The Room Where It Happened

by John Bolton;

  Trump was sitting behind the Resolute desk, which was completely bare, unlike the desk in his New York office, which seemed always covered with newspapers, reports, and notes. He had a picture taken of the two of us, and then McMaster and I sat down in front of the desk for our discussion. We talked a bit about the Obamacare repeal effort and then turned to Iran and North Korea, repeating much of the ground McMaster and I had covered at lunch. Trump said, “You know, you and I agree on almost everything except Iraq,” and I replied, “Yes, but even there, we agree that Obama’s withdrawal of American forces in 2011 led us to the mess we have there now.” Trump then said, “Not now, but at the right time and for the right position, I’m going to ask you to come into this Administration, and you’re going to agree, right?” I laughed, as did Trump and McMaster (although I felt somewhat uncomfortable on his behalf), and answered, “Sure,” figuring I had again dodged the bullet I had feared. No pressure, no rush, and no amorphous White House job without an inbox.

  The meeting lasted about twenty-plus minutes, and then McMaster and I left, stopping by Bannon’s office on the way out. Bannon and I visited for a while with Priebus, running into Sean Spicer in the hallway and then later the Vice President, who greeted me warmly. The atmosphere reminded me of a college dorm, with people wandering in and out of each other’s rooms, chatting about one thing or another. Weren’t these people in the middle of a crisis trying to repeal Obamacare, one of Trump’s signature 2016 issues? This was not a White House I recognized from past Administrations, that was for sure. The most ominous thing I heard was Mike Pence saying, “I’m really glad you’re coming in,” which was not what I thought I was doing! I finally left at about two fifteen, but I had the feeling I could have hung around all afternoon.

  I could see this pattern of contact with the Trump White House lasting for an indefinite period, and to an extent it did. But I ended the Administration’s first hundred days secure in my own mind about what I was prepared to do and what I wasn’t. After all, as Cato the Younger says in one of George Washington’s favorite lines from his favorite play, “When vice prevails, and impious men bear sway, the post of honor is a private station.”

  * * *

  Life under Trump, however, did not resemble life in Joseph Addison’s eponymous Cato, where the hero strove to defend the failing Roman Republic against Julius Caesar. Instead, the new Administration resembled much more closely the Eagles song “Hotel California”: “You can check out any time you like / But you can never leave.”

  It was not long before Bannon and Priebus were again calling and texting me to come into the White House in some capacity, as they sought to overcome the mismatches between Trump, McMaster, and Tillerson. The most palpable manifestation of the problems was Iran, specifically the 2015 nuclear deal, which Obama considered a crowning achievement (the other being Obamacare). The deal was badly conceived, abominably negotiated and drafted, and entirely advantageous to Iran: unenforceable, unverifiable, and inadequate in duration and scope. Although purportedly resolving the threat posed by Iran’s nuclear-weapons program, the deal did no such thing. In fact, it exacerbated the threat by creating the semblance of a solution, diverting attention from the dangers, and lifting the economic sanctions that had imposed substantial pain on Iran’s economy, while allowing Tehran to proceed essentially unimpeded. Moreover, the deal did not seriously address other threats Iran posed: its ballistic-missile program (a thinly disguised effort to develop delivery vehicles for nuclear weapons); its continuing role as the world’s central banker for international terrorism; and its other malign activity in the region, through the intervention and growing strength of the Quds Force, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’s external military arm, in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, and elsewhere. Freed from sanctions, benefiting from the transfer of $150 million in “cash on pallets” in cargo airplanes and the unfreezing of an estimated $150 billion in assets globally, Tehran’s radical ayatollahs were back in business.

