CQ Magazine: Scott Redd

The February issue of CQ continues our ongoing series of interviews with hams in high places, this month featuring retired Vice Admiral Scott Redd, K0DQ, who most recently served the nation as Director of the National Counterterroism Center. Scott is also an ardent contester who has won just about every major on-air competition at least once.

CQ Interviews:
Vice Admiral John Scott Redd (Ret.), KØDQ
Former Director
National Counterterrorism Center
BY RICH MOSESON,* W2VU
*Editor, CQ
e-mail:
Courtesy NCTC
www.cq-amateur-radio.com February 2008 • CQ • 13

The last paragraph of retired Vice Admiral Scott Redd’s official biography is one that’s guaranteed to get the attention of nearly any ham: After noting that Redd is past president of the Naval Academy Class of 1966 and that he has served on the advisory boards of several non-profit
organizations, the paragraph ends by saying, “An avid amateur radio operator, VADM Redd has won seven world championships.” In fact, said Scott, the only major contest he hasn’t won is the CQ World-Wide DX CW Contest … but more on that later.

“Ham radio has been and remains both a major and a very positive influence in both my professional life and my personal life,” said Redd, adding, “I used the knowledge gained
in ham radio in virtually every job I’ve had.” Those jobs have included a variety of top military assignments, followed by several high-level civilian positions in the federal government,
most recently as the chief architect of America’s war on terror, as the first Senate-confirmed Director of the National Counterterrorism Center.

As is the case with so many of us, Scott says it was getting into ham radio in his youth that got him pointed toward his eventual career, but in his case it was not so much the technology
as the operating experience and some of the people he contacted on the air from his hometown of Sidney, Iowa. He recalls discovering ham radio through Boy Scouts and building a crystal
radio, but not having a local ham mentor, or “Elmer.”

“I … didn’t really have an Elmer,” Redd noted, “but we used to go to Omaha, which was the nearest big city, and believe it or not—I’m not blowing smoke at this—I used to buy CQ. I
can remember buying CQ magazine in about 1954 on the newsstand outside of one of the big department stores there.

I’d take it home and just devour it. “Morse code was no problem. Got my license, my Novice
license,” Redd continued. “I guess I was 10 years old when I got licensed. … again, not having an Elmer was interesting. My dad bought me a Globe Scout. World Radio, if you remember
them … was in Council Bluffs. “I had my license about two months, I think, before I actually
made a contact, and the reason was I didn’t realize that there was a difference between the outside and the centerconductor, so I just had an antenna out there and I wrapped
it around the outside of the coax connector on the back of the Globe Scout. And as you would understand … it didn’t get out. So I finally had a ham from about 10 miles away come over and
he said ‘plug it in here’ and I was off and running.”

Once he actually started putting RF into the air, Scott quickly discovered the lure of DXing, recalling that he was “on 15 meters … calling CQ one afternoon and a guy from Argentina came back, and that was magic for me. And that just kind of got me started with my primary
interests, which are DXing first of all, and now contesting.”

“DXing really became a passion for me,” he continued. “I can remember going home from school—walking home, or running home, from school— at lunchtime, like in the 6th grade, to
work Europe on 15 meters. This was back in the high sunspot cycle, the coming up of (Cycle 19). … I made DXCC and it’s funny, about a year ago, I was looking at some old stuff and I found one
of my KØDQI cards and I had the very bold statement on it: ‘the youngest DXCC operator in the world.’ This was … I don’t know, I was age 13, so I guess it was 1956 or ’57. I think it was true.
Nobody ever challenged me, but that was a real passion, and by the time 1962 came around (when Redd graduated from high school—ed.), I had about 280 countries, a lot of (them) with
50 watts and a folded dipole, later with 400 watts and a small beam. But that’s where I was and DXing was really what I was into, and that wasn’t too bad a score back in those days. … At the
same time, I knew that I wanted to do something bigger.”

This, Redd noted, was a direct result of his ham radio activity. “DXing, as you can imagine, was—is—almost like the internet maybe is for kids today, but for a kid in small-town Iowa, that was my window to the world, and through a variety of circumstances, it really led to dreaming about bigger things. It definitively led to going to the Naval Academy, and that’s a story in and of itself.”

