Episode 30. European Security: ISIS Terrorist Attacks & Deterring Russia With General Gregory Lengyel And Ambassador Susan Elliott

Episode Transcript:

Amb. McCarthy: [00:00:09] Welcome to a conversation in the series, The General and the Ambassador. I am Ambassador Deborah McCarthy, the host of the series. In our discussion today, we will talk about the wave of ISIS terrorist attacks that shook Paris in 2015, how the US Special Operations Command in our embassies worked to counter the ISIS threat in Europe and how at the same time, they worked to push back against the efforts of Russia to spread fake news and undermine our European allies. Today, I warmly welcome our guests, Major General Gregory Lengyel, the former commander of Special Operation Command at the European Command, and Ambassador Susan Elliott, former civilian deputy and foreign Policy Advisor to the Commander of the US European Command. Ambassador Elliott hails from upstate New York. She served many years as a senior diplomat, including as the US ambassador to Tajikistan. She is currently the president and CEO of the National Committee on American Foreign Policy. Major Gregory Lengyel is a proud graduate of Texas A&M and served both as a career special operations pilot, including in Afghanistan and Iraq and in many senior staff positions across the Department of Defense. He is a partner in Leading Edge Vortex, based in San Antonio, Texas. When you were both at the European Command, France was under siege from terrorists. In January 2015, Islamic militants stormed the offices of a major magazine and gunned down employees. And then in November 2015, ISIS went on a rampage in Paris. Several suicide bombers tried to blow up a major stadium and gunmen went from restaurant to restaurant, mowing people down before they entered a theater and massacred more. The scenes were horrific. Susan, I understand you had just arrived at the European command. And Greg, you were already there. What were the initial reactions and steps that were taken by the European Command?

Amb. Elliott: [00:02:12] This was a baptism by fire for me. I mean, I had literally arrived that afternoon, hadn't unpacked my bag, and then this rampage took place. And it was a Friday evening, so the beginning of a weekend for me, you know, without having connectivity, without knowing how to get involved. It really was a baptism by fire.

Gen. Lengyel: [00:02:30] I remember that time period quite well. I'd been at Special Operations Command Europe for probably about 16 months when that attack took place and was feeling fairly comfortable in that job. That week I had done a trip to Kosovo and back and was getting ready for a conference with all of my subordinate special operations commanders stationed in Europe. One of the things we were going to talk about was the increasing threat of terrorism in Europe that was potentially coming from the rise of ISIS in Iraq and Syria, also potentially from the refugee flow that was coming in. One of the things that people were afraid of would be embedded terrorists posing as migrants or refugees. It was a shocking moment. Everybody from my parent's generation remembers where they were when President Kennedy was shot. Everybody from my generation remembers where they were when the Challenger exploded or 9/11, maybe for the millennials coming up behind us. And I think for a lot of Europeans, particularly French, they will remember November of 2015. It was a shocking moment. And our first reaction to any situation like that is what's next? Everybody goes into a heightened state of readiness. Every timeline that we're on for being able to respond to crisis is shortened as we try and up our game and be ready for what could come next. And of course, it was really interesting to look at the situation about what can we do in Europe to help the French, a very capable country, a great ally. It was just one of those moments where you wish you could do more, wave a magic wand and fix things for them.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:04:19] And then after those attacks, you know, moving into 2016, there was a continuation Berlin, Brussels, Istanbul, Nice, France. And from our years in Afghanistan, Iraq and other places, our military and our NATO partners had tremendous knowledge of ISIS and other terrorist groups. How did we work to share this knowledge with the civilian authorities who were in charge of responding?

Amb. Elliott: [00:04:45] For me, I think this was one of the main responsibilities I had. What we did a lot of is try to figure out, well, how can we coordinate? Because we did have representatives at the US European Command from the FBI, from Homeland Security, from the Customs and Border Protection, So we were able then to work with them. You look for ways that we could figure out how we could best help our European allies. One thing that most people wouldn't realize is that having access to the information that the embassy puts out, because when there's an attack like this, an embassy will send out classified and unclassified information back to Washington so that the President, Secretary of State, know about it. Those were the kinds of things that I could do and read and share with my military colleagues.

