CIA officer reflects on long career in new memoir ‘By All Means Available’

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• Geoff Bennett:

  The CIA and the Defense Department are two of the U.S. government's largest agencies, which run both secret paramilitary and military operations around the world.

  Amna has this conversation now with the author of a new memoir who has played key roles in both agencies.

• Amna Nawaz:

  Since the 1980s, the United States has carried out a number of large-scale covert military operations aimed at the Soviet Union, al-Qaida, and Osama bin Laden, Iran, and North Korea, just to name a few.

  A lot has been written about all of this, but now one man who played a key role in part of those operations has stepped out of the shadows to share his story in a new book called "By All Means Available: Memoirs of a Life in Intelligence, Special Operations, and Strategy."

  That author, Michael Vickers, joins me here now.

  Mike, good to see you.

  Michael Vickers, Author, "By All Means Available: Memoirs of a Life in Intelligence, Special Operations, and Strategy": It's great to be with you, Amna.

• Amna Nawaz:

  Thank you for being here.

  So, it was in 1984 that you got your first permanent assignment at the CIA. You were chief strategist for the Afghanistan covert action program that was arming the mujahideen that were fighting the Soviets, who'd invaded in 1979.

  You came in, and you essentially changed the entire CIA program. Tell us about that. What did you do?

• Michael Vickers:

  Well, so, the program had just received a very large increase in funding, quadrupling the budget, from Congress, from — particularly led by a Democratic congressman at the time, Charlie Wilson. A movie has been made after that story and his role.

  And so I thought there were a lot of possibilities with these greatly increased resources that CIA hadn't asked for, but were just given to them. And then I thought, well, maybe we could do more than just impose costs on the Soviets for their occupation of Afghanistan.

  Our analysts believed there's no way the resistance could win. The Red Army hadn't been defeated. And so that's what I set about to do. And some months later, I came up with a plan to do it that then got implemented.

• Amna Nawaz:

  This was all about beating the Soviets, not just…

  (CROSSTALK)

• Amna Nawaz:

  … right?

• Michael Vickers:

  Well, it became — actually, our policy objective shifted about four months later, when President Reagan signed a then-top secret directive to beat the Soviets, to drive them out of Afghanistan by all means, available. And, hence, that's where the title of the book comes.

• Amna Nawaz:

  We now know all these many years later, right? We know how that U.S. support for the Afghan mujahideen at the time led to other consequences, to the empowerment of other Islamic extremists, contributed to the birth of al-Qaida, who ultimately then, of course, attacked the U.S. on 9/11.

  You wrote about this, about that hindsight, in the book. You say: "We missed the strategic significance of the Afghan Arabs, the volunteers who would provide the foundation for al-Qaida.That we also did not anticipate how the defeat of one superpower would motivate al-Qaida to want to wage a global war against the sole remaining superpower," or the U.S.

  If you could go back and do something differently, would you have changed how you run the program all those years ago?

• Michael Vickers:

  No, I don't think — I don't think I would have changed…

• Amna Nawaz:

  You were arming some of the most extreme militants…

  (CROSSTALK)

• Amna Nawaz:

  … right?

• Michael Vickers:

  Well, the Afghan resistance was divided between more fundamentalist groups, some of which were the favorite of the Pakistanis, and then more traditionalist, some royalists, some more secular.

  And some of the fundamentalist groups did make common cause with the Taliban after 1996, and then became — we became their enemies and they became ours. So I don't think — I don't think we would have done anything differently in terms of the Soviet war.

• Amna Nawaz:

  You left the CIA after the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan many years later. You joined the George H.W. Bush administration working on special operations.

  And one of your main areas of focus there were drone strikes that were ramping up at the time. And there was a period of time in which I personally, actually, was on the ground, as I mentioned to you earlier, in the part of the world where the U.S. was dropping more drones and drone strikes than anywhere else, in the Pakistan and Afghanistan border region.

  And I saw the buildup of anti-American sentiment at the time as a result of those strikes. Were those strikes worth it in the end?

• Michael Vickers:

  Yes, I think they really helped prevent another 9/11 attack.

  After al-Qaida resettled in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region, the threat to the United States went way up. And so we had the transatlantic airline plot to blow up 10 airliners over the Atlantic, a 9/11-scale attack that might have killed several thousand people, in 2006.

  And so President Bush made the decision to launch a new campaign in 2008, to really start using these weapons, these drone strikes against al-Qaida and its safe haven providers in the border region, and President Obama sustained it.

  And within about four years of that, core al-Qaida's back was essentially broken in that region. Its ability to plot more was limited. And from polling I remember at the time, the closer — the closer you were to the militants, where you were being bullied by them or other things, the more the local populace supported it. The further you are away, it looked like a violation of Pakistani sovereignty.

  So people in the so-called settled areas of Pakistan had much stronger feelings against these things than those right in the border region.

• Amna Nawaz:

  Many of those strikes were carried out against people who we did not know who they were. Their identities weren't known until after they were killed in some cases, right, the signature strikes in which people were being targeted simply based on signature behavioral aspects or location.

  And we also know a number of civilians were killed along the way too. There were mistakes, women and children killed. A U.S. citizen, Warren Weinstein, who was held hostage in the area, was killed.

• Michael Vickers:

  Yes.

• Amna Nawaz:

  Do we get know the full cost in terms of civilians and people who shouldn't have been killed as a result of U.S. actions?

• Michael Vickers:

  Well, I think we have a pretty good idea.

  I mean, one of the decisions President Obama made late in his administration was to release the best data that we had in the U.S. intelligence about the number of noncombatant or civilian casualties.

  But that number was pretty small. It was in 60 to 100.

• Amna Nawaz:

  You're saying 60 to 100 civilians killed?

• Michael Vickers:

  Yes, out of about 3,000 combatants. So…

• Amna Nawaz:

  Because the Bureau of Investigative Journalism that tracks this says the civilian casualties could be upwards of 1,700 people.

• Michael Vickers:

  Yes, I don't think that's right. And I don't think the U.S. government believes that either.

• Amna Nawaz:

  You mentioned another major operation you were a part of, which was the U.S. operation to kill Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan in 2011.

  And that option, that nighttime special forces raid, was really the most risky of all the options on the table at the time, is my understanding. You were in meetings with President Obama. And the CIA had secretaries of defense and state.

  How was that option chosen?

• Michael Vickers:

  So, the options operationally ranged from airstrikes, big bomber strike, to a small drone strike, and then various kinds of raids. And some were rejected.

  Like, a big bomber strike would have caused collateral damage, not only would have killed women and children in the house with Osama bin Laden, but neighbors as well. And so that one got rejected pretty quickly. A small drone strike option didn't have much reliability to it. It would only work when bin Laden was walking around for exercise, and a very small bomb might not — might have missed, might have injured him, and then he would have fled.

  So, President Obama settled on the SEAL raid that we ended up one version of a special operations raid, but the one we ended up conducting, and that was the best option. It had its risky elements, but we tried to reduce the risk as much as we could by adding additional helicopters, reinforcing forces, et cetera, to make sure the force could get in and out.

  So, with the special operations raid, if we got him and got his DNA, we would be able to convincingly tell the world. If we had done an airstrike, we wouldn't have.

• Amna Nawaz:

  The book is "By All Means Available: Memoirs of a Life in Intelligence, Special Operations, and Strategy."

  Michael Vickers, thank you so much for being here.

• Michael Vickers:

  Pleasure to be with you. Thank you.