Podcast: Behind the scenes of "A House of Dynamite"

Intro (00:04):
Trailblazers in research, innovators in technology, and those who simply have a good story: all make up the fabric that is George Mason University, where taking on the grand challenges that face our students, graduates, and higher education is our mission and our passion. Hosted by Mason President Gregory Washington, this is the Access to Excellence podcast.

President Gregory Washington (00:26):
The White House Situation Room is one of those real life places that plays a key role in historic moments, but it's also rarely seen by outsiders. It actually takes on an outside air of mystery because of all of this. And while it's recently captured the public's imagination, again, thanks to the Netflix film, A House of Dynamite, the Situation Room is just one point in a complex web of government security and intelligence operations. Here to talk about that famous place and more is Larry Pfeiffer, the director of George Mason University's Michael V. Hayden Center for Intelligence, Policy and International Security. Larry is a highly respected expert in areas of national and homeland security policy, crisis management, intelligence strategy analysis and collection, and he's also an expert in overt and covert operations. He served for 32 years in the US intelligence community, including stints as senior director of the White House Situation Room, and the chief of staff to the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Michael V. Hayden. Larry, welcome to the show.

Larry Pfeiffer (01:50):
Hey, thank you very much. Glad to be here.

President Gregory Washington (01:53):
Obviously, I want to talk a lot about the movie and your connections to it, but before we get to the Situation Room, let's talk a little bit about intelligent security in general. As civilians, we are bombarded with information all day from every angle and every device. I can only imagine how daunting it must be to deal with all of that from a security perspective. And so can you give us some insight into how our government secure sensitive information in a time when information is so plentiful and we're so greatly connected?

Larry Pfeiffer (02:31):
Certainly that's probably one of the great challenges we have in our country today, is that volume and variety and velocity of information just grows exponentially and algorithmically hour by hour. And all that information can be useful to those in the national security arena. And, uh, those of us who worked in intelligence, you know, efforts are made to secure the material. Uh, there's executive order that governs how things are classified, and, uh, things are classified either confidential, secret, or top secret, depending upon the severity of the impact, if that material were ever to be disclosed to someone who shouldn't see it. Much of our intelligence information is classified in one of those categories, largely based on the collection, the tactic techniques, the sourcing of the information, whether it be from human collection, whether it be from technical means like signals intelligence, communications intelligence, or, uh, some information derived from satellites: imagery, or other sensing data that may be derived from a satellite. And so that material is protected using cryptography. We've, we believe that we, the US has the greatest cryptographic security of, of any country. But you never go to bed sleeping at night that, that, that's a hundred percent sure.

President Gregory Washington (03:47):
That's right. Cryptography is mathematics. And so we who has the best mathematicians? Have the best cryptography.

Larry Pfeiffer (03:55):
Yeah. And in today's world, it's quantum computing.

President Gregory Washington (03:57):
That's exactly right.

Larry Pfeiffer (03:58):
That is going to determine who dominates that information space in the future. So that's why it's vital that the US and its Western and ideologically aligned allies stay in the front in those developments and protect those developments as we move forward.

President Gregory Washington (04:14):
Exactly right. So there's data and then there's information, right? And so you have all of these tools and methods. You highlighted some of them from satellite, but also basic things from cell phones, from all of this data that's out there. From an intelligence perspective, do you see that we, that we turn data into information differently now post 9/11 than we did pre 9/11?

Larry Pfeiffer (04:42):
Hmm, interesting question. So you're right. We, we have data, we have information, and then we actually have what we would call intelligence, which is where that information has been given meaning to a policy maker, uh, in terms of, you know, what concerns they have about what's happening in the world. I, I would say that it's probably less a pre and post 9/11 delineation, and it's more just technologically development. Uh, as we go forward, the volume of information we have, the speed with, with which information is coming in, needs to be dealt with. And, you know, you go back to the sixties and the seventies, and these were human beings with index cards and eye shades on and pencils and papers and maybe a typewriter in the corner. And through much of my era, we, you know, we had the advancement of personal computing, super computing.

Larry Pfeiffer (05:22):
You know, today we are using these large, vast data centers to collect all this material. We're using machine language capabilities. We're using artificial intelligence to go through that material, to look for patterns, to look for intelligence, to look for information before a human being even sets eyes on it. Without that technical capability, we would be completely overwhelmed and we would likely miss some of the most important stuff that we're looking for. So the development of AI, the development of ML is vitally important to the intelligence community parsing through material to get to our policymakers that most critical information they need to do their jobs.

President Gregory Washington (06:02):
That's amazing. It's also scary because as the computers become more and more sentient-like---I'm, I'm, I'm not one of those ones who believes that that's not possible--then they will start to think about what information they should give us and what information they should, they should withhold.

Larry Pfeiffer (06:18):
Well, that, that is a big debate. Uh, the human in the loop.

President Gregory Washington (06:21):
oh, I'm, I'm sure.

Larry Pfeiffer (06:21):
And, and there's concern that there's some adversaries out there who may let machines do, uh, a lot of the critical decisions, and that could be dangerous. But if your adversary is letting the machines do it, and by having a human in the loop, you're not developing the information as fast as you could, it becomes a critical, not only technical debate, but a moral and ethical debate.

