Situation Report chats with McChrystal; Podesta Group lobbying for Hagel; Journalist Bill McMichael scores a win against the Pentagon; John Nagl has a staring role in Kaplan’s new book, and more.

Stan McChrystal is in the house. Breaking a long silence since his hurried resignation in June 2010, and just three days before his much-anticipated book is released to the public, former ISAF commander and head of Joint Special Operations Command Stan McChrystal is briefing military and civilian officials at the Federation Forum in the Pentagon this morning. He’ll talk about the mission in Afghanistan and how to confront the war’s challenges as the number of troops and resources decline. But it’s the imminent release of his book that is garnering him all the attention. The memoir, "My Share of the Task," due out Monday, is about his career in the Army, leadership, and his experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan before a Rolling Stone article led to his resignation. Readers hungry for a kiss-and-tell may be left wanting, McChrystal said in a brief, impromptu chat with Situation Report in his Old Town Alexandria office Thursday.

McChrystal: "For people looking for scandals or criticism, they will be disappointed. That’s not who I am." 

Instead, he said, it is a "pretty well-researched account of what we did." Out of respect for a press embargo, McChrystal said he could not discuss details of the book. But he said he was proudest of the parts that pertain to the changes he made to JSOC. "The core of the book is the transformation of JSOC during combat," he told Situation Report. "We changed completely how we operated." His book was due out just after the November election but was delayed by Pentagon vetters doing a routine review for classified information.

McChrystal told Situation Report that his Pentagon briefing this morning will be about how you get different entities to play nicely. "I’m really just going to talk to them about what it takes to make multiple organizations work together — or at least I’ll talk about the challenges," McChrystal said. Leadership is key to mounting those challenges, he said. "It’s easy to understand the requirement, fairly easy to argue for, but really hard to do."

Starting Sunday, McChrystal will be everywhere. The media frenzy will begin with a pre-taped interview with CBS’s David Martin on "Sunday Morning." That will be followed by a piece in USA Today and appearances on "Today," "Morning Joe," "The Sean Hannity Show," "The View," and "The Daily Show," as well as interviews with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, NBC’s Andrea Mitchell, Mike Huckabee on Fox and others over the next 10 days. 

Welcome to Friday’s edition of Situation Report, where we regret slicing our finger with a newly sharpened knife — forgive typos. Follow me @glubold. Or hit me anytime at gordon.lubold@foreignpolicy.com. And sign up for Situation Report here: http://bit.ly/NCN9uN or just send me an e-mail and I’ll put you on the list. And if you have a report, piece of news, or tidbit you want teased, send it to us early for maximum tease.

The Podesta Group is helping to promote Hagel. The Podesta Group is channeling as much as $35,000 to sponsor Mike Allen’s Playbook this week as it lobbies influencers on the merits of appointing former senator Chuck Hagel as secretary of defense. Podesta is providing public affairs services on behalf of an organization calling itself the Bipartisan Group, a loose association of retired national security types who have taken up Hagel’s cause after some pro-Israel groups and others raised concerns about Hagel’s past statements about Israel. The ads have appeared since Monday in the e-mailed newsletter published by Politico.

Representatives from Podesta would not comment on a matter concerning a client. But a source familiar with the effort told Situation Report that the Bipartisan Group — comprised of David Boren, Frank Carlucci, William "Fox" Fallon, Gary Hart, Brent Scowcroft, Thomas Pickering, and others — approached Podesta to help get the word out about Hagel. Critics continue to cite things Hagel did and said in the late 1980s and 1990s as evidence of less-than-strong support for Israel.

"The Bipartisan Group has a different view of Senator Hagel’s record and his views, and they want to make sure that he is not swift-boated," said the individual. "It is a record they are comfortable promoting. If he is a nominee, he should be afforded a fair hearing and that he should be afforded a fair process."

Individuals from two publications who are familiar with ad rates for Allen’s popular e-mail put the buy at approximately $35,000 for a week’s worth of sponsorship.

Critics of Hagel, like the Israel Project’s Josh Block, continue to target him. And the conservative Free Beacon published a story yesterday about how, as head of the World USO, he tried to shut down a USO port in Haifa, Israel. The lobbying effort, which includes efforts beyond sponsorship of the e-mailed newsletter, is a sign of how much some of Washington’s heavyweights are willing to fight for Hagel — unlike the ghostly push for Susan Rice as secretary of state. Many individuals on either side have criticized the White House for not moving quicker either to nominate Hagel and fight for him or to move on. 

