When you first heard about the September 11 terrorist attacks, what was going through your mind? Obviously, with your position, you must have been thinking what the response might be down the road.

My thoughts were probably about the same as a great many Americans. When the first plane hit the first of the trade towers - I looked at it and sort of wondered what would cause that. But obviously, in my line of work, and being responsible for the region that I'm responsible for, my first thought was, "I wonder if this is a terrorist attack? It probably is." Then as we watched live and saw the second plane hit the tower, there was of course no question in my mind, and I think not in the minds of a great many Americans. We thought, "This is a terrorist act." ...

Almost immediately [I was] speaking with Secretary Rumsfeld and talking about it. Of course the conclusion, I think, by a great many of us at that time was related to Al Qaeda; at least some form of sponsorship. There was immediate consideration, beginning on Sept. 12, of operations that we might need to undertake in Afghanistan. Secretary Rumsfeld told me on Sept. 12, "Prepare credible military options and bring them to me."

So how did you do that? What were they?

We do that [by] being blessed by the service of a great many very, very smart people who were operating from here in Tampa and a number of other locations. [They were] putting their heads together; considering time-distance factors, scoping the mission, so that we could describe the appropriate mission to the secretary; [and] ultimately, the president -- thinking their way through everything from the application of kinetics, and what size force would be required to do what -- the normal approach to military planning. ...

The options that we prepared were presented to the secretary. I presented them to the secretary on Sept. 19 or Sept. 20. He approved them. We took them to the president on, if my memory serves, Sept. 21, and the president approved the options. ... We described what we thought was the appropriate approach to the mission in Afghanistan. The president approved it in concept and said, "Move out and set conditions to begin operations in Afghanistan. Let me know when you're ready."

How did the military actions of the 1990s shape your planning? I'm thinking in particular of Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, and the attacks on Afghanistan by the Clinton administration, as well. This was very different from those. How did that experience shape what you thought would be effective?

I won't say that they didn't affect the thinking that went on in the minds of our planners: I will say that those operations were not considered in my mind. What was considered in my mind is the history of Afghanistan. What we worked through in our central command was the terrain of Afghanistan; historical approaches by the mujahedeen in Afghanistan to what they have always referred to as invading forces; the enemy set as we thought we saw it at that time, the Taliban; time-distance factors associated with where we had U.S. forces -- air, naval, and land forces, as well as Special Forces positioned; and the timeframe we thought we could have those forces in play in Afghanistan. And last -- but certainly not least -- the fact that whatever we chose to do would be a decisive operation. Those were the factors I think we looked at.

Being mindful that outside forces in Afghanistan don't have a happy history, how did that shape your thinking?

It's always been somewhat entertaining to me to see the views of some of the pundits who have suggested the introduction of large conventional forces in Afghanistan. I think a great many people are aware, and I know you're aware of the fact that for some 10 or 11 years of Soviet experience in Afghanistan, they introduced 625,000 people on the ground, and had 15,000 of them killed and 55,000 of them wounded. So we took that as instructive -- as a way not to do it.

I think one of the great blessings of this country is that there are a great many academics and others as well who have spent a lot of time in Afghanistan, studying Afghanistan and knowing many Afghans. So we literally brought them forward, and we brought think tanks and a variety of other-- I'll call them "experts." We brought them here to this command, listened to what they had to say, and factored their views into our planning.

So if I'm hearing you correctly, you didn't have this sort of plan "off the shelf."

No, did not, did not. This plan was cut from whole cloth, as I think the secretary described it then, and described it accurately -- but cut from whole cloth between Sept. 12 and when it was briefed to the president a week or ten days later. ...

You'd have probably saw the long report that Bob Woodward did in the Washington Post. He quotes President Bush as saying, during that initial planning period, that the military was being asked to think in a way that it hadn't thought in the past decade or so: essentially, fight a guerrilla war with conventional means. And that required a change of thinking.

Right. I think the president's observation that this would be an unconventional war was precisely to the point. I think it was an accurate observation, and I think in each of the mini-sessions that I've had with the president since we started this operation, I have seen the same sort of appreciation of the military operations in Afghanistan.