  Trump and other 2016 GOP candidates campaigned against the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the lumbering formal title of the Iran deal, and it was widely believed to be ready for extreme unction following his inauguration. But a combination of Tillerson, Mattis, and McMaster frustrated Trump’s efforts to break free from this wretched deal, earning them the plaudits of the adoring media as an “axis of adults” restraining Trump from indulging in wild fantasies. If only they knew. In fact, many of Trump’s supporters saw their efforts as preventing him from doing what he had promised voters he would do. And McMaster wasn’t doing himself any favors by opposing the phrase “radical Islamic terrorism” to describe things like… radical Islamic terrorism. Jim Baker used to tell me when I worked for him at Bush 41’s State Department and pressed for something Baker knew Bush didn’t want, “John, the guy who got elected doesn’t want to do it.” That was usually a signal I should stop pushing, but in the Trump Administration’s infant national-security apparatus, what “the guy who got elected” wanted was only one of many data points.

  In early May, after I had another White House discussion with Priebus and Bannon, they took me to what turned out to be a photo opportunity with Trump and Pence in the colonnade that connects the Residence to the West Wing. “John, so good to see you,” said Trump as we walked along the colonnade, surrounded by photographers. We talked about the Philippines and the Chinese threat to bring nearly the entire South China Sea under its sovereignty. When we finished, Trump said loud enough for the trailing mob of reporters to hear, “Is Rex Tillerson around? He should talk to John.” And with that, Trump was off to the Oval. Priebus said, “That was great. We want to get you back over here regularly.”

  Life at the White House developed its own rhythm, with Trump firing FBI Director James Comey later in May (at Kushner’s suggestion, according to Bannon), then meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov (whom I had known for over twenty-five years at that point) and allegedly being less than cautious in discussing classified material, calling Comey a “nutjob,” according to the unbiased New York Times.9 I was in Israel in late May to give a speech and met with Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, whom I had first met in the Bush 41 years. Iran’s threat was the centerpiece of our attention, as it should have been for any Israeli Prime Minister, but he was also dubious about assigning the task of bringing an end to the Israel-Palestinian conflict to Kushner, whose family Netanyahu had known for many years. He was enough of a politician not to oppose the idea publicly, but like much of the world, he wondered why Kushner thought he would succeed where the likes of Kissinger had failed.

  I was back at the White House in June to see Trump, walking with Priebus to the Outer Oval. Trump saw us through his open door and said, “Hi, John, give me just a minute, I’m signing judges’ commissions.” I was happy to give him all the time he needed, because Trump’s growing record on judicial nominations, in due course to be graced by the confirmation of Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, was for conservatives the highest priority and greatest achievement of his tenure. When Priebus and I entered, I congratulated Trump on withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement, which the “axis of adults” had failed to stop him from doing and which I saw as an important victory against global governance. The Paris Agreement was a charade, for those truly concerned about climate change. As in many other cases, international agreements provided the semblance of addressing major issues, giving national politicians something to take credit for, but made no discernible real-world difference (in this case giving leeway to countries like China and India, which remained essentially unfettered). I gave Trump a copy of a 2000 article of mine called “Should We Take Global Governance Seriously?” from the Chicago Journal of International Law, not because I thought he would read it, but to remind him of the importance of preserving US sovereignty.

  I warned Trump against wasting political capital in an elusive search to solve the Arab-Israeli dispute and strongly supported moving the US embassy in Israel to Jerusa
lem, thereby recognizing it as Israel’s capital. On Iran, I urged that he press ahead to withdraw from the nuclear agreement and explained why the use of force against Iran’s nuclear program might be the only lasting solution. “You tell Bibi that if he uses force, I will back him. I told him that, but you tell him again,” Trump said, unprompted by me. As the conversation ranged on, Trump asked, “Do you get along with Tillerson?” and I said we hadn’t spoken since January. Bannon told me a few days later that Trump was pleased with the meeting. And indeed, a few weeks on, Tillerson called to ask me to be special envoy for Libyan reconciliations, which I saw as another exercise in box-checking; if asked, Tillerson could tell Trump he had offered me something but I turned it down. Tillerson almost simultaneously asked Kurt Volker, a close associate of McCain’s, to become special envoy for Ukraine. Neither job required full-time government employment, but my view was you were either in the Administration or not, and halfway houses wouldn’t work.

