Transcript: NPR's Full Interview With Joint Chiefs Of Staff Chairman Mark Milley
In an interview on Sunday with NPR's Steve Inskeep, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley took questions about his time in quarantine, the military's role in potential election disputes, the war in Afghanistan and more.
Steve Inskeep: Let's just begin with the most basic question about what you're doing right now. Why did you go into quarantine and what has the routine been for you?
Gen. Mark Milley: Well, thanks, Steve, and I appreciate you having me on. I just want to kind of review the bidding here and assure the American people that the Joint Chiefs of Staff are fully functional, even though we're functional from home. So, we had a series of meetings, I guess it was the week before last, the week of 28 of September, the beginning of October. And in those meetings, as I think is publicly known, was Admiral [Charles Ray, the vice commandant of the Coast Guard]. Admiral Ray called me on Monday morning on 5 October and said that he was positive for a COVID-19 test.
So we put the word out and we counseled everybody. We got with the docs and we went ahead and imposed on ourselves the CDC guidelines, and we decided we would go into self quarantine or self isolation, I guess, and we would test. So we tested several times last week. Thankfully, none of the Joint Chiefs, the actual Joint Chiefs, came out positive. We did have one other officer who attended the meeting, as you know, the vice commandant of the Marine Corps. He did test positive. But we've been strictly adhering to the CDC protocols and none of us are symptomatic and so we're in good shape.
And we're operating from the home. We all have various SCIFs, special compartmented information facilities, built into our houses, whether you're here or down at the naval annex or downtown, in the Marine Corps commandant's house. And we all have all the same communication systems we have in the Pentagon. We have all the multiple VTCs. We have the phones. We can go to any level of security and
