Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House

by Peter Baker

  For Cheney, the offer was an act of statesmanship, a selfless proposition making it easier for the president to consider what most incumbents entertain in the backs of their minds heading toward reelection year. Yet at the same time, it also had the effect of taking the issue off the table early. Once he made up his mind, Bush rarely revisited a decision, and Cheney had now prompted him to recommit to his vice president.

  “It was a clever move by Cheney,” said one longtime friend of both men. “Cheney doesn’t do things that aren’t calculated and thought through.” Cheney had given Bush a chance to reassure himself that he really was in charge. “Reminding people that he was the boss was his great weakness, whether it was the shadow of his dad or his own insecurity or Rove or Cheney,” said the friend. “It was important to him. Emotionally, he had to remind people he was in charge.” Cheney had played to that insecurity. Moreover, in raising the issue, “Cheney reminded Bush of Cheney’s place in Bush world, and in the administration, in the White House, and of the centrality of his advice to Bush. ‘This is something I value.’ It’s smart.”

  BUSH AND CHENEY were both surprised to pick up the Washington Post on September 8 and find an op-ed article by Jerry Bremer headlined “Iraq’s Path to Sovereignty.” In it, Bremer outlined a seven-part plan to turn Iraq back over to Iraqis, one that envisioned writing a constitution, submitting it to a national referendum, and then electing a government before America would pull back.

  Bremer had gotten started in July by appointing a twenty-five-member Iraqi Governing Council to advise him on running the country in the interim. The council had thirteen Shiites, five Sunni Arabs, five Kurds, a Turkmen, and a Christian. But recent weeks had seen violence grow. American forces had tracked down Saddam Hussein’s sons, Uday and Qusay, notorious for their cruelty, and killed them in a firefight. Hussein vowed revenge by promising to kill Bush’s daughters, a threat that George and Laura kept from the twins even as the Secret Service ramped up security.

  Then insurgents drove a truck bomb into the Canal Hotel in Baghdad, headquarters for the UN contingent, cratering the building and leaving twenty-three bodies littered amid the rubble. Among them was Sergio Vieira de Mello, the world body’s top diplomat in Iraq and a man widely admired by the Bush administration and its critics alike. Bush had met Vieira de Mello when Condoleezza Rice brought him by the Oval Office. Now he was dead, a tragedy that would result in the United Nations pulling most of its foreign workers out of Baghdad.

  The Americans increasingly retreated behind the walls of their own fortress, a secured area that became known as the Green Zone. The occupation authority that was building up was a haphazard affair, cobbled together with little understanding of the country it was tasked with running. Muslim workers in the cafeteria were left to serve bacon and pork. Some of the civilians recruited to manage America’s new protectorate had been screened by the conservative Heritage Foundation. A twenty-four-year-old who worked at a real estate firm and had never been to the Middle East was assigned to rebuild the stock exchange. An army officer busied himself rewriting Iraq’s traffic laws by cutting and pasting from Maryland’s code. A twenty-one-year-old who had yet to finish college and whose most significant job until then had been ice-cream truck driver was among those charged with purging the Interior Ministry of militia members.

  The American military strategy was still to pull troops out, despite the violence. There was a sense that the armed forces had done their job and the longer they remained, the more it would stimulate resistance. But Robert Blackwill, a longtime diplomat assigned by Rice to study the Iraq situation, sent her a memo urging as many as forty thousand more troops, a recommendation that went unheeded by Rumsfeld and the White House. “You should have flooded the zone in the first place,” Powell said. “Rather than flooding the zone, Don wants a moat.”

  Bremer thought his plan outlined an orderly handover and was in keeping with everything he had been telling Washington for months. But Washington evidently had not gotten the message because his Post op-ed set off alarm bells in the White House and the Pentagon. Even Rumsfeld, who had just spent a couple days with Bremer, was surprised to read it in the newspaper. The plan suggested Americans would remain as occupiers for another two years. For Cheney and Rumsfeld, who had been pushing for a quick handover, this was unacceptable. They began thinking about how to accelerate the return of sovereignty.

