1
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:10,640
All across America and around the world, this is Veterans Radio.

2
00:00:10,640 --> 00:00:15,920
This is Veterans Radio.

3
00:00:15,920 --> 00:00:17,840
Welcome to Veterans Radio.

4
00:00:17,840 --> 00:00:20,560
I am Jim Fausone.

5
00:00:20,560 --> 00:00:22,880
I'm the officer of the deck today.

6
00:00:22,880 --> 00:00:24,720
We've got some great programs for you.

7
00:00:24,720 --> 00:00:27,760
I think you'll find very interesting.

8
00:00:27,760 --> 00:00:34,480
We always want to remind you you can find more about Veterans Radio at its Facebook site

9
00:00:34,480 --> 00:00:37,280
or at the web.

10
00:00:37,280 --> 00:00:42,720
VeteransRadio.org is our new URL, VeteransRadio.org.

11
00:00:42,720 --> 00:00:48,240
Where we're on the web 24-7, you can find a lot of our podcasts there as well.

12
00:00:48,240 --> 00:00:55,520
We post new ones every Tuesday, so you can get a new story, a new interview, something

13
00:00:55,520 --> 00:00:59,280
you didn't know before by going to VeteransRadio.org.

14
00:00:59,280 --> 00:01:04,560
And before we get started, we want to thank our sponsors.

15
00:01:04,560 --> 00:01:13,840
First up, we want to thank National Veteran Business Development Council, NVBDC.org.

16
00:01:13,840 --> 00:01:19,520
It was established to certify both service disabled and veteran owned businesses.

17
00:01:19,520 --> 00:01:26,080
You'll find out how they can help your business by going to NVBDC.org.

18
00:01:26,080 --> 00:01:29,600
We want to thank Legal Help for Veterans.

19
00:01:29,600 --> 00:01:35,080
Legal Help for Veterans fights for veterans disability rights all across the nation.

20
00:01:35,080 --> 00:01:47,080
You can reach them at 800-693-4800 or on the web at LegalHelpForVeterans.com.

21
00:01:47,080 --> 00:01:52,560
We want to welcome to VeteransRadio today Dr. Mark Moyer.

22
00:01:52,560 --> 00:01:56,040
Dr. Moyer is a professor at Hillsdale College.

23
00:01:56,040 --> 00:02:01,120
He's also the director of the College's Center for Military History and Strategy.

24
00:02:01,120 --> 00:02:05,400
He has had a fascinating academic career.

25
00:02:05,400 --> 00:02:12,160
He got his BA from Harvard, but he got his PhD from Cambridge.

26
00:02:12,160 --> 00:02:19,160
He went on and taught as a professor at the University of Marine Corps University.

27
00:02:19,160 --> 00:02:24,920
He taught at Texas A&M University, the Foreign Service Institute.

28
00:02:24,920 --> 00:02:31,040
He was a senior fellow at the Joint Special Operations University and has worked as a consultant

29
00:02:31,040 --> 00:02:36,840
on senior leadership of Special Operations Joint Task Force for Afghanistan.

30
00:02:36,840 --> 00:02:41,560
These all weave into the many, many things he's written on that we could talk about.

31
00:02:41,560 --> 00:02:44,520
There's just no way we can get it to it all.

32
00:02:44,520 --> 00:02:46,440
He's written on Vietnam.

33
00:02:46,440 --> 00:02:49,920
He's written on special operations.

34
00:02:49,920 --> 00:02:57,360
He's talked about issues that have, you know, administrations that have gone awry in working

35
00:02:57,360 --> 00:02:58,840
with the military.

36
00:02:58,840 --> 00:03:04,760
And his most recent book is Masters of Corruption, How the Federal Bureaucracy Sabotaged the

37
00:03:04,760 --> 00:03:06,520
Trump Presidency.

38
00:03:06,520 --> 00:03:12,640
So lots of things to talk about, but Mark, thanks for taking some time to talk to Veterans

39
00:03:12,640 --> 00:03:13,640
Radio.

40
00:03:13,640 --> 00:03:17,160
Yeah, great to be talking to you and the veteran community.

