[“You’re the Commander in Chief. You’ve got an assault going
on on the Capitol of the United States of America, and there’s
nothing? No call? Nothing? Zero?” Milley said.]
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IN MILLEY’S OWN WORDS: THE MOST STRIKING MOMENTS FROM HIS JAN. 6
INTERVIEW  
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Lara Seligman
January 4, 2023
Politico
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_ “You’re the Commander in Chief. You’ve got an assault going
on on the Capitol of the United States of America, and there’s
nothing? No call? Nothing? Zero?” Milley said. _

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The military’s top general was so alarmed by the events of Jan. 6
that he ordered his staff to immediately start collecting
“boatloads” of relevant documents for future investigations —
even classifying some so that only certain people could see them.

“I knew the significance, and I asked my staff, freeze all your
records,” Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. Mark Milley told members of the
Jan. 6 committee.

The general said he went to extraordinary lengths to classify the
documents “at a pretty high level” to ensure that only those
“who appropriately needed to see it” could access it.

The revelation was one of many that Milley made during a Nov. 17,
2021, interview with committee members.

The 300-page transcript
[[link removed]] of
the interview released this week is chock-full of wild anecdotes —
not just from the day of the Capitol assault, but from the two years
he served as then-President Donald Trump’s top military adviser.

From the very start, Milley makes clear that he is appalled by the
events of that day. The general spoke at length about the oath he took
as an officer and said he believes the insurrection was no less than
an assault on the Constitution.

“The events of January 6th, in my personal opinion, were a horrific
day, a tragic day in the history of America,” Milley said, according
to the transcript. “So what I saw unfold on the 6th was disturbing,
to say the least.”

'Nothing?’: Milley says he was surprised Trump didn’t call
military during Capitol attack

The role of the committee is “critical” to preventing such an
event from ever happening again, Milley said.

Many aspects of the assault on the Capitol and the days leading up to
it have already been reported in news articles and books. Yet the
transcript provides fresh insights for the historical record from a
top official who was there for those key events. Here are some
takeaways:

AMERICA’S ENEMIES SAW AN OPENING

Leading up to Jan. 6, Milley and other top national security officials
worried that America’s adversaries would try to exploit the domestic
instability across the country.

There was “general concern overseas that adversaries of the United
States were going to try to exploit for their own advantage what they
perceive to be instability inside the domestic politics of the United
States,” Milley told investigators.

The general noted that he had multiple conversations on this topic
with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Vice President Mike Pence’s
national security adviser, retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg.

Milley was “constantly” trying to reassure allies during the time
period from the election to Jan. 6, he said. In addition to the
widely-known phone calls
[[link removed]] to
a top Chinese general, he also made “50 or 60” calls to other
counterparts, including in France, Qatar, Japan, Russia and others.

The aim was to “calm waters, to make sure that people understood
that … this is a stable government, we’re not going to do
something crazy and all that. That took a degree of effort,” he
said.

NORQUIST PREDICTED THE CAPITOL ASSAULT

During an interagency rehearsal of the vote to certify the election in
the days leading up to Jan. 6, then-Deputy Defense Secretary David
Norquist predicted that the greatest threat that day would be “a
direct assault on the Capitol,” Milley said.

“I only remember it in hindsight because he was almost like
clairvoyant,” Milley said. “He nailed it. He pegged that one.
Incredible.”

The exercise was conducted at Milley’s insistence, and involved
laying out the entire city on the gym of Conmy Hall, in Fort Myer,
Virginia. The Secret Service, which officials tapped to be the lead
federal agency for the day, videotaped the rehearsal.

By contrast, then-national security adviser Robert O’Brien said the
greatest threat would come from “Antifa and Black Lives Matter
assaulting the protesters,” which struck Milley as interesting.

“Both are potentially legitimate views. But one guy who’s hanging
out in the White House, he says that during one of these calls,”
Milley said of O’Brien. “Was that the view of the President?”

“PROTECT MY PEOPLE”

On Jan. 3, the national security team assembled to brief the president
about Iran increasing the number of centrifuges it can use to enrich
uranium. At the very end of the meeting, Milley remembers, Trump
turned to acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller and asked him if he
was “set” for Jan. 6.

“You’re set for the 6th and all that and you got a plan and, you
know, protect my people and all that. Right?” Milley said. “And
I’m silent. I’m just listening and I’m like, hmm.”

