All right, then we signed it, and as typically happens in the United States throughout our history, what one administration signs late in the administration gets repudiated by the next administration. So the president – President Trump, that is – had promised to, and then kept his promise, to take us out of the treaty. And there we find ourselves. So we have to pick ourselves up and move on from here. And that is what it is.
It hasn't been as bad as it might have been because the Iranians, for about two years, continued to hope that we could change course again and therefore did not press forward as they otherwise might have. Now, they're doing more of that now, so they may have concluded that we're really not coming back. But we got a couple of years there.
The other thing that they had to do early in the life of the treaty was dismantle some stuff they'd already done. And they did that, thinking that we would stay in the treaty. So we kind of got that as a freebie. And that set them back further than they otherwise would have.
So, so far it has been okay. I would, again, I would have preferred to stay in because I'd like not to have Iran, with which I have so much other trouble, also have nuclear weapons, or keep making me plan for them to have nuclear weapons. Because as Secretary of Defense, I have to look ahead and say, okay, now these guys may have a nuclear weapon. And that creates a new headache for me, and I'd just as soon not have it. But we're doing okay so far.
Q: One other quick question. Based upon the alleged, whatever word you want to use, bribery of President Zelensky with holding back the $400 million in military funds, do you think that that truly impacted our defense?
Ash Carter: I'm going to answer in that a very general way. I don't want to get right in the middle of the whole impeachment thing for the following reason: Ash Carter has views about that. But I'm not real close to it now. And one of the things I really tried to do when I was Secretary of Defense, and I've tried to be respectful of that– [video/audio jump at 1:08:21]
David Martin: As Secretary of Defense, he was in charge of loose nukes. Go ahead.
Q: The current administration claims that the prior administration was too weak in their support of Ukraine. So I'm wondering if you could talk to that.
Ash Carter: I understand that people say that. And there were people in at the time who said that. That is the razor's edge that I was just talking about. There have always been people who've wanted us to do more, and there have always been people who said, If you push it too far, you'll tip the Russians. That's been going on since 1994, actually. And it's not Democrat versus Republican. We tend to think of everything as being Democrats versus Republicans these days. Most things are not that way, really. And this is not one. It's raged, and it raged within the Obama administration, it probably ranged within the Trump administration, I can't say because I'm not there. And every administration before that people would argue different things with respect to Ukraine.
If I can just tell a little story, I'm not sure if it's in the book or not. I remember going with President Clinton and Mrs. Clinton to Ukraine for the first time an American President had ever been in an independent Ukraine. And we were standing in front of Mariyinsky Palace at night, and the presidents are standing up there, beautiful, beautiful, this is a beautiful palace there in Kiev. And down two rows are the two delegations. And I'm standing next to Mrs. Clinton, Hillary Clinton. And then our staffs are standing behind us.
And they play the American national anthem and then they played the Ukraine national anthem, which is really beautiful. And over my right shoulder I hear weeping. And it's one of Hillary Clinton's staffers. And I later turned to her and said, "I heard you crying, what was going on?" She said, "I'm a Ukrainian American. I grew up in Chicago. I went to a Ukrainian American school. Every morning we sang that anthem, and I never, ever thought I'd see it here."
So in the émigré community here in the United States, like in so many others – Polish and Armenian and so forth – in the United States, the feelings are very strong. So the Ukrainian thing is like, you shouldn't be surprised when you see people arguing back and forth about how much we do for Ukraine. I don't like to see it get mixed up with other things, but debate over what to do with Ukraine is not new; it's old.
David Martin: As I remember, you were in favor of doing more.
Ash Carter: And President Obama didn't take my advice. Most of the time he took my advice, I'm happy to say, but not all the time. And this is a case where he didn't take it.
Q: Thank you for being here today. Mr. Secretary, I have a question about nuclear nonproliferation, specifically about the US pulling out of the INF and the Trump administration saying it won't renew the START II treaty in 2021. So is it in the United States' defense interests to produce more nuclear weapons? And if not, how does the United States contribute to nonproliferation in a world where these treaty frameworks don't exist?
Ash Carter: Well, I'm glad to hear you ask the question because we've talked about Syria, we've talked about women in service, we've talked about all kinds of things, but David appropriately raised nuclear weapons early on. You know, they're not in the newspapers a lot. And I always tell people, the day when nuclear weapons are in the newspaper, we're in real trouble. These things alone, of everything else we have, everything else is reparable, but you start using nuclear weapons and you have– I'm a physicist and this is, you poison a place way beyond Chernobyl for a long time, with one bomb. So you can never forget that this is a fearsome thing.
And so, any nuclear thing has to be dealt with with a lot of gravity. So good on you for asking the question. It's a serious question.
And the INF treaty, for those of you who don't know, Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces treaty is one of the treaties we signed with the then-Soviet Union, which was an important way of damping down the Cold War and making sure we didn't blow each other to smithereens. So a very important thing. Nothing more important in those days than doing that.