Gen. Lengyel: [00:05:35] Europe is significantly different than many of the other. You know, the way the US military organizes itself around the world by geographic combatant commands, the one that most Americans have been familiar with since 9/11, 2001 is US Central Command because they are responsible for what we know largely as the Middle East and which includes Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria, where we have been fighting really since 2001. The other places that you would say are most common for where we might be actively fighting terrorists would be in US Africa command. And you think about places like Libya and Somalia, several of those theaters that I just mentioned are very kinetic, active combat operations. Europe is not that way. Europe is US European Command. The way the US has organized it is 51 largely mature Western democracies. They view terrorism within their borders as a sovereign issue. That is, their law enforcement. In some cases, some nations have laws that allow their military to act within their borders. When people hear about an attack, we don't have US helicopters hovering over the Eiffel Tower, sending guys down ropes to fix things and would have to explain that to people that you know, well, what are you doing to fix that if those attacks in Paris there, General Lengyel? Well, I'm not I'm going to do everything I can to offer assistance to the French. But what that assistance usually is, is liaison to civilian agencies that share law enforcement information. And a lot of times intelligence, it can be either military or civilian intelligence communities that communicate. And we can help facilitate that just because of the relationships we had. But candidly, it didn't change our mission significantly in Europe. The special operations forces that were over there under operational control to General Breedlove really existed. There were forward deployed US forces that are there to look out for US interests and properties. If there was a crisis at an embassy somewhere.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:07:57] That's something that I think needs to be underlined. Glad you mentioned it.

Gen. Lengyel: [00:08:01] Really. It didn't change our mission a whole lot because we were not a kinetic theater with US forces actively targeting terrorists.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:08:10] Yes, but let me ask in relation to the time that you were there in 2015, also saw that huge wave of migrants making it to Europe. It was like a million across the Mediterranean and poured into Europe. The terrorist groups, ISIS in particular, took advantage of this wave of people to put their own operatives in there. Then we also have the issue of Europeans going to fight in Syria and other places to join ISIS. How did our military, with their knowledge of the part of the world where the refugees came from Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, contribute that knowledge to help the Europeans deal with the bad guys in between the migrant flow?

Gen. Lengyel: [00:08:51] There was two aspects to how we would help other European nations deal with a potential terrorist problem stemming from something hidden within this migrant flow or migrants that come in and become radicalized later. The biggest thing I would say is sharing of information. The second is one of the biggest things we did building partner capacity of European militaries to increase their special operations capability. Many of them didn't have a special operations command or special operations forces until, quite candidly, the US offered to help them build that capability to create partners around the world that were capable of dealing with terrorism so that we would not have to do it all by ourselves. They became partners with us in places like under the International Stabilization and Assistance Force, ISAF, particularly in Afghanistan.

Amb. Elliott: [00:09:57] The one thing that I'd like to add about the migrant flow, you know, the main channel into the European Union was via Turkey, through the Aegean Sea and into Greece. So one of the things that I think would be interesting for our listeners to know is that NATO and especially Germany stepped up to help the Greeks and the Turks, who traditionally they're not friendly with each other the closest. They're not the closest of our NATO allies. And the Germans then put together in a very short period of time, a NATO fleet, if you will, or, you know, maritime project, which we did contribute to, to help both the Greeks and the Turks to stem this flow and to help to sort out who are the people who really are refugees, are fleeing war and who are the terrorists.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:10:46] Well, I wanted to jump to a basically an act of heroism that, though not caused directly by our official involvement in Europe just before the attacks in November 2015, the summer before an ISIS militant tried an attack on a high speed train headed towards Paris. And he was tackled and disarmed by three Americans, two of which were off duty US military officers. Their names were Anthony Sadler, who was then a student at California State University. Airman First Class Spencer Stone. Alex Skarlatos of the Oregon National Guard. That was an incredible feat and showed that though the student didn't have training, the other two had training that helped disarm what would have been a huge tragedy. In your time in Europe, how often did you see or perceive threats to major transportation hubs? Because Europe hadn't seen that in many, many a year since the Madrid bombings and the London bus bombings of ten years before?

