Eyes on the Horizon: Serving on the Front Lines of National Security

by Richard Myers, Malcolm McConnell (With)

Overview

General Richard B. Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the critical four years following September 11, 2001, looks back over his career and provides a candid, revealing insider's view of the war on terror and proposing a bold new plan that will prepare America for the diverse national security challenges of the twenty-first century.

Growing up in Kansas as the son of hardworking, nononsense parents, General Richard Myers, a distinguished Air Force officer for more than forty years, learned early the value of steadfast integrity and selfless service. As Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 2001 to 2005, he bore witness to the critical events that shaped America's defense policy in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. In the days, weeks, and months that followed, he worked around the clock, helping to devise innovative, unprecedented strategies for the Bush administration's war on terror in Afghanistan and Iraq and advising the president on tough, historic national security decisions.

In this captivating memoir, General Myers talks candidly about his career in the military, the unforgettable events of September 11, and the global war on terror. With an insider's perspective, he outlines the mistakes made by the White House, Pentagon leadership, and the intelligence community.

Myers believes that America has misidentified its adversary, focusing too narrowly on tactical battles, instead of on a long-range strategy that will overcome a global insurgency fueled by a struggle for control within Islam. The United States must rely not just on the military, but also on intelligence and other instruments of national power and work through extant governments to reverse the depiction of an American-led crusade against Muslims. Rather than identify what Islam should become, we must work with an international community that includes responsible non-Western states to protect against the behaviors we consider universally unacceptable -- especially those that promote violence against the U.S. and its allies or any other country or society affected by the struggle within Islam. Finally, Myers maintains we must integrate our own government agencies so that we can focus a sustained approach to this strategy.

Told with unfailing honesty, Eyes on the Horizon is an unforgettable memoir of one of our nation's highestranking officers and a courageous call for change that will strengthen American national security and defend a democratic way of life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781416560319
Publisher:	Pocket Books
Publication date:	03/17/2009
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	304
File size:	524 KB

About the Author

General Richard B. Myers retird as the 15th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in October, 2005, after serving over 40 years in the US Air Force. A native of Kansas City, Kansas, and a 1965 graduate of Kansas State University, General Myers has held command positions at every level, including Commander of US Space Command, North American Aerospace Defense Command, Pacific Air Forces, US Forces Japan, and two fighter wings. A fighter pilot with over 4,100 hous, General Myers logged more than 600 combat hours during the Vietnam conflict.

General Myers now sits on several public and non-profit boards and currently lectures nationally on national security issues and leadership. He is Foundation Professor of Military Histor and Leadership at Kansas State University and holds the Colin Powell Chair of Leadership, Ethics, and Character at National Defense University. He lives in the Washington, D.C. area with his wife, Mary Jo. They have two daughters and a son, and, to his great joy, a growing number of grandchildren.

Malcolm McConnell is the coauthor of the #1 New York Times bestseller American Soldier with Tommy Franks and My Year in Iraq with L. Paul Bremer III.

Read an Excerpt

1

Sunshine and Smoke

September 11, 2001

Just before 8:45 on the bright Tuesday morning of September 11, 2001, I was waiting in the outer office of Georgia Senator Max Cleland on Capitol Hill. This was one of several scheduled courtesy calls before my Senate confirmation hearings as incoming Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, America's senior military officer. I had been Vice Chairman since March 2000, serving in both the Clinton and Bush administrations in that capacity.

Max Cleland and I got along well, and he supported my nomination. Like me, Senator Cleland had served in combat during the Vietnam War. He lost both legs and one arm in 1968 when a grenade exploded near Khe Sanh. I had flown 240 "fast" Forward Air Controller, strike, and Wild Weasel missions in modified F4 Phantoms, many against SAM missile sites in North Vietnam. We had learned a lot about war as young men.

We also worked well as partners in America's enduring yet flexible framework of constitutional government. The military is part of the executive branch. The President requests funding for Department of Defense operations, but Congress controls those funds -- and reserves the power to declare war. Therefore the interaction between senior military and congressional leaders is a vital component of our democracy that ideally transcends politics.

Now, with both the Cold War and Operation Desert Storm -- our "last" large combat engagement -- ended more than a decade earlier, it was possible to

hope that there were no imminent major threats to our national security. But I also recognized that hope wasn't part of a senior military officer's job description. Under the oversight of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Army General Hugh Shelton, the Joint Staff oversaw the preparation for worst-case war contingencies and the combatant commanders' myriad operational plans (OPLANs). The duties of the Vice Chairman are little known outside the corridors of the Pentagon. Beyond helping coordinate the OPLANs, one of my more exacting assignments as Vice Chairman had been serving as Chairman of the Joint Requirements Oversight Council -- which was composed of the four-star vice service chiefs -- who approved the requirements of weapons systems being proposed for procurement.

