Bob Woodward

by State of Denial (lit)

  When everyone else left, the secretary of defense walked to his desk and started shuffling through his papers. It took a while, and Rumsfeld started to get exasperated, unable to find what he was looking for. Finally, he picked up a small piece of paper.

  Jay, he said, looking up. Do you have a couple people on your team named Warrick and O'Sullivan?

  Yeah, Garner replied. I've got a guy named Tom Warrick who did the 'Future of Iraq' study and I got a gal named Meghan O'Sullivan, who's a real talented young lady.

  O'Sullivan, also from the State Department, had come over to Garner's team recently. She was 33, indisputably bright, had a doctorate in political science from Oxford University, and had written extensively on rogue states and Iraq.

  I've got to ask you to take them both off the team, Rumsfeld said.

  I can't do that. Both of them are too valuable.

  Rumsfeld stared at Garner briefly. Look, Jay. I've gotten this request from such a high level that I can't turn it down. So I've got to ask you to remove them from your team.

  There's no negotiation here? Garner asked.

  I'm sorry. There really isn't, Rumsfeld replied.

  A level so high that the secretary of defense couldn't turn it down? Garner thought. That could mean only Bush or conceivably Cheney.

  Back in his office, Garner couldn't locate Warrick or O'Sullivan. He told Tom Baltazar, an Army colonel who was working as his operations officer, what had happened. That's crazy, Baltazar said.

  Look, just find them, Garner said. Tell them to go back to where they came from, and I'll get them back. Tell them it's just temporary.

  Garner later tracked down Steve Hadley, the deputy national security adviser.

  I really, really want these two back, he told Hadley.

  Yeah, Hadley replied. I don't know that we can help you here.

  Garner pressed his case. Warrick and O'Sullivan knew what they were talking about. There wasn't much time before they would likely be deploying to the Middle East, and he needed them.

  Well, the man is just too hard, Hadley said. It would be impossible to get Warrick back on the team, but it sounded like he was leaving the door open for O'Sullivan.

  That night, Baltazar called Garner at his apartment to report that Warrick and O'Sullivan were gone.

  Tom, Garner asked, where in the hell do you think this came from?

  I don't know, but I've got a buddy who works at the White House. I'm going to call him tonight on his phone at home. I don't want to call him on the official line.

  Baltazar called his friend, R J. Dermer, an army colonel who worked for Scooter Libby, the vice president's chief of staff, and who had a secure telephone at home. The bottom line, Dermer said, had to do with Ahmed Chalabi, an Iraqi expatriate and head of the Iraqi National Congress, a group based in London and funded by the U.S. Cheney's office was pushing the idea that Chalabi was the answer to everything, and Warrick was not a fan of Chalabi. Dermer described the opposition to Warrick as coming from a group of about five people in Cheney's office— a cabal, he said.

  The next morning, Baltazar told Garner, It was the vice president. The vice president can't stand either one of them.

  Warrick had been in the Clinton administration, and had been a strong advocate of indicting Saddam Hussein as a war criminal. He had worked on regime change issues for State, met with lots of Iraqi exiles, and had discovered that other exiles weren't exactly enamored of Chalabi. In fact, there had been a conference of Iraqi opposition leaders he'd worked on in 2002 when many of them said they wouldn't come if Chalabi and his Iraqi National Congress were put in charge.

  O'Sullivan had worked at the Brookings Institution, a left-of-center think tank, and she was seen as a protégé of Richard N. Haass, the director of policy planning at Powell's State Department. She and Haass had co-authored a paper urging the use of economic, political or cultural incentives as levers to influence countries such as Iraq instead of military force or covert action. In another paper O'Sullivan had questioned U.S. support to Iraqi exiles.

  Garner thought the whole maneuver was a bad sign. He was repelled that personalities and apparently ideology would play a role in such vital postwar planning. Losing Warrick, clearly a top expert on the issues, was a blow, though Garner's team kept his Future of Iraq study, and a lot of Iraqis who had worked on it wound up working with Garner's organization. The incident demonstrated the depth of the infighting between Defense and State.