41
00:03:17,160 --> 00:03:23,160
Well, you've got, as I say, an interesting background academically as a historian, but

42
00:03:23,160 --> 00:03:29,240
having worked, if you will, inside the government and now outside at Hillsdale College, and

43
00:03:29,240 --> 00:03:34,480
I think you're a member of the Hoover Institute Working Group on the Role of Military History

44
00:03:34,480 --> 00:03:36,840
and Contemporary Conflict.

45
00:03:36,840 --> 00:03:41,440
So you're thinking about a lot of these issues, and kind of one of them I maybe wanted to

46
00:03:41,440 --> 00:03:48,160
start with is this whole idea of what really is the interplay between civilian oversight

47
00:03:48,160 --> 00:03:51,800
and military operations from a historical perspective?

48
00:03:51,800 --> 00:03:53,160
Yes, Will.

49
00:03:53,160 --> 00:03:57,800
This is something that dates back to our nation's founding.

50
00:03:57,800 --> 00:04:02,720
And one of the things I've enjoyed about being at Hillsdale's, we actually make sure everybody

51
00:04:02,720 --> 00:04:10,040
understands where we've come from, but the founders recognized something that actually

52
00:04:10,040 --> 00:04:16,560
didn't really become more generally known until Klossowitz in the 19th century, but

53
00:04:16,560 --> 00:04:24,880
that war itself is a political undertaking and therefore you ought to have political

54
00:04:24,880 --> 00:04:28,600
leadership ultimately responsible.

55
00:04:28,600 --> 00:04:36,600
And so we have vested in President the Authority of Commander-in-Chief with the military reporting

56
00:04:36,600 --> 00:04:43,920
to the Commander-in-Chief, and now that then requires a lot of interplay between the President

57
00:04:43,920 --> 00:04:48,880
and the military, and ideally the President should be very well versed in military affairs,

58
00:04:48,880 --> 00:04:54,560
and of course Washington was, and most of our Presidents who have been successful commanders,

59
00:04:54,560 --> 00:05:00,000
Lincoln being another great example, FDR, understood the military.

60
00:05:00,000 --> 00:05:05,080
Now we get to Vietnam and Lyndon Johnson, you run into trouble because you have a Commander-in-Chief

61
00:05:05,080 --> 00:05:10,000
who doesn't understand the military, so that is one of the big problems we've had since

62
00:05:10,000 --> 00:05:16,800
Vietnam is military, a President's lacking the military knowledge they need.

63
00:05:16,800 --> 00:05:23,160
Barack Obama is another one who wrote a book about him, a similar problem.

64
00:05:23,160 --> 00:05:28,720
And so this interplay does require, should require, Presidents who know the military.

65
00:05:28,720 --> 00:05:31,400
Yeah, it's an interesting concept.

66
00:05:31,400 --> 00:05:36,560
I think we'd all agree with the concept, but it's how it actually works in real life,

67
00:05:36,560 --> 00:05:43,320
where the rub comes in, and you've been inside special operations, you've taught at Marine

68
00:05:43,320 --> 00:05:54,000
Corps University, and sort of talked to future leaders about that interplay, I suppose, that

69
00:05:54,000 --> 00:06:02,600
not every President, not every political leader really has a good set of guiding principles

70
00:06:02,600 --> 00:06:11,800
or understanding of how to use the military and how to impact foreign policy.

71
00:06:11,800 --> 00:06:17,400
He wrote Strategic Failure, kind of talking about somebody who didn't really have that

72
00:06:17,400 --> 00:06:18,960
going in.

73
00:06:18,960 --> 00:06:21,320
Talk to us a little bit about that.

74
00:06:21,320 --> 00:06:30,320
Yes, and I think we see with Obama, a lot of the same problems we saw with LBJ, I think

75
00:06:30,320 --> 00:06:34,800
we're also seeing with the Biden, is this lack of understanding.

76
00:06:34,800 --> 00:06:43,600
Here this too relates to what the President's priorities are, and we saw that we have some

77
00:06:43,600 --> 00:06:48,240
Presidents who are very domestically focused, and basically for them, foreign policy is

78
00:06:48,240 --> 00:06:54,200
a nuisance that gets in the way of their domestic agenda, and so they tend to be reactive.

