Widower Confronts Vance Over 'Fundamental Failures' Before Iranian Drone Killed His Wife in Kuwait
Joey Amor told the vice president at a CBS News town hall that leadership failures preceded the March 1 attack that killed his wife, Master Sgt. Nicole Amor, and five others. Vance said it was the first he had heard of it.
A man whose wife was among the first American service members killed in the U.S.-Iran war pressed Vice President JD Vance on Saturday to say whether the Trump administration will hold leaders accountable for what he called "mistakes" and "fundamental failures" that came before her death.
Joey Amor put the question during a CBS News town hall, "Things That Matter," hosted by "CBS Evening News" anchor Tony Dokoupil. His wife, Master Sgt. Nicole Amor, was a member of the U.S. Army Reserve from Minnesota. She was one of six people killed in an Iranian drone attack on an outpost in Kuwait on March 1, one day after the United States began striking Iran. It remains the deadliest attack on U.S. forces in the Iran war.
"Though the Iranian drone was the weapon that killed my wife, there were a lot of mistakes and a lot of fundamental failures that led up to that," Amor told Vance, adding that "my wife has told me things before she passed." He continued: "There's a failure in the leadership. And I want to know how this administration is gonna start holding those leaders accountable for the actions and the deaths of the soldiers that we honor and that we love."
Families of people affected by the attack have raised questions since then about whether the military did enough to protect Americans stationed at Kuwait's Port of Shuaiba. CBS News has reported concerns that the facility was not adequately fortified and lacked the means to shoot down incoming drones. The network has also reported that the Army chose not to move troops farther from Iran and ignored a request to add medical support.
Vance called Nicole Amor "a precious human being who served her country honorably" and said he wanted to know about any failures. "Because if there were failures, and I don't doubt there were, I just … literally the first time I've heard of this is this conversation, and I want to fix that stuff," he said. He added that as vice president, "you live in a bit of a bubble" and "sometimes information doesn't filter up to me." He promised to "figure out what exactly happened and what exactly we can do better."
The vice president said some changes are already under way. He noted that cheap, easy-to-manufacture drones have transformed warfare, and said, "we have changed a lot of our tactics to try to suppress that drone fire, to try to protect our troops to make it so that more people don't have to pay the ultimate sacrifice." He also acknowledged that "there are issues with … where troops were located that we realized was a huge mistake, and that we could do better on. And we have changed that."
Vance declined to give specifics. "I'm not gonna get into the details, because God forbid, I don't want the Iranians to learn something else [that] they're gonna use to target somebody else's wife or somebody else's mother," he said. "But man, I promise you, this is not something I'm gonna forget. And I want to talk to those soldiers, and I want to talk to you to better understand what we can do."
The exchange came in a one-hour town hall held in Michigan, a state with a closely watched Senate race, less than three weeks before the midterm elections. The full episode is streaming on Paramount+, YouTube, CBS News 24/7 and CBSNews.com.
