HRC: State Secrets and the Rebirth of Hillary Clinton

by Jonathan Allen

  That would be all well and good if other countries also chose to stop doing business in Iran rather than face American sanctions. But the danger was that the other countries, particularly Russia, China, and Brazil, would decide it was better to suffer American sanctions and keep doing business with Iran. Aside from the question of which choice was economically better for each country, no leader would want to appear weak to his or her people by buckling to American demands.

  In conjunction with the White House and the Treasury Department, Hillary was looking for a new approach that could provide incentives for foreign companies, some of which were state-run, to join in isolating Iran. One such angle, which flummoxed Iran hawks, was a State Department proposal to let companies evade sanctions by demonstrating that they were on a serious and irreversible path toward getting out of Iran. That way companies that wanted to cooperate with the United States wouldn’t get hit with sanctions just because it took them a little bit of time to disentangle themselves from complex business relationships. While it sounded to many in Congress like the administration wanted to let bad actors off the hook, the top sanctions analysts in the executive branch thought that it was a creative way to produce a better outcome.

  Nuance on Iran had never before been a specialty of Hillary’s. As a senator from heavily pro-Israel New York, she had been among the hard-liners. In 2006, as she ran for reelection to the Senate and geared up for a presidential bid, she had blasted the Bush administration for “downplaying the threat.” But as secretary of state, she worked for an administration that had concerns about the practical consequences of blunt-force sanctions. What her new perch taught her—or made it easier for her to accept—was that American efforts to coerce other countries into imposing sanctions might cause a backlash that ultimately hindered progress.

  For months, her former congressional colleagues commented on her change of opinion. But Hillary told them it was natural that her perspective now differed from theirs. “You have a different position,” she would say. “You work in a different place.” The line allowed her to preserve some credibility as a hawk on Iran while suggesting to members of Congress that they might not hold the only reasonable point of view about the most effective way of putting pressure on the regime.

  “She was always for turning up the heat on Iran,” said a source who worked on Capitol Hill and at the State Department. “I think she just took a more nuanced view of it when she got [to State], which is that you get the Russians, the Indians, the Turks, the Europeans, to stop transacting business where that supports the petroleum sector in Iran, and you can’t do that with a sledgehammer. You’ve got to do that through the careful art of diplomacy. If we just drive this kind of truck into the negotiations and say ‘This is what we’re going to do, take it or leave it,’ they will leave it.”

  Despite pressure from hard-liners to move more quickly, Berman and Dodd already had bowed to an administration request to wait for the United Nations to impose its own sanctions before producing a final bill. On June 9 the UN Security Council voted 12–2, with Lebanon abstaining, in favor of a sanctions measure. The State Department and UN ambassador Susan Rice had assured Russia and China that if they cooperated in limiting Iran’s weapons capabilities, any follow-on American law would give plenty of opportunity to companies in their countries to avoid U.S. sanctions. Now, two days later, Hillary had to make good on that promise by getting Congress to agree to special waivers before voting for a final bill. Dodd, who had his hands full with the eponymous Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform bill, had mostly let Berman, an expert on foreign policy, take the lead, interjecting himself as a moderator between Berman and the administration when necessary over the course of more than a year of deliberations.

  All sides had been in close contact with AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which was the driving outside force behind the legislation. In general, members of Congress were eager to put the scalps of outlaw companies on the wall to impress pro-Israel voters and donors at home, and they were reluctant to do anything to soften the legislation. Berman had been “holding back AIPAC,” according to one congressional source. The worst-case scenario for Obama would be to look like he was at odds with a nearly unanimous Congress on an issue affecting Israel in advance of a reelection effort in which he would need the support of pro-Israel donors and voters.

  While the White House believed that its approach would likely be more effective in isolating Iran and forcing its leaders to the negotiating table, more discussion of provisions that could be interpreted as lenient presented a political risk. But Hillary and her aides took that risk. “I believed very strongly, as did she, that at the end of the day, it did not matter how far unilateral sanctions [went] if we didn’t have strong international cooperation, because on an economic level and a political level, the thing that was going to make the biggest difference was for Iran to feel that it had no champions, no place to turn, no out,” said Deputy Secretary Jim Steinberg, who has been credited with devising the “special rule” that let cooperating companies avoid sanctions. “This was a conversation that I was deeply involved in with the Hill and with outside groups like AIPAC—and with others—to demonstrate to them we were serious, that we were not just looking for excuses to let others off the hook.”

  Typically, House-Senate conference committees are conducted in the Capitol. Sometimes the administration has representatives observing the meeting with no official role. But in this case, Hillary became the de facto chairwoman of the conference committee, running the meeting from her own conference room with the two senior lawmakers responsible for writing the bill. The scene might have been a reminder that the separation of powers among branches of government is far narrower when a single party controls the White House and both chambers of Congress. Berman and Dodd were amenable to finding some kind of accommodation because Obama was a president from their own party and could benefit politically from signing an Iran sanctions bill. But there had been a total of twelve votes against the House and Senate versions of the bill in its first go-round, meaning the administration had little leverage to threaten to veto the bill or force changes like the adoption of a waiver for companies that promised to play nice.

