Combining Intelligence and Action with Phil Reilly
Sandy and Sandra’s guest this episode is Phil Reilly, a former CIA paramilitary officer who was the first American on the ground in Afghanistan in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. Phil starts by explaining a little about the history and organization of the CIA and how the paramilitary fits into it. He also talks about the tough vetting process to get into the CIA and how recruits are analyzed to determine which area they’ll be placed in. Phil then shares his own journey to the CIA, including his time on a HALO team as a Green Beret, his choice between the Navy or the Agency, and his paramilitary and operational training. He also shares some details of his experiences in Central America in the 80s and with operating under an alias persona, something that would likely not be possible in our age of ubiquitous technical surveillance and global connectivity.
Next, Sandy asks Phil to discuss his experience on the ground in Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks. Phil explains that he was chosen to be on the Jawbreaker team that was picked just two or three days after the attacks and discusses the team’s mission to prepare the way for US military boots on the ground. He also talks about some of the risks and concerns they had to deal with and his personal feelings on responding to a direct attack on US soil. Then he discusses how the environment changed after he returned as the Chief of Station of Kabul, especially in relation to the Afghan people and their relationship with the US troops, before addressing his feelings on how the US military’s presence in Afghanistan ended. And finally, Phil points out some of the benefits of a career in the CIA, including having a real mission and getting to see the world.
Resources:
If you enjoyed this episode of The Adrenaline Zone, hit the subscribe button so you never miss another thrilling conversation, and be sure to leave a review to help get the word out to fellow adrenaline junkies.
Transcript:
Dr. Sandra Magnus: It lies somewhere between the pit of your stomach, your racing heart, and your brain, somehow trying to keep it all together. That's an area we call The Adrenaline Zone.
I'm retired astronaut Dr. Sandra Magnus.
Sandy Winnefeld: And I'm a retired Navy fighter pilot, Admiral Sandy Winnefeld. We're two adrenaline junkies, who love spending time with people who are really passionate about pushing their boundaries as far as possible.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: It's been over 20 years since terrorists attacked the United States on 9/11, killing over 3000 people. After the dust settled, it quickly became clear that Al Qaeda, an organization based in Afghanistan, was responsible.
Sandy Winnefeld: Our guest for this episode is Phil Reilly, a former CIA paramilitary officer, who was the first American on the ground in the wake of the attacks, assisting the Northern Alliance and helping prepare the battlefield for the US response.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: As you can imagine, Phil has led quite an interesting life before and during his service as a CIA officer. We caught up with him in between overseas trips.
Many thanks to our sponsor for this episode, Freedom Consulting Group. If you're looking for stimulating work in our national security intelligence sector, check them out at freedomconsultinggroup.com.
Sandy Winnefeld: Phil Reilly, welcome to The Adrenaline Zone. It’s terrific to have you with us.
Phil Reilly: Thank you for having me. It's an honor.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: So, before we get into the adrenaline-packed life, previously, you led as a paramilitary officer for the CIA, it might help our listeners, if you tell us a little bit about the CIA, at least to the extent that you can. How is it organized and also where do the paramilitary operations fit into the whole picture?
Phil Reilly: Sure! The CIA was created in 1947. It's an intelligence collection and all source analysis capability for the United States government. That's its primary mission, but it also has a covert action mission to conduct at the President's direction, special operations of a very low-profile nature.
When I left in 2014, there were four directorates There are now five including digital innovation, science and technology, analysis, operations, and support – the five now. They work very well together, very much linked.
And then, there are mission centers based on geographic regions, and in some cases, specific missions like counterterrorism, and counter-proliferation. And now, most recently the press indicates that there's a China mission center focused on those types of operations.
Well, CIA, I guess the numbers are actually classified, but let's just put scores of thousands of people spread around the world operating everywhere, essentially, but with a major nexus here in the Washington DC area.
Sandy Winnefeld: How does the paramilitary piece fit into that, obviously, a little more closely held? If I'm an analyst, it's one thing, if I'm out there overseas undercover and that kind of thing, it's a little different.
Phil Reilly: That's right. The CIA essentially has a small Army, Air Force, and Navy to conduct military-like operations, but not as US military. We’re capable of working with the US military and we frequently do, but we also operate unilaterally.