A Landlubber Goes to Sea

It seems that Scott Redd never really planned on going to Annapolis. Growing up in Iowa, he’d never even seen the ocean, let alone sailed on it. And his ham radio contacts had him looking
skyward… “Ham radio, as I said, was sort of a window on the world. I’d talked to Barry
Goldwater (K7UGA, the Arizona Senator and 1964 Republican Presidential candidate who had been a reserve Major General in the Air Force, and one of the leading proponents of establishing the the U.S. Air Force Academy—ed.) and actually talked to the Vice Commander of the Strategic Air Command, Butch Griswold, and (to make a) long story short, I wanted to go to the Air Force Academy because I wanted to fly airplanes, the Strategic Air Command and all that sort of stuff. My Congressman called and said, ‘Hey, I don’t have an appointment to the Air Force Academy, would you like to go to the Naval Academy?’ And I’d never seen the ocean and never gone anywhere. … I think I’d been east of the Mississippi once, and I said ‘sure.’ ”

Redd took to the Navy like, oh, I can’t resist the pun … like a duck to water. He was president of his class at the Naval Academy, where he majored in math and physics and was a Trident
Scholar. After graduation in 1966, Redd became a Fulbright Scholar and studied in Uruguay; then as a Burke Scholar, received a Master of Science degree in Operations Analysis from the Naval Postgraduate School. Through it all, though, ham radio was never far away.

“DXing was hard to stay up with (in the Navy). You couldn’t make the Honor Roll when you moved every two years, obviously, so DX contesting kind of took over.”

Scott recalled that his first contest win came from Uruguay. “I spent a year as a Fulbright cholar in Uruguay when I graduated from the Academy, ‘66–’67, and was CX3BBD, and actually operated (the CQ World-Wide DX Phone Contest) from CX2CO. … We won the multisingle
in, it must have been ’66, from down there.”

But Scott pointed out that “my highlight was probably in Mexico, ’71–’73 … actually in the ’71–’72 contest year.” At that point, he was a young Lieutenant with a young family, assigned to the Mexican Naval Academy in Veracruz. He brought his Drake 4 line and a couple of antennas to his new QTH and was quickly licensed as XE1IIJ and got on the air.

“In those days there were five major (contests),” Redd continued. “CQ World-Wide Phone and CW, ARRL Phone and CW, and (CQ) WPX, which was only sideband in those days, as you
may recall. I won four out of five. The only one I didn’t win was the CQ World-Wide CW, and those were the first four world championships … and that became my passion.”

“So anyway, I started doing singleoperating but typical of the Navy, came back from Mexico, went to sea, didn’t do much operating, came back ashore, finally won a U.S. championship from
W3GRF in 1987, right before I made Admiral. Then basically life just got too hectic and I did very little contesting,very little operating, except when I was in Bahrain, as A92Q, and let’s see, I think I was third in the world in WPX over there.”

Scott described that experience in an article he posted on the CQ WPX contestwebsite. “With a modest antenna system I entered my first CQ WPX CW as A92Q in 1995,” he wrote. “I had no
strategy, only a bare understanding of propagation from the Middle East, and didn’t think I’d be able to finish the contest.

But the Gulf was quiet that weekend and I managed a third-place worldwide finish. That was my first serious contest since Mexico as a DX station, as well as my first contest using a computer,
and my appetite was whetted.”

Back to our interview, Redd brought us up to the current time. “(I) finally retired from the military in ’98, went in the private sector … wanted to get back into contesting, ended up going down to Aruba (as P40Q and P41P, operating from the QTH of Jacky Oduber, P43P) and trying to win (the CQ WW CW). I also won WPX CW at some point for the world (2002—ed.), so now I’ve won five out of six world championships and I’ve been trying like a son-of-a-gun
to win CQ World-Wide CW. … I’ve come in number two, I’ve come in number three, but I’ve never won that one. And I don’t know if anybody’s ever actually won all six of them—there are only a few people who come close to it—so that’s still my goal, every time I get close, in
CQ World-Wide CW, to win the world. I haven’t gotten there yet.”

“So the long and the short of it is, I’m still interested in ham radio,” KØDQ added. “I’m looking forward to the chance, to the time, when I can go do it some more. I’ve done a little bit of operating back in Washington here, at W4RX, Jim Ahlgren … he’s a physician and he has a big mountaintop station.

