Episode Info
- Season2
- Episode1
Hosted by Christina Ruffini and Sir Richard Dearlove
Guest
Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman
Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman's testimony rocked the Trump administration, and although called a hero, Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman was betrayed by those on whom Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman had relied.
Episode Summary
Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman’s testimony rocked the Trump administration. He was called a hero. Then, betrayed. By the very people he thought he could rely on most.
Listen & Subscribe
- Watch on YouTube
- Listen on Apple Podcasts
- Listen on Spotify
Transcript
COLD OPEN
Kosinski: Coming up on One Decision.
Vindman: I kind of wanted and expected the Army and the Department of Defense did the right thing. I mean, I certainly by no means expected the military to behave like this.
Kosinski: The Steele dossier.
Dearlove: I said I absolutely didn't want to read it because I had a pretty fair idea what it might contain.
INTRODUCTION
Kosinski: Hi. Welcome back to One Decision, where we go deeper into the trickiest decisions that impact our world. I'm Michelle Kosinski. If you've been alive over the last year and a half, and I'm just going to assume you have, chances are you've heard the name Alexander Vindman. That's Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, now retired.
Vindman: In the spring of 2019, I became aware of two disruptive actors, primarily Ukraine's then prosecutor, Yuriy Lutsenko, and former mayor Rudolph Giuliani, president's personal attorney, promoting false narratives that undermined The United States Ukraine policy.
Kosinski: Retired in a sort of fireball, he gave that powerful and brave testimony before Congress about conversations the Trump administration and then the president himself had with Ukraine, wanting Ukraine, pressuring Ukraine to investigate Trump's then election rival, Joe Biden, and his son.
Vindman: On 07/25/2019, the call occurred. I listened in on the call in the situation room with White House colleagues. I was concerned by the call. What I heard was inappropriate, and I reported my concerns to mister Eisenberg. It is improper for the president of The United States to demand a foreign government investigate a US citizen and a political opponent.
Kosinski: His testimony riveted the world and led to Trump being charged with abuse of power in his impeachment in the House of Representatives. Vindman's decision to sound the alarm on this behavior was momentous in itself. But then, Vindman most unexpectedly ended up with an even tougher personal decision to make. We're gonna dig into it. But first, let's check-in with our super spy, the retired head of MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove.
Dearlove: Pleased to be with you, Michelle.
Kosinski: So many Americans were glued to Alex Vindman's testimony. Did you watch it?
Dearlove: I have to say I didn't watch it. I guess I felt I knew what would happen. I mean I don't want to be arrogant in making that point or making that judgment, but let me tell you a little anecdote and you'll understand why. Now we love your anecdotes, we need more. When I became the head of MI6, my mother, she sent me a little card and written on the card was: Beware the highest benches, they are the slipperiest.
Kosinski: Oh, that sounds downright Shakespearean and ominous. Slipperiest.
Dearlove: The slipperiest. You slid off. And actually that's a quotation from King James I of England. I mean the fact that Vindman ended up in a situation where when you're that close to naked power, whether you're right or wrong, you are in an extremely vulnerable situation. And I mean what I found fascinating about what he said and his attitude was there's a certain naivety about him because you're not going to probably survive that sort of intense political event.
Kosinski: Yeah, well he was idealistic I think.
Dearlove: Well he was hugely idealistic and you have to admire him and I would express massive goodwill towards him, a man of principle, a man of integrity, and he'll do fine. But the fact is you're going to get sliced up. You know, the Trump administration was intensely political in a way that maybe America wasn't used to.
Kosinski: Okay, so as a former top spy, this whole issue of this call with Ukraine and the president's asking another government to investigate a political opponent, was this all of particular interest to you?
Dearlove: Yeah. Inevitably, I mean it's extreme. I think we all understand that strange things happen in politics, but I mean this was off the scale really, and the fact that you know there was the witness to it. What did you think? Well if I sort of transposed myself into that situation I would have gone straight to the, well I would have gone straight to the Prime Minister personally. I mean you know if you're head of MI6 you have access. I mean, I'm not going to go into detail, but I had some pretty interesting political experiences when I was head of MI6 in terms of, well, let's put it like this, having words with politicians.
