The best time of my life, Quinn said. He'd commanded a crew of 5,000 and some $12 billion worth of ship and equipment. Command at sea was the emotional pinnacle for a Navy officer, as Rumsfeld knew. That's what we live for, Quinn said.
Marty Hoffman grabbed a piece of blank paper and asked Quinn to write something to see if Rumsfeld could read his handwriting.
Quinn wrote, Mr. Secretary, I really want this job.
I can read that, Rumsfeld said chuckling. Within two weeks, Quinn was sitting at the desk in a small office adjacent to Rumsfeld's beneath a framed picture of several Civil War generals' aides standing around holding the reins of their bosses' horses. Called The Horse Holders, the picture had been signed by the previous senior military assistants to the secretaries of defense. Among the signatures was that of Colin Powell, who had held the post for Secretary of Defense Weinberger and was now Bush's secretary of state.
On Friday, February 16, Rumsfeld's 21st day in office, two dozen U.S. and British planes bombed 20 radar and command centers inside Iraq, enforcing the no-fly zones the United Nations had put in place after the 1991 Gulf War. These were the largest strikes in two years. A general from the Joint Staff informed the White House about the bombing, but Rumsfeld felt he had not been fully brought up to speed and he was livid. Information from the commanders in the field was being routed to him through Shelton. It could take six to ten hours before he learned what had happened.
I'm the secretary of defense, he said. I'm in the chain of command. He—not the generals, not the Joint Staff—would deal with the White House and the president on operational matters.
Rumsfeld demanded that Shelton do a detailed reconstruction of the process. Why had those targets been selected? Who had approved them? Who had briefed? Who knew? Who was thinking? The attacks had been against Iraqi long-range search radars outside Baghdad. The explosions were heard in the Iraqi capital. So there was CNN coverage, and it looked like an air strike on Baghdad, grabbing international attention. For a brief moment it had looked like the new Bush administration had launched a war against Saddam Hussein in its first month.
Rumsfeld felt he had been misled, not warned, not given the full story in advance.
Vice Admiral Scott A. Fry, the director of the Joint Staff and General Shelton's right-hand man, thought Rumsfeld had a point. They should have made it clearer. They had failed to anticipate and they had violated the no surprise rule—don't surprise the boss.
Fry, a 51-year-old, 1971 graduate of the Naval Academy, was one of the Navy's most promising officers. As a junior officer he had read about the careers of some of the top admirals, and he had dreamed about being director of the Joint Staff. In his view it was the greatest job in the U.S. military for a three-star officer. He had previously served as executive assistant to the chief of naval operations, been the deputy in the Joint Staff plans and policy directorate (J-5), and gone on to command an aircraft carrier battle group—the USS Eisenhower, two cruisers, four destroyers and two submarines—the backbone of the Navy. He was then made director for operations (J-3), and finally given the most coveted position, director,
Rumsfeld's attitude was one of fundamental distrust, Fry realized. So that meant they would have to prove themselves. One day he took two slides classified confidential on a minor operational issue up to Rumsfeld's office. He was going over them with Steve Cambone when Rumsfeld came in.
Why are they classified confidential? Rumsfeld asked.
Fry wasn't sure. It was the lowest level of classification. Most matters that came to the secretary had much higher classifications—SECRET, TOP SECRET, code word special access programs, special compartments to limit distribution of sensitive information. Soon Rumsfeld, Cambone and Fry were in a discussion about classification. It turned out, Fry conceded, that these particular slides didn't really need to be classified at all. He wanted to review the substance.
No, Rumsfeld said. Please go down and get new slides and bring them back properly marked unclassified.
Fry talked to Shelton, who unloaded about the nonstop questions from Rumsfeld: Why did the chairman have a special assistant who traveled with Secretary of State Powell on trips abroad? What was that all about? Rumsfeld wanted to know. Who did he report to? What was the information flow? When would he, Rumsfeld, learn about what Powell was doing? Tell me again why you have a lawyer.
