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September 14, 2021
Two days after the January 6 assault on Congress, Donald Trump's highest military adviser, Joint Chief of Staff Mark Milley, took a single initiative to limit the possibility of the president ordering a dangerous military attack or launching a nuclear weapon. It is one of the revelations of 'Peril', the new book by legendary Watergate reporter Bob Woodward and Washington Post reporter Robert Costa, out on September 21 but of which CNN has had a copy.
The two authors write that Milley, deeply shaken by the onslaught, "was certain that Trump had fallen into a severe mental decline after the election. Almost manic, he shouted at the leaders and built his own alternate reality on the endless electoral conspiracies." The general feared that the commander in chief might "go his own way". "You never know what a president's trigger point is," Milley would tell his staff. The joint chief of staff called a secret meeting in his office at the Pentagon to review the planned process for military action, including the launch of nuclear weapons.
Speaking to the officers in charge of the National Military Command Center, the Pentagon's war room, he ordered them not to take orders from anyone else unless he was involved. "No matter what you were told, you follow the procedure. And I am part of the procedure," he said, according to the book. Then he walked around the room, looked the officers in the eyes one by one, and asked them to verbally confirm that they understood. "Yes, sir," was the reply, which Milley took as an oath, according to the volume's authors.