https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/01/embedding-with-pentagon-leadership-in-trumps-chaotic-last-week

Former CIA lawyer - now Vanity Fair "journalist" gets to spend some quality time with Chris Miller, Kash Patel, and Ezra Cohen-Watnick?

…Miller responded. “And [Trump] goes, ‘You’re going to need 10,000 people.’ No, I’m not talking bullshit. He said that. And we’re like, ‘Maybe. But you know, someone’s going to have to ask for it.’” At that point Miller remembered the president telling him, “‘You do what you need to do. You do what you need to do.’ He said, ‘You’re going to need 10,000.’ That’s what he said. Swear to God.”

…The day began with a lull. “We had meetings upon meetings. We were monitoring it. And we’re just like, Please, God, please, God. Then the damn TV pops up and everybody converges on my office: [Joint Chiefs of Staff] chairman [Mark Milley], Secretary of the Army [Ryan] McCarthy, the crew just converges.” And as intelligence started cycling in, things went from watch and see to “a current op.” Miller recalled, “We had already decided we’re going to need to activate the National Guard, and that’s where the fog and friction comes in.”

…“The D.C. mayor finally said, ‘Okay, I need more,’” Kash Patel would tell me. “Then the Capitol police—a federal agency and the Secret Service made the request. We can support them under Title 10, Title 32 authorities for [the] National Guard. So [they] collectively started making requests, and we did it. And then we just went to work.”

Miller and Patel both insisted, in separate conversations, that they neither tried nor needed to contact the president on January 6; they had already gotten approval to deploy forces.

…As for Mike Pence, Miller disputed reports that the vice president was calling the shots or was the one who sent in the Guard. The SECDEF stated that he did speak with Pence—then in a secure location on the Hill—and provided a situation report. Referring to the Electoral College certification that had been paused when the mob stormed the building, Miller recalled Pence telling him, “We got to get this thing going again,” to which the defense secretary replied, “Roger. We’re moving.”

…"When we came in here, they literally expected Ezra and Kash to have blood dripping from their mouths because they just, like, ripped the throat out of a baby,” Miller told me as we sat in the living room of his well-appointed Virginia home. “Then all of a sudden, they’re like, ‘Jeez, they’re actually willing to take on the machine.’”

…Ezra Cohen, another of Miller’s top confidants, believes that his colleagues’ words and deeds may be well and good, but are beside the point: “The president threw us under the bus. And when I say ‘us,’ I don’t mean only us political appointees or only us Republicans. He threw America under the bus. He caused a lot of damage to the fabric of this country. Did he go and storm the Capitol himself? No. But he, I believe, had an opportunity to tamp things down and he chose not to. And that’s really the fatal flaw. I mean, he’s in charge. And when you’re in charge, you’re responsible for what goes wrong.”

…His promotion was fodder for trolls of every stripe. “To the left I became this horrible person that enabled the president, attacking [Obama officials] and all this other stuff like that,” Cohen contended as we sat in his kitchen and later drove through a Chick-fil-A before tooling around northern Virginia. “And then to the crazy people on the right—that are dangerous people that did the horrible, antidemocratic behavior with the Capitol—these nutjobs are saying that I am QAnon.”

…For the past year Kash has swung the biggest dick in D.C. because he could just say, ‘Oh, I’m going to go to the president.’ And we were on emails with him where he’s telling four-star generals, ‘Hey, this is a White House priority. Don’t make me go talk to the president, because I will.’ And the generals always rolled over.”

…The day before, a Washington Post photographer had captured Michael Lindell, the MyPillow CEO and one of Trump’s fringiest allies, walking into the West Wing carrying a piece of paper that included the instruction: “Move Kash Patel to CIA Acting.” Sipping an IPA and wearing a baseball cap—bearing the insignia of a British special forces unit—Patel seemed utterly unfazed. He said he’d never met or communicated with the MyPillow guy.

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https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/01/embedding-with-pentagon-leadership-in-trumps-chaotic-last-week

Former CIA lawyer - now Vanity Fair "journalist" gets to spend some quality time with Chris Miller, Kash Patel, and Ezra Cohen-Watnick?

…“The idea was to put Kash in as the deputy, which doesn’t require Senate approval, and then to fire Gina the next day, leaving Kash in charge…. Robert O’Brien, [Trump’s national security adviser], is the one who deep-sixed it.” When I pressed Patel further about these machinations, which had occurred in December, I saw him turn lawyerly: “That stuff is between me and the boss. That’s the only thing I don’t comment on. Ever. It’s executive privilege.”

…That evening, over beers and a two-for-$20 special at an Applebee’s near Fort Campbell, Patel was reflective. “They thought we’d blow the place up,” he recalled. “But we’re just getting shit done. Ended three wars…..

…I asked Miller how he was feeling. “Focused, obviously. Have to compartmentalize because it’s like being in combat. When you take casualties, you’re just like, it’s horrible. But I’ll think about that later over some drinks when I get home.” He seemed remarkably calm: “I refuse to take the bait and get panicky. I have to portray that this is the Department of Defense. That’s my Bill Belichick. Do your damn job. And I’m not going to go out and make some statement…. Right now the country just needs to take a quaalude.”

…Miller said that he earned the respect of DOD’s interagency partners—and a long leash from the president—by coming to the table with a range of solutions to thorny threats. Many of his predecessors, he argued, came to the table with limited options. “We’d be like, ‘A, B, C, D, E, F—we can go from everything from thermonuclear war to absolutely doing information operations. What are you thinking?’”

Miller insisted the president had been in good spirits. “I know the media portrays it a little differently,” he insisted, though he might have been putting on his game face with me. “I got to take the guy’s temperature, you know. Make sure that we’re in a good place. And Im very, very comfortable, very confident.” I then showed him the long-lens photo of the MyPillow CEO, Lindell, coming into the White House—with a memo referencing “martial law.” He laughed, quickly did the math, and figured he and Patel left the grounds before the picture was taken. When I inquired about the meaning of the words “Move Kash Patel to CIA Acting” on Lindell’s briefing papers, he chuckled: “Maybe he’s got a new job then, right? Get out of my hair. That’s funny. That’s MyPillow guy? Huh, okay.”

Sitting on his couch at the end of a surreal week, he finally took off the gloves. His target? The Defense Department itself, the largest organization in the world—and one he has served in various ways since he was 18. “This fucking place is rotten. It’s rotten.” Miller’s gravest concern, he said, involved a bedrock principle of American democracy: civilian control of the military. “When the system is weighted towards the Joint Staff and the geographic combatant commanders against civilian control, you know, we’ve got to rethink this.” He expressed a belief that by “idolizing and fetishizing” the top brass, members of Congress had ignored an erosion over time in the chain of command.

…As Secretary Miller and I were winding up our conversation, his wife, Kate, who had overheard bits and pieces, walked in, visibly upset……You see where we live. His reputation is all that we have. And I am very concerned that he’s being exploited right now. He’s done his job. He’s done a very good job. Nobody gives a shit.” She then addressed her husband, “I think we need to just put a line under it and say, ‘We’re done.’”