79
00:06:54,200 --> 00:06:55,800
And that was what happened with Johnson.

80
00:06:55,800 --> 00:07:02,040
He was not proactive, he didn't have a proactive strategy, he was trying to remake the country

81
00:07:02,040 --> 00:07:08,440
through the great society, and Vietnam was this pesky thing, and so he would react as

82
00:07:08,440 --> 00:07:09,440
problems arose.

83
00:07:09,440 --> 00:07:14,720
But that's not really a good way to manage the strategy of the world's biggest power

84
00:07:14,720 --> 00:07:21,640
or the military because you want to be proactive and moving, and we saw the same thing with

85
00:07:21,640 --> 00:07:22,640
Obama.

86
00:07:22,640 --> 00:07:26,360
I think we're seeing it again with Biden.

87
00:07:26,360 --> 00:07:32,360
So it takes a lot of effort by the President and interest to actually have a more proactive

88
00:07:32,360 --> 00:07:39,480
approach, to actually have a strategy because the idea of sort of reaction and crisis management,

89
00:07:39,480 --> 00:07:45,080
which Bill Clinton was another one who fits in this category, that is very passive and

90
00:07:45,080 --> 00:07:48,840
it leaves you vulnerable to your enemies.

91
00:07:48,840 --> 00:07:58,520
Because the strategy that a President should create comes simply out of his view or her

92
00:07:58,520 --> 00:08:06,520
view of the world, of foreign affairs, of domestic policy, and who should be putting

93
00:08:06,520 --> 00:08:11,560
input into this as you've studied it, those who have been successful and those who have

94
00:08:11,560 --> 00:08:16,760
not, where does the input for developing that policy come from?

95
00:08:16,760 --> 00:08:23,720
The President should have a strong set of advisors who can help him understand the key

96
00:08:23,720 --> 00:08:31,320
issues, and we've seen here too a range of people and qualifications.

97
00:08:31,320 --> 00:08:35,720
You know, Robert McNamara is probably the poster child for the Secretary of Defense who

98
00:08:35,720 --> 00:08:41,240
was ill-prepared for his job and gave a lot of bad advice to the President.

99
00:08:41,240 --> 00:08:47,240
Like LBJ finally by 1968 figures out that McNamara has really not been doing a good job and it

100
00:08:47,240 --> 00:08:50,120
ends up letting him go.

101
00:08:50,120 --> 00:08:55,640
We've had other people, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates who was in second Bush and then

102
00:08:55,640 --> 00:08:57,680
also spent some time in the Obama administration.

103
00:08:57,680 --> 00:09:02,080
I think he was someone who was much more effective.

104
00:09:02,080 --> 00:09:06,840
He ends up having a big falling out with Obama and believes Obama deceived him.

105
00:09:06,840 --> 00:09:09,120
He wrote a long book about it.

106
00:09:09,120 --> 00:09:13,760
Then you also have the uniform military who weigh in on these issues.

107
00:09:13,760 --> 00:09:20,320
We see some Presidents are much more willing to listen to what they have to say.

108
00:09:20,320 --> 00:09:22,960
Others are very dismissive.

109
00:09:22,960 --> 00:09:29,640
We saw with the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Vietnam War that the President, especially

110
00:09:29,640 --> 00:09:33,680
Johnson and also McNamara didn't pay attention to them.

111
00:09:33,680 --> 00:09:37,600
What they were saying and in hindsight we can see they were actually recommending a much

112
00:09:37,600 --> 00:09:42,720
better strategy than the one the civilians were pursuing.

113
00:09:42,720 --> 00:09:48,320
Now of course the generals aren't always right but I think they should get greater respect

114
00:09:48,320 --> 00:09:49,520
than they sometimes get.

115
00:09:49,520 --> 00:09:57,680
We also saw this in the Clinton administration, the Obama administration and we know we also

116
00:09:57,680 --> 00:10:03,760
in the Trump administration some cases where there was this conflict between the uniform

117
00:10:03,760 --> 00:10:09,360
military or lack of respect and the Trump administration certainly went both ways where

118
00:10:09,360 --> 00:10:10,360
we saw it.

