Thomas P.M. Barnett :: Weblog

Mark Warren dropped this idea on me casually in an email in September, suggesting I call him about how we’d do a story on Fallon. I had no idea what he was aiming for.

What set Mark off was Fallon’s statements to Al Jazeera that the “drumbeat on Iran” was “not helpful” and “not useful.” Mark, aware of Fallon’s history of marching to his own drumbeat re: China, was intrigued by his capacity and willingness to voice a contrarian view within an administration that seemed to be pushing the war option on Iraq with some vigor. So the intrigue for me became, If Fallon could stand up on China, would he do the same on Iran?

Fallon was already on the record as wanting a more rapid drawdown on Iraq, putting him with Gates and the JCS versus Petraeus and the White House.

To me, Fallon’s story was interesting enough solely on the China/Iran comparison, but likewise because he’s from the Villanova “mafia” that’s been so prominent lately (Cebrowski, Zinni, etc.), a group I knew well enough. Plus, in my mind, Fallon represents the last CENTCOM boss likely to enjoy a serious freedom of action, given the unique set of circumstances (Rice focused on Israel-PA, Petraeus running the show in Iraq, and so Fallon is the man on the rest of the region just as the Bush admin winds down and just as Russia, India and China are ramping up their interests/presence).

In short, Fallon has an opportunity to navigate his own course (with support this time from SECDEF Gates) in a way that no future CENTCOM boss may enjoy.

So I plot my approach on Fallon. I have Jenn Posda work the usual public affairs angle through CENTCOM while I pitch him direct by email. Basically I said that Esquire wanted to know what would be “helpful” and “useful” on Iran if the drumbeat was no good. Plus, I said we wanted to present his wider, regional strategy in the profile.

Fallon agreed and the negotiations ensued on access. Jenn did a lot of this negotiating for me in emails, with me intervening as required.

It was a long and tortuous process, not because anyone wanted it to be so. It was just the nature of the times.

First, Fallon’s people offered me F2F on a flight from Kazakstan to Singapore at the end of a Central Asian tour he was taking. Once I heard that, I wanted on the whole tour and pleaded to that end directly to Fallon by email. It worked.

So the plan became that I would leave the US on the 29th [of October] right after speaking at a corporate event in California (San Diego) and meet up with Fallon in Turkmenistan.

At that point we began the long and tricky visa process, with Esquire’s Tim Heffernan (Mark’s right hand) directing via a company that provides such services (getting visas). We found out that Turkmenistan and Tajikistan, the two early stops on the trip, would be very hard to get, because each wanted to hold my passport for days and we simply would run out of time.

So I told Tim to start at the end of the Central Asian tour (Kazakhstan) and work backwards. So the agency got the Kazakhstan visa first and then said my passport didn’t have enough pages to accommodate the rest, so two days were spent getting additional pages taped in (a U.S. passport process). Then the passport went to the Pakistan consulate, and then to the Afghani. While the Kazakhs took three days, both Pakistan and Afghanistan could turn around in 24. I could buy a tourist visa at Kyrgyzstan, so now I had four of the six countries in hand and as time was running out, we bagged the idea of trying to make Turkmenistan and Tajikistan happen (bad idea on that latter country, as it was later added back into the itinerary and I landed with no visa--more on that later).

At one point, the trip was altered some and it looked like I might try to meet up with Fallon in Qatar before he left, but that was too hard in terms of working the visa, so it was agreed that I would land in Islamabad on the morning of the 1st and link up with Fallon as he arrived late that night.

Then things changed because of the San Diego fires and the resulting postponement of my talk out West. That actually simplified things a bit on flights and my departure time, giving Tim and Esquire more days to complete the visa effort.

Then my brother-in-law Steve died early on the morning of the 29th and my plans were discombobulated again. CENTCOM was very accommodating, at first trying to get me into Kabul via Kurdistan, but then we all agreed it was easier to do via Dubai. The Pakistan portion of my trip was thus curtailed and I’d join Fallon in Afghanistan on the 3rd and continue with him through the evening of the 7th, visiting two other states (Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan), so in the end, my six-nation tour was cut to just three nations, but the upside was substantial to me personally, because it meant I was home for Halloween (big when you have four kids), plus I was able to pay my respects to my brother-in-law’s family at the service on 1 November and not force my wife to travel to her brother’s funeral without me. As a result we took three of our four kids along and Kevin sang a solo (“A Time for Us” from Romeo & Juliet) at his uncle’s memorial service.