Kosinski: And this is what this is all about, politics seeping in to what is supposed to be pure, including the military. And one thing that Vindman said was what he saw were people not experienced, not qualified to be in the jobs that they were in, and as a result, giving some bad advice to the president. That makes The United States vulnerable from a security standpoint, doesn't it?
Dearlove: Of course it does, and you know some pretty weird things happened in the Trump administration. I think when Trump was originally elected, there appeared to be a possibility that he might have a different dialogue in particular with the Russian state, and that that dialogue might be positive. And then of course the whole thing so quickly went belly up. I mean it really, really and it went off the rails not just a little bit but very, very badly.
Kosinski: While we're on the subject, the Steele dossier, the infamous Steele dossier, politically motivated or useful and necessary?
Dearlove: Well this one's a bit tricky for me but I'll say it was commissioned politically.
Kosinski: For sure.
Dearlove: And I feel a little bit well, Chris Steele in a way, you know, he was a victim of intense politics like Vindman was. Exactly. I mean it's very clever of you to bring it up because I mean the parallels quite close and he and his business partner, what they produced was intensely interesting. But you know it turned out probably to be the hottest political potato. I mean, God, it was terrible for them in a way when they realized what they had initiated.
Kosinski: I'm sure.
Dearlove: I mean they did ask me what to do with it because I know both of them quite well. I refused to read it because I didn't want to get involved.
Kosinski: Wow. Wow. Was that a hard decision? Yeah. I thought it would be I would have opened that thing up, cracked open a glass of wine and just went to town.
Dearlove: I said I absolutely didn't want to read it because I had a pretty fair idea what it might contain.
Kosinski: Did you now?
Dearlove: And I didn't wanna get involved directly. So I just advised them on process.
Kosinski: And that was prescient of you.
Dearlove: Yeah. I think it was a sensible way for me to cope with it, because I didn't want, as it were, to be part of the story, and I'm not part of the story.
Kosinski: Yeah. But politicization has gotten to the point where now any political angle of any kind will be highlighted as the key motivator. And even where there might not be a real political motivation, that will be alleged. So it's like there's politics everywhere.
Dearlove: Yeah, I think it's really tricky. And Vindman's case is fascinating because he can't really avoid becoming part of the story, you know, when you turn up in full uniform in front of the congressional committee. He becomes an iconic, you become an iconic figure, and I mean I feel so sorry for the guy because he's obviously extremely honorable. And frankly behaved immaculately, but that doesn't make any difference unfortunately in the world in which we're living. You're going to get sliced up because the politics is so fierce and uncompromising too. I mean actually if he had hung on, Biden might have given him some special appointment.
Kosinski: Agreed. So to leave or not to leave. That is the question, so let's get to it with Lieutenant Colonel Vindman himself, who likes to be called Alex. Welcome. So what is your life like after all this?
INTERVIEW WITH ALEX VINDMAN
Vindman: Thank you for having me. So my primary time commitment is to my doctoral studies. I'm pursuing a doctorate in international affairs from Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. I'm looking at Russia and Ukraine, their bilateral relationship, and the impact on US foreign policy for my doctoral thesis.
Kosinski: Well, so how are you doing? How do you like your new life?
Vindman: It's interesting. I'm enjoying being my own boss, not being scrutinized by or being judged by kind of institutions, that in my kind of opinion, fell short, when I was faced with some significant challenges. In addition to that, to the doctoral studies, I'm also working at a think tank as a military fellow, senior fellow. I'm lecturing, consulting, just doing I think my wife says I have got a half a dozen jobs at this point.