  But as they did so, Cheney’s right hand, Scooter Libby, who would normally be the instrument of advancing the vice president’s views, was increasingly distracted by the CIA leak scandal. Libby believed Bremer needed to be reversed but felt his own effectiveness was compromised.

  On September 16, the CIA gave the Justice Department a memo outlining its internal probe and seeking an FBI investigation into who leaked Valerie Wilson’s identity. The same day, Scott McClellan, who had moved up to replace Ari Fleischer as White House press secretary, told reporters that it was “totally ridiculous” to blame Karl Rove but offered no such defense of Libby.

  News of the CIA request broke ten days later, when NBC News reported it. At the White House, the report of the investigation request was seen as a deliberate attempt by the CIA to draw attention away from a Senate decision to investigate the agency’s flawed intelligence on Iraq. Tenet “was using that as a diversion and it worked,” Adam Levine, a White House press aide, said later. Tenet wrote in his memoir that he had nothing to do with making the referral.

  The Washington Post dealt the next blow, reporting on September 28 that “two top White House officials called at least six Washington journalists” to out Valerie Wilson before Robert Novak’s column ran, a sensational claim that roiled Washington with its implication of an orchestrated hit campaign. An unnamed senior official was quoted saying, “Clearly, it was meant purely and simply for revenge.” The report was generated partly from a conversation between Mike Allen, a Post reporter, and Levine. It was true that Libby, Rove, and Ari Fleischer had talked with several journalists about Valerie Wilson, though not all before the Novak column and not all by making cold calls volunteering the information. And the phrase “before Novak’s column ran” had been inserted by an editor who misunderstood the timing. Talking with reporters about Valerie Wilson after her identity was already disclosed by Novak was different from disclosing it in the first place.

  The story drove a further wedge into the Bush-Cheney team. McClellan, who had denied that Rove had been involved, now confronted him again. Rove acknowledged that he had spoken with Novak.

  “He said he’d heard that Wilson’s wife worked at the CIA,” Rove explained. “I told him I couldn’t confirm it because I didn’t know.”

  McClellan was bothered because Rove had never before volunteered even talking with Novak. “Were you involved in this in any way?” McClellan asked.

  “No,” Rove said. “Look, I didn’t even know about his wife.” He did not mention that he had also spoken with Matthew Cooper of Time about Wilson’s wife.

  Bush called to grill Rove too. “Are you the one behind this Novak column?” he remembered asking.

  In the president’s recollection, Rove told him that he had spoken with Novak but it “had nothing to do with Valerie Plame” and she “had never come up.” If Bush’s memory was correct, Rove had misled him.

  Rove remembered the conversation differently. In his memoir, he wrote that he told Bush that Novak had asked him about Wilson and he replied, “I have heard that too,” but that was all. “Bush sounded a little annoyed but took my word,” Rove wrote.

  The morning after the Post story, Bush passed along Rove’s assurance to McClellan.

  “Karl didn’t do it,” Bush told McClellan.

  “I know—” McClellan began.

  “He told me he didn’t do it,” Bush went on.

  Andy Card gestured with his hands to indicate that Bush should not talk about it.

  “What?” Bush asked with irritation. “That’s what Karl told me.”

  “I know,�
�� Card said. “But you shouldn’t be talking about it with anyone, not even me.”

  McClellan told Bush he planned to say at his briefing that it was a serious issue that should be examined.

  “Yeah, I think that’s right,” Bush said. “I do believe it’s a serious matter. And I hope they find who did it.”

  McClellan returned to let the president know he would say publicly that anyone involved would no longer work in the administration.

  Bush agreed. “I would fire anybody involved,” he said.

  But while Rove and Libby were involved, so was Richard Armitage. Novak wrote a column on October 1 noting that his original source was “no partisan gunslinger,” and Armitage realized that meant him. He called Colin Powell to admit his role and then approached prosecutors. While the State Department lawyer told the White House vaguely that the department had information it was sharing with prosecutors, he did not give any details, and the White House lawyers did not want to know. Wary of compromising the investigation, neither Powell nor Armitage told Bush or Cheney. Their caution would permanently sour their relationship with Cheney once he later learned of it.