Amb. Elliott: [00:11:51] After Paris, of course, you remember there were the suicide bombers who were at the airport in Brussels. I don't think we had any advance warning of that. In fact, there were people from the US mission to NATO who were killed in that attack. So I think one of the things and the act of heroism that you mentioned happened before I got to the US European Command, but one of the things I think that we did during that time was start to be more aware of where are our personnel and how do we keep track of them when a crisis like this happened. And, you know, from being an ambassador, one of the first things you have to do, you want to take stock of are all my people safe? Where are they? Do we need to rescue people? Are people hurt? That was something that we worked on over the time that I was at US European Command to make sure that when military or civilians were traveling, that they would have. And the State Department has this. It's very easy to do. And I would recommend anyone listening if you travel, you go on to the website and register that you're going to be in the country.

Gen. Lengyel: [00:12:51] And I think it was also usually through the embassies when we had specific intelligence threat streams that would involve a Christmas market, a festival, a transportation hub, if there was intelligence of planning or an effort to attack. Those were generally shared in that manner. I will say, regarding the three Americans on the train that day, it was a minor miracle, maybe a major miracle that they were successful in stopping that attack. And it just goes to show if they had done nothing, they'd probably be dead. It is really challenging and it's kind of the definition of courage to take action even when you are scared and success is unlikely. And they saved a lot of lives that day and we owe them a debt of gratitude for their heroic actions. It was incredible.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:13:43] I want to turn to Russia. Russia and its invasion of Ukraine was a game changer for Europe and for the United States. And as you have said, Greg, Europe went from being a provider of security to a consumer of security. What has Russia's aggressive stance meant in terms of the overall US military presence in Europe, including Special Operations Command Europe?

Gen. Lengyel: [00:14:06] I totally agree with you on the statement. It was a game changer. Us European Command had become a little bit of a since the end of the Cold War, a peaceful lily pad for US forces to launch into the Middle East. We maintained our relationships over there, particularly with our NATO allies and in the Special Operations Command world. As I've mentioned previously, we took a lot of the newer NATO nations, former Soviet states, and helped them westernize their militaries and in our case, add a capability to conduct special operations and then go be our allies outside of US European Command and fight terrorists and Afghanistan and other places. What changed is all of a sudden there was a real threat. You know, people often use the term near-peer adversaries. I would say that Russia is a peer adversary, not near-peer, but a peer adversary militarily. And there had not been a significant military threat to most of Western Europe since the end of the Cold War. And all of a sudden there was a wake up call that not only have they rebuilt that archaic old Soviet military, but they're willing to use it because they want to be a world power again and they want to be respected for being a superpower.

Gen. Lengyel: [00:15:39] It changed everything that was going on militarily in Europe. We had nations that were very glad where you were serving as the ambassador at the time that they were part of NATO because they were fearful of another Russian strong hand coming in and coming down on them. And I really believe that General Breedlove handled it brilliantly by quickly getting US forces with US flags on their sleeves with some type of presence in those border countries, particularly the Baltics and Poland. When Putin looks across the you know, this is a General Breedlove quote, When he looks across and sees the Lithuanian flag, he may be tempted to take a run for the Baltic. But when he sees American flags and German flags or British flags with them, that changes the calculus that they'll have to kill NATO members. It was a big difference for us. It really changed our entire focus away from simply building partner capacity of other nations, special operations forces to deploy with us to how do we help them become more resilient and resistant to Russian aggression at home.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:16:51] There were requests for US troops coming from a lot of countries, far more than we could respond to, and we also felt other NATO countries should respond. How did you handle that in your responsibilities.

Amb. Elliott: [00:17:03] For the long term, we had to figure out how do we balance where the Estonians wanted us just as much as the Romanians wanted us? And you have to figure out what's the best use of your limited resources, because as General Lengyel pointed out, this isn't what we had been doing since the fall of the Soviet Union in Europe. We were building partnerships. We weren't trying to deter enemies other than perhaps terrorists. What we then had to do was convince the allies, which it wasn't hard to do, that we needed to have what we called an enhanced forward presence so that it's not just the US that's there, but that we have the Germans, you know, we have other NATO allies there, the Brits, the Canadians, everybody wanted, you know, the Germans are good, but we want the Americans, you know, in Lithuania and Estonia, what I did was connect with the ambassadors and the embassies in those countries so that when we did start to have military presence or, you know, planning for how are we going to deter Russia, that the ambassadors knew what we were doing. And General Lengyel and I came up with some I think that came out to be almost a best practice, you know, looking for ways that we would have video conferences on a regular basis and have either the ambassador or the deputy chief of mission, the leadership and talk about what our objectives to help the countries and what can you tell us about the concerns that the governments and the people of the countries that you're serving in it? And it worked quite well.