We recruit extensively from the US Special Operations community. I would say 100% of the ground branch which we see in the army and roughly analogous elements, are all prior special operations people from the US military community, all the services, and a significant number of the maritime and air branch personnel come out of the military as well.
So, there's a tremendous innate understanding of the military in the CIA because particularly in the paramilitary ranks, we all came from that world. Oftentimes, if you go down to a JSOC unit, a special mission unit of the United States government today and put 100 guys in a room and say, 'Who here's been in the CIA?' You may not get a hand raised. But if you go to the ground branch, and you ask, 'How many people served in the US military?'100% of the hands will be raised.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: So, is there any carryover from the operation side to the analysis side, personnel-wise? Do people move, maybe when they're done with operations into analysis because it seems like the analysis side could always benefit from operations? That's true of any organization, by the way.
Phil Reilly: That's a very good question. The vetting process to get into the CIA is extremely thorough, and you are analyzed for basically what your skill set is and what area you should really go into.
An operations person will have a certain profile and I happen to fit that. In analysis, an analyst will have a certain profile. And so, while you can go between the two, it is very rare. Generally, you come into one of those and you stick with it.
Sandy Winnefeld: Yeah. And isn't it true, Phil, that younger people coming out of college who don't necessarily have the pedigree of Special Operations would go into analysis right away, but you're not going to take somebody right out of college into. As you said, you've got to have some experience to be out there in the field. Is that true?
Phil Reilly: Well, the CIA does like life experience. They do take some young people and put them into professional trainee programs for a few years and get them ready. And then, they go through all their formal training, but most of the case officers or operations officers that are not paramilitary officers are in fact people out of academia, kids coming out of college or law school, but generally, yes, they want several years of real-life experience doing something else.
Sandy Winnefeld: One of the things that I wanted to get out early in this discussion was the CIA has this sort of brand, right? It’s like, ‘Oh, my God! It’s the CIA. It must be evil.’ When in fact, there's a lot of great work going on in support of not only the US but our allies there.
I was struck by a wonderful talk that the current director, Bill Burns gave down at Georgia Tech, Sandra, and my alma mater. Just humility, straightforward, really explaining what it's all about. I just encourage our listeners to take a peek at that. I don't know if you've had a chance to listen to it, Phil, but it's terrific.
Phil Reilly: I have and again, it got like Ambassador Burns is still well credentialed to be the director of CIA. You can argue what the pedigree actually should be, but you're hard pressed to not say the former Ambassador to Russia is not someone who's not suitable right here and now.
Sandy Winnefeld: Yeah, no kidding. Somebody who's maybe sat down and had tea with Putin – not a bad idea.
Phil Reilly: Yeah, he speaks the language, he knows the guy. He got a few strengths, yeah.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Sometimes the timing in the world works out well, that's good to know. So, you've had some pretty interesting jobs even before you got into the CIA, and I think something called a Special Atomic Demolition Team. What was that all about?
Phil Reilly: Well, when I left Georgetown, I think I told you, but I did what you're not supposed to do. I enlisted in the US Army and I wanted to be a Green Beret. So, with my Georgetown degree, I went to the army on a path, or at the time that was available to young people coming in and making it through all the hurdles, through Special Forces.
Yeah, I was in the Green Beret in the 7th Special Forces Group in the early 1980s. I was assigned to a HALO team, a high-altitude jump team with the SADM mission - the Special Atomic Demolition Munition Mission - which is a backpack nuke, which is no longer in the US inventory, but they were at the time.
They were in theory for operations where at the time, US airframes or Air Force, or missiles would not be targeted. So, we did a lot of training, a lot of jumping – high altitude. High altitudes are anything over 15 grand. Most of our jumps were about 25,000 feet with that device. And then, as a team, we had other missions that were associated with getting that device into place, but I was a demolition Sergeant. So, mine dealt with the emergency destruct procedures.
Sandy Winnefeld: You left off an important part of HALO. And that is the L-O part, which is a Low Opening. So here you are jumping out of high-altitude coasting in there and opening that parachute at very low altitude, but at least you had a nuclear weapon attached to your back.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Yeah, that's not risky at all. No!
Phil Reilly: I was very lucky. I was not a natural jumper. I learned it for the military, both jump school, and HALO school. But I was on a team of super experienced people. There is a jumping community and coaches - if you really get into skydiving and HALO jumping, you can meet people and I did meet people with thousands and thousands of jumps. And so, their capabilities were just absolutely remarkable so you felt very safe.
