The World as It Is

by Ben Rhodes

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  WHEN I TRAVELED WITH OBAMA in the final weeks of the 2012 campaign, I started to notice scattered protesters holding up signs along the motorcade route with words like BENGHAZI/MURDERER and TRAITOR on them. Conspiracy theories were emerging like mushrooms from the dirt: It was alleged that the U.S. military had been ordered to stand down, intentionally leaving Americans to die in Benghazi, or that the Obama administration was using the facility where Chris Stevens was killed to run guns to jihadists in Syria. To cover this up, the conspiracy theory went, we had invented the ruse of the Internet video insulting Islam.

  Part of what was so disorienting was that we had no idea where these theories were coming from. We could track what was on a cable television channel like Fox News or a website like Breitbart, but we had no idea what was being discussed in the darker corners of the Internet. Clearly, whatever people were consuming went well beyond a complaint that Hillary Clinton didn’t provide enough funding for diplomatic security, or Barack Obama didn’t plan for the postrevolution period in Libya. “Benghazi” was an accusation that seemed to mean everything and nothing at the same time, shifting from one conspiracy theory to the next.

  I figured this was just part of the end of a presidential campaign. But after the election, this darkness migrated from the Internet and talk radio to Congress. Republicans started investigating the Benghazi attacks in every committee with any possible jurisdiction over the event. The best way to put the whole thing behind us would have been to release all of the information we had about Benghazi. But institutionally the White House counsel needs to avoid setting a precedent that the inner workings of the government are easily obtained so that the president can receive unvarnished advice. And so we were going to face the drip, drip, drip of a story coming out in bits through the drama of congressional committees forcing information out of the White House, information that reached the public only after being filtered through the faux outrage of the Republicans who obtained it.

  As 2012 drew to a close, Susan Rice took the brunt of the attacks because she was the front-runner to replace Hillary Clinton as secretary of state. As outwardly composed as she was, she was shocked by the vitriol. Her aging mother couldn’t look at the news; her young daughter didn’t understand what was happening. Stories were popping up about her finances, her work history, her temperament; columns were written about everything from her Africa policy decisions in the 1990s to the fact that she’d once—decades ago—given Richard Holbrooke the finger. A picture was drawn of an unethical, incompetent careerist who’d gone on television to lie about the deaths of four Americans.

  I knew better than anyone else how false that was—Susan had merely used the CIA talking points I’d forwarded her before her appearances. And yet I had to watch her character being assassinated, her chances of achieving a dream job slipping away. She never blamed me. Instead, she’d call and ask for advice. “Do you think it’s better for me to get out there, or keep my head down?” I’d sit holding the phone, not knowing what to say. “Let us get out there on your behalf,” I’d respond. But the reality is that nothing we did made a difference—the people attacking her weren’t going to change their minds; reporters would tell you privately that they knew Benghazi was a bogus scandal, but they would still report on the allegations against her in print and on TV. The Republicans were talking about it incessantly, so it was news. In December, Susan told Obama she was taking her name out of the running for secretary of state. The next time I saw her, she looked as if a weight had been lifted off her shoulders—maybe this would make it go away—and Obama had told her she was likely to be his next national security advisor. She told me that she loved me, and that I was one of the only people who defended her.

  At some other point in the past, perhaps a story like Benghazi would have petered out—facts might have mattered. But in 2013, the partisanship in our politics merged with new media platforms and allowed “Benghazi” to survive the long stretches when it wasn’t dominating the news cycle. During those gaps in attention, new conspiracy theories expanded their reach on fringe right-wing media outlets, like a creature that grows larger in the depths of the ocean. Social media also gave someone like me the ability to open a window onto this world through the comments people made about me. One day I was part of a global Jewish conspiracy, working with my brother to fix the news. The next I was a virulent anti-Semite, covering for the Muslim Brotherhood. Most days I’d get a trickle of such comments. But every now and then, there would be an enormous spike—dozens or hundreds coming in bursts of a few minutes—people calling me a traitor, a fascist, a Nazi, an Islamist; people who wanted me to be imprisoned, brutalized, even killed; people who seemed unable to contain their rage. When those spikes happened, I knew somewhere in America, a talk radio segment had just aired, or someone had just posted something about me on some website I’d probably never heard of before. It felt like a malevolent force in America that I couldn’t comprehend, an anger attached to something bigger than Benghazi, the same blindness to reason that led people to believe that Barack Obama wasn’t born in the United States.

  Things boiled over for me on a Friday in May, when an ABC reporter named Jon Karl published an “exclusive” revealing that I’d written an email the Friday night before Susan’s Sunday show appearances that said, “We must make sure that the talking points reflect all agency equities, including those of the State Department.” To Benghazi aficionados, this confirmed a theory that the White House sided with Hillary’s State Department in rewriting the talking points. And with this, the vitriol for me no longer came in short bursts; it became a permanent, angry shriek.

