Bob Woodward
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State of Denial
Bob Woodward
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Biography
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State of Denial
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INSURGENTS AND TERRORISTS RETAIN THE RESOURCES AND CAPABILITIES TO SUSTAIN AND EVEN INCREASE CURRENT LEVEL OF VIOLENCE THROUGH THE NEXT YEAR. This was the secret Pentagon assessment sent to the White House in May 2006. The forecast of a more violent 2007 in Iraq contradicted the repeated optimistic statements of President Bush, including one, two days earlier, when he said we were at a turning point that history would mark as the time the forces of terror began their long retreat.
State of Denial examines how the Bush administration avoided telling the truth about Iraq to the public, to Congress, and often to themselves. Two days after the May report, the Pentagon told Congress, in a report required by law, that the appeal and motivation for continued violent action will begin to wane in early 2007.
In this detailed inside story of a war-torn White House, Bob Woodward reveals how White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card, with the indirect support of other high officials, tried for 18 months to get Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld replaced. The president and Vice President Cheney refused. At the beginning of Bush's second term, Stephen Hadley, who replaced Condoleezza Rice as national security adviser, gave the administration a D minus on implementing its policies. A SECRET report to the new Secretary of State Rice from her counselor stated that, nearly two years after the invasion, Iraq was a failed state.
State of Denial reveals that at the urging of Vice President Cheney and Rumsfeld, the most frequent outside visitor and Iraq adviser to President Bush is former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who, haunted still by the loss in Vietnam, emerges as a hidden and potent voice.
Woodward reveals that the secretary of defense himself believes that the system of coordination among departments and agencies is broken, and in a SECRET May 1, 2006, memo, Rumsfeld stated, the current system of government makes competence next to impossible.
State of Denial answers the core questions: What happened after the invasion of Iraq? Why? How does Bush make decisions and manage a war that he chose to define his presidency? And is there an achievable plan for victory?
Bob Woodward's third book on President Bush is a sweeping narrative—from the first days George W. Bush thought seriously about running for president through the recruitment of his national security team, the war in Afghanistan, the invasion and occupation of Iraq, and the struggle for political survival in the second term.
After more than three decades of reporting on national security decision making—including his two #1 national bestsellers on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Bush at War (2002) and Plan of Attack (2004) —Woodward provides the fullest account, and explanation, of the road Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice and the White House staff have walked.
BOB WOODWARD, an assistant managing editor of The Washington Post, has been a newspaper reporter and editor for 35 years. He has authored or coauthored ten #1 national nonfiction bestsellers. He has two daughters, Tali and Diana, and lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife, Elsa Walsh, a writer for The New Yorker.
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State of Denial
Bob Woodward
Simon Schuster
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Copyright © 2006 by Bob Woodward
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ISBN-13: 978-0-7432-7223-0
ISBN-10: 0-7432-7223-4
To Mary Walsh
AUTHOR'S NOTE
Christine Parthemore, a 2003 Phi Beta Kappa political science graduate of The Ohio State University, is a kind of Wonder Woman of the Information Age, capable of finding any information or any person. She has never let me down. Meticulous and diligent in every task from transcribing hundreds of hours of interview tapes to editing the manuscript, she is learned, frank, and smart. A natural editor, she knows how to get to the heart of matters. As she demonstrated every day, Christine has the energy of half a dozen and an endless capacity for work.
PROLOGUE
IN late December 2000, less than a month before his inauguration, President-elect George W. Bush was still debating who should be his secretary of defense. Former Senator Dan Coats, an Indiana Republican who had served on the Armed Services Committee, had been at the top of Bush's list and had the backing of his conservative base. But Coats had not been impressive in his interview with Bush and Vice President elect Dick Cheney, who was heading the transition team for the new government. Coats knew the top generals mostly from a distance and was lukewarm on the national missile defense system Bush had promised in the campaign. He had never run a large organization and he acknowledged he would need a strong, experienced number two at the Pentagon.
It wouldn't work. Bush needed someone who could not only battle things out with the generals but who also had as much gravitas as the rest of his new national security team. Cheney had been secretary of defense under Bush's father; Colin Powell, Bush's pick for secretary of state, had been chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Reagan's national security adviser. He needed a secretary of defense with more stature, grit and experience.
What about Donald Rumsfeld? Cheney suggested. Rumsfeld, 68, Cheney's old boss and mentor, had the dream resume. He had been secretary of defense once before, under President Ford from 1975 to 1977. He had been a Navy pilot in the 1950s, elected to four terms in Congress, served as Ford's White House chief of staff, and been the CEO of two Fortune 500 companies. They'd been talking about making Rumsfeld CIA director, but maybe that wasn't right. Maybe they needed him back at Defense.