  Cheney was upset Rove had been exonerated from the White House podium while Libby had not. Libby scratched out notes of what he thought McClellan should say on his behalf: “People have made too much of the difference in how I described Karl and Libby. I’ve talked to Libby. I said it was rediculous [sic] about Karl and it is rediculous [sic] about Libby. Libby was not the source of the Novak story. And he did not leak classified information.”

  Libby showed it to Cheney, who added his own notes to the bottom of the page: “Has to happen today. Call out to key press saying same thing about Scooter as Karl. Not going to protect one staffer and sacrifice the guy that was asked to stick his neck in the meat grinder because of the incompetence of others.” Presumably, Cheney meant Libby had been forced to clean up the mess the two of them blamed on the CIA. Cheney took the issue to Bush, who agreed Libby should be cleared from the podium as well.

  At 8:30 a.m. on October 4, Card called McClellan at home. “The president and vice president spoke this morning,” Card said. “They want you to give the press the same assurance for Scooter that you gave for Karl.”

  McClellan called Libby to hear his denial directly.

  “Were you involved in the leak in any way?” McClellan asked.

  “No, absolutely not,” Libby said.

  McClellan then called four reporters to convey the denial.

  THE IRAQ WAR was taking a toll inside the White House, and the situation on the ground was no better. Frustrated by Bremer’s performance and Donald Rumsfeld’s hands-off management of it, Rice prevailed upon Bush to create the Iraq Stabilization Group under her to improve coordination between Washington and Baghdad. When David Sanger of the New York Times heard, Rice confirmed it to him without letting Rumsfeld know the story was coming.

  Rumsfeld erupted when he saw the newspaper on October 6. “The story indicates Condi stated that the reorganization was developed by herself, the Vice President, Powell and Rumsfeld,” the defense secretary wrote in a memo to Bush and Cheney. “I was not consulted—only advised.” If Rice was so eager to run the Iraq political account, Rumsfeld essentially said fine, he would be happy to off-load it. He recommended that “Jerry Bremer’s reporting relationship be moved from DoD to the President, Condi Rice or Colin Powell, as you may determine.” After all, Rumsfeld wrote with evident pique, Bremer already “has been reporting directly to Colin, Condi and you,” and “Condi, in effect has been [sic] announced that that is the case.”

  Bush told Rice to calm Rumsfeld down. “You need to make it right with Don,” he said.

  He suggested she go to Cheney. She did, and he promised to talk with Rumsfeld.

  When she saw Rumsfeld a week later, she pulled him aside and apologized.

  Rumsfeld was unforgiving. “You’re failing,” he told her bluntly. “You could have said something in the NSC meeting in front of the president and the principals.”

  “Don,” Rice replied, “you’ve made mistakes in your long career.”

  “Yes,” he said, “but I’ve tried to clean them up.”

  The schism over Iraq was a decisive turning point in their relationship. For all of their tension in the past, this was the clash from which they never recovered. For the rest of their time in office, Rumsfeld and Rice warily circled each other, ever ready to pounce when possible and nurse grievances when not.

  Bush was getting grief on all fronts. The same day, he met with senators in the Roosevelt Room to push an $18.6 billion request for reconstruction, but the senators wanted it to be a loan that Iraq would have to pay back.

  “I did not come here to negotiate,” Bush said, pounding his fist on the table.

  Senator Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, said the UN resolution anticipated that Iraq’s oil could finance its recovery.

  Bush pounded the table again. “Did I make myself clear?” he asked.

  Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, bristled. “Well, I didn’t come here to negotiate either,” he said. “Let me tell you why I’m gonna vote against you, Mr. President. I’m not worried about pleasing people who think we went to Iraq for oil. They’re nuts. I am worried about people back home paying the bill.”