I think all of us recognized that there are a variety of ways to either apply force or threaten the application of force. One is cruise missiles. Another is the introduction of large conventional forces. The Soviets tried it, and didn't like it. Another approach is an unconventional approach, which seeks to leverage operational forces, air-to-ground forces, air support, that sort of kinetic activity by putting people on the ground close enough to observe the targets one would like to destroy. That approach is certainly unconventional at the level at which the operation in Afghanistan moved forward.

What do you mean by that last statement, "at the level at--"

I recall other wars in other places where we have had people on the ground -- adjust fire, if you will -- provided by indirect means, either aircraft or artillery or mortars or whatever. But the scale and the scope of the introduction of Special Forces in this particular effort, and what they were able to do by directing the kinetic work by a great many different types of aero platforms, [is] unprecedented, to my knowledge.

Once you got the plan approved and started gearing up for actually putting it in place and getting the air campaign, there must have been a number of things to put in place - like, how do you work with other coalition forces? To what extent do they get involved? ... How did you, at your level, go about practically piecing together the coalition? And if a country bought into the coalition and was involved in Afghanistan, what was the chain of command? Were they all going through you? Who chose targets, and how did you choose the targets?

Right. Coalition operations [are a] remarkable feat in this case. Beginning on Sept. 12, having worked our way to a plan which we executed or started to execute on Oct. 7, by the time we reached the end of September, we had a coalition here in Tampa of senior national representatives of some 15 or so nations. By the middle of October, that coalition had grown to 20 or so. By the end of October, more yet; and as we stand today, there are 34 national flags with us in this coalition here.

When we started to work with these coalition national representatives, one of the first things we did was describe the fact that the mission we chose to undertake would define the coalition -- that the coalition nations would not be permitted to assist in defining the mission. We've stayed with that since the very earliest days.

The coalition nations represented here, who placed their forces into Operation Enduring Freedom, placed their forces -- naval forces, air forces, special operations forces, ground forces -- under our operational control. They remain that way today, very, very effective, and managed through some of the best coordination that I've seen between our own State Department, between this command, between the office of the secretary of defense, the joint staff involved in Washington. ...

The war begins with the bombing. Then, at some point, there is the insertion of Special Forces with the warlords of the Afghan allies. It started up in the north to begin with. How much confidence did you have in the Afghan allies that we were working with at that point, before we knew what the hell was going to happen?

I think we were positive about it; a great deal of hope. But there is a military saying that one should never try to turn hope into a course of action. Think about Afghanistan for a minute. Recognize that when we started combat operations on Oct. 7, about 80 percent or so of Afghanistan was under the control of the Taliban. The standing military forces that opposed the Taliban were rightly called the Northern Alliance, because the enclaves where these forces were located -- the ones who turned out to be friendly to us -- were up in the north along the Central Asian states area. Since about 20 percent of Afghanistan was controlled by the Northern Alliance, it made perfect sense to us that this would be a place to see what we could leverage, which opposition forces we could support, link up with, provide assistance to, gain leverage with -- in order to accomplish our mission. ...

It's a very difficult mission. But the mission itself was not exceedingly complex. It had to do with the destruction of the Taliban as a government and the destruction of terrorist networks inside Afghanistan. So the planning that we executed worked along about six or eight lines of operation.

I won't go through all of [the lines of operation]. But one of the lines of operation was support to opposition forces. Another of the lines of operation was direct action to attack Taliban enclaves, leadership and so forth. Another of the lines of operation was humanitarian assistance. Factually, there were a total of nine of these lines of operation. We executed eight of them simultaneously from the very beginning of the operation. ...

I think it's well documented that we did not choose to work with all opposition leaders, and factually we still don't [work] with all opposition leaders. When the operation started, we worked with opposition leaders in the north, the Northern Alliance. As the operation moved along, our people, our Special Forces, gained a toehold with some opposition leaders in the south. That's where we saw Chairman Karzai enter the equation, and that's where we saw Sherzai, who is now the governor of Kandahar, enter the equation.

