The White House chief of staff, John F. Kelly, talked about his son’s death and defended President Trump during a news briefing on Thursday.
WATCH VIDEO Photo by Tom Brenner/The New York Times.
On a more
serious note, we've had a lot of questions come in, and I certainly addressed
quite a few of them yesterday, and thought today it might be more appropriate
to have the Chief of Staff address some of those questions specific to outreach
to Gold Star families. He'll address questions on that topic, and if you have
other questions throughout the day, the press staff will be here and happy to
answer those after the briefing later this afternoon. Thanks, guys.
GENERAL KELLY: Well, thanks a lot. And it is a more serious note, so I
just wanted to perhaps make more of a statement than an -- give more of an
explanation in what amounts to be a traditional press interaction.
Most Americans don't know what happens when we lose one of soldiers,
sailors, airmen, Marines, our Coast Guardsmen in combat. So let me tell you
what happens:
Their buddies wrap them up in whatever passes as a shroud, puts them on a
helicopter as a routine, and sends them home. Their first stop along the way is
when they're packed in ice, typically at the airhead. And then they're flown
to, usually, Europe where they're then packed in ice again and flown to Dover
Air Force Base, where Dover takes care of the remains, embalms them,
meticulously dresses them in their uniform with the medals that they've earned,
the emblems of their service, and then puts them on another airplane linked up
with a casualty officer escort that takes them home.
A very, very good movie to watch, if you haven't ever seen it, is
"Taking Chance," where this is done in a movie -- HBO setting. Chance
Phelps was killed under my command right next to me, and it's worth seeing that
if you've never seen it.
So that's the process. While that's happening, a casualty officer
typically goes to the home very early in the morning and waits for the first
lights to come on. And then he knocks on the door; typically a mom and dad will
answer, a wife. And if there is a wife, this is happening in two different
places; if the parents are divorced, three different places. And the casualty
officer proceeds to break the heart of a family member and stays with that
family until -- well, for a long, long time, even after the internment. So
that's what happens.
are these young men and women? They are the best 1 percent this country
produces. Most of you, as Americans, don't know them. Many of you don't know
anyone who knows any one of them. But they are the very best this country
produces, and they volunteer to protect our country when there's nothing in our
country anymore that seems to suggest that selfless service to the nation is
not only appropriate, but required. But that's all right.
Who writes letters to the families? Typically, the company commander --
in my case, as a Marine -- the company commander, battalion commander,
regimental commander, division commander, Secretary of Defense, typically the
service chief, commandant of the Marine Corps, and the President typically
writes a letter.
Typically, the only phone calls a family receives are the most important
phone calls they could imagine, and that is from their buddies. In my case,
hours after my son was killed, his friends were calling us from Afghanistan,
telling us what a great guy he was. Those are the only phone calls that really
mattered.
And yeah, the letters count, to a degree, but there's not much that
really can take the edge off what a family member is going through.
So some Presidents have elected to call. All Presidents, I believe, have
elected to send letters. If you elect to call a family like this, it is about
the most difficult thing you could imagine. There's no perfect way to make that
phone call.
When I took this job and talked to President Trump about how to do it, my
first recommendation was he not do it because it's not the phone call that
parents, family members are looking forward to. It's nice to do, in my opinion,
in any event.
He asked me about previous Presidents, and I said, I can tell you that
President Obama, who was my Commander-in-Chief when I was on active duty, did
not call my family. That was not a criticism. That was just to simply say, I
don't believe President Obama called. That's not a negative thing. I don't
believe President Bush called in all cases. I don't believe any President,
particularly when the casualty rates are very, very high -- that Presidents
call. But I believe they all write.
So when I gave that explanation to our President three days ago, he
elected to make phone calls in the cases of four young men who we lost in Niger
at the earlier part of this month. But then he said, how do you make these
calls? If you're not in the family, if you've never worn the uniform, if you've
never been in combat, you can't even imagine how to make that call. I think he
very bravely does make those calls.
The call in question that he made yesterday -- or day before yesterday
now -- were to four family members, the four fallen. And remember, there's a
next-of-kin designated by the individual. If he's married, that's typically the
spouse. If he's not married, that's typically the parents unless the parents
are divorced, and then he selects one of them. If he didn't get along with his
parents, he’ll select a sibling. But the point is, the phone call is made to
the next-of-kin only if the next-of-kin agrees to take the phone call.
