NPR’s Steve Inskeep speaks with Marty Skovlund, co-author of a book with Joe Kent, who resigned his position as the Trump administration’s top counterterrorism official.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
We follow up this morning on the resignation of Joe Kent. He was President Trump’s director of the National Counterterrorism Center. He was a devoted Trump supporter, but in his resignation letter, Kent said he cannot support the war in Iran. He says Iran did not pose an imminent threat to the United States and goes on to claim that the U.S. started the war due to, quote, “pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.” Our next guest co-authored a book with Joe Kent. He’s a journalist and Army veteran – Marty Skovlund Jr. Mr. Skovlund, good morning.
MARTY SKOVLUND JR: Hi, Steve. Thanks for having me on.
INSKEEP: So much to talk about here, but I want people to understand a little bit about Joe Kent’s background. He was an official until yesterday, but your book was about his first wife, who was a Navy linguist who was killed in Syria. And Joe Kent himself served in the Army and the CIA – a lot in Iraq. So what’s he like?
SKOVLUND: Yeah. So he’s like every special operations intelligence professional I’ve ever known, which is a very calm, measured, analytical person, very principle-driven. That’s how he was before he entered public life. I first met him shortly after his wife – his late wife, Shannon Kent, was killed in action over in Syria, and we met at the memorial. That was while he was still at the CIA’s ground branch. He still couldn’t show his face or, you know, attach his name too publicly to anything.
And as I’ve seen him kind of transform into this – you know, when he started running for office and then his appointment in the Trump administration recently, he’s very much a public figure now, but I haven’t seen a big change from who he was as a special operator and an intelligence professional to who he is as a public official. He just has always struck me as someone who’s always stood on his principles, you know. And people can agree or disagree with his views, but…
INSKEEP: Yeah.
SKOVLUND: …In my experience, he’s not really a man who says one thing in private and another in public.
INSKEEP: Although we should just note, I mean, he embraced President Trump’s claims about the 2020 election that he lost and talked of January 6 as a false flag. I mean, he’s said some remarkable things in recent years.
SKOVLUND: Yeah, absolutely. And I definitely don’t think that – I think two things can be true. I think he can believe in his principles and stand on his principles and that you may not agree with his views or opinions, you know. And everything that he’s said publicly I do believe he believes wholeheartedly.
INSKEEP: OK. Well, let’s talk about this resignation. What did you think when he let his letter out yesterday?
SKOVLUND: Well, I read the letter, and there was nothing in there that surprised me. Now, the letter was a surprise. I didn’t know he was resigning. You know, I found out the same time everybody else did. But his messages on – you know, he’s a big believer in nonintervention in the Middle East at this point. And, you know, there’s nothing really in there that he hasn’t said before, either publicly or privately. These are views he’s held for a while. So – and I guess the overall message he’s sending by a very public resignation over his principles was not really shocking to me, although the letter was a surprise.
INSKEEP: Well, there’s a couple of aspects of this. One is the idea that the war in Iran is a bad idea. Like, apparently, majorities of Americans agree with that. But there’s a big theme in this letter about Israel, which I need to explore. He says Israel pressured the United States into the war. OK, there’s evidence that Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, came to the White House and tried to persuade President Trump, but Joe Kent goes further. He says his wife was killed in Syria, quote, “in a war manufactured by Israel.” He says the Israelis used lies to draw the United States into the Iraq War. What do you make of the extent of this?
SKOVLUND: Yeah. So, I mean, I have a different understanding of, you know, things like how ISIS came to be and how things went down in Iraq. I don’t know that I’m necessarily right. I don’t know if he’s right. I’ll leave that to the policymakers, intelligence professionals and the public to debate. But as far as his motivations around, hey, I don’t want us being in any new wars, particularly in the Middle East, I mean, like you said, he lost his wife to these wars. He feels very strongly about it. And unlike a lot of people debating this publicly right now, he has deep, deep experience in the region – 11 combat deployments, many of them fighting Iranian-backed proxies in the Middle East, and then as an intelligence professional, then his most recent position as the director of the National Counterterrorism Center. I just – I’m not going to discount what he’s saying here because…
INSKEEP: Yeah.
SKOVLUND: …I don’t have as many facts as he does.
INSKEEP: What do you think if people hear all of those statements taken together and hear something antisemitic embracing conspiracy theories about Jews running the world?
SKOVLUND: Yeah. I mean, he hasn’t said anything antisemitic yet, though, has he?
INSKEEP: Well, I don’t know. A war manufactured by Israel?
SKOVLUND: Yeah. I think we can talk about nation states…
INSKEEP: The Israelis used lies to draw the United States into the – I mean, I covered those events. I mean, Israel has an opinion. Israel has policies. Israel has influence, but U.S. officials make the decisions they make. That just doesn’t sound accurate to me.
SKOVLUND: Yeah. I think just like with Israel’s actions in Gaza and everything, it’s very possible to criticize the state and not make a larger statement about a religion or ethnicity. So I don’t want to characterize what Joe said as antisemitic. And I know just based on our own conversations he’s publicly defended Israel’s actions in the past before. I mean, his actions and words over time have not been consistent with somebody that’s antisemitic.
INSKEEP: Let me ask about another aspect of this because you would think that as the head of the National Counterterrorism Center that Joe Kent would be on the inside of decisions, would need to be prepared for the blowback from a war in Iran and so forth. House Speaker Mike Johnson has been saying, well, he must not have been in the briefings that I was in because Iran was a threat. He’s contending that Joe Kent was out of the loop on this. Do you think that Joe Kent was on the inside or the outside of decision-making in the Trump administration?
SKOVLUND: I saw Mike Johnson’s comments, and I literally laughed out loud. It says a lot more about this administration and the buildup and planning for a war effort if your director of the National Counterterrorism Center was not involved at a very deep level in those conversations. That says much more about the administration than it does about Joe. So I don’t know if that was the case. I hope with – considering how involved we are with Iran right now and everything that is going – and the world impact that this war is having, I hope that he was involved at a very deep level. But if he wasn’t, then there’s much bigger, more serious questions we need to be asking of the administration.
INSKEEP: Marty Skovlund, a pleasure talking with you this morning. Thank you very much for taking the time.
SKOVLUND: Thank you.
INSKEEP: He co-authored a book with Joe Kent, and the book is called “Send Me: The True Story Of A Mother At War.”
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