So what started in the north with the introduction of Special Forces subsequently moved into the south as well, when we were able to establish contact and begin to build relationships with those tribal leaders.

There was a report [by] Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker about the early days -- that a [unmanned] Predator [aircraft] had Mullah Omar in its sights, and there was some legal problem-- That was the story, at least. I'm sure you're familiar with it. Was that the case, and it was their decision not to fire?

Actually, it wasn't the case. No one in this campaign has, quote, "had Mullah Omar in their sights," from day one until now. The processes that we used initially in this campaign are the same processes that we use now, in terms of what we call "high-value targets." I think that the article that you made reference to did the same thing that a great many articles have done; some have been accurate to the hundredth percentile; others have been less accurate.

When there is paucity of accurate information available during any particular war fight -- we have seen that in this one, for very good reason -- because as I think most of us have said, some will be overt; some will be covert. The timing of all of it will be almost never be divulged. The tactics, techniques, procedures, approaches -- we haven't talked about those, and we won't. But when one takes dots and tries to form a mosaic from the dots, in a lot of cases, you'll find pieces and parts are truth, but seldom find a full story. So that's the way that I reacted to the article.

We have not had Mullah Omar in our sights since we started this. [Since I've] looked at a great [deal] of the intelligence, and have paid very close attention to Predator feeds -- which is what I think Mr. Hersh's article was relying on, or was reporting, if you will -- at any point in time, it's possible for a half-dozen people to look at these feeds and draw different conclusions. I have no doubt that, on several occasions, people have reported having observed some of these feeds and said, "Aha, this is person number one," or "This is Mullah Omar," and so forth.

I wouldn't debate at all that there were people who thought they saw Mullah Omar. I will say that I am quite familiar with the approach we use to high-value targeting, and I have yet to have Mullah Omar in my sights.

How about bin Laden?

I have yet to have bin Laden in my sights, although I think that all of us believe that his time will come. ...

What was the strategy behind [the Ranger raid at the end of October], and was it effective?

Talking the about the raid toward the end of October, Oct. 18, 19, 20, if my memory serves. There were essentially two of them. ... [One of the raids went into] Mullah Omar's compound. Another of the raids went into what we subsequently called FOB Rhino, Forward Operating Base Rhino. Rhino was subsequently occupied by a Marine formation, which was the Marine formation that moved into and assisted in securing Kandahar.

The rationale behind going with a special operations force raid into what at that time was Objective Rhino was because we needed to understand the capability of that airfield. We wanted to understand how that airfield was defended. So that's why that objective was taken.

The objective in downtown Kandahar was for reasons that you probably have already intuited -- to prove that the coalition forces are in this for the long haul; that we will go anywhere we choose to go; [in] part, an information operation, and in part in order to prove that we will place our forces in the middle of that country and in fact in Mullah Omar's home. So I think the operation was an absolutely outstanding success both for Operating Base Rhino and for Omar's compound in downtown Kandahar. It had the desired effect. ...

When team 574 went in with Hamid Karzai and met him, he had a fairly small band of fighters with him.

Right.

[He] was doing political work at the same time as he was fighting. One of the things we're focusing on is Tarin Kowt, and what happened up there, and would argue that that was a fairly decisive, little-known battle. Do you want to talk about that from your perspective, and how important that was?

At both the policy level and at the operational level, we had worked with Chairman Karzai, both in-country in Afghanistan, and out of country. For some period of time, [we were] in constant contact with him. When he started to form tribal elements to the north and northwest of Kandahar, we had our people with him, and that's where this notion of Tarin Kowt came from.

At that time, we had the sense that Kandahar, being the capital of the Taliban, was a very, very important place to us. With Karzai's forces up to the north and the west of Kandahar, and with another man by the name of Sherzai's forces being introduced from Pakistan up into Afghanistan in the vicinity of Spin Buldak, Afghanistan, [we had] the sense that this vise would move on Kandahar and would set conditions for the capital to fall. In fact, that's exactly what happened. I mentioned earlier support to opposition; at this time, we were supporting both Karzai in the north and Mr. Sherzai in the south.

[Can you talk about] the Special Forces guys [who were providing that support]?

