Interview with Lieutenant General Calvin Waller, Deputy Commander of Central Command (CENTCOM)

Waller: I think to be perfectly candid and fair the atmosphere was a little tense. There were many staff officers who were very reluctant to go in and tell the C-in-C candidly what needed to be said, because you must realise that the C-in-C was by himself, he did not have a deputy at the time, he had been doing all of the political things that he had to do and in addition he had been doing all of the things on the tactical side that needed to be done also, so he was enormously busy and in I guess many cases pretty short with people. I thought it was sort of like individuals walking around on eggshells, they were very tentative and very timid in how they would talk to the C-in-C for fear that they would cause some minor upheaval.

Q: When you arrived in the headquarters, General Schwarzkopf, it's no secret, had an explosive temper. What was morale like in that regard?

Waller: Well first of all the staff officers were very very timid .. now you have to bear in mind that General Schwarzkopf was by himself, he had no deputy at that time - he had a chief of staff and other staff officers but he didn't have another senior officer to relieve him of a lot of the responsibility, so he was doing all of the political things that he had to do and he was doing all of the tactical things, so it was incumbent upon me to walk in and try to relieve him of some of those tactical things that needed to be done and leave him to the political entities, but I will tell you that the staff officers appeared to be timid, a little bit like walking around on eggshells, they were very reluctant to give bad newsto General Schwarzkopf, for fear that they would cause some minor eruption, and therein was a problem, to make sure that staff officers did not fear saying what needed to be said so that we could get to the bottom of all those issues.

Q: So you found yourself becoming an intermediary between General Schwarzkopf and officers with bad news.....?

Waller: Well, you know, a lot of people have said that the reason why General Cal Waller was sent to Saudi Arabia was to keep General Schwarzkopf at peace with the staff and with the commanders. You know, if that is the truth, no-one ever instructed me that that's the reason why I was being sent to Saudi Arabia or to Riyadh, I was told by General Powell, as well as by the Army Chief of Staff that I was going to Saudi Arabia because of my experience as a ground combat commander and that I was going there to assist General Schwarzkopf with the combat operation since the President had recently made a decision to increase the number of forces there by over 100,000 when it was decided that VII Corps coming out of Germany would be moved from Europe, NATO countries, into Saudi Arabia, so I went there for ground combat and for combat operations more than I did for trying to keep General Schwarzkopf on an even keel. Now it just so happened that that was my fourth time working for General Schwarzkopf and we were friends and had known each other for years and I certainly understood what was required in working with Norman Schwarzkopf.

Q: What were the warning signs and how did you cope with that, you were talking about the thermometer and so on.

Waller: Well, you know, Norman Schwarzkopf is an enormous bright individual, a smart person, that is prone to some fits of temper and having worked with him for many years I knew what the warning signs of working with Norman Schwarzkopf was all about, it was sort of like watching a thermometer, the blood would start around the shirt collar and then it would work its way up to the jawline and then to the ears and by the time it got to the ears you ought to watch out because there was going to be a minor eruption and if it got to the top of the ears, watch out, because usually there was going to be an eruption and whoever was in the way might get lambasted, so just look at it as an inverse thermometer.

Q: What effect did this explosive temper have on the guys around him?

Waller: You know, many people said to me when I arrived there that many of the staff walked around with a stunned mullet look, sort of a closed caption on their face, staring off into the wild blue yonder, something which was affectionately known to me and the staff officers as a stunned mullet look, not quite knowing what to expect or what was going to happen. There was a lot of that when I arrived and I found it amusing that we found so many people who just sort of wandered around with that particular look, but really what it was all about was there were an enormous amount of dedicated individuals working a lot of long hours trying to accomplish many things that needed to be done but needed a little tender loving care and a few pats on the back and someone to let them know that they wouldn't suffer a severe socking chest wound if they made a minor mistake.

Q: And they weren't going to get that from Norman Schwarzkopf.

Waller: Yes, Norm Schwarzkopf was probably a bit too busy to embrace and put his arm around everybody who probably needed to be embraced and have a little tender loving care taken to him, so I felt it was important for me to stroke those people up who needed to be stroked up and to sort of gently wire-brush those who needed to be wire-brushed.

Q: You caused a rumpus when you said in no uncertain terms that the army needed more time to build up. Did the politicians in the White House understand the scale of the logistics that was required?

Waller: You know, there was an enormous upheaval in early December when I made the comment that the ground forces would not be ready for combat on January the 15th, so let me try to reconstruct for you precisely what went through my mind and what was happening and why I said what I said. I knew precisely what the war plan was all about and how it was going to take place, I knew that we had an air plan that was designed to go on for weeks and then the ground plan would come to fruition and we would launch the ground attack, but I certainly wasn't going to tell Saddam Hussein what our plan was, so in early December I was doing an interview with some reporters who had come over on the plane with Secretary Cheney and they kept pressing me about the magic January the 15th date, which was a date that had been established, which I kept asking where did this date come from, who established January 15 as this critical date - I couldn't really find anyone who could tell me why it was so critical other than it had been a date that had been sort of plucked out of thin air as a date we wanted Saddam to be out of Kuwait or we were going to do something, so when the reporters asked me about January the 15th I told them that, yes, the air force would be ready, yes, the Marines would be ready, I said, yes, I think the Marines will be ready, because the Marines had been there early on and were in position. They asked me if the ground combat forces would be ready to attack on January the 15th and I said, no, they will not be.

