From Kansas to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: The Military Career of General Richard Myers

An Excerpt From Veterans Chronicles

Veterans Chronicles, the American Veterans Center’s weekly radio series, features the stories of America’s greatest military heroes, in their own words. The program is hosted by Gene Pell, former NBC Pentagon Correspondent and Moscow Bureau Chief, as well as Director for Voice of America and President of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

Each week, Gene talks to distinguished service members from World War II all the way through Operation Iraqi Freedom, allowing them to share their insights on the great and tragic moments in American military history. Veterans Chronicles airs nationwide on the Radio America network, downloaded via podcast, and heard online at www.americanveteranscenter.org.

Recently, in a special edition of Veterans Chronicles, American Veterans Center president James C. Roberts sat in for Gene Pell to interview former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Richard Myers, author of the new book Eyes on the Horizon: Serving on the Front Lines of National Security.

Myers served in the Air Force over a span of 40 years, taking him from combat in the skies over Vietnam to the highest-ranking position in the United States military where he served as principal military advisor to the president.

In this issue, we share a partial transcript of Jim Roberts’ interview with General Richard Myers. The conversation begins with General Myers’ account of his experience on one of our nation’s most trying days – September 11, 2001:

General Richard Myers: I was on my way to Capitol Hill to meet with Senator Max Cleland of Georgia. It was prior to my confirmation, and it is customary that you meet all the senators on the Armed Services committee to make sure that if they have any issues with your nomination, you can hopefully resolve them in face-to-face meetings. I had been nominated to be the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but was the Vice Chairman at the time. The Chairman, General Hugh Shelton, was on his way to a NATO meeting in Europe and was not available.

James C. Roberts: So that made you the acting chairman.

General Myers: Correct – I was the acting chairman. When I walked into Senator Cleland’s office for my 9:00 AM meeting, the television in the office was showing pictures of the first tower in flames. The newscasters were talking about how they thought a plane had struck the building, but there was a lot of uncertainty. I thought to myself that it was such a clear day with blue skies here on the East Coast that no pilot could be so stupid as to run into the World Trade Center. It had yet to click that this might have been intentional.

Shortly after we began our meeting, the South Tower was hit. We knew immediately that something was wrong, so I excused myself and was soon on the phone with the North American Air Defense commander, General Ralph Eberhart, talking about the actions we would need to take to land all of the airliners that were in the air and sort things out. As I prepared to leave Capitol Hill, my driver said to me, “Sir, we just got a call from the office – the Pentagon has been hit.”

“Oh my goodness,” I thought. The World Trade Center, and now the Pentagon. We rushed back from Capitol Hill and across the Potomac, and looking toward the Pentagon I saw billowing black smoke and flames rolling out of it. As we got closer, we could see people evacuating and heard the fire alarms going off. Helicopters had landed to ferry some of the staff to an alternate site, which is part of our continuity of government plan.

I asked my military assistant, who was still in the building, whether the National Military Command Center was still up and functioning. He said it was, and I knew that was where I needed to go. It was almost surreal; walking back into a building where you could smell smoke, and the fire alarm was going off all around you, though we were not in any danger. The command center was much more quiet and we got down to business as usual. We had a great team, as you can imagine, and they did an excellent job coordinating our responses while taking in all of the developing information.