Special Forces guys are young, capable, smart, dedicated. I'll use the term "remarkable" -- absolutely remarkable, very, very, brave men. [They were] introduced in the country of Afghanistan in a great many locations in very small numbers. It sounds a bit dramatic, but they were inserted in the dead of night, sort of alone, but unafraid. They took a great deal of capacity with them -- a capacity to communicate, capacity to be able to identify and engage targets at a considerable distance from themselves, using air-to-ground forces, close air support. [It was] remarkable, a remarkable effort. I predict that people will still be writing about the exploits of some of these young people well off into the future.

... I talked about support to opposition; it came in many forms. One support to opposition is the kinetics, this business of bombing and fighting and that. Additional support to opposition came in terms of providing foodstuffs, in many cases providing winter clothing. It's been reported that, in some cases, we provided feed for the horses -- absolutely true. All of this [is] in the category of support to opposition, dropped in most cases by parachute from aircraft flying over Afghanistan. Tons and tons and tons of that sort of support-- ...

Let's talk about Tarin Kowt. From where you sat, how significant was that battle? Was it a turning point?

Tarin Kowt [was] not a turning point from where I sat. But [it was] very, very important, obviously, because it had probably been three weeks, maybe a month, since Kabul had fallen. So the area that we were working very, very hard on was Kandahar.

Tarin Kowt was a piece of commanding terrain in order to get into Kandahar and do it the way we wanted to do it. Chairman Karzai was able to rally a number of tribal elements and build a substantial force up in that area and push the Taliban out of the way, and killed the Taliban who were up there resisting. That was very, very important to our being able to get down into Kandahar, very important, to be sure. [There were] two pieces of it: the first coming out of Tarin Kowt toward Kandahar, and the other coming from the south and the east down around Spin Buldak and moving toward Kandahar that way.

Some accounts I've read said that, when the Taliban were defeated there, it had a big psychological impact.

No doubt in my mind. As the Taliban tried to hold on to Kandahar and position themselves, mass themselves, the defeat they suffered around Tarin Kowt was a substantial psychological defeat to them. But I wouldn't want to minimize the importance of the effort around the Kandahar airport that was undertaken by Sherzai at about this same timeframe. The combination of the taking of Kandahar Airport, and the the Taliban losing the fight in the vicinity of Tarin Kowt, [was] very, very important to securing what had been the Taliban capital up to that point.

What happened in [the friendly fire incident on Dec. 5]?

... The final work [on the investigation of that incident] is not yet done on that. The sense is that that we put a bomb in the wrong place. It's an unfortunate thing. It's a sad thing. As you know, it was not the first time that we had that effect. Actually, I've been amazed at the paucity of casualties in this operation.

I'm not a fan of what we call "friendly fire" or "blue on blue." We don't want to have that. But I will say that it does not surprise me a lot when we do have it. My suspicion is that that it's a friendly fire issue associated with either a bad target location being sent by a ground team to an aircraft, or in an aircraft where the munitions are armed and released on a bad set of coordinates being placed there. I'm not sure that's what caused it, but it's pretty obvious to all of us that we put a bomb in the wrong place

What was your assessment of the Tora Bora [operation]?

Tora Bora, in my view, was a successful operation. There was much speculation about who was in Tora Bora -- all of the speculation [was] after the fact. Looking back, I think that we had a sense that there were enemy formations in the Tora Bora complex. Historically, in Afghanistan, there are about a half-dozen places where outsiders, non-Afghanis, aggregate. ...

In early December ... it became obvious that the opposition forces with whom we were working in the vicinity of Jalalabad and down toward Tora Bora themselves don't like Al Qaeda at all, didn't like the Taliban at all. [They] had a desire to take their forces, which were substantial at that time, and move them on a sweep operation through Tora Bora. [They] put together an operation. We supported that operation.

I think it was a good operation. Many people have said, "Well, gosh, you know bin Laden got away." I have yet to see anything that proves bin Laden or whoever was there. That's not to say they weren't, but I've not seen proof that they were there. A great many Taliban and Al Qaeda [may have] lost their lives in Tora Bora. Some have said, "You just ran all of them over into Pakistan." At that particular time, our work with President Musharraf and with his forces along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border was also another very positive piece of this operation.

