Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House

by Peter Baker

  Sulzberger tried to lighten the mood. “I know what it’s like to sit in your father’s office,” he said lightly.

  Bush’s face registered no reaction; the Times executives thought either the joke went right over his head or he simply did not find it funny.

  Bush turned the discussion over to Hayden, who pulled up a chair opposite the president and Sulzberger and laid down briefing materials. Hayden argued the program had prevented terrorist attacks, but one example he shared did not impress the newspaper executives, the case of a would-be terrorist who planned to knock down the Brooklyn Bridge by cutting suspension cables with a tool similar to a blowtorch. Sulzberger and the others found that fanciful at best. How long would it take to knock down the Brooklyn Bridge with a blowtorch? Hours? Days? And no one would notice? Sulzberger glanced at Bush and thought he seemed to be snickering at the notion too.

  But Bush made the hard pitch, arguing that disclosure could cost lives. There would be another terrorist attack someday, he said sternly, and if administration officials were called to account on Capitol Hill for why they failed to prevent it, the Times executives should sit in the dock right next to them. Keller later called that the “blood on our hands” warning. “Whatever you think of Bush,” he said later, “hearing the president tell you you’re about to do something that will endanger the country is no laughing matter.” Yet when they left the White House gates, with a light snow falling, Keller, Sulzberger, and Taubman agreed they had heard nothing to change their minds. It was hard to imagine al-Qaeda militants did not assume their calls might be tapped, warrants or no, so the most compelling issues were the legal questions: Had Bush and Cheney exceeded their powers? Where were lines to be drawn in a democracy during wartime?

  They posted the story on the newspaper’s Web site on the evening of December 15, shortly after informing the White House. Bush and Cheney felt betrayed by not having much if any real notice, which exacerbated their anger. The story, under the headline “Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts,” caused a sensation. Among those who had been kept in the dark about the program were Michael Chertoff, the secretary of homeland security, and Frances Fragos Townsend, the president’s homeland security adviser, not to mention the vast bulk of Congress. Some inside the White House were stunned and wanted nothing to do with it. Frederick Jones, the press secretary for the National Security Council, refused to be part of any defense of the NSA program or, for that matter, the interrogation program many considered torture. “Maybe you should quit,” another White House official snapped at him.

  Bush ripped up his radio address for Saturday, December 16, to publicly acknowledge the program while defending it. Delivering the address live from the Roosevelt Room, he called the program “a vital tool in our war against the terrorists” and “consistent with U.S. law and the Constitution.” Senator Arlen Specter, the Judiciary Committee chairman, vowed to hold hearings. “He’s a president, not a king,” declared Senator Russell Feingold, a Wisconsin Democrat. The administration, added Senator Patrick Leahy, “seems to believe it is above the law.”

  The episode prompted a debate inside the White House about openness. Dan Bartlett pushed to be more forthcoming about security initiatives, arguing that Bush was “just carrying too much baggage” from all the secret activities.

  “Dan,” Cheney replied, “we aren’t doing these things for our entertainment. We’re doing them because we’re at war. These programs—and keeping them secret—are critical for the defense of the nation.”

  AT THE SAME time, John McCain pressed ahead with the Detainee Treatment Act. After winning the lopsided vote in the Senate, McCain now won an overwhelming nonbinding vote in the House supporting his position as well, 308 to 122, again enough to override a veto. Cheney wanted to keep fighting, but Bush knew he was beaten. On December 15, he endorsed McCain’s legislation, taking satisfaction that Stephen Hadley had negotiated protection for interrogators from legal liability for past actions.

  Inviting McCain and Senator John Warner to the Oval Office, Bush made the best of the situation, praising his former rival as “a good man who honors the values of America” and declaring himself “happy to work with him to achieve a common objective.” McCain responded by thanking Bush no fewer than six times.

  Cheney did not show up for the public rapprochement, but he was not done. With the help of allies in Congress, the final bill imposed less restrictive rules on the CIA than on the military, banning its interrogators from using cruel or inhuman treatment but not limiting them to the more conventional techniques outlined in the Army Field Manual. David Addington, who had replaced Scooter Libby as Cheney’s chief of staff, made sure the cruel and inhuman standard would be interpreted according to a Supreme Court ruling that defined cruelty as an act that “shocks the conscience.” In his view, that provided considerable latitude when measured in the context of a threat of a major terrorist attack. Once again, Addington had worked his will behind the scenes, encouraged by Cheney and tolerated by Bush.

  Cheney articulated the more permissive standard during a surprise visit to Iraq. “The rule is whether or not it shocks the conscience,” he told ABC News during a stop on December 18. “Now, you can get into a debate about what shocks the conscience and what is cruel and inhuman. And to some extent, I suppose that’s in the eye of the beholder. But I believe, and we think, it’s important to remember that we are in a war against a group of individuals, a terrorist organization, that did, in fact, slaughter 3,000 innocent Americans on 9/11, that it’s important for us to be able to have effective interrogation of these people when we capture them.”