  For two Democrats who had been in Washington for so long—Hillary since 1993 and Berman since 1983—they hadn’t spent much time together, apart from a congressional delegation trip to Kiev and Munich in 2004 and a few courtesy calls during her first year at State. Their lack of familiarity was one of the reasons Berman had felt comfortable endorsing Obama in 2008. For the moment, Hillary put that slight aside and dug into the policy at hand. Berman was struck by her command of the substance. It was uncanny, he thought, how well Hillary had digested the subject matter, given that she clearly couldn’t have spent as much time on it as he had. “It was incredibly complicated. The sanctions aren’t on Iran—they’re on entities doing business with Iran,” he said, ticking off the permutations of sanctions that she had nailed down. “At least on the major ones, she had learned them. She drilled down enough.”

  The negotiations came down to the wording of two provisions that State wanted Berman and Dodd to add to the final measure. One was called the “closely cooperating country exemption,” which closed the loop on the assurances the administration had given to Russia and China in advance of the UN sanctions vote and clarified that the president could waive sanctions against a company if its home country was actively working to stop Iran from building its military capabilities. Technically, the president could waive the sanctions anyway, if he determined that it was in the national security interests of the United States to do so, but the language was something Hillary and Susan Rice could point to in discussions with the Russians and Chinese. The second provision, the “special rule,” created the complex waiver authority in which the president could temporarily waive sanctions against a foreign company if the company could demonstrate that it was on a path to divest from Iran. As the bill was originally written, there was no in
centive for a company with a lot of business interests in Iran to begin divesting.

  Both provisions were added to the bill, with each side conceding ground on the particulars of the wording. Obama signed the legislation on July 1, 2010, and later used it as evidence of his support for Israel in his reelection campaign. His opponents cited waivers granted under the last-minute provisions as evidence that he wasn’t tough enough on Iran—a line of argument that frustrated administration officials to no end because the waivers were a sign that the sanctions law had actually persuaded foreign companies to begin breaking ties with Iran. Hillary had taken up for Obama and cut a deal that preserved both his Iran policy and his ability to present himself as tough enough to pro-Israel voters.

  In that way, she won on the substance. But by joking about how her new job gave her a new view on the issue, she also managed to convince her former colleagues that she was doing her duty more than her wont, reducing the political risk of her new position. “Hillary Clinton as a senator was a person I really liked because she was tough on Iran. Hillary Clinton as secretary of state had to do the bidding of the Obama administration,” Republican representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the former chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said. “You may think I’m excusing her, but I think in her heart of hearts she would have liked to have been as tough on Iran as possible.”

  The Iran sanctions deal came together just as Hillary was beginning to focus on two major unions in her personal life, the weddings of her daughter, Chelsea, and of Huma, whom the Clintons often referred to as being like a second daughter. Like many of the people closest to Hillary, Huma exudes one particular characteristic that is also central to Hillary’s persona. Philippe Reines shares with Hillary an ability to anticipate political peril and a desire to be on the inside of the joke. Jake Sullivan is a government nerd, facile with both policy and the building of power within a bureaucracy. Cheryl Mills is the lawyer who ferociously represents her client’s interests. Capricia Marshall breaks down interpersonal barriers by making other people comfortable. With Huma, the reflection of Hillary’s own character can be seen in the perfection of the role of superstaffer. Hillary played that part for Obama on trips abroad, and for Bill as his right-hand political and policy adviser throughout his career in public life.

  Whatever Hillary needed, Huma got it—often before Hillary had thought to ask for it. At the White House in the late 1990s, in the Senate, on the campaign trail, and in Hillary’s first two years at State, Huma was seldom more than a couple of feet away from her boss and mentor. When iconic photos of Hillary were taken, Huma was usually just off camera, holding as many as three BlackBerry devices at once. Chelsea Clinton has said that Huma, less than four years her senior, is like a sister to her.

  During the 2008 presidential campaign, Hillary intervened to help Brooklyn congressman Anthony Weiner secure his first date with Huma. As that relationship grew more serious, Huma again followed in Hillary’s footsteps by falling for a politician. On June 30 the Clintons welcomed several hundred guests to their home for an engagement party for the young political power couple. “It was love at first sight,” Hillary said, pausing for the punch line, “for Anthony.”

  Weiner choked up while delivering his own remarks, expressing his appreciation for his bride-to-be and his hosts. Bill, embracing Chelsea, said that if he’d had a second daughter, it would be Huma. It was a celebration, but there was an ominous undertone, according to one attendee. “Huma seemed like this aloof woman,” the source said. “It was like ‘how much Anthony loves Huma’ and then it was like ‘Anthony loves Huma.’ ”

  Hillary often shows interest in the love lives of her many aides and advisers, including one who traveled with her frequently during the 2008 primary. “I was engaged at the time, and she was so interested in our wedding planning process,” the aide said. “I was on this major diet at the time, and she was constantly concerned that I have diet-friendly food on the plane. She was really into it.” Huma was much closer to the Clintons than the average aide, and they became heavily invested in the details of her wedding.