And when you're out of that plane, you're on your own, right? You've got to deploy that canopy or get your reserve into gear. I've had malfunctions and I've had to use my reserve but you have a real sense of safety given the caliber of the people that were on the team. I was the least experienced by far, to be honest.
Sandy Winnefeld: But at least you were doing it at night.
Phil Reilly: Yeah, it was at night with oxygen. Yeah, exactly. I don't care what goggles they provided you in the day, they always would fog up. So, we're trying to look at that altimeter frantically to make sure you have the right attitude.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Wow! I had the opportunity to jump once from 14,000 with a tandem because I was just curious about what it was like, and I'm not, I can't imagine doing that a lot, but it was interesting.
Sandy Winnefeld: We had a great episode previously with Blanco, who was working in this brewery where rival gang members man the thing and their graduation exercise is to jump out of an airplane. Most of them have never even been in an airplane and having to jump out of it for the first time, it’s pretty amazing.
Well, let me ask you, you started out in Special Forces and by the way, there's a pretty high, I don't know if it was this then, a high percentage of special operators that have college degrees. So, you weren't necessarily alone in that regard. But what was the path you took to get into the CIA? There had to be other alternatives out there or you chose the CIA or they chose you – one or the other?
Dr. Sandra Magnus: That's right, I was getting ready to ETS or leave the service we had for three years and I had this desire to go to Delta Force but of course, I would have to re-up and re-enlist for that and I realized probably the officer ranks were where I should go.
So, what I did was I looked at the US Navy Naval Aviator Program and started to go through the hoops to go into the Navy upon exiting the army. That said, at the exact same time, I did get a tap on the shoulder from a CIA representative at Fort Bragg that was located there then and it's still there with one of his duties is to identify people coming out who may be suitable for the CIA.
So, I got tapped on the shoulder and I was running both the naval aviator program and the CIA in parallel. Frankly, the CIA only won because they offered the job quicker. So, I was eager to take that. Plus, let's face it, the mystique was there, I knew very little about what I was getting into, I had never heard of what a paramilitary officer was, had some rough ideas but it made a lot of sense. At the time, in the early 80s, the Contra effort in Central America was going strong. I was a 7th Special Forces Group guy which covers Central America and South America.
So, it made a lot of sense to bring in a person like me and then turn them around and use them on that effort, which is exactly what the CIA did.
Sandy Winnefeld: So, we in naval aviation let a good fish off the hook is what you're trying to tell me?
Phil Reilly: I’m not sure about that. By the way, that interest was pre-Top Gun, as I like to say, and I know you were in that film. This is before it became really sexy, but frankly, it was exciting.
[Advertisement]
Dr. Sandra Magnus: If you want to serve your country by being on the front lines of providing critical information to our nation's key decision makers, consider a career in the intelligence community.
Sandy Winnefeld: Freedom Consulting Group offers a highly rewarding way to be part of the intelligence community in the private sector. If you're an experienced coder, an American citizen and are looking for a great work environment, job security, and terrific benefits, visit Freedom’s website at freedomconsultinggroup.com.
[End of the Advertisement]
Dr. Sandra Magnus: What kind of training, well, at least that you can talk about, did you do to prepare for some of your paramilitary operations or just in general?
Phil Reilly: That's a great question. They do more now, in preparation for the cycles that were up until very recently, for 20 years going back and forth to Afghanistan and other trouble areas.
Well, we like to say the CIA is a consumer of skills. I mean, we let the US military do so much of the actual training. So, you come credentialed and basically, you're getting additional paramilitary skills specific to CIA, let's say, equipment or team or the way we operate.
But the biggest piece you're going to get as a paramilitary officer at CIA today, and this wasn't always the case 25 or 30 years ago, is you're going to also get the operational training as a case officer, as a collector of intelligence, being able to go out and spot, assess, develop, and recruit foreign sources for CIA. So, you are dual-hatted. Paramilitary may be your primary focus but you also have the case officer skills. So, that is all trained and you're provided that training at the farm.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: But you still need, I mean, when we were trying for our shuttle, even when we weren't flying, we were doing sims periodically to keep our skill sets up. So, you still had ongoing refresher training, right?
