Bob Woodward

by State of Denial (lit)

  I had explored the issue of doubt with Bush in several interviews. In December 2001, three months after 9/11 and several weeks after the apparent success of the first part of the war in Afghanistan, he volunteered at the end of an interview the following: I know it is hard for you to believe, but I have not doubted what we're doing. I have not doubted what we're doing. . . . There is no doubt in my mind we're doing the right thing.

  Rice and others had said that doubt was an essential ingredient in decision making because it forces careful reconsideration and readjustment. I pushed Bush on this again during an August 2002 interview at his ranch in Crawford. The topic was the Afghanistan War but he was, of course, heavily involved in secret planning for the Iraq War, which he would order seven months later.

  First of all, he said, a president has got to be the calcium in the backbone. If I weaken, the whole team weakens. If I'm doubtful, I can assure you there will be a lot of doubt. If my confidence level in our ability declines, it will send ripples throughout the whole organization. I mean, it's essential that we be confident and determined and united.

  I don't need people around me who are not steady.... And if there's kind of a hand-wringing attitude going on when times are tough, I don't like it.

  The initial tough times in the Afghanistan War really lasted for only a while. That was the brief time between public discussion of a quagmire and the quick collapse of the Taliban. In Iraq, though, the tough times—the violence, the deaths, the uncertainty, and all the signs of a quagmire—had lasted years, and were continuing.

  In the rare moments Rice had time to read, she read about the Founding Fathers to remind herself that the United States of America should never have come into being. In particular, she was affected by David McCullough's 1776, about the darkest times of the American Revolution. General George Washington wrote a private letter to his brother in which he reflected on the contrast between his public demeanor and knowledge of the dire circumstances. Many of my difficulties and distresses were of so peculiar a cast that in order to conceal them from the enemy, I was obliged to conceal them from my friends, indeed from my own army, Washington wrote, thereby subjecting my conduct to interpretations unfavorable to my character.

  Rice maintained to colleagues that neither she nor the president felt any equivalent distress. Tough sledding, she said, but Bush had told her, I see the path on Iraq.

  She often used football analogies to her inner circle. You're going to get sacked once in a while, she said one time. Once in a while you might have a fumble. But it's not as if anybody feels that we're down 25 points with no time-outs and one minute, 34 seconds to go.

  But the reality of Iraq was escalating violence. Enemy-initiated attacks against the coalition and Iraqis had numbered around 200 in June 2003. By the summer of 2004 they were around 1,750 per month, nearly a ninefold increase, according to the classified summaries given to top officials. This information was not necessarily concealed from the public, but it was certainly not emphasized, and the reporting on it was not regular. News reports on TV and in the newspapers tended to focus on the big, spectacular attacks that killed dozens or more. But the disturbing truth was that Iraq had become a country where normal now meant nearly 60 attacks a day.

  30

  soon after the Tenet resignation, Andy Card called Armitage to see if he was interested in taking over the CIA.

  No, Armitage replied emphatically.

  Can I ask you the reason? We're disappointed.

  Armitage replied that he could give the reason but he would prefer not to because it might hurt Card's feelings.

  Card knew the problem for Armitage was Cheney and Rumsfeld. He nonetheless asked Powell if there was a way to persuade Armitage.

  You can ask him again, Powell replied, but he doesn't fool around. An Armitage no is a no. My personal view is he won't do it.

  In Armitage's view, after yes, the second best answer anyone could give you in the English language was no. It was definitive. It would allow you to move on. In Washington, he felt, you were just tempting fate if you hung around very long. The time to leave was when you were at the top of your game, when everyone was saying, Man, you're the man. By that standard Powell and he had already stayed too long.

  Armitage concluded that the penalty for disagreement in the Bush White House was an implied or explicitly stated accusation that you were not on the team. If he or Powell said something might be harder than it looked, Rice or Hadley judged them not on the team. If they said, as they had, Maybe the Iraqis might not like it if we occupy their country very long, that meant they were not on the team.

  Powell was getting about 20 minutes a week with Bush. In theory they were supposed to meet alone, but Cheney was often there. The vice president wouldn't say a word, but afterward, Powell was convinced, Cheney would offer Bush one version or another of He's not on the team.

  Powell and Armitage understood that the White House saw the State Department and its diplomats as appeasers. Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Rice to some extent, would not allow State to engage in diplomacy because diplomacy was considered a weakness.

  Their idea of diplomacy, Armitage said to Powell once, is to say, 'Look fucker, you do what we want.'

  Nonetheless, because Iraq had consumed so much attention, money, military force and political effort—sucking the oxygen out of everything else, as Powell had warned Bush six months before the war—the result was that the United States had no choice but to engage in diplomacy. It was about the only tool left, for example, in dealing with North Korea and Iran.

  On August 11, President Bush nominated eight-term Florida Congressman Porter Goss, the 65-year-old chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, as the new CIA director. Armitage ran into him soon afterward. Poor Porter, he was thinking.

  What's a nice guy like you doing sitting in a place like this? Armitage asked.

  I thought you were going to take this job, Goss replied, and I could avoid it.