Rumsfeld sent short notes all around the building, called snow-flakes, asking questions, seeking detail and asking for reconstructions when it was unclear to him what had happened. He'd developed the snowflake system early in the Nixon administration, when he led the Office of Economic Opportunity. Though unsigned, everyone knew they represented orders or questions from the boss. But if a snowflake leaked, it provided deniability—no signature, no clear fingerprints. He was quite proud of his new management tool. When Rumsfeld had been ambassador to NATO from 1973 to 1974, his memos were on yellow paper, called yellow perils. Now they were once again on white paper, and snowflake was resurrected.
Rumsfeld either scribbled out his notes or dictated them, and Delonnie Henry, his confidential assistant, then typed them out. Rear Admiral J. J. Quinn, the new military assistant, became the keeper of the snowflakes. There were roughly three kinds—administrative ( call and arrange a lunch with Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan —an old Rumsfeld friend from the Ford days), simple thoughts or personal reflections, and calls for information or action. Some were quite broad and asked for a lot. Quinn delivered them, often by hand if they were urgent and important. Rumsfeld kept copies of the snowflakes in files on his desk. He had a file for Shelton, another for Quinn, one for Cambone and others for his top aides.
In an interview later, Quinn said, It was a simple, efficient way for him to keep track of what he had asked for and what he wanted to get done. It was a way for him to get his arms around this big behemoth called the United States military.
Rumsfeld was into everyone's business. No one was immune. Many in the Pentagon looked at the snowflakes as an annoyance. Others found them intrusive and at times petty. For some, there was no way to keep up.
Vice Admiral Fry told the Joint Staff this was an opportunity to examine what they were doing and why. Soul-searching and introspection were good, it would be good for the Joint Staff. We need to do this, he said. We'll get through this. We'll gain his confidence. He'll get comfortable with us.
Under the old system, as practiced by Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen and General Shelton, when there was a significant incident—a ship collision, violation of the no-fly zones in Iraq, or in the extreme an outbreak of war—the duty general or admiral in the National Military Command Center (NMCC), which was part of the Joint Staff and manned around the clock, would call Shelton. Rumsfeld wondered to Shelton why he didn't get called first. He was in the chain of command, not Shelton. He, Rumsfeld, reported to the president. Shelton replied that he often had to get answers from the duty general or admiral. He had to anticipate the secretary's questions so that when he called Rumsfeld, he'd have answers.
Oh, no, Rumsfeld said. He wanted to know first. Suppose it was serious and he had to call the president? Since the command center monitored the world, the duty officer called Shelton regularly. Whenever this happened, Rumsfeld demanded a full reconstruction of the timeline— when Shelton got called, when Rumsfeld got called, what information each received, and explanations for the delays and discrepancies in the reports. It was almost a daily occurrence. Rumsfeld brought in another retired admiral to do a study of the NMCC. As the overseer of the NMCC and the duty officers, Fry was in the middle.
On Thursday, March 15, 2001, the 53rd day of the Bush presidency, Prince Bandar went to the Oval Office with his loyal aide-de-camp, Rihab Massoud. Condoleezza Rice, who was now Bush's national security adviser, attended. It was highly unusual for an ambassador to have Bandar's kind of direct access to the president.
Bandar complained about a remark Secretary of State Powell had made in congressional testimony a week e
arlier. The United States planned to move its embassy from Tel Aviv to the capital of Israel, which is Jerusalem, Powell had said. Since Arabs claimed that part of Jerusalem is Palestinian, it was outrageous.
Bush said he knew how sensitive Jerusalem was to the Saudis. Powell had probably misspoken.
In a message from the Crown Prince, the de facto leader of Saudi Arabia, Bandar said that moving forward on the peace process between the Palestinians and Israel, which had just elected Ariel Sharon its new leader, was critical to building a coalition of moderate Arabs to pressure Saddam Hussein. He asked how much longer the enforcement of the United Nations no-fly zones over Iraq would continue. Two years? Five years? Ten years? This is costing us militarily, financially, but much more importantly politically, he said. And it is not hurting Saddam Hussein.
