John Weisman is one of the select company of writers to have had books on both the New York Times fiction and nonfiction bestseller lists. His acclaimed short stories have twice been selected for Best American Mystery Stories.
A former journalist, Weisman has worked in more than three dozen countries. His latest book, the shadow war thriller Jack in the Box, is now available in hard cover through HarperCollins/William Morrow, bookstores nationwide, and Amazon.com. Last
year's bestselling SOAR has just been released in paperback.
He can be emailed at blackops@johnweisman.com, or reached through his website, www.johnweisman.com.
Sometimes pictures are a lot more incisive than words. Take last week’s issues of Time and Newsweek. Both magazines covered SECDEF Don Rumsfeld’s surprise trip to Iraq, where he and JCS Chairman General Richard Meyers visited Abu Ghraib prison. Their tour was led by the head of the U.S. prison system in Iraq, Major General Geoffrey Miller.
You remember MG Miller. He was in charge of the detention center at Gitmo, and did such a good job of squeezing intelligence out of the enemy combatants that he was dispatched to Baghdad so he could fix the intel vacuum at Abu Ghraib.
So, Miller and his team visited Abu Ghraib in the late summer/early fall of 2003. Despite the fact that the detainees at Gitmo were al-Qa’ida and Taliban enemy combatants and those at Abu Ghraib were common criminals, EPWs, and civilians swept up for possible anti-Coalition activities, Miller’s report, according a paragraph marked S/NF (Secret/NOFORN) in the Taguba investigation documents, included the statement, "It is essential that the guard force be actively engaged in setting the conditions for successful exploitation of the internees."
Remember who the guard force at Abu Ghraib was? That would be the 320th MP Battalion. And we all know what happened next.
So, what kind of leader is Miller? I’ve seen very little written about him.
That’s where the photographs come in. Sometimes, you can learn a lot from a photograph. In the intel trade, it’s known as photo analysis.
So let’s look at the pix. Both Time and Newsweek have what’s called "double-truck" photos of Miller showing Rumsfeld and Meyers around the Abu Ghraib compound. What struck me is that although Rummy and Meyers aren’t wearing body armor, Miller is. In fact, you can see what appears to be the outline of a ceramic strike plate under the two big stars velcro’d like a center-mass sniper target in the middle of his chest.
It was the outline of the ceramic plate that struck me. As I said, neither Rumsfeld nor Meyers was wearing body armor -- unless you count the quarter-sized disc of Rummy’s presidential tie clip. But then again, why should they? First, SECDEF travels inside a cordon sanitaire second only to the president’s. He’s surrounded by scores of bodyguards, most of them probably from SFOD-Delta. And second, why is a general whose main duties are administrative, wearing one of those precious ceramic plates, when there are Soldiers in the field -- Soldiers under fire -- who haven’t received ceramic plates yet.
Okay, I thought, maybe Miller bought the plate himself. They are for sale. In fact, on page 61 of the Brigade Quartermasters catalog that arrived at the same time as Time and Newsweek, I saw an ad for ceramic plates. They cost $550 each. That’s $1100 for front and rear protection. It’s a lot of money. But then again, Miller makes a two-star’s salary, so he can afford to buy his own. Maybe that’s what he did.
But there was still something...bothersome about the photo.
And it is this: I have been told by every great officer I’ve ever asked about leadership -- from USMC Commandant Chuck Krulak, to Delta Force CO Col. Charlie Beckwith, to First SEAL Roy Boehm -- that there are two fundamental qualities to good leadership.
The first is that leadership is done by example. You lead from the front. The way Boehm puts it is "I can define leadership in the two words Follow Me."
Marine Captain Brian Chontosh leads by example. When his platoon was ambushed during the initial drive into Baghdad last year, Chontosh -- then a first lieutenant -- knew what to do. He employed violence of action and led his men in a counterambush. He charged the enemy position in his Humvee. He jumped into a trench filled with Iraqis armed with AKs, mortars, and RPGs. And he killed them. When he ran out of ammo, he grabbed AKs and an RPG from the enemy corpses and used them to good advantage. According to published reports, by the time the smoke cleared, Chontosh cleared 200 yards of entrenched Iraqis, killing almost two dozen.
Chontosh operated in the great Marine tradition, He followed in the footsteps of another distinguished Marine, Marine Major General Ray L. Smith. Smith became known as "E-Tool," because in Vietnam, so the story goes, he used an entrenching tool to clear a trench after his M-16 jammed. The tag, probably apocryphal, has it that Smith explained himself by saying, "E-Tools don’t jam."
So much for leading by example. The other universally accepted fact is that, as an officer, your men must come first. This is known as loyalty down the chain of command. Good officers practice it. Bad officers put themselves and their careers first and to hell with everyone else.
Now there are certain military traditions that allow officers to put themselves first. For example, when troops are in garrison, officers often cut to the front of the mess line. It’s an accepted practice.
But not in the field. In the field, as one 20-year veteran put it to me, "In the field the men eat first and resupply first. The officers do it all last -- or not at all. That’s how I was taught."
The reason, this retired SF Soldier explains, is simple: "As an officer, the Nation has bequeathed my men's lives to me. I have to do everything in my power to protect them and bring them home."
So here is this picture of Miller, wearing, by the way, not only a trauma plate in his vest carrier pocket, but sporting what appears to be one of those currently fashionable hop-and-pop, sneak-and-peek, shoot-and-loot SpecOps SEAL/Delta/SF thigh-rig holsters. And yes it occurred to me Miller’s in a war zone, and even the one-star PAO who briefs the press sports a shoulder holster in the briefing room (probably in case a reporter gets out of hand). And in war zones, all Soldiers should go armed.
But what kind of example does Miller’s wearing a ceramic plate to a dog-and-pony show set for Soldiers who are getting shot at and sniped who don’t have ceramic plates yet? What does it say about Miller’s leadership style? What does it say about his character, his loyalty to those under his command, his integrity, and his moral courage? What does it say about his leading by example? What does it say about putting his Soldiers first? What does it say about how he’ll behave should he receive a third or even a fourth star?