Kosinski: Let's go back a ways. Alex Vindman and his twin brother, Yevgeny, were born in Ukraine back when it was still part of the Soviet Union. Tragically, their mother died, but then their father got a chance to change their lives forever in a different way to bring them and their older brother to The United States. Alex was three. As adults, both he and his twin served their adoptive country in the army. Alex went overseas, including Iraq, where he was hurt in a roadside bombing and earned a Purple Heart. He got his master's from Harvard, became an expert on Russia and Ukraine, was stationed in Moscow, worked for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. And then in 2018, Alex was offered the job that he had aspired to for more than five years, director of European affairs at the National Security Council.
Vindman: It was happening. It's a prestigious assignment. You're really having a significant impact.
Kosinski: Particularly, he thought, in dealing with a resurgent, aggressive Russia. But from the start, he saw some red flags flying high over the Trump administration.
Vindman: I spoke to some senior personnel, and they told me this is gonna be the most dangerous environment you've ever served in. These are not kind of there is a lot more of a, you know, backbiting, ambitious, group of folks. There were concerns about how the Trump administration might upend what had been kind of established policy.
Kosinski: Did you have misgivings about the things Trump had said about Russia, about his stance on Russia in general?
Vindman: I did have misgivings about his stance. He had brought in people that were not really well qualified for the positions they were serving in and potentially were giving the president bad advice and that I could offer some options for the president's decisions. So I was mindful of that.
Kosinski: So we know what happened ultimately with that call between Trump and the Ukrainian president. Is there anything about it that you feel still needs to be said?
Vindman: I understood immediately that this was a threat to our democracy, American democracy, in that the president was looking to upend free and fair elections. That's that was why I responded. Well, I think it's important to mention that, you know, time did not stop and start with that phone call. There were a whole series of events with the president's disinterest. He had no kind of interest on most of foreign policy as a whole, national security, except if there was a transactional benefit potentially. Our policy towards Ukraine was not purely oriented on national security. There are other issues in play, and those issues included advancing the president's political goals, going into 2020 elections.
Kosinski: Alex testified before Congress in November 2019. But it was what happened next that led Alex down a path he never fathomed. He was trashed by the president, then fired, escorted from the White House. So is his twin brother. Then came the matter of Alex's promotion to full colonel, which had been fully expected. Now it was dead silence. It all walked and talked like retaliation, which stunned him. This was happening within his own military here in The United States.
Vindman: I surveyed senior officers that I had relationships with. And at least on one occasion, I was told you basically don't have a career anymore. And another one with another individual, now a four star, was more cryptic and said that I would need a rehabilitative assignment, that I had flown too close to the sun and that, you know, I'd have to prove myself, which is a funny thing to say to a colonel, soon to be colonel with twenty plus years of experience. But even in spite of that, I kind of wanted and expected the army and the department of defense did the right thing. My name was supposed to appear on a promotion list. And I almost was almost insistent that that play out, and that the army do the right thing and not kind of do something that's purely oriented on kind of senior leaders not running afoul of the president.
Kosinski: Alex waited and waited for months. And on the very last day, it was possible he made the decision to leave, to essentially say, if you're going to act outside the honorable realm, then I don't want you anymore.
Vindman: Within two days, they issued me instructions allowing me to retire.
Kosinski: Two days. It usually takes weeks or months. That was the army saying, yeah, don't let the door hit you on the way out. They rushed his retirement before they then released that list of promotions, which his name did appear on so that they could later say, see, he was going to be promoted, not punished. Nothing to see here, folks. Very shady. But they weren't finished.
Vindman: Yeah. I found out that the department of defense had actually run an investigation into me based on this kind of specious claims of wrongdoing that the White House provided the department, a memorandum of things I had done wrong, were completely fabricated. And also that the chief of staff for the president, a guy named Mark Meadows, had called in the secretary of the army and secretary of defense and berated them about considering putting my name on the promotion list. I wanted to take fate into my own hands, make my own decisions.
Kosinski: Was this one of the toughest decisions of your life?