I’ve had a couple of U.S. top ten finishes from there in the last couple of years, but basically, since coming to this job, I really haven’t been able to do much contesting, and in the years between government service I was going to Aruba. I was Papa-40-Queen down there for, I guess, three or four contests, and that’s where I won the WPX, one year with high power and one year with low power, and just missed a world record by a scratch on low power.”

A “Top Flight” Navy Career

Focusing on ham radio in our discussion, Scott somewhat glossed over the details of his military career, particularly between the time he made Admiral in 1987 and his retirement from active duty in 1998, so we’ll fill i the blanks from his various official biographies. His early commands included a guided missile destroyer, a destroyer squadron, a multi-national NATO force, and a carrier battle group.

From 1994 to 1996, Redd commanded all U.S. naval forces in the Middle East, and in 1995, recommissioned the only new U.S. Navy fleet in a half century, becoming the first Commander of the Fifth Fleet since World War II. While in the Middle East, he commanded seven major operations involving Iraq, Iran, and the withdrawal of United Nations forces from Somalia. He was awarded the Order of Bahrain along with five Distinguished Service Medals from the U.S. Navy.

Again, Scott always found time for ham radio along with his military duties.

“I’ve tried to be an ambassador for ham radio,” he explained, noting that he made a point of visiting notable hams in the region when he could. “Obviously, King Hussein, when I was out in the Fifth Fleet, (on) the professional side, I was out in Bahrain … went to see King Hussein.
(At a) different time in life, I went to see the Sultan of Oman several times, (he was) A-41-Alfa-Alfa. You know, a lot of the Middle Eastern rulers out there actually were ham radio operators in their youth.”

In 1996, Admiral Redd was reassigned to Washington, where he served as the Navy’s senior advisor on strategy and policy, and as chief of staff to the Secretary of Defense’s senior civilian
policy advisor. His final assignment on active duty was as Director of Strategic Plans and Policy in the office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In this position, he was the senior advisor on strategy and policy for the entire U.S. military and was one of three military leaders (along with
the Chairman and Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs) who regularly attended senior National Security Council meetings at the White House. While in this post, Redd also guided the development of a new National Military Strategy and supervised the military strategy portion of the Secretary of Defense’s $1.5 trillion Quadrennial Defense Review. Scott retired from active duty on September 1, 1998. The only real change, though, was exchanging his Navy uniform for a suit.

Brief Stint in the Private Sector

In 1999, Scott became Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer of the NetSchools Corporation, which his bio describes as “a high-tech startup company in the education sector.” Scott filled in the details in our interview: “Essentially (NetSchools) was a systems approach or comprehensive approach to education and using technology in education. ... The core of it was,
on the one hand, every kid gets a laptop computer. Number two, you use the internet and you take the best of the best in terms of where there’s teaching styles, pedagogic styles, and you were
able to make that available to a much broader group of students. And number three, which was probably the most key thing to making it succeed, was that you trained the teachers in the use of technology. So that’s what that was all about, and we had some pretty dramatic results in terms of raising test scores and all sorts of things. We were actually cash-flow positive before 9-11, and of course, after 9-11, a lot of the state budgets were affected and we ended up selling the company.

“One of the interesting things was, how do you put a bunch of computers in a classroom and make it work? If you can imagine having 40 students in every class taking a laptop and plugging and unplugging it into a bunch of wires, that wasn’t a solution; the lower end of the RF spectrum had some problems, because it goes through walls, so we ended up using infrared … as the wireless system, if you will, within the classroom.

That’s the high end of the spectrum, obviously ... and that actually became a pretty significant piece of what we did.

So even in that, ham radio came in handy, and just more generally with computers. You work with contesting programs and everything else and you feel very comfortable with the computing
world, too. ... This is the future of education in the country, I believe. But it’s going to take a while to catch on.”

Back to Government Service

After five years in the private sector, Scott returned to the federal government, this time in a civilian role as Deputy Administrator and Chief Operating Officer of the Coalition Provisional
Authority in Iraq, a position in which he was able to get local and foreign hams there back on the air.