Sometimes they don't.
So a pre-call is made: The President of the United States or the
commandant of the Marine Corps, or someone would like to call, will you accept
the call? And typically, they all accept the call.
So he called four people the other day and expressed his condolences in
the best way that he could. And he said to me, what do I say? I said to him,
sir, there's nothing you can do to lighten the burden on these families.
Well, let me tell you what I told him. Let me tell you what my best
friend, Joe Dunford, told me -- because he was my casualty officer. He said,
Kel, he was doing exactly what he wanted to do when he was killed. He knew what
he was getting into by joining that 1 percent. He knew what the possibilities
were because we're at war. And when he died, in the four cases we're talking
about, Niger, and my son's case in Afghanistan -- when he died, he was
surrounded by the best men on this Earth: his friends.
That's what the President tried to say to four families the other day. I
was stunned when I came to work yesterday morning, and broken-hearted at what I
saw a member of Congress doing. A member of Congress who listened in on a phone
call from the President of the United States to a young wife, and in his way
tried to express that opinion -- that he's a brave man, a fallen hero, he knew
what he was getting himself into because he enlisted. There's no reason to
enlist; he enlisted. And he was where he wanted to be, exactly where he wanted
to be, with exactly the people he wanted to be with when his life was taken.
That was the message. That was the message that was transmitted.
It stuns me that a member of Congress would have listened in on that
conversation. Absolutely stuns me. And I thought at least that was sacred. You
know, when I was a kid growing up, a lot of things were sacred in our country.
Women were sacred, looked upon with great honor. That's obviously not the case
anymore as we see from recent cases. Life -- the dignity of life -- is sacred.
That's gone. Religion, that seems to be gone as well.
Gold Star families, I think that left in the convention over the summer.
But I just thought -- the selfless devotion that brings a man or woman to die
on the battlefield, I just thought that that might be sacred.
And when I listened to this woman and what she was saying, and what she
was doing on TV, the only thing I could do to collect my thoughts was to go and
walk among the finest men and women on this Earth. And you can always find them
because they're in Arlington National Cemetery. I went over there for an
hour-and-a-half, walked among the stones, some of whom I put there because they
were doing what I told them to do when they were killed.
I'll end with this: In October -- April, rather, of 2015, I was still on
active duty, and I went to the dedication of the new FBI field office in Miami.
And it was dedicated to two men who were killed in a firefight in Miami against
drug traffickers in 1986 -- a guy by the name of Grogan and Duke. Grogan almost
retired, 53 years old; Duke, I think less than a year on the job. Anyways, they
got in a gunfight and they were killed. Three other FBI agents were there, were
wounded, and now retired. So we go down -- Jim Comey gave an absolutely
brilliant memorial speech to those fallen men and to all of the men and women
of the FBI who serve our country so well, and law enforcement so well.
There were family members there. Some of the children that were there
were three or four years old when their dads were killed on that street in
Miami-Dade. Three of the men that survived the fight were there, and gave a
rendition of how brave those men were and how they gave their lives.
And a congresswoman stood up, and in the long tradition of empty barrels
making the most noise, stood up there and all of that and talked about how she
was instrumental in getting the funding for that building, and how she took
care of her constituents because she got the money, and she just called up
President Obama, and on that phone call he gave the money -- the $20 million --
to build the building. And she sat down, and we were stunned. Stunned that she
had done it. Even for someone that is that empty a barrel, we were stunned.
But, you know, none of us went to the press and criticized. None of us
stood up and were appalled. We just said, okay, fine.
So I still hope, as you write your stories, and I appeal to America, that
let's not let this maybe last thing that's held sacred in our society -- a
young man, young woman going out and giving his or her life for our country --
let's try to somehow keep that sacred. But it eroded a great deal yesterday by
the selfish behavior of a member of Congress.
So I'm willing to take a question or two on this topic. Let me ask you
this: Is anyone here a Gold Star parent or sibling? Does anyone here know a
Gold Star parent or sibling?
Okay, you get the question.
Q Well, thank you, General Kelly. First of all, we have a great deal of
respect -- Semper Fi -- for everything that you've ever done. But if we could
take this a bit further. Why were they in Niger? We were told they weren't in
armored vehicles and there was no air cover. So what are the specifics about
this particular incident? And why were we there? And why are we there?
GENERAL KELLY: Well, I would start by saying there is an investigation.