  On Monday morning, I gave in to an impulse to search for the offending email—ironically, it was located in a folder labeled PROTESTS on my computer, which I’d created in the midst of chaos, back when I had no idea if Benghazi was a violent protest or a terrorist attack. There it was, dated September 14, a relic from an evening eight months ago, something I probably spent thirty seconds writing: “We need to resolve this in a way that respects all of the relevant equities, particularly the investigation.” Then I read the Karl story again, quoting my email: “We must make sure that the talking points reflect all agency equities, including those of the State Department.”

  I stared at the words. I figured that if an email of mine was quoted by ABC News, the reporter must have had it. Clearly, he didn’t. What he had was my email translated into Benghazi-speak. “We need to resolve this” became “We must make sure that the talking points”—because our focus on these relatively obscure talking points as the fulcrum of a cover-up was essential. “All of the relevant equities, particularly the investigation” became “all agency equities, including those of the State Department”—because we must have cared more about Clinton than about the FBI investigation. The fake was close enough to be recognizable, but its meaning was transformed to support a conspiracy theory. I brought it to the press team, and they gave it to a reporter.

  Like a condemned man who thinks he’s going to be exonerated, I walked the hallways with a lighter step, telling anyone I could about what I’d found. Perhaps like Susan after she withdrew from consideration for State, I thought the thing would be over. I was wrong. No one who was already inclined to insist that we had perpetrated a cover-up on Benghazi was moved by facts that told a different story. The vitriol directed at me only intensified, becoming sufficient to prompt the Secret Service to patrol the streets around my apartment building in northwest D.C. because of the threats of physical violence.

  It was a new feeling, to have so many people hate me. Worse was the realization that this was never going to be cleared up. At no point would some movie judge step forward to declare me innocent of the charges. I had strange thought patterns while lying awake at night or in breaks during the day. I wished, for instance, that I was being attacked over something I had actually done wrong. No matter how many i
nvestigations found no wrongdoing, there would be another one. No matter how clearly mainstream reporters saw it was a sham, they’d cover it anyway—it was a story, and I was one of the characters.

  I started to change—the kind of change that is imperceptible day to day but builds visibly over time. I withdrew into myself, growing distant from friends and colleagues. I couldn’t fall asleep unless I listened to an interview program, Fresh Air, which could distract my mind from worry. I was less joyful at working in the White House, more burdened by it. Without discussing it with others, I nursed a ball of anger deep within me that I kept pushed down—anger at Republicans, anger at the media, anger at the realization that I had no control over what people thought of me. I sensed that some of my colleagues held similar feelings. We worked in the most powerful building in the world yet felt powerless to change the environment around us.

  But the one thing I wouldn’t do was hide. To disappear would mean defeat. That’s what they wanted, whoever they were. If I was going to be turned into a cartoon villain, then at least I was going to get something done.

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  ON JUNE 14, 2013, Hassan Rouhani was elected president of the Islamic Republic of Iran, representing the more moderate faction of Iranian politics. He was not the preferred candidate of Iran’s hard-line Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. This fact alone was an extraordinary contrast to the 2009 election, when Khamenei had thrown his support behind the incumbent, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, placing opposition leaders under house arrest and launching a sustained crackdown on the opposition. Rouhani had campaigned on a platform of seeking improved relations with the West, linking progress on the nuclear issue to the goal of improving the Iranian economy. His election indicated that Iranian public opinion could apply pressure on the country’s leadership from the bottom up. If that pressure was sufficient to get Rouhani elected, perhaps it could compel Iran to make concessions on its nuclear program.

  During a morning meeting shortly after the election, Obama proposed taking advantage of this opening. “Why don’t I send Rouhani a letter?” he asked. “It’s worth testing.” Susan agreed. In the past, he had sent letters to the Supreme Leader that led nowhere, and he’d never reached out to Ahmadinejad—a disempowered and polarizing figure. At Obama’s direction, a letter was drafted to Rouhani proposing discussions on the nuclear issue. Within weeks, we received a positive response—the Iranians wanted to get a diplomatic process under way.

  Over the course of that summer, we went back to the government of Oman, which in the past had offered a venue for meetings between the United States and Iran, to see if they could host such a meeting. And so, that August, at the same time that I was pursuing secret diplomacy with Cuba, we initiated a secret diplomatic channel with the Iranians in Oman, which would be led by Jake Sullivan and Bill Burns, the deputy secretary of state. A routine was established: Jake would get Obama’s input before his trips to Oman and then brief us upon his return. Sitting in those meetings, I felt I was seeing what it must have been like in those early stages of the bin Laden hunt. Obama would probe what elements of their nuclear program the Iranians would put on the table and how much they were asking for in return, delving into arcane details of nuclear infrastructure and sanctions policy like an explorer who has spotted some destination in the distance that he is intent on bringing into focus.

  After a few weeks, Bill and Jake developed a framework for an interim agreement: The Iranians would, essentially, freeze their nuclear program in return for some limited relief from sanctions. To achieve it, we would have to shift our diplomacy into the so-called P5+1 process, in which the five permanent members of the UN Security Council—the United States, Russia, China, France, and the UK—plus Germany negotiate with the Iranians. The obvious time to do this was during the meeting of the United Nations General Assembly, in late September. John Kerry would join a meeting with the other P5+1 countries and Iran to kick off the formal negotiation, which would be the highest-level contact between the United States and Iran in decades. As those meetings approached, another question emerged: Would Obama meet with Rouhani, who was also coming to New York? Overruling his political advisors, who thought the last thing Obama needed was a photo with the Iranian president, Obama told us that he’d do the meeting. I took it as a signal that he was prepared to take on a lot of political risk if it meant achieving a nuclear agreement.