Three days before Christmas, Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld had a long meeting and lunch. Wiry, cocky, confident with a boyish intensity, Rumsfeld seemed only half his age. He blew into the meeting like a tornado, full of excitement and vision. He knew the Pentagon; he had recently headed commissions on the use of space and the ballistic missile threat. He seemed to know everything.
Bush was surprised to be so impressed. Afterward, he spoke with his incoming White House chief of staff, Andrew H. Card Jr.
Bush had selected Card, 53, because his father said there was no more loyal person. Back in 1988, Card had been instrumental in his father's win in the critical New Hampshire primary. Later, Card had been Bush senior's deputy White House chief of staff and transportation secretary.
After the 2000 election, Card thought he would be asked to run the transition team. No, I'm not talking about that job, Bush told him. I'm talking about the big one. They would have to have a completely candid, unique relationship, Card insisted, setting out his conditions for becoming chief of staff. Access to all people, meetings and information. I also can't be a friend, Card said.
Of course, Bush said.
In November, weeks before the Supreme Court settled the election in his favor, Bush announced Card's appointment, intentionally
sending the strongest signal: Besides the vice president, Andy Card would be first among equals in the Bush White House, on all matters, at all times.
Coats seemed like a good man, Bush told Card, but the contrast with Rumsfeld was stunning. Rumsfeld understood what military transformation meant—making the weapons and troops more mobile, swifter, higher-tech and more lethal. He was so impressive, Bush said. This is what has to be done. This is how to do it. These are the kinds of people it takes. It was as if he already had a plan. Rumsfeld was 43 when he had the job a quarter century ago. It was as if he were now saying, I think I've got some things I'd like to finish.
There was another dynamic that Bush and Card discussed. Rumsfeld and Bush's father, the former president, couldn't stand each other. The two had been the young GOP stars in the 1970s, and there was a lingering animosity between them. Bush senior thought Rumsfeld was arrogant, self-important, too sure of himself and Machiavellian. He believed that in 1975 Rumsfeld had maneuvered President Ford into selecting him to head the CIA. The CIA was at perhaps its lowest point in the mid-1970s. Serving as its director was thought to be a dead end. Though things had turned out differently, Bush senior didn't trust Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld had also made nasty private remarks that Bush was a lightweight, a weak Cold War CIA director who did not appreciate the Soviet threat and was manipulated by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.
Card could see that overcoming his skepticism about Rumsfeld added to the president-elect's excitement. It was a chance to prove his father wrong. And Rumsfeld fit Cheney's model.
Cheney had been in charge of the search for Bush's running mate. He'd said he was looking for someone with a broad range of experience. An ideal candidate would know the White House and Congress, have held elected office, have run a large federal executive department. He also had to be someone who wasn't just a creature of Washington. He had to have experience in the real world, the corporate world perhaps. A CEO, for example. Perhaps it was not surprising that Cheney, who had been a congressman, White House chief of staff, secretary of defense and Fortune 500 CEO, would value his own experience and model the ideal candidate after himself. Bush got the message and picked Cheney as his running mate. Now, Cheney seemed to have done it again. He had set up a model for secretary of defense that mirrored his own resume. Cheney thought Bush needed a Cheney at the Pentagon. Nobody resembled Cheney more than Rumsfeld. On paper, at least, they looked almost perfect.
Bush would nominate Rumsfeld, he told Card. Cheney had been selected for his national security credentials. He was the expert, and this was the sort of decision that required expertise. Still, Bush wondered privately to Card about pitfalls, if there was something he didn't see here. After all, his father had strong feelings.
Is this a trapdoor? he asked.
A movie of the George W. Bush presidency might open in the Oval Office a month later, on January 26, 2001, six days after the inauguration, when Rumsfeld was sworn in as defense secretary. A White House photographer captured the scene. Rumsfeld wears a pinstripe suit, and rests his left hand on a Bible held by Joyce, his wife of 46 years. His right hand is raised. Bush stands almost at attention, his head forward, his eyes cocked sharply leftward, looking intently at Rumsfeld. Cheney stands slightly off to the side, his trademark half smile on his face. The man in the black robe administering the oath is Judge Laurence H. Silberman, a close friend of both Rumsfeld and Cheney dating back to the Ford days, when he was deputy and then acting attorney general. It is a cold, dry day, and the barren branches of the trees outside can be seen through the Oval Office windows.
The White House photograph captures a moment tying the past with the future. Back in the days of the Ford presidency, in the wake of Watergate—the pardon of Nixon, the fall of Saigon—Cheney and Rumsfeld had worked almost daily in the same Oval Office where they once again stood. The new man in the photo, Bush, five years younger than Cheney and nearly 14 years younger than Rumsfeld, had been a student at Harvard Business School. He came to the presidency with less experience and time in government than any incoming president since Woodrow Wilson in 1913.