  North Korea was also on the Administration’s mind, with the release of Otto Warmbier, who suffered barbaric treatment at Pyongyang’s hands and died upon returning to the United States. The North’s brutality told us everything we needed to know about its regime. Moreover, Pyongyang was launching ballistic missiles, including on the Fourth of July (how thoughtful), followed by another on July 28, which ultimately led to further UN Security Council sanctions on August 5. A few days later, Trump was prompted to threaten “fire and fury like the world has never seen” against North Korea,10 though Tillerson immediately said Americans should “sleep well at night” and have “no concern about this particular rhetoric of the past few days,” hardly clarifying things.11 I wondered if Tillerson was pooh-poohing North Korea or Trump, who upped the ante on August 11 by saying the US was “locked and loaded” on North Korea.12 There was little visible evidence that any new military preparations were under way.

  On August 30, Trump tweeted that we had talked to North Korea for twenty-five years without result, and there wasn’t much point in talking further. Trump reiterated the point on October 7:

  Presidents and their administrations have been talking to North Korea for 25 years, agreements made and massive amounts of money paid… hasn’t worked, agreements violated before the ink was dry, makings fools of U.S. negotiators. Sorry, but only one thing will work!

  Mattis, in South Korea, almost immediately contradicted Trump, saying there was always room for diplomacy, although he quickly walked it back, claiming there was no daylight between him and the President.13 The dissonance was getting louder. North Korea had chimed in with its sixth nuclear-weapons test on September 3, this one almost certainly thermonuclear, followed twelve days later by firing a missile over Japan, underlining Trump’s point in his tweet. Almost immediately thereafter, Japanese Prime Minister Abe wrote a New York Times op-ed concluding that “more dialogue with North Korea would be a dead end” and saying, “I fully support the United States position that all options are on the table,” which is as close as any Japanese politician can get to saying he could support offensive military operations.14 By contrast, Tillerson was announcing we wanted “to bring North Korea to the table for constructive, productive dialogue.”15 He was obviously deep in the grip of “the building.” When Trump announced new financial sanctions on North Korea, China responded by saying its central bank had directed all Chinese banks to cease doing business with Pyongyang, which was quite a step forward if actually carried out (and many were dubious).16

  Iran remained the most visible flashpoint, however, and in July Trump faced his second decision whether to certify Iran was complying with the nuclear deal. The first decision to do so had been a mistake, and now Trump was on the verge of repeating it. I wrote an op-ed for The Hill that appeared on its website on July 16,17 apparently setting off a daylong battle inside the White House. McMaster and Mnuchin held a conference call to brief reporters on the decision to certify Iranian compliance, and the White House e-mailed “talking points” to the media explaining the decision as their call was under way. But an outside analyst told me, “There’s chaos at the NSC,” the talking points were pulled back, and the decision to certify compliance was reversed.18 The New York Times, citing a White House official, reported on a nearly hour-long confrontation between Trump, on one side, and Mattis, Tillerson, and McMaster, on the other, on the certification issue, confirming what I had heard earlier. Other sources said the same thing.19 Trump ultimately succumbed, but not happily, and only after yet again asking for alternatives, of which his advisors said there were none. Bannon texted me, “POTUS loved it… Your op-ed drove him on Iran.”

  Trump called me a few days later to complain about how the Iran certification issue had been handled, and especially about “people in the State Department” who hadn’t given him any options. Then he said, referring to my last conversation with Tillerson, “I hear what Rex talked to you about won’t work. Don’t take some half-assed position over there. If he offers you something that’s really great, okay, whatever, but otherwise just wait. I’m going to call you,” concluding the call by saying I should “come and see [him] next week” on Iran. Bannon texted me right afterward, “We talk about it/u everyday.” I told Bannon I would write a plan about how the US could withdraw from the Iran deal. It would not be hard.