  No way, Armitage said. I've been on the inside too long. Porter, you never take a job where you don't know who your boss is going to be.

  Under the new intelligence legislation, the director of national intelligence would outrank the CIA director. Goss and his successors would report to the DNI—whoever that might be.

  David Kay testified before Congress on August 18 about the Iraq WMD intelligence. There was plenty of blame to go around, he said, but his most pointed criticism was of the NSC and by implication Rice.

  The dog that did not bark in the case of Iraq's WMD program, quite frankly in my view, is the National Security Council, Kay testified.

  The next day, Kay's testimony was in the newspaper. He'd barely read the story when he got a call from Robert Joseph, the NSC staffer for weapons proliferation, who worked for Rice, asking him to come by for lunch. Kay and Joseph had known each other for 15 years.

  This conversation never took place, Joseph said when they sat down. He tore into Kay. How could he have testified about Rice like that? She was the best national security adviser in the history of the United States.

  Well, she could have stopped trying to be the best friend of the president and be the best adviser and realize she's got this screening function, Kay said. When Tenet insisted the WMD case was a slam dunk, she should have followed up aggressively, demanding a full reexamination of every last shred of the slam dunk evidence.

  Joseph was adamant. Rice had done all she could. The intelligence community and CIA had befuddled her, he said.

  Kay figured Joseph had been sent by Rice, and there was nothing to be gained by shooting the messenger. He was amazed at how sensitive she was.

  Kay was unmoved. She was probably the worst national security adviser in modern times since the office was created, he said.

  Meghan O'Sullivan, the young Oxford Ph.D. who had been temporarily kicked off Jay Garner's team at the urging of the vice president's office, had turned out to be a survivor in both Baghdad and Washington. After her on-again, off-again, on-
again experience in Garner's group, she'd made it to Iraq. She, Scott Carpenter and Roman Martinez were among Bremer's closest aides, and among the very few staffers who worked for him in Iraq throughout the entire history of the Coalition Provisional Authority. After the transition of sovereignty, she came back to the White House with Blackwill to work on the NSC staff.

  So, she said to Miller when she arrived, I understand I'm supposed to take over all of Iraq someday,

  Maybe, Miller said, chafing a bit, but I'm still here. Miller started to get complaints from some of his contacts in the Pentagon, sources he'd cultivated over three decades in government. He confronted her. The DOD was his turf. I stay out of your business, Miller said. You stay out of mine. He soon concluded that O'Sullivan was very bright, but that she knew little about security, reconstruction or how the military fights wars. She was another policy person, he thought. With the rise of the Iraqi militias, the private armed sectarian groups, she had an idea: Let's just draft the militia into the Iraqi army, she proposed.

  Meghan, that's a really bad idea, Miller said. The militias were not controllable. They worked for sectarian leaders or clergy like Moqtada al-Sadr.

  Every night, Miller and O'Sullivan put together Bush's Iraq situation report. It was short—a page or two maybe, never more than four— spelling out key developments on Iraq's politics, reconstruction and military issues, and always including the most recent casualties. O'Sullivan had personal relationships with many Iraqi leaders after her time with Bremer, and she would have long phone conversations with some of them. Miller noticed that she included what she'd heard from them in the presidential briefing.

  These wily old sheiks are playing her for all she's worth, and it's going directly and unfiltered to the president, Miller thought. He decided to drop the penalty flag and went to Hadley, who seemed to understand his concerns. She's very bright but she has some significant flaws and she needs management, Hadley agreed. He said he'd figure out a way to put someone over her, to keep her in line. But it didn't happen. Soon she was her own boss and the senior NSC staff person for Iraq. Miller was astonished.

  In August 2004, the number of enemy-initiated attacks jumped by 1,000 over the previous month to 3,000, according to classified reports. Rice hated getting up in the morning and reading the newspaper. It was one bad story after another with the American presidential election just several months off.

  I feel like that little Road Runner character, she told her staff, hanging on to a branch and spinning my little feet with news stories coming along and chopping at the branch.

  In early September, White House communications director Dan Bartlett called a meeting of experts from the various departments and agencies to see what could be done to improve the message on Iraq.

  Several suggested that the president carefully acknowledge some mistakes in Iraq, arguing that it is human and powerful to admit a mistake.

  No, Bartlett said, closing the door, making it clear the president was not going to talk about mistakes.

  Do you want him to inspire or inform? one of the generals at the meeting asked.

  Both, Bartlett said.

  You probably can't do both, the general said. Informing people is often boring, and an inspiring message is more often rhetorical and not driven by facts. He cited former President Reagan, the so-called Great Communicator, who shied away from facts but could give uplifting speeches.

  Thank you, Bartlett said.

  Bush did not have to refashion his message. Though it was his war, the communications spotlight was on his opponent, Senator John Kerry, the Democratic nominee, for his service in Vietnam as a Navy Swift Boat commander, and his votes in the Senate authorizing the war, and voting against $87 billion in war funding.

  The president did not have to inspire or inform. He could hide in the fog created by the mismanagement of Kerry's message. Kerry, swimming in the past, defending his Vietnam and Senate service, never explained how he would use the power of the presidency. Bush had made it clear. He had used the power to go to war, and he was not going to back down.