119
00:10:10,360 --> 00:10:15,600
It would appear to be General Mark Milley verging on insubordination towards the White

120
00:10:15,600 --> 00:10:16,600
House.

121
00:10:16,600 --> 00:10:21,840
Yeah, Trump said horrible things about the military and he said good things about the

122
00:10:21,840 --> 00:10:23,720
military.

123
00:10:23,720 --> 00:10:27,240
That whip-sawing has got to drive people crazy as well.

124
00:10:27,240 --> 00:10:36,240
You have taken a lot of time to look at the issue of the Vietnam War through a historian's

125
00:10:36,240 --> 00:10:42,680
lens decades and decades later you've written triumph regained and triumph forsaken which

126
00:10:42,680 --> 00:10:46,680
tells me there's one more coming out.

127
00:10:46,680 --> 00:10:57,680
That is trying to reimagine or reposition the Vietnam War and strip away from it sort

128
00:10:57,680 --> 00:11:04,040
of the 1968 domestic problems.

129
00:11:04,040 --> 00:11:10,320
Tell us when you relook at the Vietnam War if it was winnable or if it was just from

130
00:11:10,320 --> 00:11:13,440
the get-go not so and politics prevailed.

131
00:11:13,440 --> 00:11:21,120
Yeah, so the reason I got so involved in selling Vietnam is that at the time I was going through

132
00:11:21,120 --> 00:11:23,840
college this was the early 90s.

133
00:11:23,840 --> 00:11:29,760
Vietnam War was widely derided by the American intelligentsia as this unwinnable conflict

134
00:11:29,760 --> 00:11:38,000
we should never have been in it and Vietnam veterans were maligned in part for their participation

135
00:11:38,000 --> 00:11:39,000
in that war.

136
00:11:39,000 --> 00:11:45,920
So I started reading about it, it occurred to me that so much of what the intelligentsia,

137
00:11:45,920 --> 00:11:51,640
the journalists and historians were telling us was factually incorrect and that it appeared

138
00:11:51,640 --> 00:11:58,880
to be guided by motives other than getting to the truth such as justifying why we protested

139
00:11:58,880 --> 00:12:04,400
against the war or refused to serve in the military during Vietnam.

140
00:12:04,400 --> 00:12:11,400
And so Triumph Forsaken which goes up to 63, I originally was going to do one volume on

141
00:12:11,400 --> 00:12:16,160
the whole war but as I got into it I realized there's an amazing amount of information that

142
00:12:16,160 --> 00:12:23,920
hasn't been shared with the public and it causes us to fundamentally rethink how the

143
00:12:23,920 --> 00:12:26,200
war came about.

144
00:12:26,200 --> 00:12:33,760
And so that book Triumph Forsaken goes up into July of 1965 and in that period where

145
00:12:33,760 --> 00:12:40,600
the US is not yet committed to the war we see now and with the benefit of a lot of new

146
00:12:40,600 --> 00:12:46,040
sources especially from the North Vietnamese side that the outcome was far from foreboding

147
00:12:46,040 --> 00:12:52,360
and in fact the US was doing pretty well up until 63 when we participated in a disastrous

148
00:12:52,360 --> 00:12:58,400
coup but even after that the North Vietnamese were still very wary of going to war and so

149
00:12:58,400 --> 00:13:04,800
it was Lyndon Johnson through a series of misstatements particularly the statement that we're not

150
00:13:04,800 --> 00:13:10,760
going to fight, send our American boys to fight in Vietnam and various other acts of

151
00:13:10,760 --> 00:13:15,440
weakness that really invite the North Vietnamese to come into the war.

152
00:13:15,440 --> 00:13:19,720
And then we also have lots of information now saying that other strategies including

153
00:13:19,720 --> 00:13:23,920
invading North Vietnam or cutting the Ho Chi Minh Trail could have given us a different

154
00:13:23,920 --> 00:13:24,920
outcome.

155
00:13:24,920 --> 00:13:30,080
Yeah, it's always interesting when you get the other guy's perspective too you say the

156
00:13:30,080 --> 00:13:37,560
sources from Vietnam shed a whole new light on this because you now know what, how they're

157
00:13:37,560 --> 00:13:40,720
reacting to your action and vice versa.