Well into his seventh decade, many of Rumsfeld's peers and friends had retired, but he now stood eagerly on the cusp, ready to run the race again. He resembled John le Carré's fictional Cold War British intelligence chief, George Smiley, a man who had been given, in late age, a chance to return to the rained-out contests of his life and play them after all.
Get it right this time, Cheney told Rumsfeld.
1
in the fall of 1997, former President George H. W. Bush, then age 74 and five years out of the White House, phoned one of his closest friends, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the longtime Saudi Arabian ambassador to the United States.
Bandar, Bush said, W. would like to talk to you if you have time. Can you come by and talk to him? His eldest son and namesake, George W Bush, who had been governor of Texas for nearly three years, was consulting a handful of people about an important decision and wanted to have a private talk.
Bandar's life was built around such private talks. He didn't ask why, though there had been ample media speculation that W. was thinking of running for president. Bandar, 49, had been the Saudi ambassador for 15 years, and had an extraordinary position in Washington. His intensity and networking were probably matched only by former President Bush.
They had built a bond in the 1980s. Bush, the vice president living in the shadow of President Ronald Reagan, was widely dismissed as weak and a wimp, but Bandar treated him with the respect, attention and seriousness due a future president. He gave a big party for Bush at his palatial estate overlooking the Potomac River with singer Roberta Flack providing the entertainment, and went fishing with him at Bush's vacation home in Kennebunkport, Maine—Bandar's least favorite pastime but something Bush loved. The essence of their relationship was constant contact, by phone and in person.
Like good intelligence officers—Bush had been CIA director and Bandar had close ties to the world's important spy services—they had recruited each other. The friendship was both useful and genuine, and the utility and authenticity reinforced each other. During Bush's 1991 Gulf War to oust Saddam Hussein from Kuwait and prevent him from invading neighboring Saudi Arabia, Bandar had been virtually a member of the Bush war cabinet.
At about 4 a.m. on election day 1992, when it looked as if Bush was going to fail in his bid for a second term, Bandar had dispatched a private letter to him saying, You're my friend for life. You saved our country. I feel like one of your family, you are like one of our own. And you know what, Mr. President? You win either way. You should win. You deserve to. But if you lose, you are in good company with Winston Churchill, who won the war and lost the election.
Bush called Bandar later that day, about 1 p.m., and said, Buddy, all day the only good news I've had was your letter. About 12 hours later, in the early hours of the day after the election, Bush called again and said, It's over.
Bandar became Bush's case officer, rescuing him from his cocoon of near depression. He was the first to visit Bush at Kennebunkport as a guest after he left the White House, and later visited him there twice more. He flew friends in from England to see Bush in Houston. In January 1993 he took Bush to his 32-room mansion in Aspen, Colorado. When the ex-president walked in he found a Desert Storm Corner, named after the U.S.-led military operation in the Gulf War. Bush's picture was in the middle. Bandar played tennis and other sports with Bush, anything to keep the former president engaged.
Profane, ruthless, smooth, Bandar was almost a fifth estate in Washington, working the political and media circles attentively and obsessively. But as ambassador his chief focus was the presidency, whoever held it, ensuring the door was open for Saudi Arabia, which had the world's largest oil reserves but did not have a powerful military in the volatile Middle East. When Michael Deaver, one of President Reagan's top White House aides, left the White House to become a lobbyist, First Lady Nancy Reagan, another close Bandar friend, called and asked
him to help Deaver. Bandar gave Deaver a $500,000 consulting contract and never saw him again.
Bandar was on hand election night in 1994 when two of Bush's sons, George W. and Jeb, ran for the governorships of Texas and Florida. Bush and former First Lady Barbara Bush thought that Jeb would win in Floridaand George W. would lose in Texas. Bandar was astonished as the election results poured in that night to watch Bush sitting there with four pages of names and telephone numbers—two pages for Texas and two for Florida. Like an experienced Vegas bookie, Bush worked the phones the whole evening, calling, making inquiries and thanking everybody—collecting and paying. He gave equal time and attention to those who supported the new Texas governor and the failed effort in Florida.
Bandar realized that Bush knew he could collect on all his relationships. It was done with such a light, human touch that it never seemed predatory or grasping. Fred Dutton, an old Kennedy hand in the 1960s and Bandar's Washington lawyer and lobbyist, said that it was the way Old Man Kennedy, the ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy, had operated, though Kennedy's style had been anything but light.
Bandar planned his 1997 visit with the Texas governor around a trip to a home football game of his beloved Dallas Cowboys. That would give him cover, as he called it. He wanted the meeting to be very discreet, and ordered his private jet to stop in Austin.
When they landed, Bandar's chief of staff came running up to say the governor was already there outside the plane. Bandar walked down the aisle to go outside.
Hi, how are you? greeted George W Bush, standing at the door before Bandar could even get off the plane. He was eager to talk.