Now that was the truth and the reason it was the truth, because at that time we only had 18th Airborne Corps in the country and 18th Airborne Corps, except for the 24th Division, was basically a light infantry division - you don't send light infantry divisions and one heavy division against what we were told were thousands of forces. Now if the President of the United States had made a decision to bring in VII Corps and over 130,000 forces in that Corps from Europe, then it must have been important for them to be on the ground, in their attack positions, with their equipment fully uploaded, with all of the ammunition needed to fight a war. Now I knew that that was not going to happen until mid-February sometime, so I couldn't fathom how anyone could think that we would be ready for a ground attack on January the 15th when the VII Corps was still being shipped over via ships and their ammunition as well as many of their tanks and other combat equipment hadn't even arrived in the country, so the people who castigated me and the people who said that I didn't know what I was talking about, they're the ones in my opinion who did not understand modern warfare. You can't ask a corps to fight a war if it isn't in its positions, if they don't have the people there, if they don't have their weapons ready, and if they aren't prepared to fight.

Q: But the people in the White House and Brent Scowcroft in particular, still feel to this day that if he hadn't hurried things along, General Schwarzkopf would still be out there in the desert waiting for one more battalion. What would have happened if the White House had said, 'hey, you've got enough forces, the Soviets are causing us problems, we want the land war to start on January the 15th?'

Waller: Let me tell you about one of my greatest concerns about that January the 15th date was I knew that if we started the air war on January the 15th, which we did, and we were perfectly capable of doing it because we had an outstanding air war plan, my greatest fear was that after using all of these marvellous airmen and doing all of these great things in the first 10 days of the war, that someone would say, okay, enough of this air attacks and enough of all of this bombing these people, let's go in on the ground and punish them or root them out and send 'em home from Kuwait, and that goes back to what I was saying a bit earlier, how are you going to do that if you only have the 18th Airborne Corps in place, you can't do it, it would have been .. it would have been .. an analogy would have been like sending sheep or lambs to the slaughter, you can't expect one corps which is basically a light corps made up of America's finest airborne paratroopers, made up of the 101st Air Assault Division, and the 24th Division, only one heavy division, the rest of 'em are basically light infantry divisions.

Q: But you and General Schwarzkopf were worried that the White House would say to you, 'go now.' What would you guys have done?

Waller: I was very concerned about whether or not some political figure would make a decision and would press to start the ground war before the VII Corps was in place in their attack positions ready to start the war, that was one of my gravest concerns. I did not want to see a bunch of young Americans or other coalition forces lose their lives because we had not taken the time to put the people in position that was there. I asked General Schwarzkopf, what happens if after 9 days, 10 days of bombing, someone says from the White House or from the Department of Defence, alright, enough of this, go in on the ground, and he says I will resign and I said, well, then what does that mean, and he says, well then probably you'll be in charge, and I said if I resign that means they keep going down the line till they find somebody who will do it and then we will suffer a lot of casualties in my opinion needlessly, so it was of the utmost concern to both Norman Schwarzkopf and myself that someone might pressure to start the ground attack before we had VII Corps in position.

Q: The atmospherics that you were getting through Colin Powell, I mean you must have been well aware of all the General McClellan jibes --were you aware that all this stuff was going on behind your backs in the White House?

Waller: One of our greatest concerns was although that the Civil War series was on back in the States at the time, was well done, it made instant military experts out of a lot of people in the White House and across America, because then all of a sudden watching the Civil War series, some 14 hours of it, decided they wanted to liken Norman Schwarzkopf to General McClellan and me to someone else and maybe every commander they tried to line up and said, you know, that's Jeb Stewart or that's McClellan or that is Longstreet, so forth and so on, and that was a grave disservice to us I believe, that it happened to be on that particular time, because these instant military experts would say, well, these guys are like McClellan, they want to have all of the troops that they can possibly get, and to an extent that is true, if we made a decision to bring 'em in and the decision was made, then in my opinion it is folly not to wait until they get on the ground and are prepared to fight, so all I said and I think Norman Schwarzkopf agreed with me was let's wait until our forces that have been designated to get here are here and ready to fight before we launch some premature ground attack.

Q: Was there any specific conversation or incident that you recall linked to this conversation with Norman Schwarzkopf which made you think, hey, there really is a head of steam building up in the White House to do this earlier?

Waller: Yes, because he talked to General Colin Powell sometimes 3 or 4 times a day and, you know, on some occasions even more frequent than that that he talked to him and of course Colin Powell knew about what was happening in the political halls of the White House and the Pentagon about people wanting to draw an analogy between McClellan and General Schwarzkopf, so I think on several occasions he mentioned this to Norman Schwarzkopf, he being Colin Powell, mentioned it to Norman Schwarzkopf that, hey, people back here think that you don't want to really do this, don't have the stomach for it, you know, just heads up, be alert to this particular point and of course General Schwarzkopf was upset by those kind of remarks, being an astute military historian he didn't particularly take kindly to someone calling him a McClellan.

