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A farewell interview with Mike Mullen

At a change-of-command ceremony this past week, President Obama had nothing but praise for Admiral Mike Mullen, the just-retired Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Admiral Mullen has been speaking out a lot this week, too ... as we hear in our Cover Story from CBS News national security correspondent David Martin:

You wouldn't think the nation's highest ranking officer would be a regular on "The Daily Show," but in his final days as chairman he was back for a third appearance.

Last summer Admiral Mike Mullen recruited "Daily Show" host Jon Stewart to go with him to visit the troops in Afghanistan: "I was surprised when we landed in Kandahar that you forced them to carry you around on a litter," said Stewart.

"Actually that usually only happens once a trip," Mullen laughed.

After the "Daily Show" taping, Martin asked Mullen for an assessment of his host: "Good. Good. I mean, he does his homework."

When asked what he gets out of appearing on a Comedy Central satirical news TV show, Mullen replied, "Well, I get an opportunity to address an audience that in many cases may not be really familiar with the military and what we've been through.

"It's a much younger audience and it's a very popular audience. And it's been an opportunity with him to connect with a very popular guy who can also be a voice for our men and women and their families, and he clearly is."

Stewart was similarly complimentary of his guest: "He always does great, the man is charming," he said.

Well, not always. His staff says when he's tired he can be grumpy. And with his schedule he is frequently tired. In addition to all the things you expect the President's chief military adviser to do, he is constantly trying to connect with wider audiences - going on daytime talk shows, appearing with Muppets, and traveling to campuses to tell people what life is really like for soldiers and their families ...

"If I'm a 15-year-old boy or girl in that family and I was four or five when these wars started, my whole life in my family has been at war. That's never happened before," he told the audience at the University of Miami.

When he first started reaching out he was shocked at how little people really know about the sacrifices the one percent who serve are making - and what service members have been through - the number of deployments, stress on families, the suicide rates.

People who know the details, like retired Sgt. Jarrad Turner, who couldn't get the V.A. to pay for his surgery after being wounded in Iraq, frequently give him an earful:

"You got men and women and wives and kids and they're suffering. We've got to do better, sir," Turner said.

"Well, that's why I'm here," Mullen responded.

Everyone agrees wounded soldiers deserve the best possible care. But the stand Mullen took on gays serving openly put him at odds with some of the top commanders. They were worried about its effect on readiness.

He saw it differently.

"It's fundamentally an integrity issue

"Did it ever occur to you when you became chairman that you would end up being an agent of cultural change?"

"I hadn't thought about that."

In fact, it had never occurred to him that he would become Chairman. He was planning to retire as Chief of Naval Operations, until the day then-Secretary of Defense Gates called him into his office.

"Within about, oh, I don't know, 30 seconds, I could tell where he was going," Mullen recalled. "And I, uh, sort of got into one of these slow motion, 'Is this really happening' kind of feelings."

"And why did he tell you he was turning to you?"

"In particular something I had said that got his attention, which I felt that our Army was the center of gravity of our military - and he thought that was pretty significant coming from the Navy chief."

An Admiral suddenly thrust into the middle of two land wars, he immediately took off for Iraq and Afghanistan to see for himself.

It was the Fall of 2007. In Iraq the battle was raging full-tilt. But what really alarmed him was Afghanistan. Notes taken by one of Mullen's aides record a sergeant saying he was seeing his men "crumble" under the stress of too much fighting with too little equipment.

One commander said he needed 34 more helicopters. Mullen had to tell them there was "nothing on the shelf for Afghanistan."

"We were just limited on what we could send to Afghanistan, based on the priority that the Iraq War had at the time," Mullen said.

When he became Chairman there were 165,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, and just 25,000 in Afghanistan.

Friday - when he stepped down as Chairman - there were 40,000 troops in Iraq, and 97,000 in Afghanistan.

It was Mullen who told the President he should send General Stanley McChrystal to Afghanistan, a recommendation which ran disastrously aground when McChrystal and his aides were quoted in Rolling Stone Magazine as being disrespectful of their civilian leaders in Washington.

"When that article broke, he literally called me as, as I had it on my desk - and I was sick, I mean literally sick to my stomach," Mullen said.

"Sick about what?"

"Sick that, that our commander in Afghanistan was, from my perspective, immediately in jeopardy . . . I was stunned and I knew it was big trouble."

"Did you say, 'Stan, what the hell were you thinking?'" asked Martin.

"He knew it was, it was wrong," Mullen said. "And he took responsibility for it immediately."

The President fired McChrystal, bringing what - until that moment - had been a glorious career to a humiliating end.

"That night you went over to his quarters. What did you talk about?" Martin asked.

"My schedule was crushed that night but that didn't make any difference. I was gonna figure out a way to just get to Stan, to be with him, talk about it, because all of us know what a crushing blow something like that would be, and clearly it was for Stan and his wife," he said. "And I just wanted to be with them."

That was one of the low points of Mullen's four years in office.

The unquestioned high point: Watching the raid that got bin Laden, with the President in the White House Situation Room.

"I had extremely high confidence that would, we could execute the mission," Mullen said. "I went out and watched them rehearse."

"You watched a rehearsal of the raid? Did you talk to them?" Martin asked.

"I did."

"What did they tell you?"

"I got to meet 'em all and look 'em in the eye about, actually shake their hand, and a little closer than you and I are sitting right now," he said.

"Were they confident?"

"They were. They're the best I've ever seen. Incredibly experienced."

After the raid, somebody in the room had to inform Gen. Parvez Kayani, Chief of Pakistan's Army, what had just happened.

"Who gets to make the first call to Pakistan?" Martin asked.

'''Cause of my relationship with Kayani, I was the one that made the call to him."

"What was his reaction?"

"One of the things I've tried to do is, with my relationship with General Kayani is keep the things that we've talked about privately, private," Mullen said.

"Was it tense? Angry?"

"I'd just say difficult," Mullen said.

And it became more difficult last week, when Mullen told Congress Pakistan's intelligence service, known as the ISI, had helped the Haqqani network - one of the most violent factions in Afghanistan - pull off high-profile attacks, like the one on the U.S. Embassy in Kabul.

"The ISI strategically has supported the Haqqani network for a significant period of time," Mullen said.

The man who had worked hard at becoming Pakistan's best friend had finally had it with Pakistani double-dealing. "One of the messages to Pakistan is, what does it say when the interlocutor that has been closest to you over the last four years feels this strongly about where we are?"

In his four years as Chairman, more than 2,000 Americans have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. You can't see it, but he wears a bracelet in memory of all the fallen.

"I've tried to keep that as close to me every single day, every waking moment, as I possibly can," he said.

"So you have the name of a specific soldier killed in battle?" Martin asked.

"Right. A young woman named Corporal Jessica Ellis, who died in May of 2008. She's buried in Section 60. We routinely go by her grave."

In one of his last official acts as Chairman, Mullen and his wife Deborah planted a tree in Section 60, the part of Arlington National Cemetery where the dead from Iraq and Afghanistan lie buried.

"For me and for Deborah, there's no greater sacrifice ... And America needs to look that most difficult part in the eye and make conscious decisions that we will continue to do this."

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