President Gregory Washington (06:39):
That's so true. I, I see the challenge there on both sides.

Larry Pfeiffer (06:43):
Mm-hmm <affirmative>. And the other interesting thing with this flood of information, there is so much information that's available in what we call open source or, you know, publicly available information unclassified. And the policymakers love to be able to use information that's not classified. They can publicly discuss it, they can share it, they can use it. So there's a greater emphasis in the Intel community on getting into that publicly available open source information to get most of the information our policy makers might actually need. And then using the expensive, exquisite intelligence tools that develop classified intelligence in a more discreet, more targeted, more tailored manner.

President Gregory Washington (07:16):
Well, look, I am a guy who loves films and movies that make you think.

Larry Pfeiffer (07:21):
Me too, <laugh>,

President Gregory Washington (07:22):
And my movie of the year in that regard was "A House of Dynamite". The Netflix film. And my understanding is, is that you were a consulting expert for that film.

Larry Pfeiffer (07:35):
I was.

President Gregory Washington (07:35):
Talk to us a little bit about how that transpired and how you got to be in the position of the expert on set.

Larry Pfeiffer (07:43):
Sure. So I retired from government about 10 years ago, and much of that time since then has been spent doing consulting work for corporations or here at George Mason, helping General Hayden with his, uh, Hayden Center. The last thing I ever thought is, is that I would, you know, go Hollywood. So, uh, I'm, I'm sitting in my, on my phone scrolling through my email late spring, early summer, and I see an email from a guy named Greg Shapiro, and I'm like, I don't know a Greg Shapiro. I open it up and he's like, "hi, I am a producer in Hollywood and, uh, I have a director who's gonna be making a movie that will feature the situation room in a prominent way. And I've been given your name as somebody who could maybe help us understand and best portray what a situation room is like. Can we do a Zoom call?"

Larry Pfeiffer (08:24):
And I'm like, yeah, this sounds intriguing. Sure, why not? And get on the Zoom call with him, and we have a quick call. And, uh, he then tells me that it's for a movie that's gonna be directed by Kathryn Bigelow. Well, Kathryn Bigelow is one of the great directors of our generation, the first woman to win the Oscar for, uh, directing and best picture. She's also done a great job portraying the business of intelligence and national security in some of her previous movies. Uh, "The Hurt Locker" in particular. And, uh, "Zero Dark Thirty" about the take down of Osama Bin Bin Laden. So now I'm getting excited. Okay. I'll move mountains for Kathryn Bigelow given positive spin, she's put on the good men and women in the intel business.

President Gregory Washington (09:03):
Yeah. One of my good friends was in "The Hurt Locker", and I ah, I love that movie as well.

Larry Pfeiffer (09:08):
Oh yeah. And so we do a zoom call with Kathryn, and in the course of the Zoom call with Kathryn, I asked them if they've ever been to the White House and seen the Situation Room, which can happen. Some celebrities, presidents will take them on a quick tour of the Situation Room. And Greg and Kathryn both said, no, they had not. And I said, you know, I said, I know the guy running it now. I said, let me just ask him. I said, I'm not gonna promise you anything. It's, it's a roll of the dice. But three weeks later, uh, the guy's name's Mark, he gets back to me and says, yeah, bring him on in. So I brought Kathryn, Greg, I brought her cinematographer, her set designer, a couple other guys. We all go in, they give us this great briefing, they give us a tour, and as we're leaving the White House, Kathryn was very thankful for that opportunity. And they then asked me if I would be interested in helping them when they make the movie. And I said, that sounds great. I said, but you'll, you'll take care of like my transportation and hotel while I'm there. And they said, Larry, we're gonna pay you to do this. I was like, oh, hey. Even, even better.

President Gregory Washington (10:09):
The price is right!

Larry Pfeiffer (10:10):
<laugh> So, uh, so yeah, so, you know, roll forward, uh, through the course of the summer, I'm reviewing scripts. I'm talking to the set designer. I'm talking to the costumers. I'm talking to the IT folks who are designing what are gonna be on the different screens in the, in the situation room. And then at a certain point, I was asked to talk to some of the actors. So I did a couple of phone calls with some of the actors ahead of time, and come late August, and then into September of 2024, I spent quite a bit of time in Jersey City, New Jersey, which is where the movie was largely filmed, all the inside. Uh,

President Gregory Washington (10:42):
That is amazing. Yeah. Yeah. So somebody made New Jersey seem like it was Washington, DC

Larry Pfeiffer (10:48):
Well, I tell you, I, uh, I, I I walk into this warehouse of a building. I mean, it looks like just a big ugly warehouse. And inside there are studios or basically hangers, and you walk in and you see construction, you know, plywood, two by fours, et cetera, but they have doors. You go up a ramp, you open the door, and I walk in and I am in the White House. It was an absolute mindblower how well the set designer had created the hallway that leads to the Navy Mess, the Navy Mess that then leads to the entry to the situation room. I walk into the situation room and it was like, we were there a few months before.

President Gregory Washington (11:28):
Did you have that feeling of, oh, I got my phone on me and I shouldn't have my electronic devices in this room? I mean, did it feel like that?

