by Bob Woodward
Tillerson saw they had quickly closed on a working agreement. State and Defense would never go into a National Security Council meeting without having worked out a common position. If an open issue existed, they would find a common position.
As a general, Mattis’s job had been to carry out orders from the civilians—president, secretary of defense and National Security Council. But now he had to shift. He was no longer there just to carry out policy—“no cheery aye-aye, sir.” Tillerson and he were there to construct policy.
Mattis was surprised how simpatico he felt with Tillerson. He just knew he could work with him. Sometimes you sit down with someone and you know you can trust them.
Mattis continued, “My job is to try to keep the peace, or what passes for peace in this troubled world.” Mattis often liked to say, “Keep the peace one more year, one more month, one more day, one more hour as you guys [diplomats] work your magic.” America is still an inspiration, he added, but “Intimidation is necessary. That’s what I exist for. But it should generally be the last resort.”
Both men left Plume confident they would make it work between State and Defense.
* * *
Mattis spent the first three weeks in Washington preparing for his confirmation hearings, a period normally focused on meetings with senators who would vote on his nomination. Republican senators found him appealing, a consummate professional. But he quickly met a wall of silence from the Democrats in Congress. Not even routine courtesy calls. Then endorsements came from former Republican defense secretaries Donald Rumsfeld and Robert Gates, and former Democratic defense secretary Leon Panetta. Word began to spread that Mattis was the “good” Trump nominee.
Suddenly Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer opened the door. Mattis experienced an unexpected flood of attention. The Democrats couldn’t see enough of him. He even met with democratic socialist Bernie Sanders and Mazie Hirono of Hawaii, bringing to about 50 the number of senators he met with from both parties. He seemed to be on a good footing for his confirmation.
During the confirmation process, the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency gave him in-depth briefings, but protocol prevented any real contact with senior military leaders in the Pentagon. He could not presume he would be confirmed. But Mattis kept asking for the strategy. What was the plan? What was the current theory of the case for defending the United States? Trump made many promises during the campaign. How would they fit into the overall strategy?
But Mattis was not getting any answers. If he had learned one thing from his 40 years on active duty, it was essential to think these matters through, weigh them, debate them, test them against history. It was gut-wrenching to be shut off from such critical matters.
Mattis received his waiver and the Senate confirmed him, 98 to 1.
* * *
Later Tillerson was confirmed by the Senate 56 to 43, winning four votes from the Democratic Caucus. Trump gave him his personal cell phone number and said he could call him 24/7 and he would take the call. Trump also agreed to give Tillerson an hour on Tuesdays and Thursdays when the two of them would meet alone. Also, on Fridays, Trump would have lunch with both Tillerson and Mattis when all were in town.
FOUR
Just days after the election, Senator Dan Coats, an Indiana Republican, also received a call from Pence, one of his closest friends and confidants.
A calm and gentlemanly devout Christian, the 73-year-old Coats had served sixteen years in the Senate.
“You want a job?” Pence, a born-again Christian himself, asked Coats.
“No, no,” Coats said, “I don’t want a job!”
* * *
Pence knew Coats was on a different path. Pence, when governor of Indiana, had invited Coats and his wife, Marsha, to stop by for dinner with him and his wife, Karen, at Aynes House, the governor’s retreat in a rolling, wooded area about 45 minutes outside Indianapolis in Brown County.
Religion was a central force in the Coatses’ life. Dan and Marsha had met at Wheaton College, an evangelical liberal arts college in Illinois, 50 years earlier. The Wheaton College motto is “For Christ and His Kingdom.” Evangelist Billy Graham was a dominant and abiding influence at the school.
In a lengthy prayer session, the four agreed they needed to make some decisions about their futures. Should Pence run for president or a second term as governor? Should Coats seek another term in the Senate?
“We talked about the future and where God might lead each of us,” Coats later explained. “We prayed that God would be clear, and I think I raised the question that we should pray for clarity, not for what we want but clarity for what God would want.”
Coats did not believe any of them had a special line to God. “It is just simply built into our faith that ultimately we are his children, and he has a plan for us. And we don’t know what it is, and our job is to be obedient to ask for clarity, and then to fulfill it.”
Pence recounted the Old Testament story of David, who was hiding from King Saul in a cave when God sent a spider to weave a web across the cave opening. On seeing the web, Saul did not enter the cave. The spider had concealed David’s presence and saved his life. The story showed that even a spider might be an instrument of great salvation in the hand of God.
Marsha Coats, whose grandparents were ministers, had never heard a sermon as serious and deep. The story raised obvious questions. Could a spider, normally a cause for fear, bring salvation?
By the end of the dinner, two decisions emerged. Coats would not run for another Senate term after his term ended, and Pence would not run for president.
Pence’s unexpected selection as Trump’s running mate had taken them all by surprise.
In their post-election call, Pence proposed Coats come speak to Trump even if he did not want a job. He could describe how the Senate works.