158
00:13:40,720 --> 00:13:46,680
But I wanted to ask about come back to the president's role in setting military direction

159
00:13:46,680 --> 00:13:53,680
and policy and that the president should have a strategy for how to use the military and

160
00:13:53,680 --> 00:14:04,260
in your writings it seems like as new items, new approaches develop maybe the presidential

161
00:14:04,260 --> 00:14:08,840
strategies don't embrace them timely.

162
00:14:08,840 --> 00:14:15,280
One is the concept of counterinsurgency, another is how do you use special operations

163
00:14:15,280 --> 00:14:22,200
and then like technological advances, drones would be a good example of it.

164
00:14:22,200 --> 00:14:27,440
How do you as a historian in the academic as you look at this and you see these kind

165
00:14:27,440 --> 00:14:34,280
of advances in warfare, how does it get molded into a current strategy?

166
00:14:34,280 --> 00:14:38,720
Yeah, so that's an excellent question.

167
00:14:38,720 --> 00:14:47,480
That has been a big challenge in both counterinsurgency and special operations as you mentioned.

168
00:14:47,480 --> 00:14:53,400
And one of the big problems you have is that senior leaders don't necessarily really understand

169
00:14:53,400 --> 00:14:55,560
what these things are.

170
00:14:55,560 --> 00:15:00,000
We saw this in Iraq and Afghanistan especially a lot of people throwing around the terms

171
00:15:00,000 --> 00:15:05,920
counterterrorism and counterinsurgency without fully understanding what they mean or people

172
00:15:05,920 --> 00:15:13,800
thinking that special operations can do things well beyond what they can actually achieve.

173
00:15:13,800 --> 00:15:18,200
There's a lot of mystique around special operations and sometimes they're seen as a

174
00:15:18,200 --> 00:15:19,200
silver bullet.

175
00:15:19,200 --> 00:15:29,600
Now we had the killing of Osama bin Laden by Navy SEALs which was a major tactical victory

176
00:15:29,600 --> 00:15:37,140
but for one thing those victories are few and far between but also we've seen that even

177
00:15:37,140 --> 00:15:45,440
if you decapitate or remove one leader in this network of nefarious actors usually they're

178
00:15:45,440 --> 00:15:50,120
able to replace that person and especially it was an issue in Iraq where we thought we

179
00:15:50,120 --> 00:15:57,920
were going to get once we got rid of Saddam Hussein and his sons that the conflict will

180
00:15:57,920 --> 00:16:02,920
be over but it turned out that these insurgents had a lot more staying power and so you couldn't

181
00:16:02,920 --> 00:16:08,200
just use special operations you had to have conventional military forces to go in and

182
00:16:08,200 --> 00:16:11,160
actually solve the problem.

183
00:16:11,160 --> 00:16:15,400
The reason I'm touching on all of these veteran radio listeners and we're talking to Dr. Mark

184
00:16:15,400 --> 00:16:20,560
Moyer who is the professor at Hillsdale College and the director of the College's Center for

185
00:16:20,560 --> 00:16:24,560
Military History and Strategy is he's written on all of these.

186
00:16:24,560 --> 00:16:29,560
He wrote Oppose Any Foe, the Rise of America Special Operations Forces.

187
00:16:29,560 --> 00:16:35,800
He wrote a book called A Question of Command, Couter Insurgency from the Civil War to Iraq.

188
00:16:35,800 --> 00:16:42,520
So we're talking about issues that are, he's spent a lot of time thinking about and I want

189
00:16:42,520 --> 00:16:47,040
to go back to when you say senior leaders don't always understand.

190
00:16:47,040 --> 00:16:54,600
Are you referring to in the military or at the cabinet level, the presidential level

191
00:16:54,600 --> 00:16:58,000
over on the civilian side?

192
00:16:58,000 --> 00:16:59,400
It's usually on the civilian side.

193
00:16:59,400 --> 00:17:05,560
The military officers, they spent their whole careers in the military so usually, not always

194
00:17:05,560 --> 00:17:13,200
but usually they have a strong appreciation of what the military is actually capable of

195
00:17:13,200 --> 00:17:19,600
but you have oftentimes people on civilian side who have spent little to no time in the

196
00:17:19,600 --> 00:17:26,560
military and so they don't have that understanding and once you're president or secretary of

197
00:17:26,560 --> 00:17:30,600
defense, you do not have a lot of time to obtain new knowledge.