Larry Pfeiffer (11:36):
Well, actually, there was one time when we were filming, and I was--in all of the great scenes in that movie. I'm actually somewhere in the room behind the camera was, uh, it was a lot of fun. But yes, there was one time when I'm sitting there in the room and my phone starts to buzz in my pocket. And just for a split second, not terribly long, but for a very split second, I had this pang of guilt like I would've had back when I was working in the Intel business, if I had actually carried my phone into a secure facility. Uh, and then, you know, then of course I immediately recognized, no, I'm not actually there. But that's how real this place looks.

President Gregory Washington (12:09):
Now, the movie is fictional, right?

Larry Pfeiffer (12:11):
Mm-hmm <affirmative>.

President Gregory Washington (12:11):
But as someone with experience in Situation Room scenarios, what does the movie do best at depicting in terms of a real lifelike scenario?

Larry Pfeiffer (12:23):
So, Kathryn's objective was that I help them make the room and the activity in the room look as real as possible so that someone who had actually lived this experience would go, "wow, they really captured it." And so we worked very hard to do that. Now, there were some suggestions that I made that Kathryn was like, uh, it sounds really good, Larry, but that doesn't help advance the story, or it makes it a little clunky for the movement of the actors. And, you know, that was fine. They're making a movie. But what I really wanted to make sure they captured was the sense of duty, the sense of mission, the sense of patriotism that the men and women of the situation room bring to their job every single day. And I thought they, they did a great job capturing that. Yeah.

President Gregory Washington (13:04):
Yeah, even the heartbreak. When, when, when they fail, or when they didn't get it right. I, I thought that that was very, very touching.

Larry Pfeiffer (13:12):
Right, I mean, I, when I used to sit down with new duty officers, as they came into the situation room, I used to say to them, you are never gonna, you've never worked before, and you're never gonna work again in an environment that requires zero defects. I said that, that, that if you make a mistake here, you could be slowing down the ability of the President of the United States to learn the information he needs to help him make the decisions that will protect the country. So then they, the, the young Duty officers would look at me with like terror in their eyes.

President Gregory Washington (13:39):
<laugh> their eyes would open real wide.

Larry Pfeiffer (13:41):
Like, what have I gotten myself into? And then I would say to 'em, but we also know that we are all human beings, and there are gonna be times when it gets a little hectic and you're juggling a lot of balls, or there's gonna be times when things get a little emotional, and your job is to work as a team. So if you notice your partners sitting at the chair next to you is struggling a bit, you jump in and help them. If you hear somebody make a mistake, you jump in and help them. If you feel that the emotions are taking you to a place where you're beginning to feel panic or anxiety, maybe you need to just step away from your desk, maybe step out into the hall, catch your breath, come back in. Uh, and Rebecca Ferguson actually picked up on that.

President Gregory Washington (14:19):
Everybody did that, that happened in the movie

Larry Pfeiffer (14:21):
They did do that in the movie. And I thought they captured that, that really well. And the other thing I really wanted to capture, and they did this I think remarkably well, was the zero to a hundred mile an hour nature of watch operations. You know, you could come into work and you could just be doing the basics, just monitoring the, the reports that are coming in, sending them to the right people, maybe answering phone calls, passing messages, you know, helping to set up a, a, a meeting for a conference. And then suddenly the, the world goes to hell, and you're now operating at high revolutions per minute. And they captured that very well, um, in this movie, not only in the Situation Room, but in the, in the other environments as well. Yeah.

President Gregory Washington (15:02):
What was that, that one, that remote facility where they were

Larry Pfeiffer (15:06):
Yeah.

President Gregory Washington (15:06):
Trying to sense incoming missiles.

Larry Pfeiffer (15:09):
Yeah. Yeah. The, uh, missile defense site up in Alaska. Yeah. Yeah.

President Gregory Washington (15:12):
And, uh, you know, just like, just a few kids up in a <laugh>, you know, manning a manning a space. And, uh, really cool. Okay. So let's suppose for a minute, and then I'm just gonna ask you to put your hat on of the kind of person you were back in the day. Let's say you took 20 people who were intimately familiar with the kinds of things that happen in the Situation Room and, and happened in that environment. What would you say is one small detail that a casual observer might not notice, but those individuals who, you know, who've been in that space, would've caught in the movie?

Larry Pfeiffer (15:49):
Yeah. There were a handful of things like that. The first day on the set, I looked around the room, we did a little rehearsal thing, and I was like, there's something not right in this room. I, and I, and finally I realized there were no burn bags in the room. And for, for folks who wonder what the hell's a burn bag? So a burn bag is just a craft brown paper bag. Often in the intelligence business, for whatever reason, they have orange stripes down the side, but it's a bag where you throw your classified waste and it gets folded up and taken away and goes off to a place to be burned or pulverized. So I said to the prop director, I said, Hey, you need burn bags. He goes, what's a burn bag? I explained it to him and he said, oh, not a problem.

Larry Pfeiffer (16:25):
And the very next day we walk into this set, and there were burn bags everywhere. I looked at him, I said, where did you get these? He goes, oh, movie magic. <laugh>. And then, then there were a couple others. The, uh, Rebecca Ferguson, when she first reports the duty, she comes to her desk and she takes a bottle of cleaner, and she's spraying down the surfaces on her desk, her keyboard, her mouse. And that is something that was done by many duty officers and watch officers as they changed shifts, just because nobody wants to get sick. You're working crazy 12-hour shifts around the clock, off hours, you, your, your body immune system gets a little down, and it's very easy to catch a cold. So that was another thing that any duty officer who ever worked in the Sit Room probably got a chuckle when they saw that.