“I was there a fairly short period of time, until I got called back by the President, but I was basically the co-Vice President of Iraq; Jerry Bremer was the head of the Coalition Provisional
Authority and I was his deputy, and it turned out that the half of the country that I took care of was the technology area, so actually I was responsible, along with electricity and gas and everything else, for about two months, for ham radio licensing, and a guy whose name
escapes me right now was actually the guy who ran it. We got, as you indicated, both the local Iraqi hams back on the air and we allowed the contractors and foreigners in the area to operate.”

After just two months in Iraq, Redd was called back to Washington to serve as Executive Director of the commission established as a result of the controversy over intelligence reports about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq that preceded the U.S. invasion there in 2003 (the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction).
After the commission deliv

ered its report to the President in early 2005— a report that was adopted by President Bush as his blueprint for reforming the intelligence community—Redd was
named the Director of the newly formed National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) and was confirmed by the Senate, assuming his new duties on August 1, 2005.

The NCTC has a dual mission and KØDQ had two bosses. The first mission is to serve as the federal government’s primary organization for analyzing and integrating all intelligence
related to terrorism. In that role, Scott reported to the Director of National Intelligence. The second mission—an extension of Scott’s earlier assignments— is to conduct strategic and
operational planning for all U.S. counterterrorism activities, essentially to be the chief architect of America’s war on terror. In this role, Redd reported directly to the President.

The Role of Ham Radio

Admiral Redd says ham radio has played an essential role in his professional life in addition to the hobby aspects that have provided him with a break from his day-to-day responsibilities.
“It got me going; it gave me a bunch of things professionally,” he explained. “I used the knowledge gained in ham radio in virtually every job I’ve had, from obvious things such as knowledge of HF propagation … you know, you’re on a Navy ship at sea, and you’re trying to
figure out how to get to the base and (I’d tell the radio op), ‘try the 3 meg to Keflavik; trust me, it’ll work,’ and the guy says, ‘the chief says no, it’ll never work’ … and 10 minutes later, we’re the
heroes of the entire battle group because they’ve established comms, and it’s all because as a DXer and a contester, you know what HF propagation is like.

“At the other end of the spectrum, understanding the RF spectrum is something that has entered into every aspect of my job, including the current one. I’ve used it in understanding radio and propagation, whether it’s navigation, communication, radar, electricity in general, satellites, electronic warfare, command-and-control, all of that. … For most of my contemporaries, all of that stuff was a black box and that was something for the techies and the geeks to worry about. And growing up with (ham radio), you’re just very comfortable with it, and I’ve used it in things such as arms control discussions and other stuff over the years, just because I feel comfortable with it.”

Redd continued, “I could take you through every job I’ve had. Of course, the Navy’s a technological service, but not just in the Navy. Even being in Washington and the policy committee, sitting in the White House situation room with the President—everything,
virtually everything that I touch and have touched in my career in government and indeed out of government, I’ve been better prepared to do that job because of ham radio. “Some of it’s a direct correlation … the things we’ve talked about—the RF spectrum, understanding technology
writ large, understanding electricity and electronics; and the other is just sort of the general thing, because … you have an understanding of how things work and if things don’t work, you look for solutions, you learn to solve problems. (It’s) sort of a thing that’s very difficult to
quantify, and to a certain extent it’s intangible, but I think you learn that in ham radio, whether it’s - in my case starting out, how do you connect an antenna to a transmitter when nobody’s
told you how to do it - to how do you get the last decibel out of that 4-element, or 5-element or 6-element Yagi, how do you stack ‘em and how do you get the phasing to line up in a two or three (Yagi) stack, that sort of stuff — working through that is a mental discipline, and

I think anybody’s who been through amateur radio and has gotten involved in it, and particularly has either built or experimented with it, is going to be better off for it. And getting in front of a microphone—I mean, when I got on a Navy ship, I had no compunction about
getting on and talking on a tactical voice circuit or … doing more than one thing at a time. I think you’ve got the general gist of it, I think it’s just something which has a tremendous payoff, some of it’s very easy to relate and quantify and the rest is a little bit more intangible, but
nonetheless very real.”

Ham Radio and National Security

In our December interview, Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England, ex-W3AWO, said he believes that not being competitive in science and technology poses an even greater threat to
the U.S. than does terrorism, noting that “(w)e need to expose young people to things like amateur radio to get them interested.” Since Adm. Redd’s job was to lead the war on terrorism, I asked whether he agreed with Secretary England, and whether he feels ham radio continues to be relevant to young people today.