Phil Reilly: We did extensively. We have facilities around the US, or we borrow US military facilities at the time, and we do a lot of our training. We also would send people back, for instance, I did Special Operations Training with the US military as a CIA officer going back. When I went through HALO training in the army, there were two fellas with long hair. I said, I don't know who these two are, but they were CIA people going through a HALO course at the time.
Sandy Winnefeld: Wow! So, we'll get into some of your interesting experiences in South Asia in a bit. But you didn't start there, you began your career as a paramilitary officer elsewhere. Tell us about that.
Phil Reilly: Yeah, it was the mid-80s. They were using us extensively in Central America, against the Sandinistas, the whole Contra effort, if you will. At the time, we were not in direct kinetic operations against the Sandinistas. We were training and equipping the Contras and other elements with the equipment or the gear they needed to conduct the operations.
So, surface-to-air missiles, MANPADS, and things like that, we provided the training. So, we had a lot of that. And then, also at the same time, the mid-80s was the Africa Bush wars, and various conflicts pushing back on the then Soviet Union, which had Cuban proxy forces all throughout Africa and we would do operations against them in certain places.
Sandy Winnefeld: Most Americans, including myself, don't really know much about those Bush wars. What was the dynamic? What was going on? Why were we involved? I guess just trying to push back against the Soviets or…?
Phil Reilly: That's exactly right. I mean, you still stopped the spread of Communism. It sounds almost humorous today, but at that time in the early 80s, you were stopping the spread. The Soviet Union has not collapsed yet but they were overextended. Again, they were using Cuban proxies. And so, wherever they were trying to spread Communism or some of their allies, we were there to push back in one way or another. I'm not suggesting there were kinetic or paramilitary operations all throughout the continent, there were all forms of covert action from covert influence to some tactical operations but from a paramilitary perspective, yes, those operations did go on.
Sandy Winnefeld: And I would imagine that your Latin American experience would help you understand how the Cubans were operating on the continent there. It wasn't just like totally lifting and shifting, you kind of had a sense of what was going on already.
Phil Reilly: No, you're exactly right. To be honest, a lot of the weapons systems are the same. The MANPADS, the Stinger were obviously very, very famous. The precursor to that was the Redeye. It was a more primitive version, but also very effective in bringing down airframes and then Stingers.
So, a lot of the weapons systems you carried over. As a paramilitary officer, you had to know those systems. We were going to be introducing them or utilizing them. A little bit different. I mean, for instance, in some of the African Bush Wars, there was armor involved. We didn't have that in the Central American conflict. So, again, very different weapons systems being brought to bear. TOW missile, for instance, could be brought to bear. It's interesting to say that because you jumped forward to even the current crisis and the TOW missile's not completely out of the game.
Sandy Winnefeld: Yeah, no kidding. It's a big shift. A lot of people are waking up to the fact that big, slow, non-stealthy things are pretty vulnerable to these small smart things, right?
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Most of us visualize someone sort of covertly going into another land as a James Bond-ish. There's a lot of popular romanticism about some of this, but you probably weren't wearing a tuxedo with a pistol underneath, but still, there are always special toys, as it were. So, did you have at your disposal something like a Q?
Phil Reilly: Yeah! The Office of Science and Technology, the OTS, is remarkable. It is the real Q. By the way, in the British service, they have a Q. That's an actual legitimate thing. There’s a Q. But they're budgets are not like they are in the James Bond movies, I assure you, my British colleagues.
But in the US, they can be. But you're correct, we would deploy, again, I'm speaking as a paramilitary officer, often in an alias persona with alias documentation and operating not as a US official which was very much easier in the 80s and before. It got more difficult in the 90s, got very hard in the early 2000s, and I think it's damn near impossible now to operate in an alias persona, given ubiquitous technical surveillance and all the intertwined connectivity of the different security apparatus around the world.
But I will leave it at that because I'm no longer in government service. But there are probably ways to still defeat that. But it's a very, very different world than when I was a young buck, and you could put together an alias, credit card and a couple of things, driver's license and passport and go.
Sandy Winnefeld: Yeah, much different. And any cool devices, obviously, that are out of service right now. And obviously, you couldn't talk about anything that you know of that's being used.