  Addington intervened one final time, intercepting a statement the president would release upon signing the Detainee Treatment Act and striking most of the language with a red pen. In its place, he inserted a caveat, asserting that the president would construe the law “in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President to supervise the unitary executive branch and as Commander in Chief” charged with “protecting the American people from further terrorist attacks.” John Bellinger, the State Department’s top lawyer, was furious and blasted out an e-mail saying they had just unraveled all of Hadley’s careful negotiations. McCain was incensed; Bush was saying he would do whatever he chose, law or no.

  Bush was operating from a position of weakness. Iraq had sapped his public standing and drained the political capital he believed he had earned a year earlier. Of the four domestic goals he had set for 2005, three were dead. Social Security disappeared without a vote. The Breaux-Mack tax commission produced a plan considered so politically toxic that Bush put it on a shelf never to look at again. And his immigration overhaul had so far gone nowhere amid Republican opposition. Only the fourth goal, a crackdown on court-clogging litigation, had been partially accomplished.

  He found himself hamstrung overseas as well. The president who had vowed not to sit by and let another Rwanda genocide occur on his watch was now sitting by and watching what his own government termed genocide in Darfur. While Bush had taken a personal interest in Sudan and managed to broker a deal halting a long-running civil war between the Muslim government and rebels based in the south, authorities had begun arming local Arab militias known as the Janjaweed, which were rampaging through villages, slaughtering hundreds of thousands of people. By late 2005, when he sat down with advisers to ask what could be done, he discovered no options he liked. What about establishing a no-fly zone or sending in combat helicopters to take out militias attacking refugee camps? But Iraq had made that impossible. It would be attacking another Muslim country, he was told, and would inflame much of the Islamic world.

  Bush wrapped up his Iraq speeches with a prime-time Oval Office address on December 18, his first since launching the war thirty-three months earlier. This time, more of the concessions favored by Bartlett and Wallace made it into the speech. “This work has been especially difficult in Iraq, more difficult than we expected,” he acknowledged to thirty-seven mi
llion viewers. “Reconstruction efforts and the training of Iraqi security forces started more slowly than we hoped. We continue to see violence and suffering, caused by an enemy that is determined and brutal, unconstrained by conscience or the rules of war.” He offered an olive branch to war opponents. “We will continue to listen to honest criticism and make every change that will help us complete the mission.”

  The president was pumped up afterward. Instead of heading immediately to bed, as he generally did after a nighttime address, he lingered with aides to chew over themes for his upcoming State of the Union address. The Iraq speeches made him feel he was regaining momentum. He was rewarded with an eight-point bump in his approval rating to 47 percent, suggesting the public was still willing to listen. The lesson he and his staff took was that Iraq had come to consume his presidency and there was little room for much else unless he kept the public behind him on the war. They would have to keep pushing for support on Iraq and take on their critics. Peter Feaver waged an internal campaign to get Cheney to debate Jack Murtha on Larry King Live, much as Al Gore had taken on Ross Perot over the North American Free Trade Agreement in the last administration, but the vice president demurred.

  Bush was feeling feisty, though, his competitive spirit coming through. On New Year’s Eve, he asked Karl Rove about his New Year’s resolutions. After an incredibly busy 2005, Rove said he hoped to devote more time to books, a passion that had eluded him lately. His goal for the next year, he said, was to read a book a week.

  Three days later, he and Bush were together in the Oval Office when the president turned to him.

  “I’m on my second. Where are you?”

  With that, a contest was born.

  AFTER THE HOLIDAYS, Bush and Cheney focused on confirming Samuel Alito. Senate hearings were turning heated over his memos and other documents from his time working for the Reagan Justice Department. Of particular interest was a 1985 job application when Alito was seeking a promotion after working in the Reagan solicitor general’s office. “I am and always have been a conservative,” he wrote. He described his “personal satisfaction” in pushing Reagan policies: “I am particularly proud of my contributions in recent cases in which the government has argued in the Supreme Court that racial and ethnic quotas should not be allowed and that the Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion.”

  Now seeking the role of neutral arbiter, Alito explained that those were the words of an advocate and that his years as a judge had transformed him. But he had little of John Roberts’s smooth charm, and Democrats were eager to fight since his replacing Sandra Day O’Connor would move the court to the right. The confrontation peaked on January 11, 2006, when Senator Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican, came to Alito’s aid with a series of questions intended to mock the liberal attack on him, particularly his affiliation with a Princeton University alumni group that opposed special efforts to bring more women and minorities to the school.

  “Are you really a closet bigot?” Graham asked.

  “I’m not any kind of bigot, I’m not,” Alito answered.

  Graham agreed and said, “I am sorry that your family has had to sit here and listen to this.”

  Martha-Ann Alito, the nominee’s wife, started crying. Rachel Brand, the Justice Department lawyer sitting next to her, leaned over and whispered, “It’s okay to step out if you want.” And so she left the room. It was a genuine moment of angst, but Cheney’s man knew just what to do. Steve Schmidt, the vice president’s counselor who was managing the confirmation, immediately sent a note to the dais asking for a recess so the dramatic moment could sink in.

  When Martha-Ann had recovered and stood up to return to the hearing room, Schmidt stopped her.