  At the State Department, Powell got word of what Rumsfeld had done. What the hell is going on? he asked Rumsfeld in a phone call.

  Rumsfeld said that they needed people who were truly committed and who had not written or said things that were not supportive.

  Powell took that to mean that his State Department people didn't support exiles like Chalabi. Soon the secretary of state and secretary of defense were into a giant row. I can take prisoners too, Powell said.

  Garner went back to Rumsfeld. Let me have these two people back, he said.

  I can't do that, Rumsfeld said. I told you I was asked at a high level to remove these people. I asked you to do it. You've done it. I can't go back on that now. Finally Rumsfeld said, Look, bring the woman back. Garner could have O'Sullivan. Nobody will know that.

  Powell quickly learned of the half resolution, and he asked himself if things could get any weirder. He found seven senior State officials he thought would be useful to Garner, but Doug Feith wanted outsiders instead of representatives from the Department of Nice. Powell said it was bullshit. He and Rumsfeld got into another big fight, but Powell got five of the seven approved and on Garner's team after a week of more silliness.

  The overriding problem was that there was not one, single plan, thought Paul Hughes, an Army colonel on Garner's staff. There was no single document spelling out, This is your objective. This is who's in charge. These are the priority tasks. These are the coordinating steps we will take to bring these all together. Garner had tried to synchronize things at the rock drill, but they clearly weren't there yet, not even close.

  Hughes, a tall, trim 50-year-old officer who had served 28 years on active duty, had been in charge of national security studies at the National Defense University until he was assigned to Garner's group. He and another officer on Garner's staff, Colonel Thomas Gross, were known as The Law Firm, and had wide latitude. Even on some of the official office phone lists, where their colleagues were identified by the division in which they worked, Hughes and Gross were listed simply as Law Firm.

  Hughes had spent six months thinking about what postwar Iraq would look like, and had put together a two-day conference on the issue in November 2002. The National Defense University had done a 41-page report on their findings, which wound up in the hands of Jim Thomas, a special assistant to Paul Wolfowitz.

  Hughes continued to push for an omnibus plan. The word from Feith's office was a simple no. Hughes saw that such a document would almost inevitably involve the interagency process, including State and the CIA. That wouldn't fly because NSPD-24, which had set up Garner's office, had specifically put the authority and responsibility for postwar planning for Iraq in the Defense Department.

  Rumsfeld invited an outside group of experts to the Pentagon to discuss postwar Iraq. Among the group was James F. Dobbins, who probably knew as much about managing modern post-conflict situations as anyone. A courtly, 60-year-old veteran diplomat, Dobbins was Mr. Postwar. He had been the U.S. envoy for Kosovo, Bosnia, Haiti and Somalia, overseeing both the celebrated and controversial stabilization and reconstruction missions of the 1990s. Now he was at RAND Corporation, the think tank, as the head of international and security policy.

  In 2001, Powell had named Dobbins to head the negotiations among the Afghanistan opposition groups to find a leader after the fall of the Taliban. It was a classic brokering assignment, requiring as much negotiating among the various U.S. agencies and departments as with foreign governments. At the CIA several officials proposed Hamid Karzai, a mode
rate Afghan leader who had been a junior minister under the Taliban but had defected and joined the opposition. General Franks approved and others in the CIA, State and Defense Departments signed off. Having gathered consensus within the U.S. bureaucracy, Dobbins headed to a U.N. conference in Bonn, Germany, where the Afghan factions were engaged in all-night negotiating sessions, trying to settle on a leader. Dobbins persuaded the key regional players—the Russians, the Pakistanis and even the Iranians—to agree on Karzai, who took the oath of office as Afghanistan's president on December 22, 2001—just 102 days after 9/11.

  At the Pentagon, one of Feith's deputies briefed Dobbins and several other outside experts on a postwar plan that seemed to envision a full-scale occupation of Iraq. Dobbins thought of it as Plan A—a sort of General Douglas MacArthur viceroy. The United States would prepare the country for elections, after which sovereignty would be given back to the Iraqis.