198
00:17:30,600 --> 00:17:34,920
That's one of the reasons why it's important that hopefully you have people in these jobs

199
00:17:34,920 --> 00:17:38,760
who already know a lot when they come to the office.

200
00:17:38,760 --> 00:17:44,920
Yeah, I've heard things out of congressional offices were like, oh we don't need to catch

201
00:17:44,920 --> 00:17:50,720
up on the naval fleet or the air fleet with the Chinese because we're going to use autonomous

202
00:17:50,720 --> 00:17:58,000
vehicles, drones, air frames, etc. and you sort of go, I don't know if these people know

203
00:17:58,000 --> 00:18:03,160
what they're talking about and that's that we kind of fall in love with finding the

204
00:18:03,160 --> 00:18:08,040
silver bullet, don't we, whether it's technical advances or we'll just send special forces,

205
00:18:08,040 --> 00:18:09,640
they're the silver bullet.

206
00:18:09,640 --> 00:18:12,520
That's kind of a common civilian problem, isn't it?

207
00:18:12,520 --> 00:18:14,280
Yeah, it is.

208
00:18:14,280 --> 00:18:17,560
That's certainly been an issue with special operations forces.

209
00:18:17,560 --> 00:18:21,920
I mean, that's how Bill Clinton thought he was going to solve Somalia by sending in Delta

210
00:18:21,920 --> 00:18:23,960
Force to Somalia.

211
00:18:23,960 --> 00:18:30,320
Bush initially was hoping they could deal with Saddam Hussein and then Obama thought

212
00:18:30,320 --> 00:18:34,480
we could basically get rid of much of our military because we could rely on these special

213
00:18:34,480 --> 00:18:38,400
operations forces.

214
00:18:38,400 --> 00:18:41,680
Usually we tend to overestimate the power of these things and we're seeing this now

215
00:18:41,680 --> 00:18:44,840
with new technologies.

216
00:18:44,840 --> 00:18:51,800
People thinking that artificial intelligence is just going to totally change how war is

217
00:18:51,800 --> 00:18:58,320
fought but if you look at what's going on in Ukraine right now, war there actually doesn't

218
00:18:58,320 --> 00:19:00,320
look a whole lot different than it used to.

219
00:19:00,320 --> 00:19:05,800
Obviously you have new technologies that can be important but, you know, seldom are they

220
00:19:05,800 --> 00:19:10,880
going to fundamentally transform the way that wars are fought.

221
00:19:10,880 --> 00:19:16,360
Yeah, I don't think I can have a conversation these days without somebody bringing up AI

222
00:19:16,360 --> 00:19:18,560
and how that's going to impact things.

223
00:19:18,560 --> 00:19:25,120
And then as you say, you look at Ukraine, that's just a basic old bloody artillery war

224
00:19:25,120 --> 00:19:30,000
sprinkled in with some new technologies so maybe what's old is new as well.

225
00:19:30,000 --> 00:19:37,640
So I do have a question that I want you to elaborate on though, Professor Moyer.

226
00:19:37,640 --> 00:19:46,080
And that is this idea that everything the civilian side wants, and I'll say primarily

227
00:19:46,080 --> 00:19:52,520
the president wants to get done, gets implemented in a straightforward fashion according with

228
00:19:52,520 --> 00:19:56,960
the policy that he's setting out.

229
00:19:56,960 --> 00:20:01,400
The federal government doesn't work that way, does it?

230
00:20:01,400 --> 00:20:02,480
Generally not.

231
00:20:02,480 --> 00:20:08,560
It depends too on how high of a priority the issue is for the president, but even then

232
00:20:08,560 --> 00:20:14,160
we've seen just about every president has complained that some part of the bureaucracy

233
00:20:14,160 --> 00:20:20,320
is not doing what he wants, you know, whether it's the State Department or the Defense Department

234
00:20:20,320 --> 00:20:22,440
or the Department of Justice.