Bush seemed to agree. If there is any military action, then it has to be decisive. That can finalize the issue, the president said. The Iraqi opposition is useless and not effective. They discussed the difficulty of using covert action to overthrow Saddam. The president expressed concern about increases in worldwide oil prices, something the Saudis influenced heavily. He said he would like to see Bandar at least once a month. He wanted honest talk.
Bandar was elated. He sent a secret message to the Crown Prince: Many positive signs as far as relations and issues that are of concern to both countries. Loyalty and honesty are sensitive issues for this president. It is important that we invest in this man, in a very positive way.
Rumsfeld was trying to define the task before him and get everything down on paper. His dictations, memos, drafts, redrafts and snowflakes reveal his conviction that he faced huge obstacles. On March 20, he dictated a four-page memo, Subject: The Challenge—the Importance of Succeeding.
After two months on the job, it is clear that the Defense establishment is tangled in its anchor chain, he dictated. Congress required hundreds of reports. The Pentagon couldn't construct a $500,000 building without congressional approval. There were so many auditors, investigators, testing groups and monitors looking over their shoulders at the Pentagon, more perhaps, at 24,000 on any given day, than the U.S. Army has deployable front-line troops with weapons. The military's personnel policies were designed to manage a conscript force of single men and had not been changed for a volunteer force with families. Military officers were transferred from assignment to assignment every 20 to 25 months or so, to the point that successful officers skip across the tops of the waves so fast that even they can't learn from their own mistakes. The military fringe benefits mindlessly use the failed Soviet model centralized government systems for housing, commissaries, healthcare and education, rather than using the private sector competitive models that are the envy of the world.
Distrust between Congress and the Defense Department was so great, he said, that from a practical standpoint, the DOD no longer has the authority to conduct the business of the Department.
The maze of constraints on the Department force it to operate in a manner that is so slow, so ponderous and so inefficient that whatever it ultimately does will inevitably be a decade or so late.
Without changing and fixing the relationship with Congress, Rumsfeld concluded, transformation of our armed forces is not possible.
Six days later, he snowflaked Wolfowitz, Cambone and two others asking for their edits and ideas. This Anchor Chain memo became notorious among Rumsfeld's staff as they watched and tried to help him define the universe of his problems. By April 10 he had dictated a 10-page version, and by May 1 it had grown to 12 pages. By then he had found that Congress required 905 reports a year. The 1962 Defense Authorization Act had been a single page; in 1975 when he'd been secretary it was 75 pages. Today the Act has ballooned to 988 pages.
It sounded like he had almost given up fixing the Pentagon during the George W. Bush presidency. The task was so hard and would take so long, he dictated, that our job, therefore, is to work together to sharpen the sword that the next president will wield.
I've got four drafts of it, I told Rumsfeld in a 2006 interview.
Do you really?
Yes, sir, I said, handing him copies. I wanted to give you copies. It got better, he said.
It did, I agreed. It almost looks like you're struggling, if I may be frank with you.
This is a difficult job here, he said. This is not easy, this department. And I can remember having been here a month or two and standing at my desk at night, reflecting over this whole thing and saying, Okay, I was asked to do this job. I've accepted. And what is it? How do you define the job and what are the problems you're facing and what are the obstacles to getting it done? And what's doable and what isn't doable?
I quoted from the last draft of the memo: We'll have to do it for the next president.
You know, he said, in a place this big that's almost true of everything. He noted that back in 1975 as secretary of defense the first time he had approved the Ml tank that was used in the first Gulf War and the recent invasion of Iraq. He also had approved the F-16, which was still being used in air operations over Iraq. He spoke almost wistfully. These decisions you make play out over a long period time, either to the benefit of the country, or conversely to the detriment of the country if you fail to do something.