  The quick, easy victory of May seemed a thousand years ago. Rumsfeld expressed frustration with progress in the war on terror in a memo on October 16. “It is pretty clear that the coalition can win in Afghanistan and Iraq in one way or another,” he wrote, “but it will be a long, hard slog.”

  Bush was sticking by Bremer. As he told a group of current and former officials from the Coalition Provisional Authority one day that October, “I tell members of Congress all the time—if Bremer’s happy, I’m happy. If Bremer’s worried, I’m worried. If Bremer’s frustrated, I’m frustrated.”

  Bush, Cheney, and the rest of the team met with Bremer in Washington on October 28 to talk about the way forward. Bush then invited the Iraq viceroy to join him for a workout, another signal of confidence in Bremer to the rest of the administration and especially to Rumsfeld. Bush worked the elliptical machine for forty-five minutes while Bremer took the treadmill, and then the two retired to the second floor for sandwiches.

  Bush asked about Rumsfeld. “What kind of a person is he to work for? Does he really micromanage?”

  Bremer said he liked Rumsfeld and admired him. “But he does micromanage,” he said. “Don terrifies his civilian subordinates, so that I can rarely get any decisions out of anyone but him.”

  Bremer expressed concern that the Pentagon was trying “to set me up as a fall guy” by suggesting they wanted a quick end to the occupation against his resistance, “so any problems from here on out were my fault.”

  “Don’t worry about that,” Bush said. “I’ll cover you here. And we are not going to fail in Iraq.”

  Bush’s commitment to Bremer, though, rankled Rumsfeld further. What were the two of them doing working out together? Did Bremer work for the Pentagon or directly for the president?

  “I thought Bremer reported to you?” his friend Kenneth Adelman asked.

  “Only on paper,” Rumsfeld grumbled.

  “That’s what paper is for, Don,” Adelman said. If Bremer bypassed him, “then just change the paper” so he would formally report to Bush.

  BY FALL, WITH weapons nowhere to be found, Bush was looking to advance a more compelling narrative for Iraq. When he learned that the National Endowment for Democracy was celebrating the twentieth anniversary of its founding under Ronald Reagan, he figured that was a perfect setting.

  Just as Reagan had emphasized the moral quality of his crusade against the “evil empire,” Bush would cast the campaign in Iraq as part of a broader movement toward democracy in the Middle East. While that had not been the driving force behind the decision to invade, these were themes Bush had been thinking about for a while, even including them in his National Security S
trategy. Now that America had broken Iraq, it owned it, as Powell had memorably put it, and Bush was looking at how to put it back together again in better shape.

  Addressing the democracy group at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce across Lafayette Park from the White House on November 6, Bush dismissed the notion that Muslims were culturally unsuited for democracy, noting that the same was once said about Japan, Germany, and India. “I believe every person has the ability and the right to be free,” he declared. To soften the blow against autocratic allies in the Middle East, he was careful to praise Egypt and Saudi Arabia for relatively modest reforms while calling on them to do more. But he made clear he saw democracy as the underpinning of a new doctrine to counter Islamic extremists.

  “Iraqi democracy will succeed,” Bush said, “and that success will send forth the news, from Damascus to Tehran, that freedom can be the future of every nation. The establishment of a free Iraq at the heart of the Middle East will be a watershed event in the global democratic revolution. Sixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe—because in the long run, stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty.”

  The rhetorical shift excited Michael Gerson and others in the White House, but it was greeted warily by Cheney. The vice president thought democracy was fine as a goal, but he was not a neoconservative crusader; he was much more driven by national security concerns, by the goal of preventing threats from gathering—an “American nationalist,” as his aide John Hannah dubbed him. Bush was arguing that those imperatives were no longer at odds, that a freer, more democratic Middle East was in the interest of American national security too. And in that, he had an important ally—Liz Cheney, the vice president’s daughter, who as deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs was in charge of the Middle East Partnership Initiative, started in 2002 to promote democratic reform in the region. Liz Cheney increasingly became known as one of the leading voices for democracy promotion.