Phil Reilly: We had very interesting communications capabilities that, frankly, would still be interesting, even now. And obviously, everything's overtaken now by how you operate even on the internet and obscure, obfuscate what you're doing, but back then satellite communications with special devices and all were all very, very interesting to me.
In terms of weapons systems? No, not really. We would often use what was available to our military colleagues. I mean, there was an Agency issued sidearm and it has changed over time. But again, in the paramilitary ranks, you use whatever you need to do. I mean, an AK 47. It's not an issued US military weapon. But again, frequently where we operate, that may be the only thing at hand.
Sandy Winnefeld: Interesting. So, let's move on. I found myself off the coast of Pakistan on an aircraft carrier immediately after the terror attacks of 9/11. But we didn't do anything for a month while all the diplomacy worked its way out and all that sort of thing. But you were the if I'm not mistaken, the very first American security person on the ground in Afghanistan after those terrible attacks? Can you give our listeners a sense of how that all came about when you arrived, and sort of what you were doing?
Phil Reilly: Yeah, sure. I was in language training, learning Serbo-Croatian, actually on the morning of 9/11, and like a lot of colleagues and Americans, when we saw the horrible events on TV, I knew within minutes, in some cases, that it was a terrorist strike.
People tried to volunteer and get back into the fray. So, Serbo-Croatian was no longer important to me. And getting into the response was critical. I was very lucky and I was picked to be on what was known as ‘The Jawbreaker Team.’
I was picked about two or three days after 9/11. We started to assemble CIA, a team of people to go in. The President was offered a number of, at the time, George Bush was given a number of courses of action for reasons again, Sandy, you probably know better than I do. DOD just did not have a very immediate quick response on the shelf to go.
George Tenet, Director of CIA, and some others did, and what it was that we would send a team in to work with the Northern Alliance, which we had a relationship with - however dodgy that relationship was, we had one - and we had the air assets in theater or near theater that we could get to. And so, we prepared a 10-man team – 7 men on the ground and a 3-person aircrew. So, 10 people would be utilizing a Mi-17, Russian airframe, staged in the area that recently had been refitted.
We had not been into the Northern Alliance for 6 months or more at the CIA. But that was the mechanism we were going to use. The mission was straightforward. Get to the Northern Alliance. Bring them to our side. Prepare the way for the introduction of the US military boots on the ground, as well as collect intelligence on Al Qaeda, the perpetrators of the events of 9/11.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: So, what kind of risks did that entail, and how did you deal with them?
Phil Reilly: It was interesting. I'd done a lot of work, and we talked a bit about it already, working with liaison. And liaison can be anybody as formal and great as the Brits, the Australians and it can also be a bush fire somewhere. But I knew how to work with a liaison so I wasn't really concerned with dealing with the Northern Alliance.
Again, not to get too far into the weeds, but two days before 9/11, Ahmed Shah Massoud, the head of the Northern Alliance was also assassinated by Al Qaeda. That event completely galvanized the Northern Alliance to our side, the side of the USA.
And so, I didn't think, correctly, that there would be any problem, that they would be wanting to join us, and in fact, they did. My biggest concern then was, and probably remains, getting in and out in a rickety Mi-17. The way in through Uzbekistan and Tajikistan and down into the Panjshir Valley, you have to claw up to 15,000 feet in this older helicopter and get over, clear the Pass, and then descend.
So, it was always clear to me that it was going to be a mechanical issue. I've often said if we were going to have a massive loss of life by CIA standards in Afghanistan, it would have been a helo loss in Afghanistan. But knock on wood, we have not had that happen.
Anyway, that was my biggest concern, was getting in. Once in, we were there to map enemy positions again, at that time, the Taliban still controlled the entire country. So, we were mapping positions using military gear and our own, the Kabul front and what was known as the Takhar front up to the northwest.
Again, the Northern Alliance owned a small little sliver of Afghanistan, everything else were bad guys. And again, our team was the first one in and we brought in on October 16, the first US Army Special Forces.
During that period of darkness, they came into the Kabul area and they also went up to Dostum, one of the warlords we were working with, and put a team in up there as well. That's the first of the start of the Special Forces coming in.