4
on April 1, China forced down a U.S. Navy EP-3E spy plane and took its 24 crew members hostage, the first major foreign policy crisis of the new Bush administration. The White House was determined to keep President Bush away from the delicate hostage situation. Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan had given hostage-takers leverage by becoming emotionally involved in trying to get back Americans held in Iran and Lebanon. In Carter's case, it had led to a general sense of impotency and fear in the country, with ABC News running a nightly show called America Held Hostage and prominently reminding viewers each day how long the Americans had been held. Under Reagan, the hostage crisis had led to secret arms sales to Iran and the biggest scandal of his presidency, Iran-contra. The image of powerlessness his predecessors had endured would not be allowed to develop in the George W. Bush administration.
Secretary of State Powell was given the assignment of negotiating a settlement with the Chinese. Powell enlisted Prince Bandar, who had special relations with the Chinese through various deals to purchase arms and missiles. China was also beginning to rely on Saudi oil.
Bandar eventually got the Chinese to release the 24 hostages. Never modest about his influence, Bandar considered it almost a personal favor to him. The Chinese wanted a letter from the United States expressing regret. It was the kind of diplomatic gobbledygook that was Bandar's specialty. As the Chinese wanted, the United States would say it was very sorry the spy plane had entered Chinese airspace to make an emergency landing, while the United States would not apologize for what it considered a legitimate intelligence-gathering mission. The National Security Agency was monitoring Bandar's calls with the Chinese, and sending reports to Powell about the various negotiations, including the final deal Bandar arranged. Powell called Bandar with congratulations.
Hey, it's great! he said.
How the hell do you know? Bandar asked.
Having jumped the gun, Powell sheepishly tried to get out of explaining. Bandar knew his calls were monitored, but he and Powell couldn't really talk about one of the most sensitive and classified intelligence-gathering operations of the U.S. government involving communications among foreign governments. So for a year Powell and Bandar laughed and half joked about it without ever really defining it.
Rumsfeld demanded a full reconstruction of the timeline of the EP-3 flight from the first moment. He didn't like any aspect of it. The EP-3 was being followed closely and harassed by a Chinese fighter, and there had been a collision. One question was whether the U.S. pilot had made the right decision to land in China. As Rumsfeld dug deeper, he was asking what these intelligence missions accomplished. Who authorized them? Who assessed the value of the intelligence that was gathered? What about the risks
versus the rewards? That led to more questions and a top-to-bottom evaluation of intelligence-gathering missions from all U.S. military airborne platforms.
Painful, but important, Fry told the Joint Staff and the intelligence experts. Such potentially high-risk missions had been going on for years and were on a kind of automatic pilot. They needed to be reexamined, Fry thought, but as Rumsfeld turned over rocks, he was finding too many worms.
The question was when to resume the EP-3 missions off the Chinese coast. A few days later Rumsfeld convened a secure conference with Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Richard B. Myers and Admiral Dennis Blair, the commander in chief of Pacific Command, the combatant commander in the region. General Shelton was traveling so Myers represented the JCS. The gentlemanly, 6-foot-3 1/2-inch Air Force general had been Shelton's deputy for just over a year. A Vietnam combat pilot who flew F-4 Phantom fighter jets, the soft-spoken Myers had served as the commander in chief of the U.S. Space Command before becoming the vice chairman in March 2000.
Rear Admiral Quinn took notes as Rumsfeld, Admiral Blair and General Myers conferred.
Blair recommended that they restart the spy missions soon. The Chinese alleged the flights violated their airspace, but the U.S. recognized a 12-nautical-mile limit and did not want to concede anything or cave in to Chinese intimidation. Blair outlined a rough schedule for resumption of flights.
Denny, Rumsfeld said, that sounds like a good plan. Send me a one-page message that outlines the exact details so I can show it to Condi Rice and Colin Powell tomorrow morning. He had a secure conference call with Rice and Powell at 7:15 a.m. each weekday.
Aye aye, sir, Blair said.
The next morning Quinn was in by 6 a.m. looking for Blair's message when Rumsfeld called.
I don't see the message from Denny Blair, he said.
Mr. Secretary, I'm searching for it too and can't find it.
Bob Woodward Page 4