  Bill presided over the ceremony on July 10, 2010, at Oheka Castle, a sprawling estate situated at the highest point on Long Island. He joked that their religious differences (Weiner comes from a Jewish family and Abedin from a Muslim family) were nothing compared with the difficulty of marrying a politician. It’s “easy to distrust them, whatever their religion,” he said. Oscar de la Renta, a friend of the Clintons—and of Huma—designed her dress, a flowing, cap-sleeved number embroidered in gold. Weiner, nearly ten years her senior, professed that he was “over the moon” about Huma.

  The Weiner-Abedin nuptials whetted the public appetite for Chelsea’s very private American version of a British royal wedding three weeks later, on July 31. For months, long before the actual wedding, reports surfaced that Chelsea was on the verge of tying the knot, which annoyed the Clintons to no end. “The press thought it was happening a year earlier than it did, when she wasn’t even engaged, and they wouldn’t accept it when the mother of the bride said it wasn’t happening,” griped one aide to Hillary. “One person, a wire reporter, was told by his editor, ‘She’s not a good enough source.’ ”

  The last business call Hillary made before Chelsea’s wedding was to Senator Johnny Isakson, a Georgia Republican and a pivotal player in the New START nuclear arms pact with Russia that was close to Obama’s heart. Isakson had taken the text of the complicated treaty up to his mountain home over the July 4 weekend, and sitting by the boathouse, with his grandchildren playing nearby, he had gone through it page by excruciating page, scribbling notes in the margin. Over the next few weeks, Isakson peppered State Department officials with specific technical questions and even spoke to Hillary repeatedly about it. With a committee vote pending after the August recess, Hillary dialed up Isakson one last time before Chelsea’s wedding just to make sure he was getting all the answers he needed.

  It’s not that she worried about the Foreign Relations Committee approving the treaty, thereby clearing it for consideration on the floor. Because Democrats held 59 of the 100 seats in the Senate, and thus a majority on the committee, the outcome of the panel vote was a foregone conclusion. But on the floor, treaties require a two-thirds vote of the Senate—at least 67 of 100—for ratification. So the votes of Republicans on the committee would be an important indication, both to Democratic leaders in the Senate and to rank-and-file Republicans who didn’t serve on the committee, of the treaty’s viability on the floor. Indiana senator Richard Lugar, the top Republican on the committee, had worked on Russian arms treaties with everyone from Ronald Reagan to Obama, and he was considered more or less a mortal lock to vote yes in committee. For a variety of reasons, most notably their openness to reason and to the nuclear power industries in their home states, Hillary had targeted Isakson and Tennessee Republican Bob Corker as possible supporters early on in the process.

  As in the Iran sanctions debate, Hillary became the point of the administration’s spear on Capitol Hill. In this case, rather than playing defense with hawkish Democrats, she went on offense to persuade a handful of Republicans that the dovish-sounding arms-reduction treaty was in the national security interests of the United States. She knew her way around the Hill as well as anyone in the administration, save Vice President Joe Biden, and she understood that it would take a lot of time and effort to get senators comfortable with both the substance and the politics of the treaty.

  “She started months before anyone else,” said one official familiar with the administration’s effort. Hillary focused most intently on Isakson and Corker. Each had a home-state interest in nuclear power, but each also had a political interest in denying Obama. As a politician herself, she knew she had to assure them that the treaty was not only the right thing to do but politically sustainable. That meant making sure they could defend it back home.

  But by May that was becoming increasingly difficult as conservatives, led by Senator Jim D
eMint (R-S.C.), demanded that the White House turn over a set of documents known as the “negotiating record” of U.S. talks with Russia. The dossier contained all the offers, counteroffers, instructions, and side talks that had gone into creating the treaty. Without the record, the conservatives argued, how could they know that the Russians hadn’t interpreted certain provisions—particularly those relating to missile defense—one way while the Americans read them another way?

  The clash over the negotiating record created a bind for Corker and Isakson, who were leaning toward voting for the treaty but would have trouble justifying those votes if conservatives were saying publicly that they were voting without having all the information provided by the negotiating record—that they were blindly trusting Democrats. What if Obama had negotiated bad side deals? That, the conservatives suggested, could lead to the Russians getting a leg up on the United States.

  Reagan had framed nuclear arms treaties with Russia with the phrase “trust but verify”—meaning that for an accord to hold, the two countries had to be able to inspect each other’s weapons stockpiles. Corker and Isakson were trusting, but they wouldn’t vote yes without being able to verify.

  But the White House policy was to keep the negotiating record private, in large part because discretion allowed for candor in negotiations with Russia. If the record were turned over to the Senate, the details would surely show up in media accounts within a matter of hours, if not minutes. Typically, the Senate had not been privy to similar documents on past treaties. So the impasse was clear: the White House didn’t want to make the negotiating record available to senators, and the senators whom the president needed on his side wouldn’t vote with him unless they felt they had all the information they needed.