Coats had been around long enough to know this was a recruitment tactic dressed up as a request for wise guidance. Coats bit anyway. In late November, he traveled to see the president-elect at Trump Tower in New York City. Coats was uneasy. When the Access Hollywood tape revealing Trump’s lewd comments about women surfaced during the campaign, Coats had blasted his party’s nominee on Twitter: “Donald Trump’s vulgar comments are totally inappropriate and disgusting.”
“So you want a job,” said Trump, acting as if he was unaware of or didn’t care about Coats’s earlier comments.
“No, no, I don’t want a job.”
“How about becoming an ambassador?”
“I’ve been an ambassador,” Coats said. He had served four years as ambassador to Germany for George W. Bush.
“How about Russia or China?” Trump asked, suggesting that would be a promotion.
Coats explained he had been banned from Russia several years earlier because of his vocal criticism of the Russian invasion of Crimea.
“That’s great,” Trump said, adding, “We’ll send you to Russia and that’ll really stick it to them!” Trump was clearly basking in his role as the future president.
Just then Trump was informed that Harold Hamm, a billionaire Oklahoma oilman and big Trump money man, had arrived.
“Bring him in,” Trump said. The more people around the better, it seemed. “This guy, he sticks a straw in the ground and up comes fucking oil,” Trump said. “Wherever he drills, he finds oil.”
The discussion quickly turned away from Coats to Hamm. Almost as an afterthought, Trump said he would call Coats about a job.
Coats left Trump Tower and didn’t hear anything for a few months. But a month after their meeting, Pence phoned again. “The president would like you to be director of national intelligence.”
Coats paused. The role, often referred to in its abbreviation DNI or as the intelligence czar, had been created in the wake of the massive information and coordination failures before the 9/11 terrorist attacks. This was one of the biggest jobs the president could offer—the top position in the intelligence world overseeing 17 intelligence agencies including the
CIA and the National Security Agency, which intercepted worldwide communications. As a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Coats knew the post of DNI would virtually guarantee him admission to the president’s national security inner circle and the very center of the central nervous system of the American espionage establishment and its secrets.
Still, Coats was reluctant. Marsha urged him to take the job. “Such an awesome position, and powerful and kind of frightening,” she said.
She understood her husband’s uneasiness about Trump. He had split the Republican Party. Republican members of her own family had told her before the election they could not vote for Trump, even when he looked like the presumptive nominee. Marsha was the sole Republican committeewoman for Indiana, appointed by Pence three years earlier.
She asked her family members, who are you going to vote for, then?
We probably won’t vote, they said.
That’s not right, she said. They were Republicans. “As Americans, you need to vote. And that’s part of what living in a democracy is all about.”
One outspoken relative said of Trump, “He’s not a Christian. He’s not a nice person. He’s not a moral man.”
By then Marsha had sorted out her own position on Trump. Privately she knew he was, as she put it, “a philanderer and a womanizer, no doubt about that.” Trump was pro-life, however, and he had promised to fund a stronger military.
The family would not budge. As committeewoman, she needed to deliver the state of Indiana to the Republicans. And after Trump won the Indiana primary, Marsha Coats weighed in with a stark declaration of her endorsement in a public letter to fellow Indiana Republicans.
“I fear if we do not unite to support Donald Trump, we will again open the door for at least another four years of Washington implementing a left-wing agenda,” she wrote. “Conservatives stand to lose not only the White House and control of the executive agencies but also the Supreme Court.
“As a conservative, pro-life, evangelical, female Republican, I understand the conflict many in our party feel about supporting Donald Trump. Trump was not my first or even my second choice. He is not a humble man.
“I truly believe the office will change Donald Trump. I believe it will humble him. And I think even Donald will be impelled to turn to God for guidance.”
Dan Coats had even handed a copy of his wife’s open letter to Trump when the Republican nominee was in Indiana. Later Trump ran into Marsha Coats and promised, “I won’t let you down.” He put his arm round her and said to others there in a friendly, warm way, “She scolded me.”
“Trump is so controversial,” she later said to an associate. “He’s the kind of person that would inspire crazy people.”
* * *
Dan Coats accepted the DNI post. He concluded Pence was trying to seed the Trump cabinet with allies, people who shared his religious values, and he agreed to be nominated. As a former senator, he was easily confirmed in an 85 to 12 vote.
Real life set in immediately. Security personnel tore up the Coatses’ Northern Virginia home to set up a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF) in the basement of their three-story house to handle the most important and highly classified information. Cameras and a sophisticated security system also were installed, and intelligence and security personnel began manning the basement SCIF around the clock. Outside, security teams in 12-hour shifts sat in a car in front of their house. Privacy no longer existed. With all the people and apparatuses, Coats and his wife even worried that they were being spied on.
Soon after starting the job and attending his third intelligence briefing to the president, the President’s Daily Brief, Coats asked for some time alone with Trump.
“Mr. President,” Coats said, “there will be times when I will be walking in here to brief you on intelligence, and you’re not going to be happy with what I have to say.” That was his job, and he wanted the president to know it was not personal. Coats felt the declaration sort of freed him up.
