Meet The Man Who Kept Our Nation’s Secrets for 50 Years

BIANNA GOLODRYGA, HOST: Well, our next guest I sharing his life of secrets. Michael Vickers is a retired CIA officer and served as the undersecretary of defense for intelligence. He has written a memoir going behind the scenes of some of the most important covert operations for the 20th century. And he joins Walter Isaacson to discuss his storied career.

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WALTER ISAACSON, HOST: Thank, you Bianna. And, Michael Vickers, welcome to the show.

MICHAEL G. VICKERS, AUTHOR, “BY ALL MEANS AVAILABLE”: Pleasure to be with you, Walter.

ISAACSON: Almost exactly 50 years ago this month you enlisted in the Special Forces of the United States. You rose up through the ranks, through the CIA, to become the top civilian intelligence officer at the Defense Department, many other roles. Why, after 15 years of keeping secrets, did you decide to write a book?

VICKERS: Well, it’s a very good question. So, one, enough had become publicly available that I thought I could tell the story, and then with the help of reviewers from CIA and DOD and other government agencies, I was able to do that. And there were three reasons, principally. One was a duty to history. I participated in some pretty historic events. The CIA’s support for the Afghan resistance in 1980s that drove the Soviets out of Afghanistan, it was the largest and most successful covert action in CIA’s history. Our campaigns against al-Qaeda, to disrupt, dismantle and ultimately, defeat them, primarily in the Afghanistan, Pakistan border region, but Yemen and other places. And in the raid that brought justice to Osama bin Laden. Second reason was really to try to explain to the American people the work that CIA officers, special operators and national security strategists do on their behalf. And the third was my duty to officials, future operators and strategist to pass on lessons, hopefully inspire them and help them prevail.

ISAACSON: I was struck by the fact that you joined the Special Forces that summer of 1973, which is exactly when the U.S. is withdrawing, in a messy way, from Vietnam, and the whole country has been — our country, the U.S., has been torn apart by Vietnam. What caused you to decide to want to do that and what lessons did you take from Vietnam?

VICKERS: And so, you know, earlier on I wanted to be a professional baseball or a football player. When I realize that wasn’t the cards I thought, all right, what am I going to with my life? And I probably saw too many James Bond movies, but I settled on becoming a CIA officer via the Special Forces. The Special Forces was something I could go into right away. Complete my college degree, become an officer, which I did, Special Forces officer, and then a CIA officer. Luckily, it all worked out that way. But you know, it was a combination of wanting to do something for my country where individuals could really make a difference, that Special Forces and the CIA, and, you know, see great adventures. Again, you know, I had read T.E. Lawrence and others and I thought, that’s what I’d like to do. A high school teacher actually provided or shoved to copy of “The New York Times,” my senior in high school, in front of me and it had a story on CIA’s paramilitary operations in Laos during in the Vietnam War and he said, you might be interested in this. And I had no idea why he thought, you know, I was probably daydreaming of throwing touchdown passes, but I thought, leading secret armies, this sounds kind of cool, maybe this is something I want to do. And so, then when I went into the Special Forces, I was really blessed by having been all these Vietnam veterans as mentors teaching me, you know, combat tactics and a range of things that helped me advance up the ranks. And a lot of my fellow special operators who rose to four-star ranks really joined in that lonely 1970s period, Admiral Eric Olson, Admiral Bill McRaven, General Stan McChrystal, et cetera. So, you know, that produced a pretty good group of folks.

ISAACSON: One of the great successes in the book is the Afghan operation that drives the Russians out. It sets up a whole lot of things. Also, it causes some problems there, the Mujahideen, other things risen. How did you come up with this strategy and what would you do differently now?

VICKERS: So, the strategy was partially a result of events Congressman Charlie Wilson had quadrupled CIA’s budget, just as I took the job. And so, I thought we could do a lot more than simply impose costs on the Soviets. And then, so I got to work on what we might do. And then, as I was working on my plans, and thinking we could probably use more resources, which the Congress then provided, President Reagan signed a national security decision directive that changed our objective from imposing cause on their occupation to driving them out. And so, that gave my new strategy a lot of leeway and had the support of my seniors at CIA and then secretary of states and defense and, of course, President Reagan. What I would do differently, if I could, was we disengaged from Afghanistan after the Soviets withdrew and after the communist government, they had been backing, collapsed to the Afghan resistance. And Afghanistan — and we also withdrew from the region, Pakistan as well, in 1990. And that caused a number of problems. Afghanistan went into a civil war. The Taliban eventually came to power and al-Qaeda went to Afghanistan. So, the first thing would be to not disengage from the region. And that was tough for a variety of reasons and we had a lot of success in Europe, but that would be one.