We have now decided that we don't value being in the INF treaty in the same way. That's actually true, if I may say so. It's not as big a deal now as it used to be. And in fact, I have to tell you that as the Secretary of Defense, I occasionally looked longingly at what I might be able to do if I didn't have that treaty stopping me. Not nuclear, but missiles for other purposes; for example, China. And so, I could make good use of the absence of the INF treaty if I had to. And I wouldn't fall on my sword for it.
I think the best answer I can give to your question is, we need to be in contact with the Russians. We're not dealing with– they're a nuisance, and Putin is a real headache. But he's out there. And so, I am in favor of being in constant dialogue, even with our– [audio drops] –can be controversial in the United States, and people that say "should we talk to Kim Jong-un?" And my answer to that is, well, it depends on what you say. [laughter] I don't object to you talking to him, but I am a little sensitive to what you say.
So I'd like to be talking to Putin. And if I were talking to him about the INF treaty, I'd say, "I don't want it more than you do, pal. So you're violating it now" – which he is – "and so tell me what you think. And if you don't want it, fine; maybe we'll get rid of that." – Because it really is quite old now – "Why don't we think about something that we can do that makes sense together." Because nuclear weapons, they're not things to toy around with. As much as we dislike – I dislike – what he does in many ways, I can't afford to break contact with him, or thumb my nose at him, or push it when it comes to nuclear weapons. It's just not safe.
Q: Thank you for being here, Mr. Secretary. On the topic of missiles, a lot has been made recently in the news about a lot of land-based missiles being developed in China that potentially have the capabilities of hitting US bases such as Guam, or even US aircraft carriers. At the same time, we know that the current aircraft carrier under production is suffering from a lot of budget concerns being pushed back multiple years. Do you think these missile developments in China, how much are they a threat to either US land bases or the US Navy? And what steps should the Navy take to counteract those developments?
Ash Carter: They're a problem, and they're exactly what I meant. I can't do the same to them because of the INF treaty, which is a deal made with the Russians a long time ago for a totally different purpose. Which is why I would tell Vladimir Putin "you don't want it more than I want it." Because if we get out of the INF treaty, I know what I'll be doing tomorrow, which is designing missiles exactly like that, to go back at the Chinese.
Now, they've been at this for quite a while. It was something I'd like to not have to deal with. We do know how to deal with it. It's a nuisancesome and expensive. So if you look at Guam now and you look at the DF-21 or other missiles that they can use against Guam, that's one of the reasons why we have a missile system called THAAD, which we deployed on Guam, is to defend our forces on Guam from these missiles. Aircraft carriers are another example.
China used to be a place you didn't have to worry about all that much in the 1990s. It was weak and we didn't pay that much attention. And when they cause trouble for somebody else, like Taiwan in 1998, when they were firing missiles from either side, we – you'll remember this – sent aircraft carriers right into the Taiwan Strait and it drove them nuts because they didn't even know where the aircraft carriers were.
Today they would. It's okay, I think we still know how to deal with it, but it was easier then than it is now.
David Martin: I've heard a lot of people say that China really got serious about its armed forces after those carriers and they realized that there was absolutely nothing they could do about it.
Ash Carter: All the China experts say that that's exactly right. That was a humiliating thing. In fact, I remember Chi Haotian was the Chinese defense minister then, and he came to the Pentagon. He had a long scheduled visit, and then that event happened, and two weeks later he found himself in the United States. Humiliated by what we had done. And I remember he said to Bill Perry, who was my boss at the time, he said, "I lost face as a consequence." And Bill, being a very practical person, he just said, "Well, you deserved to lose face." It was a beautiful answer. "It's 1996, for Christ's sake, you can't fire missiles around people's territory. So if you lost face, it's your fault," is what our then-Secretary of Defense – I think perfectly appropriately – said to him. But they remember that kind of thing.
Q: Hi, Secretary. Thank you again for being here. So switching gears a little bit, I know we've been veering away from politics, but at least from a geopolitical perspective – and I know that you're the director of the Belfer at Harvard, so I'm curious to hear your thoughts on this – it was alarming to me, and I'm no expert in international relations, that there's been a rise of authoritarianism globally, whether it's with Vladimir Putin, Bolsonaro in Brazil, Erdogan and, some would even say, here in the US. But do you find it to be alarming, this rise in authoritarianism? Or is it just the natural course of politics?
Ash Carter: I don't like it. We all thought in ‘99, remember, the end of history, and it was all our way and everybody was going to be democratic? You can't look around the world now and think things are going your way. But if you're asking me is that my way? That's my way. Speaking for myself, I'm old fashioned, and I believe in the Enlightenment, and I believe in good, old American values. Which, let me remind you, are not American values. This is an important thing with respect to the Chinese.
At our best, and in our founding institutions and so forth, we echo the Enlightenment phrase, what they called the dignity of man. We would say the dignity of humans or something now. But the dignity of man. Not the dignity of Americans, not the dignity of Frenchmen, not the dignity of Englishmen. The dignity of man. I like to think we still are that and stand for that. And I only say that because – and this is not to denigrate China – but the Chinese agenda is about being Chinese. It is. And they don't have anything to say about people who are not Chinese. It's all about being Chinese. Which is fine, they're entitled to be– [audio drops] –want to do. But then you say, well, can you say a little something about how all the rest of us fit in? And we don't.