Signer Zbigniew Brzezinski, to Situation Report on why the lobbying for Hagel: "I think a lot of people are reacting to the completely one-sided and unfair and almost odd attacks on Hagel, which is not a contribution to a serious public discussion about who would make a good defense secretary."

From the letter, addressed to President Barack Obama: "We write to you, Mr. President, in support of Senator Hagel because we believe our polarized political life is much in need of leaders with the kind of bipartisanship and independence of conscience and mind that Chuck Hagel’s service to our country has exemplified."

Bipartisan Group letter: http://bit.ly/TnWWLB

Free Beacon story: http://bit.ly/WoiHbI

From Josh Block’s Twitter account last night: @TNR: The reasons why liberals should oppose #Hagel are numerous. http://on.tnr.com/UmQMOw 

Meet the Pentagon’s new top lawyer. For now. The E-Ring’s Kevin Baron reports that the man to replace Jeh Johnson is his former deputy, Robert Taylor. http://atfp.co/TzZPJl

Score one for journalism. Journalist Bill McMichael won an important legal fight in a FOIA case against the Pentagon regarding the allegedly abusive work environment at U.S. Strategic Command. McMichael, formerly a long-time reporter for Navy Times who is now with the News Journal of New Castle, Del., had requested the records of a DOD Inspector General investigation into the work environment at the command, created by Capt. William Powers while he was serving as a top official there between October 2008 to March 2010. But his request was denied through a "Glomar" response, which is a legalistic dodge named after a vessel built by the CIA to salvage a sunken Soviet submarine. Under Glomar, the government neither confirms nor denies the existence of the records. McMichael made a subsequent appeal to DOD, which was also denied, leading him to file a suit in federal court. Judge Rosemary Collyer of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia agreed with McMichael, saying release of the records was in the public interest. McMichael was represented by Yale Law School’s Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic and other attorneys. 

McMichael, a former colleague, to Situation Report, on the win: "This case involved nothing more than an investigation into an allegedly abusive military leader of substantial stature — a public figure, as the judge determined. Hiding the existence of that investigation behind Glomar was a travesty, in my opinion. It’ll be interesting to see what DOD does next." Yale Law School story: http://bit.ly/Z2yYom

"Morning Joe" runs an excerpt of Fred Kaplan’s new book, "The Insurgents: David Petraeus and the Plot to Change the American Way of War," that leads with: "A few days shy of his twenty-fifth birthday, John Nagl saw his future disappear." Kaplan describes how at that time, in February 1991, in the deserts of southern Iraq, Nagl, a platoon leader, embodied a U.S. Army struggling to adapt after the Cold War. Nagl, now the counterinsurgency expert, had become fluent in German because he thought that that’s where he’d be spending the bulk of his career. But the fall of the Berlin Wall, the end of the Cold War, and the realities of confronting a crumbling military in Iraq showed just how ill-prepared the Army was for the future.

"The Insurgents," Kaplan argues, is the "inside story" of how Petraeus and people like Nagl and H.R. McMaster forged a "mafia" to force the Army to change its culture and institutions — a shift with which the Army continues to struggle to this day. 

Kaplan, on Nagl and the first Gulf War in the first chapter: "It was a moment of unaccustomed triumph for the US military, still haunted by the defeat in Vietnam. But to Nagl, it also signaled the end of the era that made the triumph possible. Tank-on-tank combat had been the defining mode of warfare for a modern superpower; now it teetered on the verge of obsolescence. The Soviet Union and Iraq had been the last two foes that possessed giant tank armies. With the former gone up in smoke and the latter crushed so easily on the battlefield, it seemed implausible that any foreign power would again dare challenge the United States in a head-on contest of strength. The premise of all Nagl’s plans — to say nothing of the rationale for his beloved Army’s doctrines, budgets, and weapons programs — seemed suddenly, alarmingly irrelevant." http://on.msnbc.com/X2IUPh

Noting

• The Atlantic: How Obama decides your fate if he thinks you’re a terrorist. http://bit.ly/VxYUr6
• Defense News: Defense News correspondent Enginsoy in Turkey dies in home. http://bit.ly/ZYraKl
• WSJ: Defense industry girds for a new reality. http://on.wsj.com/S7gkhV
• BBC: Bahawal Khan to succeed Pakistan militant leader. http://bbc.in/Zjz1RB
• Reading Ricks: Moving through Army jobs too fast. http://atfp.co/Tz4QSs
• Air Force Times: An ode to the "Poo Pond." (with video!) http://bit.ly/VzloIa
• Spiegel Online: Syria: A two-year travelogue from hell. http://bit.ly/TNj2pS