ISAACSON: Wait, wait. Let me push you there. If we hadn’t disengaged, what will we have done in Afghanistan to make things different? Do you think we could we have created a civil society? I mean, we spent $2.3 trillion in 20 years trying to do it, and we weren’t able to.

VICKERS: Well, I think we might have prevented if we hadn’t disengaged the Taliban from taking over and al-Qaeda coming back. Now, (INAUDIBLE) or our ambition should have been, I take your point on nation building and, you know, that maybe a bridge too far, but, you know, Afghanistan really descended into hell and that created the path for the Taliban after years of civil war. But the —

ISAACSON: Well, let me drill down on that nation building things, because I’m not trying to push you.

VICKERS: Yes, yes. Sure.

ISAACSON: I don’t understand the answers here. Is nation building something that people like our, you know, covert action leaders like yourself and CIA

and the government in the U.S. can’t do or should we keep trying to do nation building?

VICKERS: Well, some of it we can try. I mean, it’s certainly not something that people in my old line of work necessarily do, it’s more job for the State Department and other elements of government. But, you know, it has its roles, just when you set your objectives too high. But ordinarily, on our counterterrorism interest, you know, what we learned after 9/11 was not to give groups like al-Qaeda any sanctuary, and we didn’t do that before 9/11. And so, if I could just wind the clock back to 1998, after the embassy bombings, knowing what happened on 9/11, I would’ve certainly recommended far more decisive action than we took, you know, you know, some cruise missile strikes against al-Qaeda and some backing of some local elements, but that’s it. You know, we would’ve done something far more muscular after 9/11 as we did.

ISAACSON: What lessons coming out of Afghanistan apply both to the Russians trying to be in Ukraine and us trying to help the Ukrainians?

VICKERS: So, one, when you try to occupy — invade and occupy a big country as the Russians did in Afghanistan and Ukraine, and the population is against you, you’ve got your hands full, particularly when you have a small force, which the Russians did in both cases relative to the size of the problem. You know, in Afghanistan, they would have needed four times the force they had to even have a chance of pacifying the country, and even then, they would’ve taken a lot of casualties. Same is true in Ukraine, and that’s why they’re hunkered down now in certain regions that they’re trying to hold with the defensive lines. For the U.S., I think the answer is somewhat different. You know, we were very successful at toppling a government, not so successful in what comes after. In Afghanistan, we did transition security responsibility to the Afghans. And so, we were providing assistance, you know, the last several years, advise, aid, and then backed up by our power. And then the question is, do you have the strategic patience to stay that course? When, one, do you transition soon enough to where the American people don’t get tired of the war?

ISAACSON: As you look at Prigozhin and you look at that wild thing that’s happened in Ukraine, with Prigozhin sort of having a mercenary army, the Wagner Group, it seems like he was partly affiliated with Putin for a very long time, and this doesn’t ring true to me, what’s just happened. What’s your assessment?

VICKERS: Well, he was close to Putin for a long time. And the Wagner Group was an important instrument of Russian foreign policy around the world, several countries in Africa, you know, providing security and exchange for critical minerals, gold and other things, in Syria, and then, in Ukraine, that’s really the shock troops, you know, the offensive shock troops in Bakhmut. And, you know, he had been progressively criticizing Russian military leadership, the minister of defense, and of the chief general staff, and that they weren’t doing enough. And there was also this regulation coming up one July that required his group to be transferred to the ministry of defense, and he had been making a billion dollars in the last year in a lot on Wagner Group operations. So, this was a threat to his business interest as well as whatever else he thought. And so, you know, since he’d gotten away with things for months, this progressive rhetoric, I thought he could — he thought he could, you know, do this march and get these two individual Sergei Shoigu and Valery Gerasimov removed, it didn’t turn out that way. And so, he turned out, I think, to be a loser in this. Putin is weakened by it, which all too good for Ukrainians, Europeans, and the United States.

ISAACSON: How do you see the Ukrainian situation resolving itself?

VICKERS: Well, it could end up something like Korea, like other Russian conflicts where they tried to have a frozen conflict or, you know, you have some armistice, and that’s why I think we need to think through not only help the — giving the Ukrainians what they need to win and take back most, if not all, of their territory —

ISAACSON: I’m sorry. Do you mean Crimea as well?

VICKERS: Crimea is the one case that, you know, you have to deal with when we come to it. But certainly, Eastern Ukraine and quite likely Crimea, yes. And — but, you know, it’s a little bit of a different kettle of fish. And then, deterrence afterwards, because Russia would try to come back at some point. You know, so things that we talk about, well, they don’t need it now like F-16s, they will certainly need to deter in the future and they actually do need them now, and it would help. And then, there’s the rebuilding aspects to this. You know, it’s going to be a pretty staggering reconstruction effort.