  After the briefing, Rumsfeld came in to meet with Dobbins and the others.

  I thought we did it just fine in Afghanistan, Rumsfeld said, acknowledging Dobbins and his role, and I would hope that we'll be able to do the same thing in Iraq—that is, bring together a representative group of Iraqis and find Iraq's Hamid Karzai.

  Rumsfeld said later, I tilted to the latter, to the quicker handover, and the president did . . . Clearly you needed somebody who people could recognize as providing leadership in the country. And I've always felt that foreign troops are an anomaly in a country, that eventually they're unnatural and not welcomed really. There's also the concept of declining consent.

  Dobbins was happy to see that there was a Plan B—a Bonn conference equivalent with quick transfer of power to an Iraqi government. He wondered which model—MacArthur or Karzai—would be used. There seemed to be no well-devised plan for either, and clearly there was no consensus within the administration. It was also evident to him that the administration did not comprehend the massive undertaking before them—not only the security, governing and economic issues but the task of trying to heal some of the old wounds from the dictatorship, and the hatred between the Sunnis, who ruled Iraq under Saddam, and the Shiites, who were a majority of the population.

  Bush had disparaged nation building in the 2000 presidential campaign. But now his administration was going to be in that business big-time.

  Six weeks into his assignment, Garner went to the White House, midmorning on Friday, February 28, 2003, to meet President Bush for the first time and brief him on what his team had been doing. Waiting outside the Situation Room, where the president and the war cabinet were meeting, Garner recognized Attorney General John Ashcroft.

  Looks like we're both out of the loop, Garner said nervously, trying to break the ice.

  Ashcroft responded with what Garner thought was a go to hell look.

  In the Situation Room, Garner took a seat at the far end of a small, well-polished table. The president was at the other end, with the principals seated alongside, including Powell, Rumsfeld, Rice and Tenet. General Franks was there, and Cheney was on the secure video teleconference screen. Frank Miller, director of the NSC staff for defense, was in the middle of a briefing. Garner was nervous. He could see the president had no idea who the hell he was.

  As Miller talked, Bush shifted his attention between Miller and Garner, staring intently at Miller, and then glancing quickly at Garner, before turning back to Miller. Then again, a quick look at Garner before turning back to Miller. Then a third time.

  This is going to be a long day, Garner thought. Somewhat out of the blue, Bush flashed a high-in-the-air thumbs-up sign at Garner. Garner instantly felt better. He thought the president sensed his discomfort and was trying to put him at ease.

  Okay, what's next? the president asked when Miller finished.

  General Garner's in the postwar planning group, Rice said, and he's going to brief you on that.

  Before you do that, the president said, tell me about yourself.

  No, I'm going to tell you about him, Rumsfeld interrupted, and summarized Garner's Army service, his success in Operation Provide Comfort, and his service on Rumsfeld's space commission.

  That's fine, Bush said. And then to Garner: Go ahead.

  Garner passed around copies of his handout, an 11-point presentation, and dove right in. Addressing his nine basic assignments in NSPD-24, Garner said essentially that four of them shouldn't be his because they were plainly beyond the capabilities of his small team. The four tasks included dismantling WMD, defeating terrorists, reshaping the Iraqi military and reshaping the other internal Iraqi security institutions. In other words, four of the really hard ones. Those would have to be handled by the military, Garner said.

  The president nodded. No one else intervened, though Garner had just told them he couldn't be responsible for crucial postwar tasks—the ones that had the most to do with the stated reasons for going to war in the first place—because his team couldn't do them.

  No one asked the follow-up question of exactly who would be responsible, if Garner wasn't. Were the issues going to be left hanging in the air? Were they important? Maybe Garner was wrong. Maybe he could or should have those issues. The import of what he had said seemed to sail over everyone's heads.

  Garner next described how he intended to divide the country into regional groups, and moved on to the interagency plans.