Amb. Elliott: [00:18:32] And then that even morphed into a regular email that we sent out that would list the kinds of things that General Lengyel and his troops were doing and or, you know, what US European Command was going to do. It created a dialogue. This was something that the two of us came up with because I fully understood what he needed to do. I had just been an ambassador in a country where I had special forces, so and I had a really good relationship. But how can I help you to help make the embassies and the ambassadors and the countries understand what we want to do?

Gen. Lengyel: [00:19:06] We previously had mentioned how Europe was different in that it wasn't a kinetic theater with regard to counterterrorism. Most of the US military now, especially people that are in leadership positions and have been around for a while, have all had their combat deployments to Iraq or Afghanistan. Nobody in Iraq and Afghanistan during Iraqi Freedom or Enduring Freedom were checking in with the embassy to get chief of mission permission to do anything. And so, for lack of a better term, I would say we had developed some bad habits. And we start thinking that when there's a military task at hand, we come up with a plan, we get it approved in the military chain of command, and we move out. But we weren't at war in Europe. We were trying to prevent war in Europe. I might have a team out of 10th Special Forces Group in Colorado coming over to support Special Operations Command Europe. And I'm going to take that 12 man detachment and put them in Estonia to work with the Estonians for a period of four months or six months. And I used to bring these guys in. You know, they would come through Stuttgart and check in with us and I would tell them nothing will happen in that country without the chief of missions. Full knowledge and consent. Do you understand me? And every time I visited an embassy and talked to the ambassador, I would make that promise to them because it was new for many of these nations to have US forces coming in to country, especially with some tension in the air.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:20:44] Nobody wanted to say, You fulfilled that promise. I recall you fulfill that promise. You kept everybody informed. I made one of yours, put them on my country team, and there was a flow of communication. So we were all working for the same.

Amb. Elliott: [00:20:57] And I did that even when I was in Tajikistan. I put the head because I had special forces.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:21:02] And for our listeners, a country team is your chief team. You have around you as the CEO of an embassy from different parts of the government and you decide the steps you're taking to implement the country's strategy to advance our interests. Let me talk about another aspect of what Russia has done in Europe and continues to do, not only physically and. Invaded Ukraine, but it also became more aggressive across the eastern flank of Europe and also within Western Europe to try to influence influence through misinformation, influence through corruption, influence through interfering in elections. I want to ask and maybe start with you, Susan. How did you and your team work to support the embassies, to develop better strategies to push back on this sort of new aspect of Russian aggression? And can you give us a concrete example?

Amb. Elliott: [00:21:55] I can give you one example. We formed what was called the Russia Information Group. I don't want to give a lot of details about that, but we really looked at public affairs kinds of things. And again, we couldn't go in and determine what we would do in certain countries, but we engaged the embassies and in one country we identified susceptible to Russian malign influence. We worked with the ambassador, we worked with his team. We also worked with the public affairs people and came up with some plans on how we could help the people of that country to understand and not just be taken in by the kinds of things that they would hear. Well, Greg.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:22:36] Your teams went across Europe and also engaged with local people to better understand the effects of Russian aggression and to see what was happening on the ground. What was the most surprising thing they told you?