I also served on the National Security Council's Deputies Committee and as a member of the Nuclear Weapons Council. And I represented the Chairman on the Defense Resources Board -- which supported the fiscal and personnel structure to the DoD's sprawling bureaucracy. In a large civilian corporation, I would have been the COO, the chief operating officer.

This was very demanding work, but good preparation to serve as the Chairman.

Even if I'd been so inclined, this workload left me no time for politics. But it wasn't just the burden of work: It was against regulations and our military culture for an officer to take part in political activity. This was especially true for a senior officer. And I had always believed that a military career and politics didn't mix. Interaction with the executive and legislative branches, however, was an expected and essential part of being Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Like many of his colleagues, Cleland kept a television set in his outer office tuned to a news network. The first thing I saw on the screen was a live shot of the New York skyline, revealed through a wavering telephoto lens. Black smoke poured from the closer of the two World Trade Center towers, already darkening the bright September sky. At the bottom of the screen, the crawler text announced that a plane had hit the north tower.

Must have been a light aircraft, I thought. Maybe on a sightseeing flight.

I entered Cleland's private office, and we chatted a few moments about the aircraft accident in New York.

He had started preparing a pot of tea, but we hadn't taken a sip when a staff person came in from the outer office and informed us that the second tower had been hit. We both knew the interview was over and started out to the TV to see the south tower erupting with smoke and flame.

Cleland looked pale. I suppose I must have, too. This was no light-aircraft accident, but certainly an act of unthinkable terrorist savagery. The only precedent I could imagine for such an attack was December 7, 1941 -- Pearl Harbor.

My military aide, Army Capt. Chris Donahue, approached us on the way out.

"Sir," Donahue said, "General Eberhart's on my cell phone for you." Ed Eberhart had replaced me as commander of the North American Aerospace Command the year before. Obviously his call was urgent. In this emergency, I had to forgo the luxury of a secure encrypted Red Switch phone and use Donahue's cell.

"Dick," Ed said. "We've got several hijack codes in the system, and I'm working with the FAA to order all aircraft in the national air space to land." Two of NORAD's responsibilities were protecting American air space from enemy aircraft approaching our borders and warning of missile attack.

"That sounds like a good plan, Ed."

NORAD's only role with respect to hijackings was to scramble planes to shadow the hijacked aircraft. The Command was not authorized to order fighters to shoot down civilian airliners. That authority rested with the President alone.

Next, I got a call from Army Col. Matt Klimow, my executive assistant. As we spoke on Donahue's cell phone, the television showed pillars of black smoke erupting from the south tower.

"General," Klimow said in a calm, precise voice, "it looks like there's a major hijacking under way, and I recommend that you return to the Pentagon as soon as possible."

He added that the White House Situation Room had called at 9:16 a.m. to confirm that American Airlines Flight 11 from Boston to Los Angeles had hit the north World Trade Center tower.

"We're on our way back to the Pentagon now," I told Klimow.

As we raced away from Capitol Hill, my security officer took an urgent call.

"Sir," he said, "the Pentagon's just been hit."

I immediately called Matt Klimow back to verify the situation and was relieved when he answered almost at once. "People are running around shouting on the ERing corridor," he said. "And all the fire alarms are going off."

"Are you all right?"

"Yes, sir. It must have hit on the west side of the building, near the helo pad."

The Pentagon was such a massive structure that even the crash of an airliner might affect only a portion of the building. In the event of an attack, standing procedures called for the Vice Chairman to move to an alternate command post at a remote location -- "Site R" -- while the Chairman held the fort at the National Military Command Center in the Pentagon. But Hugh Shelton was airborne on his way to Europe for a NATO meeting and couldn't be back for hours. By law, as Vice Chairman, I was designated acting Chairman of the Joint Chiefs during his absence. And with NORAD and the FAA grounding all flights already airborne in the country and diverting incoming flights from overseas, Hugh might not be able to return -- although I knew it wouldn't be easy to stop the combat-hardened former Special Forces paratrooper from heading to the heart of the action.

So my command post had to be in the burning Pentagon.

Looking down the Mall, I saw the cluster of government buildings near the White House. Instinctively, my gaze swept the sky.

"Sir," Matt added, "the White House advised that the combatant commanders will probably want to increase THREATCON as they see fit." In emergencies, the functional and regional commanders in chief had control to adjust the level of protection their forces needed in their geographical areas.

The THREATCON was the alert status that the regional or functional commanders -- Central Command, European Command, Space Command, Pacific Command, and so forth -- set to defend their forces and installations against terrorist or other threats. If terrorists were executing a complex and massive attack today, our isolated naval, air, and ground bases overseas might be especially vulnerable, so raising the THREATCON was essential. The THREATCON levels increased from Normal, through Alpha, up to Delta. In the next hours, I was sure, over one million American service members around the world would be at their highest level of alert.