  “Sit down,” he urged. “Revenge is best served cold. Wait twenty minutes and then walk out.”

  The evening news was approaching, and with any luck her return to the hearing room might be covered live. The episode had made Democrats look mean-spirited. For all intents and purposes, any real suspense over Alito’s nomination was now over.

  THERE WAS PLENTY of suspense in the Middle East, where Palestinians were preparing for their first parliamentary election in a decade. In the year since Bush vowed to make democracy the touchstone of his presidency, the results had been mixed. The Iraqi elections, Palestinian presidential elections that produced a moderate winner, the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon, the so-called Tulip Revolution in Kyrgyzstan, and various reforms elsewhere gave hope. Yet by the end of the year, there was evidence of retrenchment. Egypt’s president, Hosni Mubarak, still receiving billions of American aid dollars, released from prison Ayman Nour, a top opponent, and allowed him to run against him in an election, then after an orchestrated victory reimprisoned him.

  The upcoming Palestinian parliamentary elections presented a fresh challenge to Bush. Israel already faced a crisis as Prime Minister Ariel Sharon suffered a massive stroke and his powers were transferred to his deputy, Ehud Olmert. Amid that uncertainty, Israeli officials were nervous that the most violent faction, Hamas, would win the elections. For Bush, it was a fundamental question: Did democracy really mean leaders chosen by popular will even if it resulted in a government run by a party the United States considered a terrorist organization? Some aides, like Elliott Abrams, thought Hamas should not be allowed to run, disqualified by its own history of violence. But he knew where Bush and Rice were coming from and did not fight. Bush made no effort to stop the elections.

  On January 25, as Palestinians flocked to the polls, Bush was told in his morning intelligence briefing that Fatah, the more moderate party of President Mahmoud Abbas, would win narrowly. It was not until the next morning as votes were counted that it became clear Hamas had actually won and would claim 76 of 132 seats in the parliament.

  Bush talked with Rice by phone that morning. “What do you think we should do now?” he asked.

  “The elections were free and fair,” she responded.

  “So we’ll have to accept the result,” he said.

  But accepting the results did not mean working with Hamas, which had never recognized Israel’s right to exist. While Abbas would remain president, the Hamas victory dashed hopes for a peace settlement and prompted the United States and Europe to cut off much of their aid to the Palestinian government. More significantly, perhaps, it struck a debilitating blow to Bush’s freedom agenda. Enthusiasm inside the administration for elections faded fast, and the so-called realists who had always been wary of the president’s high-flying rhetoric now had something to point to as they argued about the law of unintended consequences; popular will sounds great unless it advances enemies of one of America’s closest allies.

  WHILE BUSH HOPED to remake the Middle East in a more democratic image, he also aimed to make the United States less dependent on it. Adopting an ambition that had eluded every president since Richard Nixon, he decided as he opened his sixth year in office to focus on reducing America’s reliance on foreign oil, seeing it as a way of depriving autocratic regimes in places like Iran and Venezuela of their lifeblood and minimizing American exposure to petro-blackmail. He had long been a fan of alternative energy, lacing speeches with talk of cellulosic ethanol made from corn and switchgrass. Now he wanted to use his upcoming State of the Union address to promote a research revolution.

  Cheney was skeptical. He did not share the president’s romanticism about alternative fuels. They were fine as far as they went, but the cold truth was that oil and gas were here to stay, at least for decades. Others in the White House shared his doubts. In an interconnected energy market, it was impractical to declare that one barrel of oil came from an undesirable source while another was acceptable, not to mention that allies would still be dependent on the same sources. Energy independence, they argued, was something of a misnomer; energy security might be better. Besides, while net oil imports had risen from 53 percent of American consumption to 60 percent since the president took office, only 11 percent of the country’s oil cam
e from the Persian Gulf, even less than before Bush’s arrival. The United States was depending increasingly on Canada and Mexico for oil, much more reliable partners.

  None of that dissuaded Bush. His State of the Union would call for a two-decade project to break American energy dependence, echoing promises made by presidents for generations. His goal was to replace more than 75 percent of Middle East oil imports by 2025. After multiple drafts of the speech, he inserted his own catchphrase near the end of the process: “America is addicted to oil.” Coming from a former oilman, that would have resonance. And the choice of the word “addicted” for the former drinker was no accident. If Bush believed in redemption for the individual, this was a chance for national salvation. “That was all him,” said Jim Connaughton, chairman of the Council on Environmental Quality. “When we put it in, there was a lot of push back.” Bush ignored the protests and kept it in.

  Just hours before heading to the Capitol to give his address on January 31, Bush finally received one bit of good news. The Senate had confirmed Samuel Alito 58 to 42, overcoming Democratic filibuster threats. Alito was sworn in, just in time to appear in the House chamber in black robes next to the other justices.

  “Keeping America competitive requires affordable energy,” Bush declared in the fifty-one-minute address. “And here we have a serious problem: America is addicted to oil, which is often imported from unstable parts of the world. The best way to break this addiction is through technology.”

  The State of the Union was kicking off a new year. Things had to get better. What else could go wrong?