Gen. Lengyel: [00:22:51] Every soldier, sailor, airman and Marine that we have out there, we refer to as a sensor. They collect information. So all of our teams that were out working specifically with special operations forces and many of the concerned nations that we've already mentioned would always come back with, you know, here's the vibe we're getting for the influence the media. But one of the missions that tends to fall under special operations is information operations. And we have people that are trained in that and I had some teams that were deployed to my headquarters for soccer because of the increased Russian aggression. And in April of 2015, Easter weekend, I think it was some of the team that had been supporting the embassy in Ukraine for Ambassador Pyatt had brought back some newspapers, if you could picture kind of National Enquirer, but designed instead of to make celebrities look scandalous, to make Ukraine politicians look bad, that's what was going on. It was Russian propaganda. And I was really surprised at what I saw. I told this team to take a weekend and travel, use government credit card, buy your train tickets, travel as far as you can get throughout Europe. And I want you to collect up as many newspapers as you can. I want you to talk to as many people as you can about this. And then we're going to come back and we're going to do an analysis of what is out there in magazine, newspaper, print. And they did a great study of propaganda analysis of what was going on. And it was significant. We boiled it down into a glossy trifold, single page, double sided print brochure for General Breedlove to take back to Washington, D.C. and hand out when he talked to all of the folks in Washington that didn't believe there was a threat really going on in Europe with regard to Russian influence. And there were unclassified flyers that he could hand out because they were all open source stuff.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:24:54] So that was in the years before we realized how much was being done in the United States not to speak of, you know, our own election. We weren't being touched by it, or so we thought, and we didn't really understand what was happening in Europe.

Gen. Lengyel: [00:25:07] That's exactly right, Ambassador. It's been going on since the Cold War. But it was a resurgence, a reemergence of propaganda, and it was all post invasion of an annexation of Crimea. We also need to illuminate the Russian efforts. And so that was became one of our objectives at Special Operations Command Europe. Of course, that was all done in conjunction with the teams within the embassies that were working on.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:25:34] The communications team. We call it public affairs, the communication team that was figuring out what to do to help local countries respond with training journalists or deciphering stuff. Et cetera.

Gen. Lengyel: [00:25:46] Anybody we sent forward into a country was actually working under the guidance of the embassy's communication team.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:25:52] Well, I wanted to wrap up with the following. There's a lot of talk about how our European allies are not carrying their weight on defense. There's also questioning of the need of having US troops in Europe. We do need our embassies. Why not our military in that part of the world.

Amb. Elliott: [00:26:11] Before the illegal annexation of Crimea, I mean, people thought, well, there really is no threat like there was during the Cold War. That's all changed. And I do think that a strong and secure and safe. Europe means that there's a strong and secure and safe us.

Gen. Lengyel: [00:26:27] NATO and our transatlantic alliance really has been the cornerstone of American foreign policy since the end of World War Two. I'll paraphrase General Breedlove's predecessor, Admiral James Stavridis, was the previous Sakura and I worked for him. And when this question came up, he often would say, You can't go it alone in this world. You've got to have friends and allies. And if not, you're up. Who? And there's a lot of other countries around the world that we have very good relationships with, but no bloc as big and powerful that could ever replace NATO as a partner, despite the fact that their defense spending has been down I mean, since the end of World War Two and specifically since 9/11. I mean, we have fought as an alliance or a coalition, and the vast majority of our partners have been European nations. I completely think that the value of NATO is still real, and I think that US presence is very important in Europe. And quite frankly, those bases are incredibly valuable to us just in other things we've done around the world. But I think this one is a General McChrystal quote, You can't surge trust if you're going to have a trusting relationship with people. You got to have a regular working relationship. And if you're not forward based in Europe, you're not going to have that relationship that you can count on when trust matters.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:27:49] And it is 70 years of trust as we celebrate the 70th anniversary.

Amb. Elliott: [00:27:52] It's a military alliance, but what do we all have in common? We all have in common democratic values, rule of law. And that's what I think our military alliance is, is that we come together to try to protect the freedoms that we've enjoyed. And we haven't had a significant war in that area, you know, since World War Two. And I think a lot of it is because of the engagement of our US military and our diplomats as well.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:28:18] General Lengyel, Ambassador Elliott Gregg, Susan, thank you so much for participating in helping our listeners understand a bit more what our diplomats do overseas, what our military leaders do overseas to protect the country and advance our interests. Thank you so much.

Gen. Lengyel: [00:28:34] You're welcome. Thanks for having us.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:28:36] This program is a special project on the partnership between our senior military leaders and our senior diplomats. This is funded and produced through the American Academy of Diplomacy and the Una Chapman Cox Foundation. Past episodes with outstanding guests can be found at our website: GeneralAmbassadorPodcast.Org.