  Just a minute, the president interrupted. Where are you from?

  Florida, sir.

  Why do you talk like that? he asked, apparently trying to place Garner's accent.

  Because I was born and raised on a ranch in Florida. My daddy was a rancher.

  You're in, the First Rancher said approvingly. His brother Jeb was governor of the state, and the president visited regularly.

  Garner went on, explaining that each department and agency had to operationalize its plan and have a vision about its end state, particularly for the first 30 days to one year.

  He raised his notion of Show Stoppers, problems that might jeopardize or even stop the mission in its tracks. They were struggling for money, he said.

  The president listened.

  Referring to the rock drill, Garner explained how they planned to maintain stability in Iraq after combat.

  Garner's talking point said, Postwar use of Iraqi Regular Army. He said, We're going to use the army. We need to use them. They have the proper skill sets.

  How many from the army? someone asked.

  I'm going to give you a big range, Garner answered. It'll be between 200,000 and 300,000.

  Garner looked around the room. All the heads were bobbing north to south. Nobody challenged. Nobody had any questions about this plan.

  Next, Garner said he wanted to internationalize the postwar effort. Immediately, he noticed some discomfort in the room. Not from Powell, but from most of the others. He thought there was a lot of squirming going on, and Garner figured most of the others were thinking, Don't you get it? We're not trying to internationalize this thing. It's a U.S. operation.

  He continued, saying that he would send his advance party to the region in about 10 days, with the rest to follow 10 days later. The president didn't say anything. No one indicated when the war might start, but it was obvious it was coming soon.

  Thank you very much, Bush said when Garner was done. Rice started talking about something else, so Garner figured he was dismissed.

  As he started to walk out of the room, the president caught his eye.

  Kick ass. Jay, Bush said.

  Garner waited for Rumsfeld outside. Soon, Bush and Rice came out and walked three or four steps past Garner. Suddenly Bush turned back.

  Hey, if you have any problem with that governor down in Florida, just let me know, he said.

  14

  after Powell had toned down the idea of a Saddam-al Qaeda connection in his address to the U.N. on February 5, Cheney wanted to give his own speech making the charge. Tenet was upset. It was bullshit. He wondered to his associate John Brennan if he should ste
p down. At the same time, Tenet did not want to be the disloyal intelligence director who folded in a national crisis or on the eve of war.

  He went to the president. The CIA intelligence does not support the conclusion of Cheney's proposed speech, he said. There is no proof that Saddam had authority, direction and control of any al Qaeda aid coming from Iraq. If Cheney gives the speech, Tenet told the president, the CIA cannot and will not stand behind it.

  Bush backed Tenet. He told Cheney not to give the speech.

  Without informing anyone in the White House or Pentagon, Garner went to the United Nations headquarters in New York City on March 3. He and his deputy, Ron Adams, felt strongly that the more the war was a coalition effort, the better for all. Garner decided to see if he personally could get the U.N. stamp on as much of the postwar effort as possible.

  The outreach was dangerous because the White House and the Pentagon had scant interest in the United Nations. Garner's comment about internationalizing the effort had not gone over well at the NSC meeting just a few days before.

  Louise Fréchette, the deputy secretary general of the U.N., chaired their meeting.

  The U.N.'s working hard on immediate relief on humanitarian affairs and not seeking a role beyond that, Fréchette said.

  Garner asked if he could at least have a U.N. liaison officer assigned to him.

  No, Fréchette said.

  Bang, thought Garner. Shot down. So much for help from the U.N.

  Garner next met with Jeremy Greenstock, the British ambassador to the U.N., who looked physically exhausted, overwrought, worn out. The stress of trying to get a second U.N. resolution on weapons inspections in Iraq—an effort that would soon fail—was obviously taking its toll.

  We're in this with you, Greenstock said. We're together in this, but internationalizing this effort will make everything a lot easier for all of us. He meant especially for British Prime Minister Blair, who had promised his Labour Party at home he'd seek a second U.N. resolution. By tradition Labour paid homage to the United Nations.