Vindman: It was a tough decision, about what the rest of our life was going to be like. So had you not retired when you did, what would have happened to you? So at that point, it was unclear whether Trump was gonna have a second term. If he did have a second term, you know, the joke would be I'd end up manning a radar station in Alaska or something like that. But he didn't. And potentially, seemingly, I could have waited him out and try to be a successful military officer under a Biden administration or a non Trump administration. But the problem is that I've since kind of had my suspicions confirmed about the fact that there was a stigma associated with me almost to the extent of that's the guy that reported the phone call for the president. You know, what are we gonna do with him? I had been on a super fast track having really the most prestigious sequence of assignments that I've heard people serve in. And I think that all of those were doors that had closed for me.
Kosinski: It's painful to hear about, but are there other instances too where you felt bullied?
Vindman: Well so there were a couple of different things that are critically important. You know, I couldn't defend myself against the president's attacks or against the attacks emanating from his offspring or senators that were attacking me or the media that were attacking me based on the White House talking points. The White House basically sent out a series of talking points that's in the public record because they did it ham handedly and didn't send it out just to Fox News. They actually sent it out to media that was going to report these talking points. So in those months where I thought I was most kind of vulnerable, the military was basically in a position to at least say that I was an officer in good standing. You know, I had served honorably, that I had only done my duty in reporting what I perceived to be a wrong inappropriate phone call, and that I'd obviously earned that position at the White House based on a very successful career. There was none of that. If anything, people were doing their best to put distance between themselves and me. There was talk of assigning me to the National Defense University and kind of continuing to lecture and use my expertise. Instead, they initially were going to put me into the army museum that hadn't opened yet, you know, to do what? I don't know. And all along the way, I was kind of looking for lifelines or frankly, holding the army and the Department of Defense to account and putting them in a position where I just wasn't gonna give them an easy way out.
Kosinski: Was there anybody who reassured you or said, you know, we're going to do right by you?
Vindman: Yeah. Folks that I did work with reaching out and basically saying you did the right thing or that you adhere to the values and so forth. It's just that at the senior levels where your career is really managed, there was nothing. And they did what basically was the most risk averse way of dealing with me, which is basically not talk to me, put me off to the side, and that's it, really.
Kosinski: This must have been incredibly painful and surreal. Like, I can't even imagine how this must have felt to you.
Vindman: Well, I certainly, by no means, expected the military to behave like this. There is always this mantra of never leaving somebody behind. You don't leave soldiers on the battlefield and stuff like that. And I kind of in a certain way felt like I was being left out on my own, abandoned. And then at the same time, I was perceiving that the army, they were taking action against me. I felt like they were taking action against my twin brother also by putting him out in a remote assignment, not the most prestigious assignments, and at the same time maneuvering where they could both not upset the then president Trump or maybe in certain ways ingratiate themselves. I find it hard to understand how, in my case, my twin brother and I who acted honorably, were ostracized, but Michael Flynn, Trump's general, was national security adviser for a couple weeks. His brother started out as a two star, if I recall correctly, and was elevated to four star. And there's no way that you could miss the fact that the military was in certain ways kind of currying favor by elevating Trump's general's brother and at the same time ostracizing my twin brother and myself. So those two are hard to reconcile.
Kosinski: I think the public knows the broad strokes of what happened to you. But to hear you lay the timeline out like this, this is just messed up.
Vindman: Myself and my fellow whistleblowers have to suffer consequences that don't end with maybe just the loss of a job, but are a longer term stigma where I still have to face attacks from the far right and the establishment, frankly, on the right, which has been radicalized. And in the private sector, I'm seen as a political actor even though my actions were not driven by any politics whatsoever. They were driven by the fact that I was upholding my oath and basically doing my duty. And even early on when I referenced I was taking kind of activating my Rolodex to find out what my viability was in the think tank community, people would tell me, well, we'll see. We definitely need you. You have all the requisite skills, but we'll wait until after the election to see if the political winds blow in our favor.
Kosinski: It's sickening. Sickening.