ISAACSON: When I look at what’s happening in Ukraine, part of it looks like it’s almost the early 20th century, you know, World War I era trench warfare with people fortifying trenches. And then, it looks like 21st century warfare with a whole lot of drones, a whole lot of cyber things that — you know, using satellites in order to send drone missiles there. How is warfare changing and what does that mean for the type of special operations you did?

VICKERS: Well, you captured it very well. I mean, it really is a combination of warfare over the last hundred years. You know, part of it does look like World War I, including the need to provide a sustainable — you know, a societal order, provide sustainable lever of munitions, you know, to have the industrial capacity to produce that, you know, that was one of the factors that determine the outcome of World War I, and certainly World War II, and it applies in Ukraine as well. And then, you have all these new technologies. You know, it is a land war. So, I wouldn’t draw — you know, there’s lots lessons on land combat about artillery and mobile combined arms, the use of drones, which has really changed the battlefield. The attacks on these population centers, you know, indiscriminate attacks. But, you know, all conflicts are different. They have different politics, different techniques. And so, you know, if there was a war over, say, Taiwan, you know, it would look very different likely than — it might have some elements in common with Ukraine, popular resistance, you know, to any invasion, but it would likely be more air and maritime and space and cyber and even more high-tech than you see in Ukraine. So, you have to careful about the lessons you draw.

ISAACSON: For 50 years you’ve guarded America’s most closely held secrets, all the way up the ranks. When you are watching what’s happening on Donald Trump and those classified documents, you probably have a better sense than anybody of what might be in those documents and why it’s important to keep them. What are you thinking and what do you think the damage could be?

VICKERS: Well, it depends on what the documents are. You know, I was the senior intelligence official, the undersecretary of defense for intelligence when Edward Snowden did his leaks and took things with him and ended up eventually in Russia. And so, we had to do a series of damage assessments about that, about, you know, what we know — we knew he took and what the damage was, what he might have taken and what he looked at, but we — you know, we couldn’t be sure whether he took it or not. And, you know, some of it could — you know, pose potentially really great damage to the United States. So, without getting into the details, it looked like the worst didn’t happen, but lots of bad things were compromised by that. So, the Trump case, you know, who saw these documents that shouldn’t have seen them, you know, definitely Mar-a-Lago is a target for an espionage services, these things look like they were unguarded and moved around a lot. And, you know, so I’m sure the Intelligence Community is working diligently on assessing the damage and I know congressional committees are interested in hearing that. And, you know, it’s a concern whenever secrets are spilled, just like the recent case we had with the airman in Massachusetts.

ISAACSON: Let me read something from your book —

VICKERS: Yes.

ISAACSON: — about our effectiveness and intelligence. It says, where our analysts most missed the mark, of course, was in their assessment that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and active WMD programs. CIA had also failed to correctly assess the strategic consequences of the Arab Spring and the boosting of jihadist groups that came from it. It also failed — and this is your writing — to anticipate Vladimir Putin’s aggressive actions between ’20-4 and 2016. And if I wanted to add to that, in the broad sense, the Intelligence Community missed everything from — in the late 1980s, the collapse of the Soviet Union and how weak it was and even now, hasn’t been able to figure out or come to a consensus on whether COVID leaked from a lab. Having read your book, I was very impressed with all the things you did, but I also began to worry about our intelligent assessment capabilities.

VICKERS: Yes. So, you know, our intelligence is the best in the world by far in terms of the collection but also in the honesty of our analysis. That doesn’t mean that they get it right all the time. You know, if get it right 70 percent of the time, they’re doing pretty well. And, you know, it’s been said you can divide the intelligence world into secrets and mysteries, you know, if we can get the secret, we’re pretty good at that. The more complicated the problem, whether it is not a secret that you can steal, then, you know, it becomes, not a guessing game, but a tougher judgment. And some of those cases certainly fit into that. You know, the recent Russian invasion of Ukraine, with both the Russians and a lot of western services thought they would be able to take Ukraine quickly. That’s based on an assessment of the capabilities of the Russian armed forces, Ukrainian, et cetera, you can be wrong about, and they were wrong, you know. And there’s a number of cases like that. It’s a tough job. But, you know, I was more on the collection side. So, I’m — and really, the covert action. So, I’m a little reluctant to, you know, throw stones at analysts. But, you know, as I said, it’s not perfection. And it’s just that you want to tell it as accurately as you can, as objectively as you can and then let policymakers or commanders do, you know, what they will with the intelligence.

ISAACSON: Michael Vickers, thank you so much for joining us.

VICKERS: Walter, pleasure talking with you.