President Gregory Washington (17:05):
Oh that's cool. At some point in time you had to sit down, and I, I think you said you spent your time with Rebecca Ferguson. Who I thought was just phenomenal in the movie and Jason Clarke. Right. So what reactions did you get from actors like that when you explain to them, look, this is how the situation room really works?

Larry Pfeiffer (17:23):
Um, they, they were as goo-goo eyed and as in awe I was of watching Hollywood movie productions and hanging out with a bunch of world class actors. They seemed to think it was kind of cool to hang out with a guy that used to work in the White House Situation, Room <laugh>. So there was this interesting mutual respect thing going on that, uh, that put me at ease right from the get-go. Rebecca in particular, was absolutely wanting to make sure that she portrayed this role as accurately as possible. And we had a number of sessions where we sat down and we talked about the emotions. We talked about how you lead in the situation, room, how you need at times to encourage at other times, you need to just direct, you know, conversations as deep as that.

Larry Pfeiffer (18:05):
And then there were conversations about what do we do with my hands? What do I do? I sit down, do I stand up? How do I wear my headphones? How do I take 'em off and put 'em down? How do I use that phone that's there? And, you know, so we went through some of the mechanics of all of that, and, and, and she developed very quickly this pattern that worked for her, and I think made it look very real. And I had similar conversations with Jason and I, all the, many of the duty officers who were largely kind of background players in that scene. But, you know, they needed to know, well, what should I be saying on the phone? What kinds of conversations would I be having? Would I be consulting with the person next to me? And, and so I, I walked 'em through that. And, and these just were all very talented performers. I mean, they, they were all as good in their craft as, as, you know, the guys we would bring to the Situation Room room were in theirs.

Larry Pfeiffer (18:48):
And so that was a lot of fun. But I, I, as I mentioned to you earlier, before we started to, uh, record, I got kind of caught up with the duty officers in particular because they looked like young duty officers, the same kind of suits, you know, the same kind of hairstyles. Um, the, you know, the, the, the, the jewelry, et cetera. They, they looked like kind of professional Washingtonians. And at the end of the day, we would break, and I would usually go with Kathryn and the assistant directors and screenwriter, and we would kind of postmortem the day a little bit. And then, then we'd finish. And as you're walking out, well, the actors had all gone to the dressing rooms and gotten out of their outfits, and they're all walking out, and they looked like a bunch of, uh, theater actors from New York City, <laugh>. I mean, it was, you know. And, and they're, they're sitting, one group of them, one point were sitting in a corner and they were doing some beatboxing. And, uh, it was just, it was just hilarious. Uh, it was a real out of body experience.

President Gregory Washington (19:34):
So you obviously helped a number of people on the movie, which one most closely resembles your job?

Larry Pfeiffer (19:42):
So the, my job was the Jason Clarke character. So he was the senior director of the Situation Room. It's a day job. He, you know, you're there from seven or eight in the morning till 5, 7, 8 o'clock at night. You are managing the entirety of the Situation Room operation. And it's more than just the watch floor. The Rebecca Ferguson character is what we called a senior duty officer. So when I was there, there were five teams of nine people that worked on alternating shifts, 12 hour shifts. They had this brutal schedule they had to live with. They were all, you know, a good 10 to 15 years younger than me, and, uh, able to handle that kind of a schedule. And, and so that, that was, uh, that was Rebecca's role. But yeah, the, the role I played was more of that role that Jason Clarke had, which is kind of looking at the big picture, all the different things the Situation Room does in terms of supporting the policymakers with information, with intelligence, but also we would support them with, uh, we have a whole array of conference rooms that they use. Many of the listeners here are probably very familiar with that famous photograph of a Situation Room on the day Osama Bin Laden was brought down.

President Gregory Washington (20:46):
Oh yeah. The one where you had the, the president and everybody else in the room, and they're all, and the president was sitting over there in the corner. Which I never understood.

Larry Pfeiffer (20:52):
Oh, I'll tell you that story if you want <laugh>. But, uh, yeah, the, uh, so we manage these conference spaces, and they're used from sunup to pass sundown. And, uh, as I tell people, you know, the hardest decisions in the world get made in these rooms. So our job is to make sure those rooms are comfortable and have all the technology needed to help our policy makers get that job done. And then another significant part of the job was supporting our principals, the national security advisor, the deputy, uh, the president and vice president to a certain extent when they were on the road. So we had a whole group of people that would travel with them and go out ahead of time and set up secure rooms with secure communications.

President Gregory Washington (21:28):
So was the, uh, the, there was a part where they had the president, and they had a guy with him who was kind of the, I guess he was carrying the nuclear football or something. Is that guy real?

Larry Pfeiffer (21:38):
Yeah. So there is a group of military aids who are responsible for shadowing the president at all times. And they carry the, what's called the nuclear football, which in the movie it's the carry-out menu of nuclear annihilation, you know, <laugh>. So, uh,

President Gregory Washington (21:51):
Yeah, I mean, that thing was, so it's really a book like that, huh?

