By All Means Available: Memoirs of a Life in Intelligence, Special Operations, and Strategy - Hardcover

Vickers, Michael G.

 
9781101947708: By All Means Available: Memoirs of a Life in Intelligence, Special Operations, and Strategy
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 1101947705 ISBN 13: 9781101947708
Verlag: Knopf, 2023

Inhaltsangabe

A vivid insider's account of a life in intelligence, special operations, and strategy from the Cold War to the war with al-Qa’ida • "[An] illuminating and richly detailed memoir." —The New York Times Book Review

"Deeply insightful...A sweeping and breathtaking journey that gives the reader unprecedented access to the courage, sacrifice, and bravado of our nation’s finest warriors, in their finest hours." —Admiral William H. McRaven, author of Wisdom of the Bullfrog and #1 New York Times bestseller, Make Your Bed

In 1984, Michael Vickers took charge of the CIA’s secret war against the Soviets in Afghanistan. After inheriting a strategy aimed at imposing costs on the Soviets for their invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, Vickers transformed the covert campaign into an all-out effort to help the Afghan resistance win their war. More than any other American, he was responsible for the outcome in Afghanistan that led to the end of the Cold War.

In By All Means Available, Vickers recounts his remarkable career, from his days as a Green Beret to his vision for victory in Afghanistan to his role in waging America’s war with al-Qa’ida at the highest levels of government. In captivating detail, he depicts his years in the Special Forces—including his training to parachute behind enemy lines with a backpack nuclear weapon in the event of a Soviet invasion of Western Europe—and reveals how those experiences directly influenced his approach to shaping policy. Vickers has played a significant role in most of the military and intelligence operations of the past four decades, and he offers a deeply informed analysis of the greatest challenges facing America today, and in the decades ahead.

Riveting and illuminating, this is a rare and important insider’s account of the modern military and intelligence worlds at every level.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

MICHAEL G. VICKERS has served multiple roles in the Department of Defense and the intelligence community, most recently as undersecretary of defense for intelligence under President Barack Obama. He also served under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama as the assistant secretary of defense for special operations, low-intensity conflict, and interdependent capabilities, where he had policy oversight of all U.S. military capabilities, from nuclear weapons to special operations forces. During the Cold War, he served as an operations officer in the CIA, and as both a commissioned and a noncommissioned officer in the Army’s Special Forces. He lives near Washington, D.C.

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Part I

Preparation

1

Green Beret

Dr. DeRiggi

It was a teacher at Hollywood High School who changed my life. I was sitting at a table in the school library in February 1971, where I was supposed to be researching a paper for my international relations class—one of the few I found interesting. My teacher, Dr. Anthony DeRiggi, was a World War II veteran with strong views about U.S. foreign policy. A proponent of the “realist school” of international relations, DeRiggi was an admirer of President Nixon and a staunch supporter of the Vietnam War. I didn’t agree with him about Nixon and I had mixed feelings about the Vietnam War, but I liked his general approach to international relations, which emphasized the importance of power and the pursuit of national interests.

I was either reading or more likely daydreaming about baseball or football when he walked over to my table and slipped a copy of that day’s New York Times in front of me. He pointed to an article and said, “You might be interested in this.”

The New York Times had just published a major story on the CIA’s covert operations in Laos and its base at Long Tieng. The agency was employing a secret army of Hmong tribesmen in a large-scale paramilitary operation against the North Vietnamese Army along the Ho Chi Minh Trail.1 To this day, I don’t know why Dr. DeRiggi thought I’d be interested in that article, but I was. I imagined myself leading secret armies in far-off lands and winning against impossible odds. I imagined myself doing things that only a James Bond could do. And, for the first time, at the age of seventeen, I thought seriously about becoming a CIA officer.

There wasn’t much about me at that point, though, that suggested I was destined for a life in intelligence and special operations. For starters, I was born with strabismus, or “crossed eyes,” and amblyopia, which caused my brain to process images from only one eye at a time, precluding my ability to see in three dimensions. My right eye was also turned significantly inward, which, needless to say, didn’t escape the notice of other children. Five surgeries between ages one and nineteen improved my appearance but could not give me 3-D vision. Fortunately, my brain found other ways to judge depth and distance. I was also blessed with excellent eyesight—better than twenty-twenty in my left eye and twenty-twenty in my right.

