a state department representative was there. as one former national security official said to me, this is someone who s a republican, general milley never went rogue. donald trump went rogue when he tried to overturn the election. i understand you have new details from the october 30th call. so i think what s important here is some of this has been taken out of context. people have not read the book yet. and when aiosee the details of the conversation, it is very clear that milley is making these calls because he has sensitive intelligence. the chinese think the u.s. is going to make a strike because donald trump may pull a wag the dog. and milley initiates this call in order to reassure his counterpart general lee. woodward and costa write in the book, quote, general li, you and
afraid of a strike. or the other side, if they see confusion and chaos in washington, you don t want them to think that we re in such disarray that they can make a strike against taiwan or somewhere else and get away with it. so milley had a very difficult task but one that was dictated or would have been dictated by concerns raised by intelligence that he and presumably all the other national security team would have seen. all right. so i think that adds a lot to it, because you are explaining some of the rational, why it would make sense from a defending american national security perspective to say what milley said. one of the things that he said on october 30th call that s getting attention is the specific quote. general lee, i want to assure you that the american government is stable and everything is going to be okay. we ve known each other now for five years. if we re going to attack, i m toing to call you ahead of time. it s not going to be a surprise.
tried to overturn the election. i understand you have new details from the october 30th call? so, i think what s important here is some of this has been taken out of context. people have not read the book, yet. and when you see the details of the conversation, it is very clear that, milley is making these calls because he has sensitive intelligence. the chinese think that the u.s. is going to make a strike because donald trump may pull a wag the dog. and milley initiates this call in order to reassure his counterpoint, general li. woodward and costa write in the book, quote, general li, you and i have known each other for now five years. if we are going to attack, i m going to call you ahead of time. it s not going to be a surprise. it s not going to be a bolt out of the blue. if there was a war or some kind of kinetic action between the united states and china, there is going to be a build-up just
and we were concerned about what the president might do. so general milley understanding that same kind of concern i think tried to make sure that others understood that there was not going to be any kind of sudden attack or that we would not find ourselves in the middle of a nuclear war. i think he was doing what he felt was right as chairman of the joint chiefs. so secretary panetta, let me get to one part of it that seems to be raising the most questions and that is the specific quote about an attack, right? according to the book on that october 30th call, and again, i emphasize we understand this was in coordination with esper, but milley says in part quote general lee, you and i have known each other for five years now. if we re going to attack, i m going to call you ahead of time. it s not going to be a surprise. look, this is the quote that kind of makes everybody go huh?
that call from milley was on october 30th of 2020. and there was one more call after that. this a call from milley to the same chinese general on january 8th this year. significantly, january 8th is two days after the insurrection. now, this is according to a new book by the reporters bob woodward and robert costa. we learned the calls were not secret. not like milley got on the phone and called his counterpart and now it s leaking out. not at all. we learned there were 15 people on each of those two calls. during the discussion on january 8th. he said we re 100% steady. everything is fine. democracy can be sloppy sometimes. according to the book milley went as far to promise his counterpart he would alert them on a strike to the u.s. in the october call approved by esper.