235
00:20:22,440 --> 00:20:29,280
This does tend to be worse with Republicans, I think, because typically the federal bureaucracy

236
00:20:29,280 --> 00:20:34,880
largely votes Democrat and so they tend to be more sympathetic to Democratic presidents,

237
00:20:34,880 --> 00:20:42,960
but a lot of the bureaucracy is obsessed above all with sort of self-preservation more than

238
00:20:42,960 --> 00:20:43,960
anything else.

239
00:20:43,960 --> 00:20:50,120
And so you do see oftentimes, and I certainly saw this in my time as a trouble pointy, that

240
00:20:50,120 --> 00:20:57,280
agencies will come up with all sorts of tricks to do what they want rather than what the

241
00:20:57,280 --> 00:21:03,560
White House wants and you have about 4,000 political appointees who are set to the federal

242
00:21:03,560 --> 00:21:09,600
agencies and that was one of those in the Trump administration.

243
00:21:09,600 --> 00:21:14,080
Oftentimes in our agency, there's certainly the case, most of the political appointees

244
00:21:14,080 --> 00:21:19,040
don't know the landscape nearly as well and so career bureaucrats have a lot of different

245
00:21:19,040 --> 00:21:26,480
ways they can try to slow things down, they can hide money and I saw a lot of that.

246
00:21:26,480 --> 00:21:31,800
And then again in my agency where I worked, the Agency for International Development,

247
00:21:31,800 --> 00:21:38,040
we had top political appointees who in some cases weren't really interested in coercing

248
00:21:38,040 --> 00:21:41,760
the bureaucracy, which is what they're supposed to be there doing is getting the bureaucracy

249
00:21:41,760 --> 00:21:45,480
to do what the White House wants.

250
00:21:45,480 --> 00:21:51,480
And so you had a lot of instances where what the White House wanted was not actually implemented.

251
00:21:51,480 --> 00:21:55,360
I think we'll see that change if there's a second Trump administration because I think

252
00:21:55,360 --> 00:22:01,040
they've wised up, but that was certainly a huge problem in the first Trump administration.

253
00:22:01,040 --> 00:22:06,920
And you wrote about those experiences at the US Agency for International Development as

254
00:22:06,920 --> 00:22:14,600
a senior political appointee and sort of how career federal employees can thwart a president's

255
00:22:14,600 --> 00:22:24,640
efforts in your new book, Masters of Corruption on Encounter Books Imprint.

256
00:22:24,640 --> 00:22:29,120
Because this is surprising to you when you got inside as it was to maybe somebody like

257
00:22:29,120 --> 00:22:31,120
me reading it from the outside.

258
00:22:31,120 --> 00:22:36,960
Yeah, so I had spent time in government before but not as a political appointee and I had

259
00:22:36,960 --> 00:22:42,800
seen some evidence of corruption in the Department of Defense where I had spent most of the time

260
00:22:42,800 --> 00:22:51,680
before this, but I didn't quite realize how egregious it could be or the impunity with

261
00:22:51,680 --> 00:22:55,000
which a lot of people were acting.

262
00:22:55,000 --> 00:23:01,920
So one of the most startling things that happened was that when I approached the human resource

263
00:23:01,920 --> 00:23:08,680
authorities, when I first started getting evidence of corruption going on, they said,

264
00:23:08,680 --> 00:23:13,280
well, you know, most people here don't report corruption.

265
00:23:13,280 --> 00:23:14,920
It's a good thing you are.

266
00:23:14,920 --> 00:23:19,120
They didn't fully explain why people didn't report it, but as I later found out, it's

267
00:23:19,120 --> 00:23:26,120
that if you report corruption, the bureaucracy is going to attack you and that's what happened

268
00:23:26,120 --> 00:23:32,920
to me and I ended up getting fired based on a fraudulent accusation that some of these

269
00:23:32,920 --> 00:23:34,360
bureaucrats put forward.

270
00:23:34,360 --> 00:23:39,320
Meanwhile, the actually corrupt individuals managed to hold on to their jobs.

271
00:23:39,320 --> 00:23:46,600
Yeah, it's a sad but interesting story, Masters of Corruption.

272
00:23:46,600 --> 00:23:55,480
So, you know, bringing you back to the point of your role at Hillsdale College, can you

273
00:23:55,480 --> 00:24:00,400
tell us what the Center for Military History and Strategy focuses on?