In my view, the Pakistanis did a whale of a job supporting our operations, and in fact providing what we would call in military parlance "an amble" along that border, so that these forces were being policed up as they would try to exfiltrate from Tora Bora. ...

Those who would enlarge the story to indicate that there were some operational issues -- shouldn't have been done, or could have been done differently -- those who would argue that, don't have a very great appreciation of the factors of mission and what an enemy force can look like, and what role terrain has to play in that the timing of an operation. Knowing that, at the end of the day, this is Afghanistan, and the Afghans wanted to move on this operation, I look at Tora Bora as a favorable operation.

As we speak now, some few weeks ago, we placed forces back in there to continue or not continue, but to move through some of the areas we'd been through before, to be sure we hadn't missed anything, and to be sure that Al Qaeda had not reintroduced themselves back into that area. So that area remains a concern to us. But Tora Bora was a good operation.

Was it a feasible option to place a lot of U.S. troops on the ground? Would it have made sense in Tora Bora, when the Afghans wanted to do it themselves?

... The Afghans themselves wanted to get in to Tora Bora. They wanted to do it very quickly. At that time, our Special Forces troopers were not yet in large numbers, even with those forces that we were providing support to. So rather than taking a decision that said, "Let's take a break for some prolonged period of time and try to introduce large numbers of non-Afghani coalition forces," the determination was made. I made it, and I think it was a pretty good determination -- to provide support to that operation, and to work with the Pakistanis along the Pakistani border to bring it to conclusion.

[We were] remembering that, sure, at the end of the day, we want to get the leadership of Al Qaeda, of this terrorist organization. But we also want to be sure that the network itself has been destroyed, and we want to be sure that we have not left pockets of Taliban here and there.

One of the objectives we've had from the beginning is to move these people around and not permit them to sit to plan to think about the next 9/11 or something else for our country. The Tora Bora operation was a part of that overall campaign that seeks to dislocate, kill and capture both Taliban, at that time, and Al Qaeda.

So if I had to do it again, I actually I would do it the same way again. I'm sure that, at the levels our troops were on the ground, they would make some different judgments about "I want to be on this hill to block," or "I want to be on a different hill" -- things that were not obvious to us at that time.

One never wants to say that we don't learn something every time we do an operation. But I think we would work with the Afghans again to do the operation, rather than moving in the direction the Soviets had moved -- with the introduction of large numbers of ground forces at the altitudes where this was going on. Given the timeframe that would be necessary to introduce conventional forces, and given the fact that, even with more than 600,000 people on the ground inside Afghanistan, the Soviets were never able to get that to get it done-- ...

Iran [is] one of the things that-- In the beginning of the campaign, we heard reports -- accurate or not, I don't know -- that it looked like Iran might be sort of cooperating. ... Then that went silent, and we had "axis of evil," and things had changed. From where you sit, what was the evolution of thinking about what Iran is involved in?

It's a difficult issue. Without being cute, I think many, many people have described the situation in Iran as schizophrenic. Essentially, there are two principal government entities inside Iran. If one focuses on what we would hope at some point will be the voice of moderation in Iran, then one could find reason to sense some cooperation. So I can understand why we would see early reporting during the Afghanistan effort -- "Oh, maybe Iran is going to help."

On the other hand, if one takes a look at the Iranian guard formations inside Iran, then one finds an absolutely uncooperative sort of an effort going on in Iran. I can understand why we will see from time to time reports of, "They're just absolutely not helpful."

We have not seen in Iran a level of help for our efforts in Afghanistan that we would like to see. I mean, they're certainly not members of this coalition, having vowed to take down the Taliban and destroy Al Qaeda. In Afghanistan, I think there is a sense that the Iranians would be well satisfied if they could have an eastern border with Afghanistan that is normalized and secure. But the character of the country is a bit schizophrenic. I think it's been reported that way, and I think that's probably accurate.