Larry Pfeiffer (21:54):
It really is a book like that.

President Gregory Washington (21:56):
Oh my goodness.

Larry Pfeiffer (21:57):
It's a very serious job. It's a very serious role. We, in the Situation Room, worked closely with the military aids because there were times when they would be the closest person physically to the president, and we need to get information to 'em. Sometimes that's the person we would use to get the information to the president most quickly. So, yes, definitely. We also, in the sit room support continuity of operations, continuity of government, and continuity of the presidency, which are all three similar but slightly distinct functions. And that involves ensuring that the president has a Situation Room-like capability on even the worst of days and wherever he or she may be. But, but the, you know, as the Situation Room senior director, I probably spent most of my time worrying and working on issues about continuity of government, continuity of the presidency, to make sure that, uh, that we were fully prepared and always ready to go. And we used to drill it. Sometimes I'd set my alarm for three in the morning, and I'd call into the Situation Room and I'd say, okay, a chemical bomb just got thrown over the fence to the White House. Go. And they would drill what they would do if that was the circumstance in terms of where people should go, whether a flyaway team should be sent to an alternate location, et cetera.

President Gregory Washington (23:06):
Would you tell 'em if it was real or not, or would you

Larry Pfeiffer (23:08):
Oh, no, it was always a drill. I mean,

President Gregory Washington (23:10):
It was always a drill. Okay.

Larry Pfeiffer (23:11):
Yeah. They, they knew if I was the one calling 'em at three in the morning, it was a drill. But my expectation is that they would, they would take it very seriously. And in the morning, I would get a report from the senior duty officer on how it went and, and whether there was some lessons. I mean, that was the other beauty of the place. Everything was about learning lessons, and there was nothing about blaming people for doing things wrong. If something went wrong, the main objective was to learn from it and improve upon it so that we don't do it wrong again in the future. It was also the only time in my 32 year career in government where I can safely say that every single person working for me was a star.

President Gregory Washington (23:45):
There are so many things I want to ask you, <laugh>. So Jason Clarke most aligned with you in, in your job. You, you look at it and say, yeah, I probably would not have done that in that situation. Or is it safe to say that pretty much what Jason Clarke did and how he comported and handled himself in the movie would've been the way in which you handled yourself in real life?

Larry Pfeiffer (24:08):
I, I think that role really captured the essence of that position to a great extent. I thought Jason Clarke captured that very well in his portrayal. Um, particularly in that scene in the PEOC [Presidential Emergency Operations Center] where the deputy national security advisor is talking to the Russian, uh, I can't remember whether it's deputy prime minister, foreign minister, and Jason Clarke is the one in the background kind of telling him to kind of take the emotion down a level or, uh, passing a note to him with a suggestion as to what he could ask the Russians to do. And that was kind of the dance we sometimes had to play in that position. At the end of the day, you know, it's a team sport. We're all about making sure the team wins, and the team is team president and team USA. So most people in the White House get that.

President Gregory Washington (24:47):
So the movie has been praised for how it builds tension and emotion, right, particularly in that first segment um, with the Situation Room. So how do you feel the movie does at recreating the real emotions that would be in that facility?

Larry Pfeiffer (25:03):
So, it's interesting. I have had some former White House Situation Room employees come to me and say, man, you guys, they nailed it. That's exactly how it was. And I've had others come to me and say, eh, they got a little emotional, I don't think we would've gotten that emotional <laugh>. And, you know, and, and my response to that is, Hey, did you ever have a nuclear weapon minutes away from wiping out one of the major cities--

President Gregory Washington (25:25):
That's exactly right!

Larry Pfeiffer (25:25):
--cities in America? And they'd look at me and go, well, no, probably not that. I mean, we had bad days. I mean, we, Benghazi happened when I was a senior director of the Sit Room. And that was not a happy day, but it wasn't also not at all the equivalent to losing a, a major American city. So I think most recognize that the, that is a, a circumstance we practice to have to do, and we hope we never have to do it.

President Gregory Washington (25:47):
My understanding is, and I'm sure you heard the scuttlebutt on this, that there were individuals in the White House who we're like, oh, well wait a minute, <laugh>. It kind of took a little bit of offense at how realistic the movie actually was portrayed. Did you, did, did any of that come back to your way?

Larry Pfeiffer (26:05):
Most of the criticism has come from those people involved in the missile defense community. Um, the missile defense community has a horrendously difficult job in that they're expected to shoot down an incoming ballistic missile in a very short period of time. And the screenwriter worked with a lot of experts, both former government and academics, and scientists and engineers, and he believes that he portrayed the scenario as realistically as possible that the success rate in shooting down incoming missiles is about 60%, or has, has been, you know, that that prompts the secretary of defense in the movie to say, you know, my god, $50 billion and it's a coin toss, you know, <laugh>.

President Gregory Washington (26:49):
Yeah, I remember that one. I said, oh my God.

Larry Pfeiffer (26:52):
Um, you know, so now there are some in the community today who say, Hey, we're doing better than than that, that statistical average now. And, and I, you know, if I was in government and I was working missile defense, I would probably be defending what we do as well. I also might be using it as an opportunity to go get some more money.