I was unhappy to miss the Pakistan portion of the trip (especially given the subsequent political fireworks), but Mark and I decided that family came first and that I’d do my best to recreate that portion of the trip via interviews with Fallon (easily achieved). In all, I’d still get roughly four-and-a-half days with Fallon. Plus, since I’d offered him a speech in return for the favor of letting me on the tour, and since his staff took that offer up by asking me to address the Bright Star post-exercise gathering of senior Mideast military leaders (which Fallon was hosting) in Cairo the weekend after the trip, I figured I’d get some chance for F2F follow-up if required.

As all of that negotiating and schedule-scrambling went on (involving dozens and dozens of phonecons and emails between me, Jenn, Heffernan and a cast of many at CENTCOM and elsewhere), I set about prepping for the trip. I already had Oren’s history of U.S. relations with the Mideast, so I knocked that one off quickly. Then I blogged for suggestions on good books regarding Central Asia, and Dan Abbott suggested the two by the Pakistani reporter, Ahmed Rashid (Taliban and Jihad. I had Vonne get both immediately and I read each.

Besides that I started collecting recent stories on the region, putting together a file that I perused on the flight into Kabul. I also agreed to Fallon’s request that I visit CENTCOM in Tampa for pre-interviews. CENTCOM made it sound like I’d get briefs, but in reality, the trip was primarily so Fallon and I could have a F2F.

I flew into Tampa from DC on the 24th and spent about 5 hours on the 25th doing interviews and holding conversations. In the blog later that day, I made the whole trip sound connected to the Cairo speech, but it really was driven by the Central Asia trip.

When I got to CENTCOM’s HQ at MacDill, I spent time first with the PAO seniors, to include my handler on the trip, Cdr. Jeff Breslau, who fitted me for a desert cammie flak jacket and tried a standard-sized helmet on me (bad idea, as I’m a solid 7&5/8, but he came through with a suitably bigger one in Afghanistan). I spent the most time with the head PAO guy, Capt. Jamie Graybeal, eventually making our way to the commander’s “trophy room” (chock full of official gifts from regional heads of state and military leaders). I had been in the place before, when I sat down with Abizaid back in the fall of 2005, but the display still stunned me.

Fallon walked in just before noon and said it was nice to see me again. I blew it by asking him if we had met before, and he reminded me of the time we crossed paths in Newport (his first four-star job was Fleet Forces Command).

We headed into his office, where we were served soft drinks, and then he and I chatted alone for about an hour. True to his reputation of wanting to connect with people personally by knowing their past, he basically walked me through my entire career, interspersing my replies with stories of his own (he’s a big-time storyteller who pantomimes characters, does their voices, and recreates all the swearing with great relish). We ended the hour with a brief discussion of his strategic thinking regarding CENTCOM.

Out of the room I quickly penned a few things from the talk. It was not the kind of conversation where I could have whipped out a digital recorder. This was a getting-to-know each other talk and that part went extremely well, simply because we shared so many acquaintances and bosses and colleagues over our respective careers. I came out of the meeting feeling very good. Jenn and others had suggested that we’d get along famously, but I had my doubts. I no longer felt those doubts after the sitdown. I could tell this trip was going to be a load of fun personally, in addition to being intellectually fascinating and presumably a good haul for the piece.

Thus, my anxiety level regarding the trip (which was modest but noticeable) was now completely erased.

Rest of the time at CENTCOM was spent in two hour-long interviews. First was with the Deputy Director of Ops (BGEN Bob Holmes) and the senior intell analyst substituting for the Deputy Director of Intell. We did that taped interview in Holmes’ office. Both had done a lot of background reading on me and knew me from PNM, so my interview of them was constantly turned around into their interviewing me, but it was a good conversation, and the intell guy got me smarter on Darfur, which I appreciated a lot.

After that I bumped into the Director of Policy and Plans (RADM Findley) and he told me how excited his staff was to nab me for the Cairo gig. We promised to catch up in Egypt and I went on to the second interview with RADM John Miller, his deputy. I ran that interview right up to the point where my liaison needed to pull me out and drive me quickly to the Tampa airport for my flight to Charleston.

After all that, my only other prep prior to departing on the 1st of November was to have Esquire do a Lexis-Nexis on Fallon, which I also read on the Dubai-to-Kabul flight (incredibly bumpy, so it helped me concentrate while others were pulling out barf bags).

Oh, and I visited the Travel Doc, got a flu shot (all my other shots are up to date), and bought all the requisite precautionary meds and extra batteries).

I packed very light for the trip, but made sure I had the makings of a formal suit since I’d be trailing Fallon. But I kept it to just one roller bag of clothes and my electronic gear stuffed into the Pop!Tech backpack I just got (very nice--just like the one Steve DeAngelis carries to Kurdistan all the time).