  Newt Gingrich came to the White House in early fall 2004 to talk with the NSC staff about Iraq. Here's what's wrong, he said, confidently rattling off his litany. Managers don't have flexibility. We're not addressing the root causes of people's concerns. We have not built sufficient inroads into the local populations. We don't have translators.

  Translators, thought Frank Miller. There it was again.

  Afterward, Gingrich spoke with Miller. Were you not interested, or did you know everything I said to you? Because usually when I say these things people are surprised and react.

  No, Miller said. I've been there twice. I've been doing this for eighteen months. You're not telling me anything I don't know.

  Card started getting reports that things were not going well at Langley under the leadership of Porter Goss. Goss was too often keeping a congressional schedule—leaving Washington Thursday night and returning Monday. Goss had chaired the House Intelligence Committee for seven years, and he had made his staff director on the committee, Pat Murray, the new CIA chief of staff. Murray was rubbing many experienced people in the agency the wrong way. So Card took the highly unusual step of making an appointment to go see Goss at CIA headquarters.

  The president picked you to run the CIA, Card told Goss. He didn't pick Pat Murray.

  He's just helping me out, Goss said.

  Porter, Card said, you are separated from the building. Everything seemed to be going through Pat Murray. Get out of the office here on the seventh floor, go around and interact with the people in the building, eat in the cafeteria, show the flag, build up morale, slap backs, be a floor walker.

  Good suggestions, Goss said.

  Reach out to the former CIA directors—Bob Gates, even former President Bush, 41. And talk with others such as Admiral William Studeman, who had been NSA director and deputy CIA director. They're all talking, Card warned. Call them. Invite them over and solicit. Card felt he was just giving Goss basic leadership advice. Work closely with FBI Director Bob Mueller, and build relationships with the Homeland Security and the Defense crowd.

  Card told the president he had gone out to the CIA to give Goss some management training.

  Good, good, good, Bush said. I'm glad you did that.

  In October 2004, interim Prime Minister Allawi wrote to President Bush. Everywhere he traveled in Iraq, he was being ferried by big military aircraft with U.S. AIR FORCE painted on the side, Allawi said. It wasn't exactly the image of a free and sovereign Iraq that he or the U.S. wanted to project. Could he get his own plane?

  The issue came up at an NSC meeting, and Bush made it clear he wanted Allawi to have his own planes. Afterward Frank Miller walked outside with the chairman and vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

  Make it happen, Myers said to Pace.

  Weeks went by, and Miller hadn't heard anything, so he called some of his contacts on the Joint Staff.

  Oh, it's okay, was the response. The Brits are flying them around now.

  I can't make this stuff up, Miller thought. No, that's not the point, he said. The point is not the Royal Air Force instead of the U.S. Air Force. The point was to make Allawi's plane an Iraqi plane.

  Oh. Got it.

  A few more weeks went by. Now the plan was stalled by the State Department, which was concerned about transferring sensitive U.S. military technology to a foreign government. Finally, at the end of December, they repainted three C-130s with Iraqi flags on the tails.

  Myers thought that wasn't too bad a record. Three months was an accomplishment. But Miller thought it was ridiculous that it took this much effort to get a simple presidential order carried out in the spirit in which it was issued. The snail's pace was not because nobody gave a damn—though Miller thought it sure looked that way at times. It was because too often no one was made responsible and then held responsible.

  Miller's complaints finally got some attention at the Pentagon.

&nb
sp; Myers called to declare, We've got a master plan.

  Hadley went over to the Pentagon for a briefing, taking Miller and O'Sullivan with him. Skip Sharp, who headed the plans and policy directorate, gave them a presentation with 60 or 70 items that he said needed to be accomplished in Iraq. It was another ponderous list of basic infrastructure and security issues. Each item was marked with the familiar stoplight red, yellow or green, marking alleged progress.

  At the end of the Pentagon meeting, Hadley said to Miller, Here, Frank, take it. Keeper of the lists. Take it.

  Miller knew that the State Department had a very similar list. So much of it was the same—worthy goals such as getting the electricity working, building sewer lines, and putting Iraqis back to work. Make sure that there are embassy representatives with each of the military commanders, the State Department list said, and that each embassy representative has someone from USAID with them. But the list never really got reduced to eight or 10 priority items.

  Prince Bandar and his aide, Rihab Massoud, had half a dozen meetings with President Bush in 2004. Bush's deep religious convictions came up time and time again, as he talked about his faith and his relationship with God. The president made it clear that he felt no doubt that a higher authority was looking after him and guiding him. I get guidance from God in prayer, he said, and mentioned a number of times that he had asked for, prayed for and received such guidance.

  The Lord had played an important part in his life, Bush said, and prayer was a significant element of his daily routine. It helped him, he said, and gave him comfort. He made it clear that he felt the burdens that God had put on his shoulders as president. Bush said he relied on his faith to carry him through.

  Whenever Bush saw or talked with the Crown Prince he referred to their shared, deep belief in God. The Crown Prince sent Bush a prayer, which the president told Bandar he used.