I didn’t come from a military or CIA family. My father had served in the Army Air Corps during World War II and had earned a Silver Star and Purple Heart while flying with the Eighth Air Force as a B-17 bombardier and gunner over France and Germany in 1943.2 My grandparents were all immigrants, three of whom spoke only limited English. “Vecchiarelli” became “Vickers” a few years after my Italian grandparents, who hailed from a mountain town east of Rome, passed through Ellis Island. My mother’s parents had come from eastern Slovakia, her father finding work in Chicago’s steel mills. Los Angeles in those days was a magnet for immigrants, including refugees who had fled from Hungary and Cuba, so I had a lot of exposure to foreign cultures growing up. Most of my childhood friends were recent immigrants, and this sparked some interest on my part in world affairs.

Our family watched the evening news once or twice a week, and we talked a bit about the evils of Soviet Communism and America’s difficulties in Vietnam. But we focused on international events mostly when we felt our own lives were threatened. During the October 1962 Cuban missile crisis, when it looked as if we were on the verge of nuclear war, my father stocked our shallow and very porous basement with a few canned goods and a radio, and we practiced taking shelter there a few times. Truth be told, I didn’t think it would do us much good. If nuclear war came, I was convinced our chances of survival were slim to none.

I did show some taste for adventure. As a kid, I often went hiking in the Hollywood Hills, the big white Hollywood sign a frequent destination, and when I was older, my friends and I hiked and camped in the higher mountains beyond Los Angeles. We’d also drive out to the desert to shoot our .22-caliber rifles at Coke bottles and tin cans. But I was never a Boy Scout, let alone an Eagle Scout, and had never gone hunting or fishing. And to top it off, I was a superb underachiever academically, graduating from high school with a C-plus average. When I applied myself, as I did my senior year in Dr. DeRiggi’s international relations class, I did very well. But those successes were few and far between.

My dream growing up was to be a professional baseball or football player. I had a strong arm and was a pretty good quarterback, pitcher, and outfielder. I was also a good hitter, as long as I got a fastball to hit. After high school, I enrolled at a local community college—Los Angeles Pierce—the first in my family to attend college. I had a shot at the starting quarterback position my second year, but a temporary shoulder injury put an end to that. I tried my hand at baseball one last time, with similarly unsuccessful results. It was time to listen to Dr. DeRiggi.

Special Forces Selection

At the beginning of my final semester at Pierce, I came up with what seemed to me like a plausible plan. I figured my best route into the CIA was to first become a Green Beret. A college degree was required to become a CIA officer, but I didn’t want to wait the two or more additional years that would take. The Special Forces seemed as close to CIA, or at least my image of CIA, as one could get, and I could become a Green Beret now. I’d have adventure and get guerrilla warfare training and more foreign-language instruction. (I had already taken a year of Russian at Pierce.) All of this, I reasoned, would make me attractive to the agency. Somehow, I’d also find time to finish my degree in international relations. I planned to go from chronic underachiever to multitasking man of action in the blink of an eye. To my nineteen-year-old brain, it seemed like a straightforward path to a glorious future. The hard part would be doing it.

I read everything I could get my hands on about the CIA and Special Forces and attended a lecture at Pierce on intelligence by a former deputy director for intelligence at the CIA, Ray Cline. A Harvard PhD, Cline was far more cloak than dagger, but his talk was still interesting. I didn’t expect the CIA to talk about its secret operational side in public.

I soon went to see an Army recruiter in Van Nuys. I told him I wanted to be a Green Beret and took the Army’s required battery of aptitude tests, but he kept encouraging me to enlist in the infantry, get some experience, go to Ranger School, and then try for Special Forces on my second enlistment. My odds of making it would be better that way, he said. He might have been right, but I didn’t want to wait. So, I walked out the door and went in search of another recruiter.

When I walked into the Army recruiting office in Hollywood, the staff sergeant who greeted me was an affable Greek American named Jim Maniatis—a Green Beret and eight-year Special Forces and Vietnam veteran with silver jump wings, a scuba badge, and a host of medals adorning his khaki uniform. I had found my guy. And it wouldn’t be the last time a Greek American would have a profound impact on my career.

He invited me to his cubicle and told me about Special Forces training, his service as a Green Beret in Germany and Vietnam, and what I would need to do to qualify for direct enlistment into SF. I was more than qualified intellectually, having received a perfect 160 out of 160 on the...

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Verlag
Knopf
Erscheinungsdatum
2023
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1101947705
ISBN 13 
9781101947708
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
576
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Knopf
https://knopfdoubleday.com

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