Vindman: Well, that's just one example. There's just all sorts of residue from those fateful decisions. And that's not just a fateful decision to report the phone call that I thought was an attack on democracy, but it's also testifying in front of congress and not doing what probably would have made the military more comfortable, you know, giving yes or no answers, being kind of committing lies of omission, that's probably what ultimately maybe may have killed my military career, that I didn't kind of take the most risk averse, the most reluctant actions. Now, with the complete collapse of the Afghan government, all of this seems to me to be part of a consistent pattern of senior military leadership basically providing what they thought would Curry favor, advance their careers too often. Or in certain cases, maybe wishful thinking is the most kind way of looking at it. You know, you could almost forgive wishful thinking about it, but I think too often there was a political expediency. That's an issue that the military hasn't dealt with. There hasn't been an accounting of these failures to date.
Kosinski: I think it's really important for people to know.
Vindman: We do have a military leadership that tends to select kind of more risk averse leadership that is political, not in the sense that they have a party leaning Republican or Democrat, but see the way political winds are blowing and maneuver to benefit in those political winds.
Kosinski: What felt like the biggest failure to you personally in the way that the military did not stand by you?
Vindman: Well, I think there's silence, frankly, in a lot of ways. In a period where I could not defend myself, their silence was complicity in retaliation and bullying. I believe that they were protecting their own careers and their own standing, and that indicated a level of weakness for the president to exploit.
Kosinski: Yeah. What does this mean for the institution? Because it seems like all institutions have been poisoned by the kind of hyperpoliticism that Trump just exacerbated.
Vindman: Well, I think that's right. I think there has not been an accounting of how the various departments and agencies, the US government responded to corruption. It's not necessarily to punish Trump and his cronies. It's more to understand how the institutions have been undermined, how good governance has been eroded so we could learn from those issues and put in some guardrails to prevent further abuse.
Kosinski: At the moment Alex realized, I'm just gonna have to leave, he says he felt hurt, but it was his wife who took it especially personally, like a betrayal, because as a family, they had devoted their lives to the military. This whole terrible experience now has shaped him to wanna be an advocate for accountability and for whistleblowers.
Vindman: I guess one option is to just kinda remain silent, recede into the shadows, stop being the target of attacks, that in a lot of ways would be probably more comfortable. But I don't think that's something I could live with. Just like I couldn't live with taking, failing to fulfill my obligations in reporting the president's abuse of power. I've been given a voice, and I'm gonna use the voice to advocate for what I think is right and to make this country stronger.
Kosinski: And, Alex, what you're saying is happening within the senior ranks of the military. How is this dangerous?
Vindman: You know, that's a very interesting question. I think our system was never geared towards the level of corruption experienced under Donald Trump. A chief executive that was utterly corrupt and self serving. So I think we are potentially in for a situation where there are similarly minded corrupt actors waiting in the wings to exploit the erosion of good government, the weaknesses that have been exposed in US government, but do so in a much, much more effective manner. You know, actually that are competent. Because in a lot of cases, Trump was his own worst enemy, and he could have been a lot more harmful if he was an effective chief executive. He wasn't. With regards to the department of defense, my biggest concern there is that we don't learn any lessons from the failures of the last four years and from twenty years of war in The Middle East and South Asia, and we position ourselves for the next conflict to be ineffective.
Kosinski: What do you want people to know that you think hasn't been talked about enough?
Vindman: I'm actually, you know, easygoing. I'd like to think that I'm funny and playful and stuff like that. That's definitely the way my daughter sees me. And there's, like, a regular guy behind this public persona, I guess.
Kosinski: How does your family feel about your retirement now?
Vindman: Everything that we've experienced since those days basically continues to reinforce that it was the right decision. There's a huge amount of uncertainty about what to do in the future, but we'll figure it out. We'll be fine. And what have you learned in the making of that decision? That there are significant costs with people taking principled stances that people that don't take principled stances benefit from. Some of the military leadership that now could go out on the speaking circuit because they weren't critical of the president when they knew the president was an enormous threat to our democracy. That's just not something that I could have stomached.
Kosinski: What do you think needs to be done to protect the military from exactly the kind of politicization that it claims to be immune to?