And so, the CIA, in the case of Jawbreaker, was all CIA initially. We then had Special Forces operational attachments come in. And then, in the future, the CIA would send a 5- or 6-man team, it would be linked up with the Special Forces ODA 12-man team, and they would deploy throughout the country; there were about 8-10 of those teams. So, you do the math. And when Kabul fell, there were about 300 US boots on the ground, that's it, at the time between Special Forces and CIA. I always like to credit the US Air Power for playing a not insignificant role in completely crushing the Taliban.
[Advertisement]
Sandy Winnefeld: Looking for meaningful employment within the intelligence community? Look no further. Freedom Consulting Group is a great place to work and has several open positions for American citizens in the technology field.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Technical teams at Freedom focus on using the right technology to create flexible, long-lasting solutions for key clients.
Sandy Winnefeld: So, if you're an experienced coder, looking for a fantastic position in the world of intelligence visit Freedom’s website at freedomconsultinggroup.com.
[End of Advertisement]
Sandy Winnefeld: So, you really didn't start operating with Special Forces until after the war actually began, because October 7 was when the first bombs fell. And of course, we were involved in that along with a lot of other people.
But we were really going after more strategic targets, surface-to-air missile sites, and what we thought might be command and control nodes for Al Qaeda and the like. But once that was done, the real sort of struggle started on the ground, and that's where your teams were instrumental.
You hear stories of, you know, joint tactical air controllers on horseback directing Air Force, Navy, and Marine Aircraft in there. Were your teams with them directly talking to those airplanes, or were you feeding the intelligence back a different way, just identifying where the Taliban was located?
Phil Reilly: When Jawbreaker was on the ground alone, we were pumping everything back to Washington. We had soft lands. We had the technical gear to do exactly what you're saying but most of our reporting was on the enemy positions and where it was, and also the other missions I described, bringing the Northern Alliance to us introducing the US military. But no, the other teams that went in, all subsequent teams, they were cleverly named Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo.
They were joint teams but typically, as you know, the US military prefers to have a US military guy on the other end of the radio. So, typically the ODA communicators were the ones calling in specific airstrikes. But again, they were co-located. There was no us and them and it was just one team in every one of these locations.
Sandy Winnefeld: Yeah. So, you don't want some Afghan person on the radio calling in an airstrike on their bitter family feud, that's why we want to have somebody we know on the other end of the pipe there.
Phil Reilly: Exactly, right. And even with that, there were events, and unfortunately, there were errant strikes of people hitting themselves. That was the famous one down in the Kandahar region. So, mistakes can be made in the haze of war.
Sandy Winnefeld: Amazing! Was the feel different? All of the paramilitary operations you had done up to this point were sort of indirectly supporting another nation and its struggle against the Soviet Union or something like that. But this had to feel a little more personal. Did you think of that a lot? Or was it just 'Let's get the job done'?
Phil Reilly: No, I did. The magnitude of this was completely different. Certainly, for me, I would assume for everybody involved. This was 9/11, obviously, the Pearl Harbor, I should say, of our generation, I've often thought of it that way. I'm a New Yorker. I had a cousin lost in the Trade Center. I felt really, really visceral about it.
I mean, you're a professional so you don't want that to overcome you. But yeah, this was completely different. I have to say, there's a feeling for revenge. You had to stay focused because at the end of the day the Taliban had to be taken care of, but it was Al Qaeda that launched the attack on us. It was those elements that were much harder to root out, much harder to find than the Taliban war that we had a mission to go get.
Sandy Winnefeld: I remember, people would ask me, ‘Are your sailors upset about being extended?’ And I said, ‘Are you kidding? They would have been upset if they had been taken home because they wanted to participate in this.’
Dr. Sandra Magnus: As things change, you were later this Chief of Station in Kabul, so that probably gave you a whole different set of risks to worry about, and I'm sure things changed over time, and you guys had to change with it as the environment became a little more crowded.
Phil Reilly: It's a great point to make. I was there with 10 Americans initially alone in the country, and I come back as the Chief of Station for Kabul. But yeah, it was clearly different. It was the largest station in the world at the time. I won't go into numbers but it's massive by CIA standards. And we were building towards 100,000 coalition troops and US troops. We had 14 bases that I had responsibility for and it was just myself and 9 other guys in the Panjshir Valley.
So, it's a whole different set of problems from the strategic to the tactical. There's always a push into intelligence collection to get that big strategic gem, right? Like, what are the Iranians got to do this or what's Putin really thinking?