  The next day, Sean Spicer resigned as White House spokesman to protest Anthony Scaramucci’s being named Communications Director, with Sarah Sanders picked as Spicer’s successor. One week later, Trump fired Priebus, naming John Kelly, then Homeland Security Secretary and a former four-star Marine general, as White House Chief of Staff. On Monday, July 31, Kelly fired Scaramucci. In mid-August, controversy erupted over Trump’s comments about neo-Nazi demonstrators in Charlottesville, Virginia. He fired Bannon on August 18. Was this what business schools taught about running large organizations?

  What was not happening was any White House sign of life on my Iran-deal exit strategy, which I had earlier transmitted to Bannon. When I sought a meeting with Trump, Westerhout suggested I first see Tillerson, which would have been a waste of time for both of us. I suspected that Kelly’s efforts to bring discipline to White House operations and limit Oval Office anarchy in particular had resulted in my “walk-in” privileges’ being suspended, along with those of many others. I thought it would be a shame to let my Iran plan wither, so I suggested to National Review editor Rich Lowry that he publish it, which he did at the end of August.20 Iran’s Foreign Minister, Javad Zarif, immediately denounced my plan as “a huge failure for Washington.”21 I knew I was on the right track. Most of the Washington media, instead of focusing on the plan’s substance, wrote instead on my loss of access to Trump, probably because they understood palace intrigue better than policy. Kushner texted me to say, “You are always welcome at the White House,” and “Steve [Bannon] and I disagreed on many things, but we were in sync on Iran.” In fact, Kushner invited me to meet on August 31 to go over his emerging Middle East peace plan, along with Iran. After a relatively long hiatus, I didn’t think this meeting was accidental.

  Nonetheless, still no word from Trump, although another Iran compliance certification, required every ninety days by statute, came due in October. The White House announced Trump would make a major Iran address on October 12, so I decided to stop being shy, phoning Westerhout to ask for a meeting. By then, Tillerson had reportedly called Trump “a fucking moron,” which he refused to deny flatly. Rumors flew that Kelly wanted to resign as Chief of Staff and that Pompeo would replace him, although it was also regularly rumored that Pompeo would replace McMaster. I was still focused on Iran and wrote another op-ed for The Hill, hoping the magic might work again.22 It appeared on October 9, the same day I had lunch with Kushner in his West Wing office. Although we talked about his Middle East plan and Iran, what really got his attention was the photo I brought of the gaudy entrance to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office, located in the building where my SuperPAC was located.

  The media reported Trum
p’s advisors were urging he decline to certify Iran as complying with the nuclear agreement but that the US nonetheless stay in the deal. I saw this as self-humiliation, but so desperate were the deal’s advocates that they were willing to concede a critical point on compliance just to save the deal. Trump called me in the late afternoon of October 12 (the speech having been moved to Friday the thirteenth) to talk. “You and I are together on that deal, you may be a little tougher than I am, but we see it the same,” he said. I answered that I could see from the press coverage he was likely to decertify Iran but still remain in the deal, which I said was at least a step forward. I asked to discuss the issue further when there was more time. “A hundred percent,” said Trump. “Hundred percent. I know that’s your view. I watch what you say very carefully.” I asked if he would put a line in his speech that the agreement was under 24/7 review and that it was subject to being terminated at any time (thus eliminating the need to wait ninety days before having another shot at withdrawal and plainly making the fight over withdrawal rather than “compliance,” as the deal’s supporters preferred). We talked about the language Trump might actually use as he dictated to others in the room.

  Trump then raised the topic of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, asking if he should designate it as a Foreign Terrorist Organization, thereby subjecting it to additional penalties and constraints. I urged him to do so because of the organization’s control of Iran’s nuclear and ballistic-missile programs, and its extensive support for radical Islamic terrorism, Sunni and Shia. Trump said he was hearing Iran would be particularly upset by this specific designation, and there might be blowback against US forces in Iraq and Syria, which I learned later was Mattis’s position. But his argument was misdirected; if Mattis was correct, the answer was to provide more protection for our troops or withdraw them to focus on the main threat, Iran. As it turned out, it would take nearly two years to get the Revolutionary Guard designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization, showing the immense staying power of a dug-in bureaucracy.