President Gregory Washington (27:08):
Exactly! You know, Hey, hey, you see the movie? You see the movie? Yeah. We want, you want this, you want this number to go up, gimme a few more billion dollars.

Larry Pfeiffer (27:15):
Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

President Gregory Washington (27:16):
So one of the things I like most about the movie is that it, you, you saw the same story unfold from three different vantage points right. And that three-part structure showed multiple perspectives, but also it showed multiple responses. Everyone looking at the same catastrophic event, but looking at it from a different vantage point and having a different chain of command and communication structure. Is that strategy an accurate one?

Larry Pfeiffer (27:49):
Noah Oppenheim, who was the screenwriter for this movie, uh, said that when he and Kathryn developed the plan for this, the first thing they realized is that they had like 18 to 20 minutes of missile response time to deal with, and they wanted to make a feature length film. So they had to come up with a, a mechanism to allow them to do that. So they decided an interesting way to, to do that would be to look at those different layers of responsibility. And so the first part of the movie is largely the missile defense space in Alaska and the White House Situation Room. And so this is your, you know, kind of working fingers on the pulse at any given moment of time, um, with regard to response. And you're seeing how that gets portrayed. Um, you, you do hear things in the background that are going on at some of the other layers, um, that you then pick up more on when you then get to the second and third part of the movie.

Larry Pfeiffer (28:38):
The second part, they took it to that sort of next level of responsibility. Okay, now we're actually responding to it. So you're in the strategic command command center where they're actually having to make decisions about what to do and recommendations to the president about what to do. And you have a deputy national security advisor who's now taking this information and having to formulate a response and recommendations to the president as well. So that sort of happens at that second layer. And then the third layer that they do at the very top is they've now taken it to the top, and you've got the president of the United States, and you've got the secretary of defense, and it's how they are responding at that senior most level of government to this stimulus, to this input, to this crisis. And they did a great job weaving them all together. So, uh, things you maybe hear offhand in the first part, you now hear it more detail in the second part, and then you hear even more detail in the third. So it does weave together. Now, I know there are some critics out there who found it a little redundant, a little repetitive, but, uh,

President Gregory Washington (29:32):
That's what I liked about the movie.

Larry Pfeiffer (29:33):
Yeah. I, I actually enjoyed it as well.

President Gregory Washington (29:35):
I really, really, and it's interesting now that you tell me that they had 18 minutes and they needed to extend it into a feature length film, I'm like, oh, that's actually brilliant. That they came up with the strategy to do it from three different vantage points.

Larry Pfeiffer (29:48):
Right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Really, really, they did a great job.

President Gregory Washington (29:51):
As it relates to decisions. The thing I remember walking away and the discussions with my wife was two things. What was the right decision to make? Because at the end, they kind of leave you hanging. You're kind of left there. We went back and forth. I mean, do you launch, do you not launch? Do you launch? Do you not launch? Right. Yep. I like that it was cleverly done. But the second thing I remember walking away with is, oh my goodness, the level of responsibility that we put on a single person. We have to ensure that the people who we put in place to make those decisions are the people who are gonna make the right decision. That...I left that thinking, my God, the question of a president, no matter who the president is, that decision is an incredibly important one 'cause at the end of the day, that person is making the decision. Get what I'm saying.

Larry Pfeiffer (30:48):
Oh, absolutely. And that was some--

President Gregory Washington (30:49):
The response of the free world. I mean, this is not like you get to have Congress weigh in and, you know, have all of these other entities get their say, and you get the protest in the street, and or you get the pushback. No, no, no. It's a guy or a woman who is being confronted with an, a scenario that's happening really fast. Yep. And they have to make a decision that will alter the course of the rest of everybody else's lives in the whole, in on the whole planet. Right?

Larry Pfeiffer (31:20):
And, and, and in a timeframe where they've not been able to collect all the information that would help them make the best decision.

President Gregory Washington (31:26):
Oh, without question.

Larry Pfeiffer (31:27):
Um, in the research for the movie, Noah Oppenheim learned that the president of the United States, the secretary of defense, and some of these other very high level people, rarely, if ever rehearse a nuclear missile response drill. They, they just don't do it. Or if they do it, it's done once very early on in the administration. Because, and, and honestly, it's, it's because it's one of the least likely things that they're ever gonna have to worry about. And so they just, they either don't get around to it, they're too busy. I think Idris Elba as the president, uh, at one point, makes a speech where he says, wasn't the point of having all of this to deter people from launching missiles, which is why I never, I had to learn more about picking a Supreme Court justice. They withdraw picking a new one, and if the old one tries to crawl outta the grave, what do I do then? You know? And he said, we've never sat down and discussed what we do in, uh, in nuclear missile response because we have this great deterrent capability.

President Gregory Washington (32:20):
Yeah. Isn't that something? That is, that is actually, now that you say it, and I think about it, that's, that was a very, very true statement. That, that was the whole point. Right?