In his first three months as DNI, Coats felt utterly overwhelmed. The intelligence culture was radically different from his world. His liberal arts and law degree background had been just right for the Senate. But the intelligence community was dominated by scientists, engineers and mathematicians, all driving the extraordinary technology of modern intelligence collection. Everyone talked in acronyms, codewords and ever-increasing levels of classification and special compartments for sensitive programs. Intel was rolling in from outer space to the sea bottom and everywhere in between.
Adding to the disorientation, Coats never knew which Trump he’d find in residence when he walked into the Oval Office three times a week for the President’s Daily Brief. The PDB was designed to give—and showcase—the most useful inside and high-level sensitive intelligence about national security issues. Some days, Trump would be in a fine mood, even good. Other days Trump would lash out abusively. “I don’t trust the intelligence,” he said, making it clear he saw the intelligence people as enemies.
To help reduce the stress, Marsha fixed nice dinners with wine, a special pleasure because they had once signed pledges at Wheaton College not to drink.
“Was it a good day or a bad day?” she would ask carefully, but with intense curiosity.
“It was a good meeting today,” he said sometimes. The president listened, asked good questions. Trump was smart and could be engaging and even charming.
Then there were bad days. “The president didn’t really want to hear the information, or if he heard it, he would disagree with it, say, I don’t believe that.”
Coats had hours of reading to finish at night, and the travel was nonstop. He’d regularly spend 23 or 24 hours on a plane to go to and get back from a conference in Singapore, for example.
The difference between his old friend Pence’s relationship to the intelligence agencies and Trump’s was stark. Pence visited all the U.S. intelligence agencies, spending two or three hours, wanting to learn, building up morale. Trump turned down Coats’s invitations to tour the NSA or elsewhere. Determined to convince the president of the intelligence agencies’ worth, Coats decided to bring the intelligence directors to the Oval Office. He asked each: What are your crown jewels of collection? He was looking for the incredible stuff that gave the United States a degree of security unimaginable to an outsider.
Trump responded best when Coats brought a Navy submarine captain to the Oval Office. The handsome, charismatic officer looked like a movie star. He described Top Secret programs that could track the submarines of Russia and China. In another program, United States submarines could pick up expended missiles off the bottom of the ocean that had been launched by adversaries.
Whoa! Trump said. That guy’s really something.
But the bad days were more frequent. Coats began to think Trump was impervious to facts. Trump had his own facts: Nearly everyone was an idiot, and almost every country was ripping off the United States. The steady stream of ranting was debilitating. The tension never abated, and Coats would not bend facts to suit the president’s preconceptions or desires. Coats was shocked. “Trump was on a different page than just about anything I believed in.”
Trump’s habit of tweeting at all hours of the day and night, including about important foreign policy matters, was personally disruptive for Coats. He found himself waking up in the middle of the night thinking, oh my God, what has he tweeted? Finally, Coats decided he would look at the tweets in the morning, concluding he could not let himself get in the habit of thinking he had to wake up at 2:00 or 3:00 a.m. just to see if there were any tweets. It was also clear to Coats that the tweeting meant Trump was not sleeping. What were the president’s sleep hours? Coats heard the president was starting his work day later and later, now 11:30 a.m. Maybe that was a clue.
Marsha was stunned at her husband’s reports about the president’s arrogance. “Who could go into this office of being president and not realize how inadequate they are? Anybody would feel like they nee
ded divine help in order to tackle that job and do it well.”
Marsha, who had a degree in psychology and had once had a family-counseling practice, worried that her husband was dragging. He was losing weight. His shirts were hanging loosely on his body.
“Dan,” she said one night, “you’re going to be a failure at this job if you don’t start eating and sleeping and believing in yourself.
“You are disrespecting God. God put you here.” If you are not doing the job, she said, you are letting down not just the country or Trump. Being director of national intelligence was part of God’s plan for him. He was letting God down.
Marsha was tired of his complaining. “You wouldn’t be in this position if the Lord didn’t believe you were the right man for the job.”
FIVE
Bradley Byers, 38, a former Marine F-18 fighter pilot who had flown combat missions in Afghanistan and Iraq, joined Mattis’s office as a civilian liaison to the White House. He was part of a so-called “Beachhead Team” of three dozen Trump appointees at the Pentagon who did not have to be confirmed by the Senate. They were supposed to work in Mattis’s suite of offices at the Pentagon and give the White House leverage in Mattis’s operation.
The first week of the Trump administration, Trump was scheduled to come to the Pentagon on January 27 for a ceremonial swearing in of Mattis. The president also was in a dead sprint to sign as many executive orders as possible to demonstrate how he was changing government and overturning Obama’s legacy. He planned to sign some at the Pentagon.
“Brad,” Mattis said in the morning, “what executive orders does the president intend to sign?”
Byers did not know but promised to find out. He called and emailed the White House staff secretary’s office and cabinet affairs. The orders for the day were still being edited. There had been no NSC or cabinet meetings. Eventually the executive orders were sent by email.