  Our first night in New York, Jake left the Waldorf to go meet with the Iranian delegation in the lobby of a hotel. At first, he was worried about so public a venue, but we agreed that he was relatively anonymous, and who would think he was meeting with a group of Iranians? The Iranians told him that Rouhani was interested in a meeting, but they were noncommittal. What seemed clear is that they wanted the meeting to take place but were worried about how it would play with the hard-liners back home.

  The only window where Obama and Rouhani would be in the United Nations building at the same time was after Obama’s speech to the General Assembly. We told the UN that Obama needed someplace to wait between meetings, and they offered him some offices adjacent to the Security Council. So he sat there, in a UN office suite, scanning his iPad, while Jake paced outside in a hallway talking on his cellphone with an Iranian. Occasionally, he’d come in to report that they were going back and forth. “Just tell them I’m happy to meet up with him,” Obama said. He was, I saw, demonstrating the absurdity of some taboos. It should not be politically impossible for the leaders of two nations on a collision course involving nuclear weapons and war to meet at the United Nations.

  The Iranians couldn’t get to yes, and so we left without meeting. Walking through the hallways of the UN building, I asked Obama what we should say publicly. “Just tell it straight,” he said. “We were willing to meet, but for their own reasons, they couldn’t.” I gathered a group of reporters and delivered this message, which was sure to make the Iranians uncomfortable. Rouhani had been trying to portray himself, at home and around the world, as a reasonable man, committed to dialogue. We were undercutting that narrative, which was its own form of pressure. After we were back in Washington, the Iranians reached out to Jake and floated different ideas. Would Obama come back to the UN for a meeting of the P5+1? No, we said, most of the leaders weren’t even there. Would we do a phone call? Yes.

  On Rouhani’s last day in New York, I sat on the couch in the Oval Office while we dialed a cellphone that was handed to Rouhani, who was driving to the airport. I then watched as Obama became the first U.S. president to speak to an Iranian president since the Islamic Revolution of 1979. The fifteen-minute conversation was cordial. Obama joked about the traffic in New York. Both of them stressed the need to pursue dialogue and to reach an agreement over the nuclear program, and they said it should be pursued with urgency. Their words weren’t particularly remarkable, even if the fact of the conversation was. Returning to my desk afterward, I ran into my former assistant, Ferial Govashiri, a kind and proud Iranian American who had been born in Tehran and exiled since her family left in 1980. She was in tears at this small gesture of reconciliation.

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  LATER THAT FALL, John Kerry and Wendy Sherman, State’s point person on the negotiations, held a series of meetings in Geneva to finalize the interim agreement. While there was a seeming inevitability about it, there were still huge swings in the negotiations, in part because of the drama surrounding them.

  In my eight years in the White House, I worked for a government overseeing multiple wars in which thousands of people were killed, and yet nothing in our foreign policy was as fiercely contested as the nuclear deal with Iran. Part of this was rooted in history: Iran evokes images of dark-eyed ayatollahs and blindfolded American hostages in 1979—images of humiliation that still held power over the American mindset. Iran has been central to the backdrop of terrorism and conflict that has endured in the Middle East ever since, unfailingly hostile towa
rd America, our interests, and our friends—particularly Israel and Saudi Arabia. We spend less time examining our own support for Saddam Hussein, who used chemical weapons against Iran, or the fact that our subsequent removal of Saddam did more to empower Iran than anything else that has happened in the Middle East since 1979. Indeed, the fact that mistakes in American policy have helped Iran only increased antipathy toward it among the people responsible for those mistakes.

  The advocacy of Israel and the Gulf States is perhaps an even more important factor. In Washington, where support for Israel is an imperative for members of Congress, there was a natural deference to the views of the Israeli government on issues related to Iran, and Netanyahu was unfailingly confrontational, casting himself as an Israeli Churchill standing up to the ayatollahs, except that instead of taking on Iran himself, he wanted the United States to do it. AIPAC and other organizations exist to make sure that the views of the Israeli government are effectively disseminated and opposing views discredited in Washington, and this dynamic was a permanent part of the landscape of the Obama presidency. Iran’s other biggest antagonists are the Gulf States, principally Saudi Arabia and the UAE, which don’t recognize Israel’s existence but made common cause with Netanyahu’s government in pressuring us. In addition to being the key producer of oil for the American-led global economy, the Saudis and Emiratis have poured money into the U.S. national security establishment—investing in think tanks, universities, corporate positions, lavish parties, and paid speaking opportunities for opinion journalists and people in the revolving door between the private sector and high-ranking government positions. Taken together, the Israeli and Gulf advocacy ensured a steady flood of well-funded commentary advocating a harsh stance against Iran and, ultimately, the Obama foreign policy.