274
00:24:00,400 --> 00:24:04,520
Yeah, so we are focused on a couple things.

275
00:24:04,520 --> 00:24:08,480
One is teaching military history to the students here.

276
00:24:08,480 --> 00:24:12,840
It's a subject that has been eliminated at nearly all other colleges.

277
00:24:12,840 --> 00:24:17,640
We're about the only place that still has faculty who specialize in military history

278
00:24:17,640 --> 00:24:24,280
and we've set up a minor in military history that students can take as part of their studies.

279
00:24:24,280 --> 00:24:31,720
We also hold some big events with major speakers on military history here on campus and we

280
00:24:31,720 --> 00:24:40,400
do open those to outside visitors and we bring in some distinguished scholars to bolster

281
00:24:40,400 --> 00:24:42,160
our capabilities here.

282
00:24:42,160 --> 00:24:48,480
We are looking, I think, eventually to offering graduate degrees.

283
00:24:48,480 --> 00:24:53,480
We're still fairly early in developing the Center but over the longer term that is one

284
00:24:53,480 --> 00:24:55,760
of the other things we are contemplating.

285
00:24:55,760 --> 00:25:02,000
I have to say those who regularly listen to Veterans Radio are interested in military

286
00:25:02,000 --> 00:25:03,000
history.

287
00:25:03,000 --> 00:25:06,840
I think there's a lot to learn from it, both our mistakes and our successes and we really

288
00:25:06,840 --> 00:25:09,840
do appreciate you spending a little time with us today.

289
00:25:09,840 --> 00:25:16,400
Dr. Mark Moyer over at Hillsdale College and we'd love to have you back another time.

290
00:25:16,400 --> 00:25:17,400
Okay, great.

291
00:25:17,400 --> 00:25:20,400
Well, thanks for having me on.

292
00:25:20,400 --> 00:25:23,320
And I want to thank everybody for listening to Veterans Radio today.

293
00:25:23,320 --> 00:25:24,800
I am Jim Fossone.

294
00:25:24,800 --> 00:25:27,200
It's been a pleasure to be your host.

295
00:25:27,200 --> 00:25:31,920
I'm a Veterans Disability Lawyer at Legal Help for Veterans and you can reach us at

296
00:25:31,920 --> 00:25:39,480
800-6934800 or legalhelpforveterans.com on the web.

297
00:25:39,480 --> 00:25:44,400
You can follow Veterans Radio on Facebook and listen to its podcasts and internet radio

298
00:25:44,400 --> 00:25:49,000
shows by visiting us at veteransradio.org.

299
00:25:49,000 --> 00:25:51,720
That's veteransradio.org.

300
00:25:51,720 --> 00:25:54,920
And until next time, you are dismissed.

301
00:25:54,920 --> 00:25:59,400
If you have a VA claim denied by the Board of Veterans Appeals, contact Legal Help for

302
00:25:59,400 --> 00:26:03,640
Veterans at 1-800-6934800.

303
00:26:03,640 --> 00:26:07,640
They're experts in handling cases before the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims.

304
00:26:07,640 --> 00:26:11,600
Their number again, 1-800-6934800.

305
00:26:11,600 --> 00:26:17,200
We again want to thank our national sponsors, the National Veterans Business Development

306
00:26:17,200 --> 00:26:26,120
Council, NVBDC.org, VA Ann Arbor Health Care System, the Vietnam Veterans of America,

307
00:26:26,120 --> 00:26:35,160
Charles S. Kettles Chapter, Ann Arbor, Michigan, VFW Graf O'Hara Post 423 in Ann Arbor, and

308
00:26:35,160 --> 00:26:41,080
the American Legion Press Corn Post 46 also in Ann Arbor.

309
00:26:41,080 --> 00:26:42,560
We appreciate all your support.

310
00:26:42,560 --> 00:26:49,600
You can go to veteransradio.net, click on the sponsor level and continue to support

311
00:26:49,600 --> 00:26:52,600
keeping Veterans Radio on the air.

312
00:26:52,600 --> 00:26:56,040
And until next time, you are dismissed.