This struck Milley as “odd,” he said, because it was so out of
place at the meeting.

LOUD WORDS FOR PATEL

Milley admits to mouthing off at Kash Patel, a Trump loyalist who
became chief of staff to the acting defense secretary at the end of
the administration. At the time, a number of media reports emerged
that Patel was about to be tapped for a top position, including
potentially replacing Gina Haspel as CIA director.

Milley recalls mocking the chief of staff in front of a number of top
DoD officials, including the Army secretary and superintendent of West
Point, at the Army-Navy game in December of 2020.

“I said in perhaps a voice that was louder than maybe I should have,
I said to Kash Patel, I said: So, Kash, which one are you going to
get, CIA or FBI?,” Milley told investigators. “And Patel’s face,
you know, he looks down and he comes back and says: Chairman,
Chairman.”

Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, told Milley to back
down, noting “Hey, it’s none of your business. This is
personnel.” Milley backed off, he said.

Haspel later threatened to resign if the administration made Patel her
deputy, and the idea was dropped.

LOYALISTS AT DOD

Days after the election, Trump set off alarm bells by firing a number
of top Pentagon officials, starting with Defense Secretary Mark Esper,
and installing loyalists on a temporary basis in the most critical
national security jobs.

In quick succession on Nov. 10, a day after Esper’s firing, top
officials overseeing policy, intelligence and the defense
secretary’s staff all resigned, replaced by political operatives who
had trafficked in “deep state” conspiracy theories,
POLITICO reported at the time
[[link removed]].

“There was a general feeling of unease amongst [inaudible] in the
Pentagon at the time. And there was a feeling of unsteadiness in the
building for a period of time because of all these moves,” Milley
said.

And the feeling wasn’t limited to inside the Pentagon. Allies
noticed the changes with concern, too.

“You’ve got a large organization like the Pentagon that’s
responsible for the U.S. military all over the world, and all of a
sudden, boom, you make these rapid-fire changes,” Milley said.
“So, yeah, it’s a period of personnel instability that creates
organizational instability that creates anxiety in countries
overseas.”

The biggest concern was that most of the top national security
positions were filled by people in an acting capacity who were not
Senate-confirmed, he stressed.

“That should cause people pause right off the bat,” Milley said.
“It gets noticed by overseas, folks overseas, et cetera.”

UNLAWFUL ORDERS

There were “indications” throughout the two years he served as
joint chiefs chair under Trump that the president was contemplating
issuing unlawful orders to the military, Milley said. While not
specific to the election or the Insurrection Act, there were “other
discussions” that caused him to worry, particularly about a crisis
overseas.

“I was concerned that there could have been a serious overseas
crisis at a moment in time in combination with serious domestic
violence that could become the predicate for something that probably
was extrajudicial or unconstitutional,” Milley said.

NO CALL FROM TRUMP

Milley made and received dozens of phone calls on Jan. 6, including
with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Vice President Mike Pence, but
never got one from his boss. He stopped short of saying he was
frustrated with the president’s silence, he said “I noted it.”

“You’re the Commander in Chief. You’ve got an assault going on
on the Capitol of the United States of America, and there’s nothing?
No call? Nothing? Zero?” Milley said. “No attempt to call the
Secretary of Defense? No attempt to call the Vice President of the
United States of America, who’s down on the scene?”

COURT-MARTIALING RETIREES

Milley had to dissuade officials in the Trump administration who
discussed recalling and court-martialing retired military officers who
wrote editorials that were critical of the president, he said. His
concern was that such a move would further politicize the military.

“I advised them not to do that,” Milley told investigators. “And
I said: ‘please give me a chance to calm the waters a little bit.”

_Lara Seligman [[link removed]] is an
award-winning journalist who covers the Pentagon for POLITICO. Her
reporting on the military and the defense industry has taken her
around the world, from the Middle East to Mongolia to the backseat of
an Air Force Thunderbird._

_Before joining POLITICO, Lara covered the Pentagon and national
security for Foreign Policy. There, she traveled to West Africa to
cover the rapidly expanding terrorism threat in the Sahel, and
accompanied the Secretary of Defense on his first international trip
to Asia. She has also written for the Washington Post, Defense News,
Aviation Week, and Inside Defense._

_A Philadelphia native, Lara graduated from the University of
Pennsylvania in 2011._

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