Larry Pfeiffer (32:29):
Yeah. But Kathryn's uh, she, the origin of this movie, she read an article in a journal that she found very interesting about the nuclear weapons threat that exists today. And she walked away thinking it's more diverse. There are more countries that have weapons. Some of those countries we know very little about their weapons. We are not talking to many of those countries, you know, about them. The only country we have any kind of strategic arms treaties with is the Russians, uh, former Soviet Union Russian. And so that, that's scary, number one. Number two, we've just spent 20 plus years fighting wars on terror, where that was the primary concern for national security issues and matters. And as a public, we've largely stopped talking about the threat of nuclear weapons. I mean, you and I are old enough to remember movies and TV shows that were done about the threat of nuclear weapons back particularly in the 1980s, that great miniseries the day after, and scared the bejesus out of a lot of us. But, uh, this is probably the first movie about a nuclear missile threat at that scale since the 1980s. And so, uh,

President Gregory Washington (33:29):
No, I, I'm gonna tell you what, we need more.

Larry Pfeiffer (33:30):
Yeah. And so, Kathryn's goal, uh, although she, you know, loved to probably make a lot of money and get some awards for this movie, her, her main objective was to get people talking about it. And, uh, and I think she succeeded to a certain extent. Um, getting, getting it in front of the public, getting it in front of policymakers, getting folks at the universities and, and at the think tanks to have some discussions about the threat, about our response doctrine, about the burden we put on the president of the United States and about the technological advancements that are taking place that could make our defenses, uh, even weaker. So, yeah. Yeah.

President Gregory Washington (34:04):
Well, it's a tremendous burden that we put on the president. So I can't let you leave here without asking the million dollar question, right? Okay. Perhaps controversially, the ending of the film does not show the president's decision about whether or not to launch a nuclear counter attack. Of all the things that we talked about, my wife and I, we probably talked about that probably more than any other.

Larry Pfeiffer (34:27):
mm-hmm <affirmative>. Yep.

President Gregory Washington (34:28):
Alright. Two part question. What did you hope the audience would take away from that? Number one. And then number two, and more importantly, what decision do you think the president should make?

Larry Pfeiffer (34:41):
Sure. So the answer to the first question, you know, Kathryn's goal with this movie was to get people to spend time in the days and weeks and months after the movie continuing to talk about the issue. And she felt that if she had actually resolved it in some way, shape, or form, if you saw Chicago go up in a gigantic conflagration, or if you saw the president say, I'm not gonna do it, we're gonna wait it out. It could have been an equally interesting movie, and you probably would've talked about it for an hour or two afterwards, but you would've left the movie theater with a, with a sense of closure. Um, and she didn't want that. She wanted people to be bothered and by being bothered, force them to continue to have this conversation and dialogue. So I think she overachieved in that, in that regard, because that's probably been the number one criticism of the movie by kind of the general public. I sat through that movie for two hours and I don't know what happened,

President Gregory Washington (35:29):
Don't know what happened.

Larry Pfeiffer (35:30):
Um, but that wasn't the point of her movie. So that, that's number one. Number two, what do I Larry Pfeiffer think?

President Gregory Washington (35:35):
Yes, you, Larry Pfeiffer.

Larry Pfeiffer (35:36):
Think the president could or should have done? I, I fall in the camp that I would've waited to see what happened with the weapon in Chicago. Would it have been a completely successful nuclear, I mean, Chicago was gonna get hit. You're not stopping that at this point. So I would've waited to see, okay, is this a megaton bomb that's annihilated a large section of our country, or was it a dud? Or did it only partially go and it was sort of a nuclear radiation issue as opposed to a, you know, a fire bomb and a all, all that goes with a nuclear weapon. I think the president probably would've still had time to make a decision after that that could have been more commensurate with what actually happened. As you discussed, being a guy who kind of knows a little bit about the mechanics of ballistic missiles and missile response and the time, I think we would've known who did it. I think we could have had conversations with Russia and China to, forestall them responding in any knee jerk fashion, and the president could have then made a decision to respond at some time later may, maybe hours later, maybe a day later. But I, I think there could have been time. That's my personal opinion.

President Gregory Washington (36:45):
Okay.

Larry Pfeiffer (36:46):
What'd you think?

President Gregory Washington (36:48):
<Laugh> No, I actually agree. I, I actually think he should have held off. And, um, and, and again, there's...I don't know that my decision would have been the right one. If you wait, then you don't know what the aftermath of that is going to do to the country and how people are gonna respond and you may not have time to respond. You, you, you get what I'm saying? You don't what, what gets knocked out, right? So there's so many things that you just, we haven't been hit like that, so we actually don't know.

Larry Pfeiffer (37:22):
And you don't know if there's an, and you, you don't even know if there's an, like, is if this was a North Korea missile launch, do they have another one coming?

President Gregory Washington (37:27):
Well, you would know that, but I mean, but because it would be, it would be ballistic.

Larry Pfeiffer (37:31):
Yeah. Yeah. But I mean, but maybe they're gonna, maybe they're waiting to see what happens in Chicago and they're gonna then launch one towards Los Angeles and just keep you on your back heels all day long.

President Gregory Washington (37:39):
That's right. That's exactly right. Just as we wrap up here. Look, you've had an incredible career in intelligence and now you're the director of the Michael V. Hayden Center for Intelligence, Policy, and International Security. And, uh, for those people out there, and that's here at George Mason University, for those who don't know. So can you quickly explain what the Hayden Center does? Sure. And what inspired your move from the government to the Hayden Center?