Redd said he believes that both terrorism and a lack of competitiveness in science and technology are very real dangers to our country. “Which is number one, which is number two? I would say that tactically, the terrorism threat is obviously, certainly, the wolf closest to the sled, if you will; but they’re both very significant strategic threats, and I think we would be wrong to not take either one of them seriously and do something about it.”

Regarding the ongoing relevance of ham radio for young people today, Redd added, “Clearly, things have changed a lot since ham radio used to be one of the major means of communications, certainly for ships at sea or even if you were overseas, but I think … there are
things that you gain by being in amateur radio that you don’t get other places. And I guess, first and foremost, is the RF spectrum. No matter how you look at it and whether you’re talking about the high end of it or the HF side of it or wherever, it’s something that just permeates
everything we do. … So I think familiarity with that is one of the things you get in ham radio that you don’t get elsewhere. And number two is that sense of experimentation.”

Redd also referred back to comments made by Admiral Edmund Giambastiani, Jr., N4OC, recently retired Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in his October 2007 CQ interview, noting that even though he had worked closely with both England and Giambastiani, he hadn’t realized until now that either one had been or still was a ham.

“I grew up building Heathkits. Actually most of my building was of antennas, which was the area where I probably did more experimentation. But I think I agree with what Eddie said: You experiment around, you try something and see what it does. It takes the—what’s the word, not
the fear, and certainly not the magic— but it takes sort of the uncertainty about technology out of it, and you say, ‘OK, this is something I can work with, that I can mess around with,’ if you will, and it helps you in terms of understanding it, whether you’re making policy decisions
or whether you’re building the next generation of whatevers. So I think ham radio still has a significant role to play.

Obviously, it’s no secret it’s a graying hobby, and it’s harder to attract the youth, but I think it’s certainly something that is very important for us to continue to push as an educational thing, and as something that contributes to our national security, in the broadest sense.”

Christmas Morning

We wrapped up our discussion with a look at what keeps ham radio relevant to Scott Redd, even as he has held down a wide variety of top leadership posts in our national defense community,
both military and civilian.

“For me, because I’ve been in and out of this enough, Rich, it’s still, it’s still magic,” he said. “As a young kid growing up, Christmas morning was always exciting. You’d get up thinking, ‘What’s
going to be under the tree?’ Well, for me, it’s still exciting to wake up on the morning of a major contest, and I’m going to be able to operate in it and see what’s going to be. It’s just, it’s always
been a magical thing for me.”

“I think we’re always looking,” Scott added, “and rightly so, Rich, for how ham radio fits in the public forum in terms of worth and value, and those are all very real things; we should do that.
For me, that’s true, and I’ve used it that way and it’s been of tremendous value.

But it’s also a heck of a lot of fun. “I mean my two hobbies right now— probably ’cause my knees are shot— are fishing, and when I get a chance, ham radio. And to a certain extent, they’re both the same thing. You throw a lure out and you never know whether you’re going to catch something, and if you do, what it’s going to be and how big it’s going to be. You know, you call CQ on 20 meters over the North Pole and a wavering signal comes back and you don’t know whether it’s going to be a VU7 or whatever. There’s excitement and fun, which, for me quite frankly, has never grown old. It’s still magic.”

Postscript

Two weeks after our interview, Scott’s knees apparently caught up with him, and he announced that he would be resigning as NCTC Director effective November 10, 2007. He needed double
knee replacement surgery and felt that the surgery and recovery would take him away from his responsibilities for too long a time. In a memo to staffers, he said that, together, they
had “achieved great—even revolutionary— successes,” and that he feels the U.S. is better prepared today than at any time in its history to wage the global war on terror.

In an e-mail to CQ, he added, “It was, as you can imagine, a tough decision that was months in the making. I really hate to leave, but it’s the only prudent option at this point.” Redd said his plans for the near future are “to rest, get reconnected with family, and prepare for and
undergo surgery. Once we’re through all that, I look forward to re-engaging in ham radio. I especially look forward to doing some CW DX contesting from the U.S. and overseas.—Scott, KØDQ/A92Q”

We at CQ wish Scott all the best in his surgery and recovery, and look forward to hearing him back on the air soon, either from home, from Aruba, or from some other exotic DX location.
And we’ve got that CQ WW CW plaque on hold for you, Scott!