Personally, I never had any negative encounters with the law growing up.

My job as an intelligence officer, detective, was to monitor any subversive activity which could negatively impact the city of Colorado Springs. And, let's face it: the Ku Klux Klan, historically, is a subversive group.

I laugh all the time about our investigation, especially about making a fool of David Duke, who likes to think I don't have the intelligence of an ape because he thinks I'm genetically inferior.

The military is a microcosm of American society, so it really is not unusual that they would have Klan people and white supremacy people connected to them.

When we first met, I was probably six layers down in the military structure, but General McChrystal at that time was a soldier's leader, and he was part of the task force. So everyone developed close relationships.

When I was a child in England before the war, Christmas pudding always contained at least one shiny new sixpence, and it was considered a sign of great good luck for the new year to find one in your helping of the pudding.

War was forced upon mankind in his original civil and social condition.

Mattis has been sharply critical of President Barack Obama's policies on Iran and Obama's capping of troop numbers and campaign end-dates in theaters of war such as Afghanistan and Iraq. Mattis also appears to be a skeptic of the Obama-era policy of putting women into combat roles.