Waller: Well, you know, obviously this is a very top secret type of conversation that took place so we made sure that we were in a very secure setting when General Schwarzkopf decided to tell the key individuals there at Riyadh about the decision that had been made, so there must have been ten of us or who huddled in a room as I recall and we got the word from General Schwarzkopf that he had just received confirmation from General Powell that the President of the United States had approved the launching of the air campaign on January the 15th, United States time, January the 16th our time, so it was a pretty sombre period, we sat around and reflected on precisely what that meant, we reflected on the things that we needed to do between that day and the start of affairs, of the launch of the air campaign, and everyone went about his business in a very professional way and left there with the feeling of an enormous sense of responsibility and a very heavy weight on your shoulders, that this decision was going to possibly cause the loss of lives of a lot of great young Americans and other coalition warriors. So I don't think anyone took it lightly and, you know, everyone took it very seriously and people went back to their offices and to their respective places of duty to reflect on that and then to do the things that needed to be done in order to prepare.

Q: There wasn't a sense of euphoria?

Waller: I do not ever recall any sense of euphoria that we are now going to go kick some butt, this is what we all have been training for, are ready to do, I don't ever recall anyone giving any sort of--this is it, let's go do it and make it happen, it was a very very somber moment and I think most of the people who received that message from General Schwarzkopf were very reflective on their responsibilities and what they needed to do in order to make a success of what it was we were about to accomplish and do.

Q: Did General Schwarzkopf discuss with you his worries about the air campaign and his worries about the casualties? ...

Waller: No, General Schwarzkopf never reflected with me about the launch of the air campaign, about what was going to happen. Once that decision was made and he had announced it, I think he resigned himself to the fact that this is destiny, the handwriting is on the wall, there's not a lot that needs to be said about it or there's nothing much we can do to change it so we went our separate ways so to speak and we never really sat down and reflected on that at all, once that decision was made, there was just too much work to be done to really sit around and reflect, because that meant we had an awful lot of other things that we needed to accomplish and to get in place as a follow-on to the air campaign.

Q: That first night of the war, can you describe for me how General Schwarzkopf made his entrance and what happened?

Waller: Well, the first night of the war was really a unique sort of experience. Most of us, those people who had seats in the war room, were there long before the designated hour, and as I recall, at a few minutes before the first aircraft was to be launched and to hit its target, the door popped open and the announcement was made, ladies and gentlemen, the commanding chief of Central Command, and General Schwarzkopf came through the door, moved to his place at a table, and he turned to his right where the chaplain was standing and he asked the chaplain to say a prayer, and the chaplain said that prayer, and after the prayer was over his senior military executive, Colonel Bell, had a tape recorder and walked to the table, put the tape recorder on the war room table, punched a button and Lee Greenwood's song, "God Bless The USA" came bursting from the radio and we all stood there at rigid attention and listened at Lee Greenwood sing his song, and when that song was over with we took our seats at the table and then it was a matter of waiting and praying that those airplanes that had been launched, for which there was probably no recall at this particular time, that they would get to their targets safely and that we wouldn't lose nearly as many aircraft as we expected that we were going to lose.

Q: Jack Leide told me he didn't think there was a dry eye in the house, was it a very emotional moment?

Waller: I would say to you that it's one of the most emotional moments I've ever experienced, here was a senior leadership of the Central Command, responsible for the lead of most of the coalition forces, all of us feeling an enormous sense of responsibility, not knowing what to expect, very emotional to be there and to not be able to accomplish or to do anything except wait for the telephone to ring, for someone to tell you that we have lost X number of planes or we have X number of planes that have returned and we lost no planes or we lost no lives, and the wait was excruciating, agonising, to sit there and to be able to do nothing but just to wait to see what was going to happen ... so yes, it was very emotional.

Q: What were you thinking as an individual, not as a general but as an individual.

Waller: My thought process ran something along these lines, I have been a soldier for a long period of time, I have done everything in my power to prepare these great Americans and other coalition forces for this particular moment, I hope that we are successful and that we will lose as few lives as humanly possible, because I was so concerned about the enormous projection that had been made about how many planes we might lose, about the kind of air defence that Saddam Hussein had around Baghdad, I was just so concerned that those planes would roll in to Baghdad and that many of them would never ever return to their bases or to their ships, and I was thinking about .. most of them were young people and I was thinking about most of those pilots who were flying those planes were young enough to be my sons and I was thinking about my two sons and how I would feel as a parent if they were going over Baghdad and so forth and I knew that a lot of their parents had no idea that their sons or daughters were en route to this sort of thing, so I just tried to put myself in the kind of mood and situation where I looked upon it as a loving parent, that I'd done the best I possibly could and now hopefully their skills would bring them through it.

Q: And when this music was being played, can you describe General Schwarzkopf, what did he look like?

Waller: I glanced over to see how Norman Schwarzkopf was sort of taking what was going on with Lee Greenwood's song and he like everybody else had a tear in his eye, very emotional, somber, and probably thinking much along the same lines that I think I was and that was that we had done our very best and there was not a lot we could do at this time, that they were on their own and God help them.


Q: What else do you remember about that night, . I mean do you recall the moment the television went off the air, for example?

Waller: Well, oddly enough that particular night there were several things that will always remain with me. The first thing that I remember was getting a report that the first aircraft that was supposed to make the first attack was successful, which had opened a hole in the line.