Q: Can you recall for me the day when Norman Schwarzkopf was told that people in the White House were saying he was like General McClellan?

Waller: Yes, as I recall it was one of the early afternoon calls that General Powell made and mentioned to Norman Schwarzkopf that we should get on with things and get it organised and get it done because General Schwarzkopf was being referred to as another McClellan - after that telephone conversation was over with, I think Norman Schwarzkopf broke a pencil, probably took another one and chewed off the head of the .. the eraser off of the pencil and then related to me that there were individuals somewhere in the White House who were referring to him as another McClellan and needless to say that was not a good day to be in the Riyadh headquarters of the CENTCOM because Norman Schwarzkopf was bitterly opposed to being referred to as another McClellan and after that particular comment we made sure we renewed every effort to get on with doing what needed to be done as expeditiously as possible, in spite of the fact that we were doing everything that we could in the first place, but Norman Schwarzkopf did not want to be referred to as another McClellan.

Q: Just how big a force was VII Corps, I mean people have said to me it was the army that was going to fight the Third World War.

Waller: When you look at the total size of this force and when you want to compare the size of it, it's 130,000 souls, men and women in that Corps, that's larger than many of our cities in the United States. I mean when you look at the number of divisions that it brought with it, with the artillery groups, with the air defence group, with the battalions of support, with the engineering battalions, with the artillery battalions, with all of the things that must support this entire Corps, you're talking about moving the equivalent of a city of 130,000 people, and let's just take a city of 130,000 people in the United States and say pick it up and move everything that's in that city, lock stock and barrel, 7,000 miles away, or 4,000 miles over the ocean I would say, less than what it was from the United States to Saudi Arabia, but that's the equivalent of what we had to do, move 130,000 people that belonged to VII Corps from Europe to the desert in Saudi Arabia, house them, feed them, clothe them, outfit them with everything that they needed from a toothbrush to a toilet or to a shower or what have you, an enormous undertaking logistically to do such a thing.

Q: Did the guys in the White House understand this?

Waller: Many people have said did the politicians understand what it took to move a force of 130,000 people from NATO to the desert, I don't think people had a clue as to what it takes to do that. Most people have difficulty in moving their household goods from one place to another, but if you could just imagine, and I would like for politicians to understand when they talk about moving an army corps of 130,000, plus or minus a few, from one continent to another and from one side of the world to another side of the world, across the ocean, and say do that, just imagine it would be like moving the equivalent of 100,000 furniture vans from one place to another, and if you can imagine doing that, everybody moving at one time, imagine having a city of 100,000, all of a sudden everybody leaving that city at one time or within days of each other - an enormous undertaking and task, and a lot of politicians don't have a clue, had no appreciation for what it would take in order to make that happen.

Q: Of course Brent Scowcroft's a general, he must understand.

Waller: I think if you checked this distinguished gentleman's background, you will find that most of his time was spent in the Air Force, not in tactical units, not knowing what the Army is all about and what it takes to move the Army from point A to point B - it's a bit different from moving an aircraft squadron or a wing that can basically get into its airplane, fly the wing where it needs to be and then put the supporting equipment on various kinds of box cars, or other.......most of those people can get into their aircrafts and fly and be at point A within 12 to 15 hours. Now the other equipment has to come along behind them but when you're talking about a 130,000 man Corps, that's a big difference than moving an aircraft squadron or wing from point A to point B.

Q: When did you actually know that there would be an air war?

Waller: I realised that we were going to have an air war in December, when Secretary of Defence Cheney, along with General Powell, their advisers, came to Riyadh to receive an updated briefing from us there in the Central Command headquarters, about where we were, where we had to go and what was needed in order to launch the campaign. It was clear to me after we finished that series of briefing, in December, that the will of Secretary of Defence, as well as the chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff, Colin Powell, that we were committed to go into some form of warfare and I knew that we were going to at least launch the air campaign. I wasn't sure whether or not we would have to launch the ground campaign but I knew after those series of briefings that at least we were going to enter into the air campaign.

Q: What was giving you the clue?

Waller: I received several clues from that visit, where the resolve of the Secretary of Defence, the very pointed questions, the resolve of the chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Powell, was such that you knew that obviously they had talked with the President and the President's advisers and that the message, through body language, through the way that they conveyed their messages and so forth, that they were very serious about getting Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait and therefore I felt that we were going to at least launch the air campaign, which we did.

Q: And how did it come about that the air campaign was launched on January the 16th at that specific moment?

Waller: Well, after the December briefing and then the Secretary of Defence and the chairman departed Riyadh, they went back to the United States, to Camp David specifically, to brief President Bush about their trip to Riyadh. Shortly after their briefing to President Bush and President Bush's advisers, we received word in Riyadh, through General Powell, to General Schwarzkopf, that the .. at least the air campaign had been approved and that we would launch that on January the 15th, which was January the 16th our time at zero zero one, so that we set about to launch the air campaign precisely on the date that had been established and set.