Vindman: Yeah. I don't know if I have a good answer to that one. And I think in part, we really have to relook the way we generate officers and strategic leaders. We are not very good at that.
Kosinski: Alex, thanks so much. It's been great talking to you. Thank you. Appreciate it. Alex's book titled Here, Right Matters was an immediate New York Times bestseller.
ANALYSIS WITH SIR RICHARD DEARLOVE
Kosinski: Let's chat now with former head of MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove again. What a story. I feel sick and exhausted for the guy and very much reminded of the worries I have for The United States.
Dearlove: You know, he got sliced up.
Kosinski: Pretty badly. What do you think of the way he was treated by his own military, which is supposed to be this bastion of, you know, what's the word I'm looking for? They're supposed to be neutral. They're supposed to just follow orders and protocol.
Dearlove: Come on. They're humans. I mean, you know, there's a lot of integrity in the US Armed Forces, but there is still political influence in certain circumstances almost completely unavoidable.
Kosinski: True. And what do you think of his decision to leave? It's honorable in itself, I think. But then when somebody says, okay, if you're gonna do this to me, then I'm out, it's making a bigger stand.
Dearlove: Yeah, it's a great gesture, but you know, on the other hand these sort of gestures sometimes turn out to be a little pointless, and I think if I had been in that situation I would have hung on for the next administration in the belief that Trump probably wouldn't win the presidential election, and then he might have found that he had a meteoric series of promotions. The one thing I'm impressed by, there's one amazing quality that The United States as a country has which I hugely admire, which is creating patriotic Americans, and I don't think any other country comes anywhere near The US. I think it's a great American story.
Kosinski: Have you ever felt politics creeping into places where it should not in your career?
Dearlove: Yes. But I would prefer not to get into too much.
Kosinski: Were you able to expose it and or fight it?
Dearlove: Well you know it's a strange position to be the head of MI6. You know both sort of out of it and inside it if there's a crisis, and my tendency was to be quite combative with politicians if I felt that they were taking decisions which were questionable or poor. I tended to be quite outspoken, private, not with the press, but totally private.
Kosinski: And do you feel you had some success in calling out that kind of political behavior behind closed doors?
Dearlove: Yeah. A little bit. Not a great deal, but a little bit.
Kosinski: So, you know, we see this enormous public storm around Trump, Ukraine, and Vindman. Do you think enough attention has been paid to Joe Biden's son and his relationship to Ukraine while his dad was vice president? We don't know what went on behind closed doors there.
Dearlove: Yeah, I mean I think you know Biden and Biden's son were incredibly unwise, was I think a massive error of judgment and you know made Biden potentially vulnerable, and we don't actually know a lot. But I mean the idea that Ukraine ring up and offer you a job and offer you some board position, which Hunter had, I mean God he should have run a mile. Exactly. I mean he shouldn't have been anywhere near it. I mean I was offered, when I retired from my position as head of MI6, I was offered some ridiculous positions. You know, with golden handshakes. And I just said For sure. Absolutely no way.
Kosinski: So we saw Trump get rid of the ambassador to Ukraine. He got rid of Vindman. He got rid of inspectors general throughout the government and countless others. But do you still feel that eventually the truth comes out? Like, there aren't enough people to get rid of to get rid of the truth. It always comes out. I feel that way too. It always comes out. Are there misdeeds, that you know of that you wish you could talk about today? Like, are there things that the public should know about, that they will know about one way or another eventually, but
Dearlove: Well, I think there are certain things that one would like to talk about with more freedom. I mean, on one or two topics I have been quite outspoken, and yeah, some people can get a little upset about that.
Kosinski: Well I'm glad you're still able to tell the tale Richard, thanks for joining us again.
Dearlove: Okay Michelle, such a pleasure talking to you.
Kosinski: And thank you for joining us here on One Decision, where we like to get to the heart of the big, bad decisions that people have had to wrestle with, decisions that can shape our world. I'm Michelle Kosinski. Follow us wherever you find your podcasts and on social media. We always love to hear your input and ideas here at One Decision.