Unfortunately, the senior military and civilian leadership in this country was stretched thin that morning. The Chairman was flying to Europe; President George Bush was in Florida, promoting his education initiative; and Secretary of State Colin Powell was in South America, so a significant number of the National Security Council were away from Washington.

At this point, the roles of the military and domestic agencies were being sorted out. Klimow added that the FBI had been designated the lead civilian agency in the crisis, with the military standing by as needed if the terrorist attacks involved weapons of mass destruction (WMD: chemical, biological, or radiological warfare agents).

There was only one current enemy that could have coordinated the suicide hijacking of three airliners, almost simultaneously crashing them into the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon: Islamic extremists -- no doubt commanded by the alQaida terrorist movement. This was confirmed later in the day. These terrorists had tried to destroy the Trade Center towers with a massive truck bomb in 1993. Later in the 1990s, their growing organization had attacked American embassies in East Africa. In October 2000, an alQaida suicide boat bomb severely damaged the U.S. Navy destroyer Cole in the port of Aden, Yemen, killing seventeen of her crew and maiming many more. AlQaida's leader was wealthy Saudi radical Usama bin Laden.* Now, as my government sedan sped down I395 toward the Potomac, it was virtually certain that bin Laden had found the means to export his extreme violence to our shores.

I asked Matt if the National Military Command Center was up and running, knowing I'd need to be where we had the appropriate command and control apparatus. It was. "We're coming in," I told him. "I'll use the River Entrance."

As the sedan merged with traffic onto the Fourteenth Street Bridge, we saw black smoke and orange flame rising from the far side of the dull gray Pentagon. I wondered about my friends and colleagues, about Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his staff. How many were still alive?

My thoughts were chaotic as the car raced over the Potomac toward the rising smoke. Then, a half-forgotten childhood memory flooded back. I had seen such a greasy black pillar of smoke before.

Copyright © 2009 by RMyers and Associates, LL C

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

Part I Remembrance

1 Sunshine and Smoke: September 11, 2001 7

2 Family Values in Kansas: Discipline, Integrity, Hard Work 12

3 Spreading Wings: College, ROTC, Pilot Training, Marriage 18

4 Early Air Force: Germany, Fighter Training, First Combat Mission Southeast Asia 29

Part II Leadership

5 Honing Skills: From Fighter Weapons School Instructor to Major General 57

6 Diplomacy and Might: Japan Joint Command, Assistant to the Chairman, Space Command 85

7 Presidential Adviser: Vice Chairman, Then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Rise of al-Qaida 116

Part III Attack and Counterattack: September 11, 2001-October 1, 2005

8 Defining Moment: Vulnerable on Our Own Soil 151

9 Taking the War to the Enemy in Afghanistan: Operation Enduring Freedom 163

10 A New Playing Field: WMD and Operation Iraqi Freedom, Detainees, the Geneva Convention 197

11 Leadership in Time of War: The Coalition, the Growing Insurgency, Abu Ghraib, Reshaping the Militaryv

Part IV Our National Security Future

12 The Enduring Threat: Violent Extremism 279

13 The Most Important National Security Challenges America Will Face: Protecting the Future of Democracy 299

Index 317

Editorial Reviews

A good soldier turns in a dutiful memoir of life in uniform. Myers's ascent to chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was propelled by an Air Force career marked by the right combination of ticket-punching (flight school, combat service in Vietnam, a command position in Japan), politicking (hobnobbing with the top brass and politicos, downing fugu with Japanese generals) and doing time at the right duty posts ("We were exposed to German, Thai, and Japanese culture in ways American tourists rarely experience"). His reign lasted four years, whereupon he jumped-by other accounts, was pushed-into retirement. Myers and amanuensis McConnell-previously scribe to Tommy Franks and L. Paul Bremer, who will be known to students of the Iraq incursion-are ever careful, ever politically aware and ever dull in describing his rise, helped along by dazzlingly courageous colleagues and with a strong, cheerful wife by his side. There's not an unexpected note to be found here, even if Myers expresses "a pang of uneasiness" when George W. Bush landed on the deck of the Abraham Lincoln (he does not quote Bush's infamous "Mission accomplished"). His is the good soldiery of unknown actors and passive sentences. The diligent reader will note that it was not the fact of the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison that doomed so many a worthy star-wearer to retirement; rather, it was "the public revelation of the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in April 2004 [that] spurred a backlash against U.S. operations in Iraq and around the globe." As for those operations? All to the good, by this account, which closes with Myers presuming to offer a program for the incoming president on how to continue the noteworthy successes of George W.Bush and his servants in uniform. Useful only to true believers and admirers of Rumsfeld and Cheney.

Kirkus Reviews