Was there a change in practical efforts, or Iranian efforts, on the ground over those months that--

Not that I saw. Actually, there had been Iranians working inside Afghanistan for years and years and years. There still are Iranians working inside Afghanistan. But in terms of things that have given us operational issues and operational difficulties, we have not been hampered by major efforts coming out of Iran.

What lessons can we take from this war?

... Some enduring lessons I think we've learned out of Afghanistan is that every country that we, the United States of America, ever engage in warfare, will not be Afghanistan. We will not go from one Afghanistan to another Afghanistan for the same reasons I talked a minute ago -- the operational considerations, variables of terrain, time and all that. There is also a set of strategic considerations -- form of governance, for example. In one of these countries, their leadership [might be] supportive of our efforts, but has no capacity to control the internal factors in his own country. Well, if so, then that means that that country won't be just like Afghanistan.

If you come then from that strategic level view, and you consider what operational lessons have we learned, I think one of the key ones we've learned has to do with balance. I think that the military capacity we have in this country is incredible -- probably the best military capacity any country has ever had in history -- the best air forces, the best naval forces, the best land forces, the best special operations forces.

What happens as you look from one country or one situation to the next, the way one balances how much land force, how much air force, how much naval force will change. What we learned in Afghanistan was that Afghanistan didn't look like Iraq 11 years ago. In any other piece of geography that we're likely to go into, we will learn that every lesson will not apply. But we have picked up some enduring lessons.

One of the enduring lessons is that precision munitions have a future. We have learned that precision munitions go precisely where they're targeted to go. We've learned that the introduction of human beings in the equation, who can cause the precision munitions to go precisely where they should go, pays a huge dividend. That's this business of the joint team, between our tremendous air power and our tremendous special operating forces power.

So we've learned that sort of thing. We have learned the need to be flexible or to have flexible forces, agile forces, who can move quickly, secure themselves when they arrive in a location, assess the needs of a given mission and move to that mission. We have learned of the importance of being able to work with local populations. We have learned that in Afghanistan, and it'll apply, I predict, anywhere we conduct military operations in the future.

So I think those are some of the enduring lessons. We've learned that the business of unmanned aerial platforms is very, very powerful. We have relearned the importance of non-stop, 100 percent secure communications, all the time.

I think each of the services -- not through me, but each of the services involved in this operation in Afghanistan -- has learned its own lesson. The Air Force has formed some opinions about directions they may want to move in the future; the Army, the same; the naval forces the same. Some of the naval activity that we've seen in the operation in Afghanistan [were] unbelievable -- the use of an aircraft carrier, the Kitty Hawk, as a staging platform for special operating forces, fully supported by the United States Navy. [That was a] very, very powerful factor, very important to us at that point in time.

As you know, Afghanistan is a landlocked country. So one says, "Where would we stage our forces to be able to move into Afghanistan?" Would we want to impose on President Musharraf, at a time critical in the history of his own country, by putting large formations in his country? It turns out to be a much better effort to be able to use some of our own carrier capability and stage some of our forces from there.

So the ability, as I call it, " to plug and play," the ability [to put in and use] these kinds of forces -- air, land, naval and so forth, and coalition forces also - is very, very powerful. ...

We always want to be able to do to accomplish the mission given us by the president of the United States. We want to do that at the least possible loss of American life ... I'll say it this way: I couldn't be more pleased with the proficiency, the effectiveness, the dedication and the results produced by the young people who have been involved in this operation since last October. ...

What was the hardest moment for you, personally?

I think any time we lose people, it's a hard moment. We have lost people in this fight, and we'll lose more; there's little doubt in my mind, because much remains to be done. We'll lose them to accidents. We'll lose them to fights with hostile forces. Any time that happens, it's an unpleasant experience. So I can't really nail one thing down and say [it was] the most unpleasant experience for me.

I will say that the most pleasant experience for me has been an enduring experience, and that is that we are well served by the relationships that exist between military and other governmental organizations, [at] the policy level, and the various departments of our own government. Completely aside from the much-reported frictions and all of this, I don't think we could ask for better decision making. I don't think we could ask for better cooperation than we have seen in this effort. So for me, that's been a very positive thing.

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