So I like the Western tradition. I really believe it. And you're right, we live in an era when you need to stick up for– and you can't take it for granted anywhere.
David Martin: I know we've got other people in line, but we're down to our last five minutes, and there's one story I want to get out of Ash Carter before we leave. These jobs at the top of the Defense Department are killer jobs, and the public only sees a tiny, tiny fraction of what they entail. Every time a missile is launched anywhere in the world, it's detected by an infrared satellite which sets off alarms in command centers all around the world and immediately a conference call is convened. And usually it's a very short call because there is no real threat, and it's handled by staffers.
But throughout 2017, when the North Koreans were testing those long-range missiles, the Secretary of Defense – James Mattis then – was on every one of those calls. And he was on those calls because, one, there was at least a possibility that it was a real threat either to the homeland or to US troops overseas; and two, he needed the practice of how you are going to make these world-changing decisions about what you do about that threat in the space of just a very few minutes.
And I'm sure Ash Carter has been on any number of those phone calls. But reading his book reminded me that another phone call a Secretary of Defense gets is when a civilian aircraft intrudes into a restricted air space, like the nation's capital. And I want to ask you to tell that story.
Ash Carter: That's harder. The one you describe is, for me, easy. I don't want to speak for Jim. By the way, I've known Jim Mattis for 25 years, he and I are friends, full disclosure. And I thought he did a good job. But if North Koreans are firing missiles into the United States, I know what to do – I'm going to shoot it down. That's not a hard one. So that's the easy end of the hardness spectrum.
The hard end of the spectrum is if somebody's firing nuclear weapons at you. And we could deal with that one another time. In between is the one that David's raising, which is an airliner is coming towards the capital – should we shoot it down or not? That I lived with. And my wife is here, also, and remembers that. You remember that every minute– because it is not a no-brainer. The nuclear and missile defense are cleaner, put it that way. The nuclear escape, help the President escape, keep him alive, get a decision out of him later. The North Koreans are firing missiles? Well, for god's sake, shoot them down, do you really need to come to my level to know that?
In between is the airliner. And I've had that experience, and I think Steph will remember. I think it was one of my first nights. This is a responsibility that the President has delegated to the Secretary and the Deputy Secretary of Defense only. Remember, we cannot shoot nuclear missiles; only the President can do that. He does not delegate that. But this, he delegates. And he says, "Okay, if I'm giving a speech, you shoot down the airliner."
So that happens all the time. It's not rare. And it looks a lot more– nothing else is like a ballistic missile. Every dentist in his Cessna going for a ride on the weekend looks like an airliner attacking the Capitol dome. So it happens again and again. And it's worse when the President travels around the country because he takes a little bubble with him and they never, the civil aviators especially, never remember where he is. And we have the capability, without going into detail, to intercept, shoot down.
In Washington– David knows all this perfectly well. So one night, middle of the night, the security office, the security detail, which has rented a nearby apartment, which they always do, and so they're in there and they come down the hall and thrust a phone into my hand. And here's what was going on:
An airplane that was supposed to land at Baltimore Washington International Airport had instead overflown the airport and was heading toward the dome of the Capitol, and was not responding to radio attempts to communicate with it. So I got on. And of course on this phone call, as David indicates, in this case, are the FAA, but also the FBI and the CIA, and all of our people. But you're the one who's going to make the call.
And we had already scrambled some F-16s, which can be done on a lower level authority. And they were ascending and they came near the aircraft and tried to get this guy's attention firing flares in front of it and saying, "Dude, wake up, pay attention to what is going on." [laughter] No change in the trajectory.
So finally I said the next step, which is bump them, which is you go up there in the fighter and you fire your exhaust at them and it makes them jump around. So finally, that gets a response. You know what it is? The pilot was the only one who was on the flight deck, and he had fallen asleep. And he's flying a cargo aircraft, foreign flag. So I'm this far from shooting this guy down.
Imagine that as an airliner filled with people. It's a no-win situation, those kind of things. You can't have somebody flying into the dome of the Capitol and destroying a place that has been continuously illuminated since the Civil War. And you can't kill 200 people in an airliner either lightly.
So it is– it's an ugly duty. And it's at you all the time. And you can only trade it between the Secretary and the Deputy. So we'd say, if somebody's going out to dinner or something, you'd say, You're ONE tonight. ONE stands for Operation Noble Eagle. So if Leon Panetta, I was his deputy, was going out to an Italian restaurant he liked downtown, he'd say, "You're ONE." Okay, I'm ONE, and that means I'm paying extra attention. And I'm going overseas, he's on ONE. And I would do it when I was Secretary and had deputies, too. I hope for all of our sakes that nothing ever happens.
But we came close again and again and again. It's something that just goes on all the time. You probably don't know it. And I hope we continue to avoid shooting somebody down, or having somebody ram into the President's helicopter when he's moving, something like that. It's a serious business.
David Martin: And he also had to worry about getting his picture taken with Jane Fonda. It's a tough job. [laughter]
Ash Carter: Don't do it.
David Martin: So we've actually run over our time. So thank you, Ash.
END