Q: When you heard the news it was successful, I mean what did you think?

Waller: It was an enormous amount of elation when you heard that the first aircraft was successful in knocking out its target so that we could breach the air defence line and hopefully the rest of the aircraft or many of the aircraft could go through that particular breach in that air defence line and...

Q: What were you saying to each other, I mean you were next to General Schwarzkopf?

Waller: Well, it was sort of like being in a football game where a touchdown is scored, because there was a lot of pounding the table saying that's super, that's great, that is .. it was, you know, a moment of elation, it was very very .. very very good news when the report came in that the aircraft had been successful in doing that so, you know, it was the first taste of shall I say victory, it was the first in a series of many good things that happened that particular evening, and then as time wore on, of course you know we had some journalists in Baghdad and of course they were on CNN live, talking about various things, what was happening and so forth, and when the word came from these journalists that the aircraft were over Baghdad, we were again elated that they had made it to Baghdad but then when their success was so evident, because then all of a sudden the journalists who were there were scrambling to find some safety and when they were knocked off of the air because one of the major targets that we had put to our air campaign was to get those television stations and towers and so forth, when they went off the air we knew that at least we'd been successful in stopping some of the transmissions from Baghdad.

Q: How did you learn, did you have a television there or someone came and told you?

Waller: Yes, we had a television in the war room and it was in the corner of the war room and we could all, you know, glance to our right and look up a bit and we could see what was happening on the television in the war room, and we also had targeted the power stations in Baghdad and when the power went out and everyone said it was darkness, total darkness over in Baghdad, then again we knew we had been successful in at least reaching those targets.


Q: What did General Schwarzkopf say, you were sitting next to him ...

Waller: I was sitting next to Norman Schwarzkopf and as I recall he turned to me and he says, at least we have reached Baghdad, at least we have accomplished hitting some major targets and maybe it's going to be okay.



Q: What else do you recall from that night?

Waller: I guess the most elated feeling that I have or that I can ever recall from that particular night was that after the first wave of aircraft finished their first runs and as I recall all of them returned to their bases or to their ships and I think we only had one that did not return, so it was an overwhelming feeling of success because I mean we had .. we had a prediction of losing anywhere between 20 and 50 aircraft that night and as bad as it was to lose one, it was just such a good feeling to have the vast majority of them return safely, so that was just a overwhelming feeling of success.

Q: And then the Scuds came and there was enormous political pressure to do something, to stop the Scuds. How was this pressure to do something transmitted to you guys?

Waller: Once Saddam Hussein launched those Scuds, it was one of the most non-productive times that I think that we had during the conflict. Why do I say that? I say that because we had to divert an enormous amount of time, energy, combat resources into trying to find these mobile launch Scuds, we had a great appreciation for what was happening in Israel and how the people in Riyadh and other parts of Saudi Arabia felt about the Scuds being launched in their directions and so forth, and I don't want to diminish for one minute how these people felt, but on the other hand I would like for people to understand and appreciate that our primary mission was to bring Saddam Hussein and his military machinery to their knees and to do what the United Nations had asked us to do and that was to get him out of the sovereign state of Kuwait and here we were devoting an awful lot of our energies and time and combat power to looking for these Scud missiles.

Q: Was General Schwarzkopf getting frustrated that the politicians didn't understand this?

Waller: There was frustration on the part of everybody, there was frustration on the part of the air forces, the coalition air forces, having to divert a lot of time and energy to that, there was frustration on the part of our staff who didn't have a sense of how we could find these mobile Scud missiles, there was a frustration that we didn't know precisely how many of these things that Saddam had, it was just an overwhelming sense of helplessness - here we had this tremendous machinery of combat power and that these sort of insignificant, inaccurate Scuds which was basically a area weapon, a terrace type weapon, was causing us such an enormous problem from the standpoint of diversion of critical resources to trying to find these things.

Q: Do you recall any specific moments when General Schwarzkopf came to you and said ... you know, the guys in Washington just don't understand!

Waller: Almost on a daily basis General Schwarzkopf was receiving an enormous amount of help from politicians and from General Powell as to what might be done or how it might be done in finding these Scud missiles and those people who didn't have the responsibility always seemed to have an easy answer, just go out there and find them, go out there and cordon off this whole area and stop it, and as I recall, I remember discussing with Norman Schwarzkopf that this is like looking for a truck in the state of Maine, because the area where these things were coming from was about the size of the state of Maine, so if you could imagine having a truck moving around the forests of Maine and someone trying to find it with aircraft or an overhead or whatever, and remember that most of those aircraft were flying at some 500 plus miles an hour, to find this truck in Maine it would be rather difficult, and for those people who said just send some forces out there to have them to .. you know, scurry around the area and to find them, did not have an appreciation for how far this force would be away from their base and just what an enormous task it is to try to be on foot and cover an area the size of Maine.

Q: And what did General Schwarzkopf say to you about the people who came up with neat easy answers?

Waller: Well, needless to say, General Schwarzkopf was a bit taken aback by how so many people seemed to be offering so many easy answers but yet didn't understand the enormous task that was at hand, so I think he had a few choice words for some of those individuals ...He called them pony-headed politicians who had never fought their way out of a wet paper bag, here they are trying to tell, you know, this enormous collection of military experts how to accomplish this task of finding and destroying these Scuds.