But in tactical intelligence, often time gets short shrift. Now in a war zone, that's dangerous. And I was already trying to work with my people who didn't need much prodding, but a collection of tactical intelligence to support the warfighter was equally important.
Every now and then we would get information and intelligence about an IED here or something like that and the unit would take the time to root out that it was OGA (Other Government Agency) reporting that provided that and some sort of thankee would come back through the system.
And to me, that was the absolute best. I didn't have any strategic intelligence that was as good as the feeling you would get where you could directly help US military. So, I'd say our reporting was roughly 50/50. At one point, maybe it was 60/40 in strategic tactical. But in a warzone, force protection, not only for the military but for yourselves, is just so overwhelming. The fact that we collectively lost as few people that we did, given the dangers of that place, is a credit to the force protection efforts.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: How did the force protection efforts change or not change with the relationship that the troops had and the US presence had with the Afghan people? Was that a factor and did that change over time?
Phil Reilly: Yeah, the problem is that the Taliban obviously could blend into the environment so you never knew where they were going to be. I guess they would go into any community and threaten the locals who had no choice.
I mean, corruption ultimately helped bring down Afghanistan because the military and police were not willing to fight for an entity that didn't take care of them, let alone pay them. But I saw remarkable efforts by the US military, Special Forces, oftentimes, your Green Berets, but all the military units and the provisional reconstruction teams, these are PRTs as they were called. These were multi-agency, interagency, and frankly, were our foreign partners working in these regions. They did a lot of good work. Did it last? No, there were so many other problems inherent to Afghanistan that those efforts couldn't ultimately be successful.
But to your point, I saw us do some remarkable things with the Afghan people, but there was always a risk. I heard one former officer say, 'Well, you could actually walk downtown in' let's pick 'Asadabad' . No, you couldn't. You couldn't have walked any of those places for five minutes. You were gonna live as long as it took the bad guys to create an operation and go kill or capture you.
Sandy Winnefeld: So, Phil, we steer very clear of politics on the show and my humble personal belief is that no matter when we left Afghanistan, it was going to be hard – it didn't matter what administration or what have you.
But as somebody who spent so much time there, and who knew so many Afghans, it had to be kind of hard to watch the sort of tragic end of the experiment there, and how it's going now. Do you have any thoughts on that, particularly the people you knew?
Phil Reilly: Yeah, you summarized it well. I mean, there was no one that I know who touched Afghanistan that didn't feel horrible about the way it all unfolded, and many others a lot worse than me who more closely, like a lot of the former Green Berets – I'm talking about Generals Ed Reeder 2 star, who's personally brought so many Afghans to this country and helped them get here prior to the events at the ending. It’s just terrible.
I was worried about their safety in many cases. Of course, they all found ways to reach out to you. I had my reach outs. Other people had hundreds of reach outs. People are still getting reached out to by Afghans stuck inside or in neighboring countries, a lot being reached out in the neighboring countries now are at least relatively safe, but no it was a terrible feeling.
My interpreter in the Panjshir, in September 2001, was a guy named Amrullah Saleh. Amrullah was a brilliant young person and an Ahmad Massoud favorite. He was the Vice President of Afghanistan when it collapsed. He got all that way from the interpreter to the job of the Vice President and was on the run for his life into the Panjshir. They killed his brother. I'm not sure which country he’s in now, but he's out of the country. But every one of those people I fell for.
I'm very close with General Scott Miller. Scott and I first worked together in the Balkans in the 90s. He is a young Delta Force Major, a CIA paramilitary officer. We became friends and we remain friends to this day. I watched him and we work together now, Scott and I as he has just recently left the service. And he still gets reached out 4 or 5, 6 times a day. What can he do? I mean, you just can't flip a switch and save somebody. So, it's tough.
Sandy Winnefeld: And with information technology, when you think about leaving Vietnam, there were probably a lot of people that had the same feeling, but they were out of touch. They couldn't even talk to the people that they left behind. But now, it's a click away.
Scotty's terrific! I'm glad to see that he's got life after the military. Speaking of life after, what are you doing now? You had a very exciting, adrenaline-filled life. Do you miss it?
Phil Reilly: Yeah, I do. Time heals all wounds, right? Less so than I once did. I left it in late 2014. But I will tell you now that Ukraine is now popping, it's hard to look at that and not say, ‘Well, how would I play it?' I would love to be in the fray, so it's difficult.