Larry Pfeiffer (38:03):
Sure. So the Hayden Center is all about putting on presentations that drill in on the role that intelligence plays in informing national security policy making, national security decision making, homeland security decision making. And so we do that through one-on-one conversations, panel discussions. Uh, we do the most often in-person, um, but even the in-person ones we also do virtually. And so we bring to the table former or current intelligence officials who can lay out their thoughts based on their expertise and knowledge. We bring in folks from the Schar School at George Mason University, or other prominent academics from other universities, or think tanks. And we, we drill into the issues. Uh, this year alone, we've done a handful of events. Uh, we had Tim Weiner, uh, wrote a book about the CIA in the 21st century that was very well received. We had him in for a conversation about his book.

Larry Pfeiffer (38:58):
We had Senator Warner, uh, our great Virginia senator in for a one-on-one conversation where he laid out his very serious concerns about the state of intelligence and the state of the intelligence community and its leadership at this particular point in time. He actually called us and asked us if he could come and use our platform to have that conversation, which was very flattering. And we had a session where we had brought a bunch of former directors in. We had John Brennan, former CIA director, General Hayden, former CIA and NSA (National Security Agency) director, and Ellen McCarthy, who led the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Analysis. And, uh, and we just talked to them about what's going on in the world. So, so we, we provide a, a great platform for our students, for our faculty, our staff to come and sit and hear these experts have a conversation on these varying subjects.

Larry Pfeiffer (39:48):
We record them, we put 'em out on our YouTube channel, Hayden Center YouTube channel. We put 'em on our website. They get many, many more views after the fact.

President Gregory Washington (39:56):
Of course!

Larry Pfeiffer (39:56):
Um, and so it's been a lot of fun. We, we've really enjoyed it. General Hayden, and I believe this is a way to kind of continue our contribution to the national security of this country by helping to demystify to help inform the general public, our student audience, our faculty audience about these issues. Because television, newspapers don't have the time to sit and provide the context that you, I, I think need as a, to, to be an informed citizen in the country.

President Gregory Washington (40:24):
Oh, without question.

Larry Pfeiffer (40:26):
So, so we, so we think we're doing a good thing, uh, by doing this. It's been a lot of fun. We'd actually like to do more. We, uh, uh, we've had some great conversations with the dean of the school, Mark Rozell, and General Hayden, about kind of taking the Hayden Center to another level of, uh, activity. And so we are, uh, we are out there actively looking for folks who might be willing to offer donations to help us achieve a greater vision. So if there's anybody listening who's got a little extra pocket change <laugh> and would love to talk to us about augmenting the work we do, that would be fantastic. We have benefited greatly from Dwight Schar, who the Schar School is named after, uh, great Northern Virginia real estate developer, but today a really great philanthropist. Uh, as many of you know, he, he's donated a lot of money to a lot of different causes, including the little old Hayden Center. So we're been very grateful to him. But we are, uh, we're looking to create a legacy for General Hayden. Uh, General Hayden just turned 80 this year. He's very highly regarded in the intel business as one of the great directors, uh, that have led different agencies. And, um, we would love to have an institution that has his name on it that carries forward for a long time.

President Gregory Washington (41:33):
And I'm in agreement with that. And I want to thank you all for the work that you do in helping us continue to understand these complex issues. But I also want to thank you for being here and working with our students. I, I, you think about it, there aren't many places in the country a young person can go and get this level of depth of engagement with these kind of people. I mean, from, you know, my goodness, the whole Bin Laden thing. You guys are in the room, right? And so...

Larry Pfeiffer (42:04):
Yes. Uh, and there aren't, and you know, and there's not very many people. I mean, the, the people we get on a stage, not many other organizations can get them on the stage or get multiples of 'em on the stage at one time, which, uh, we're very proud of. And as you mentioned, the students, that that's the greatest part of the job, is actually engaging with these young students who are all a hell of a lot smarter than I ever was at their age. And these are the folks we need to encourage to give to their country in some capacity. And whether that be going into the intelligence community or going to work for one of the great contractors, the defense industry, intelligence industry contractors that reside in our Northern Virginia community, or whether it's to, to continue in an academic environment, any way they can keep contributing is fantastic. And I get excited when I engage and deal with them on a daily basis.

President Gregory Washington (42:47):
I would've given anything to have been a young person and have the access to the kinds of individuals that our young people at Mason have access to and can learn from. And it, it is, it gives me goosebumps because what's happening here is they're able to take your experience and they're able to put it in their context. And learn from it. And now they're building from that platform as they start their careers in government, as they start their careers in the military.

President Gregory Washington (43:19):
Well, so we're gonna have to leave it there. Alright. Larry, thank you so much for joining in us to give us an inside look into one of my favorite movies of the year,

Larry Pfeiffer (43:28):
<laugh>. Well, that's fantastic. I enjoyed doing it. Thank you very much.

President Gregory Washington (43:32):
I am George Mason, president Gregory Washington. Thanks for listening. And tune in next time for more conversations that show why we are all together different.

Outro (43:45):
If you like what you heard on this podcast, go to podcast.gmu.edu for more of Gregory Washington's conversations with the thought leaders, experts, and educators who take on the grand challenges facing our students, graduates, and higher education. That's podcast.gmu.edu.