Let me back up and say, the fact of the matter is, young men and women that
wear our uniform are deployed around the world and there are tens of thousands,
near the DMZ in North Korea [sic], in Okinawa, waiting to go -- in South Korea
-- in Okinawa, ready to go. All over the United States, training, ready to go.
They're all over Latin America. Down there, they do mostly drug and addiction,
working with our partners -- our great partners -- the Colombians, the Central
Americans, the Mexicans.
You know, there's thousands. My own son, right now, back in the fight for
his fifth tour against ISIS. There's thousands of them in Europe acting as a
deterrent. And they're throughout Africa. And they're doing the nation's work
there, and not making a lot of money, by the way, doing it. They love what they
do.
So why were they there? They're there working with partners, local -- all
across Africa -- in this case, Niger -- working with partners, teaching them
how to be better soldiers; teaching them how to respect human rights; teaching
them how to fight ISIS so that we don't have to send our soldiers and Marines
there in their thousands. That's what they were doing there.
Now, there is an investigation. There's always an -- unless it's a very,
very conventional death in a conventional war, there's always an investigation.
Of course, that operation is conducted by AFRICOM that, of course, works
directly for the Secretary of Defense.
There is a -- and I talked to Jim Mattis this morning. I think he made
statements this afternoon. There's an investigation ongoing. An investigation
doesn't mean anything was wrong. An investigation doesn't mean people's heads
are going to roll. The fact is they need to find out what happened and why it
happened.
But at the end of the day, ladies and gentlemen, you have to understand
that these young people -- sometimes old guys -- put on the uniform, go to
where we send them to protect our country. Sometimes they go in large numbers
to invade Iraq and invade Afghanistan. Sometimes they're working in small
units, working with our partners in Africa, Asia, Latin America, helping them
be better.
But at the end of the day, they're helping those partners be better at
fighting ISIS in North Africa to protect our country so that we don't have to
send large numbers of troops.
Any other -- someone who knows a Gold Star fallen person.
John?
Q General, thank you for being here today and thank you for your service
and for your family's sacrifice. There has been some talk about the timetable
of the release of the statement about the -- I think at that point it was three
soldiers who were killed in Niger. Can you walk us through the timetable of the
release of that information? And what part did the fact that a beacon was
pinging during that time have to do with the release of the statement? And were
you concerned that divulging information early might jeopardize the soldiers'
attempt to be (inaudible)?
GENERAL KELLY: First of all, that's a -- you know, we are at the highest
level of the U.S. government. The people that will answer those questions will
be the people at the other end of the military pyramid.
I'm sure the Special Forces group is conducting it. I know they're
conducting an investigation. That investigation, of course, under the auspices
of AFRICOM, ultimately will go to the Pentagon. I've read the same stories you
have. I actually know a lot more than I'm letting on, but I'm not going to tell
you.
There is an investigation being done. But as I say, the men and women of
our country that are serving all around the world -- I mean, what the hell is
my son doing back in the fight? He's back in the fight because -- working with
Iraqi soldiers who are infinitely better than they were a few years ago to take
ISIS on directly so that we don't have to do it. Small numbers of Marines where
he is working alongside those guys. That's why they're out there, whether it's
Niger, Iraq, or whatever. We don't want to send tens of thousands of American
soldiers and Marines, in particular, to go fight.
I'll take one more, but it's got to be from someone who knows -- all
right.
Q General, when you talk about Niger, sir, what does your intelligence
tell you about the Russian connection with them? And the stories that are
coming out now, they're --
GENERAL KELLY: I have no knowledge of any Russian connection, but I was
not, in my position, to know that. That's a question for NORTHCOM or for -- not
NORTHCOM -- for AFRICOM or DOD.
Thanks very much, everybody.
As I walk off the stage, understand there's tens of thousands of American
kids, mostly, doing their nation's bidding all around the world. They don't
have to be in uniform. You know, when I was a kid, every man in my life was a
veteran -- World War II, Korea, and there was the draft. These young people
today, they don't do it for any other reason than their selfless -- sense of
selfless devotion to this great nation.
We don't look down upon those of you who that haven't served. In fact, in
a way we're a little bit sorry because you'll have never have experienced the
wonderful joy you get in your heart when you do the kinds of things our service
men and women do -- not for any other reason than they love this country. So
just think of that.
And I do appreciate your time. Take care.
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