I tell everyone, 'You're gonna have better hours and make a lot more money in the private sector, but you're never gonna have the mission that you once had. And you just have to deal with that.'
Dr. Sandra Magnus: So, if you are a young person now, or if a young person was thinking of following in your footsteps, what advice would you give them?
Phil Reilly: I'd say go for it. I do a lot of informal pitches to people about the CIA, and I say go for it. The career is exciting and you'll love it. I did talk to Mike Morell one time, actually on his podcast. I talked about the excitement of going to work. I was at my desk at 6:30. Some of that was the traffic. Some of that was just to get my day going. I wanted to be there and turn on that machine and the whole world, and the adventure starts. And maybe you turn it off at 7-8 o'clock at night and went home. Those are long hours, but we loved it.
If you can find a job like that, that you actually love, and a mission, go for it. So, I tell young people that you're never going to be a millionaire working for the United States Government regardless of what branch you go to, but if you want to see the world, have a real mission, be able to go do a lot of different things, then join the CIA.
Sandy Winnefeld: I know Sandra feels the same way about her life and career. I know that as a young fighter pilot, you couldn't get me out of bed fast enough in the morning. I wanted to run to work. It was exhilarating and tremendously rewarding so I know exactly how you feel.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Yeah, absolutely.
Sandy Winnefeld: Any particular life lessons about managing risk on your part? I mean, you weren't gambling when you did these things, you were managing risk so anything that comes to mind?
Phil Reilly: Look, you should be learning the entire time. If I had to look back at my career, and see something I should have done, was taken advantage of the career opportunities and educational opportunities that came forward to me.
The military is much better than the CIA, where you're in the military and there are service schools that you're going to attend, those external educational opportunities that you are prompted to take, you don't have that at CIA and I wish we did. But working with excellent people on an excellent mission - I don't recall in 30 years meeting a single person who wasn't dedicated to the mission. I mean, there are varying degrees of dedication but everyone was there for the right reason.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: With respect to the lessons, after we came back from missions, we would debrief, and even when we were in training and they brought people who had worked at NASA 10-15 years before back to share stories. Do they have programs like that, where you can go in and share stories and lessons with people who are sort of young?
Phil Reilly: They do and it's informal. I'll tell you some of the best at it are the people now running the Special Activities Division of CIA, or the mission center, that's the paramilitary home in capability. They're probably the best within the building for going back and recognizing and pulling back some of the experts.
That’s what they're doing now with Vietnamese vintage people, in some cases even earlier, believe it or not, and getting those lessons down on paper. The ANC does it too, I mean, there are a number of programs for bringing people back and sort of exploring their knowledge that otherwise will be lost.
There is an element of 'nothing's new under the sun'. I got it. And that's true in many respects that we're all people, but technology has changed dramatically. The next fight and I'm not talking about Ukraine, but the next 50 years struggle with China, is going to be a completely different war.
Sandy Winnefeld: Phil, this has been absolutely terrific. It's a real treat for our listeners to get to hear somebody like you talk because there's so much mystique associated with intelligence, CIA, and that sort of thing. Getting a real human being to talk about it, people can realize that these are dedicated people doing an important job.
The whole time we were talking, I was thinking, when I was walking through an airport in uniform or something, people would always come up and say 'Thank you for your service', which was nice. Sandra has been pretty prominent as an astronaut, and people thank her. I always think of first responders and that sort of thing but it's probably pretty hard for a CIA paramilitary officer to experience that feeling of gratitude from the American people for what you've done, the sacrifices you've made, the risks you've taken. So, please, on behalf of our listeners and ourselves, thank you so much for what you've done for our country over all these years.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Absolutely.
Sandy Winnefeld: It's been a delight to have you.
Phil Reilly: It’s very nice of you to say that. I really appreciate it!
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Thank you! That was Phil Reilly, a former CIA paramilitary officer and the first American on the ground in Afghanistan in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. I'm Sandra Magnus.
Sandy Winnefeld: And I'm Sandy Winnefeld. Thanks again to Freedom Consulting Group for sponsoring this episode. Do work that matters. Check them out at freedomconsultinggroup.com.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Join us back in The Adrenaline Zone next week for a new episode. Be sure to follow the show wherever you get your podcasts.
