As the Chinese held our crew hostage, President Bush and the National Security Council deliberated on how to react. State Department officials considered the crisis a diplomatic matter and proceeded as if the Pentagon need have no role in helping to shape the American response. Though I recognized that the U.S. ambassador in China would handle negotiations to secure the crew’s release, it was Defense Department personnel who were being held hostage. Knowing the sensitivity of the situation—China was obviously testing the new American president—I saw the problem not as a matter to be worked out by a small circle of State Department officials but one to be decided by the President, with the advice of his NSC, which included the Defense Department. The diplomats’ default position was to negotiate a settlement that seemed designed to placate the Chinese government. But for me, after their provocation, keeping the Chinese happy was not a goal that I thought should be at the absolute top of America’s priority list.
On the morning of April 2, 2001, a day after the capture of the American crew, Bush called Powell, Rice, and me into the Oval Office. The President asked each of us for our views. Powell and Rice appeared to favor a U.S. apology. Powell told us that State Department officials also favored a suspension of the routine U.S. reconnaissance flights that the Chinese had been periodically intercepting. Powell added that Admiral Dennis Blair, the combatant commander of the U.S. Pacific Command, supported the recommendation to suspend the flights. These views reflected the natural inclination to move quickly to bring the unfortunate incident to an end, even if America had to humble itself to get the crew back as rapidly as possible. American companies were investing many billions of dollars in China. There were significant economic interests in maintaining good relations with the PRC by offering an apology and moving on.
When the President asked me what I thought, I said I did not favor an apology or suspending our reconnaissance flights. The Chinese knew they were in the wrong. Capitulating to their threats and feigned outrage could embolden China’s military and political leaders to commit still more provocative acts. I did not believe that America would benefit from being seen as a weak supplicant. Moreover, I thought that there should be some kind of clear penalty for China’s dangerous behavior. I recommended that we temporarily suspend our military-to-military contacts with the PRC. I strongly favored these military exchanges in general, but the PRC had been using the contacts as intelligence-gathering missions, and had been denying us truly reciprocal visits of equal value by American military officers. Since the Chinese benefited from these military exchanges, this seemed to be an opportunity to impose a cost on them and to later renegotiate more balanced exchanges. Bush agreed to that proposal but remained undecided on the apology.
The impasse over the EP-3 crew ultimately ended with Bush approving a letter from U.S. Ambassador Joseph Prueher to the Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs expressing “regret” over China’s “missing pilot and aircraft” and for our EP-3 entering China’s airspace without “verbal clearance.”21 This language was unfortunate, since the fact was, of course, that our aircraft had entered China’s airspace only because the alternative was crashing in the South China Sea. The wording was in effect an apology, and the Chinese played it as one. The twenty-four U.S. crew members were released, though it would be months before we finally got back the EP-3, and then in pieces, after the Chinese had inspected every inch of it.
The April 2001 incident provided an early window into the workings of the Bush administration’s “interagency process”—the bureaucratic term for the way the several national security–related departments and agencies interact, advise the president, and carry out his decisions. The vice president, the secretary of state, the secretary of defense, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the director of the CIA, and the national security adviser all had an opportunity to offer their views to President Bush at the height of the crisis. Having considered the options, and the advice we recommended, he decided the course he thought was best. Even though Bush chose a course somewhat different from my recommendations, he made the decision. I thought that was exactly how the NSC should have functioned. Regrettably, that would not always be the case.
CHAPTER 24
The National Security Council
Throughout my decades in public life, I have seen personalities come and go, but some degree of friction in the NSC’s processes has remained a constant. In the Nixon administration, I observed then National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger and Secretary of State Bill Rogers differ over foreign policy before Nixon concluded that the solution was for Kissinger to take Rogers’ place while keeping his post at the NSC. As White House chief of staff, I saw in the Ford administration how the President had to navigate between Kissinger’s détente policy on the one hand and Jim Schlesinger’s (and later, my) concerns about it on the other. The media covered clashes between National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski and Secretary of State Cyrus Vance exhaustively during President Carter’s administration. I also observed the differences between Secretary of State George Shultz and Secretary of Defense Cap Weinberger during the Reagan years.
The disagreements were not simply the result of their personalities, though there is generally no shortage of strong views among senior government officials. More often than not, the differences were the almost inevitable result of the differing statutory responsibilities and roles of the various federal departments. Add to those the influences and pressures of the many congressional committees and subcommittees that oversee the executive branch and jealously guard their jurisdictions, interests, and authorities, and friction is created.
Just as there is no single successful model of management in business, there is no single correct model or approach for a president to use to lead his NSC. The optimal system, of course, is the one that works best for each individual president. Some leaders (Ford and Kennedy, for example) preferred to hear discussions and debate personally. Some (Nixon and Reagan) relied somewhat more heavily on memos that set out various options together with arguments pro and con for each suggested approach. Some (Nixon and Clinton) had close relationships with trusted advisers and tended to disfavor larger meetings. Some presidents made a point of staying at the strategic level in policy discussions (Reagan), while others routinely drilled down into minute details (Carter).
Still, there are basic principles and good practices for NSC management that are applicable in most cases. Foremost among these is that the president’s senior advisers understand the National Security Council’s role as well as their duties as members or advisers. The NSC’s task is to mitigate problems that arise from the way our government is organized. Brilliant and farsighted as they were, the Founders of our country created a federal government structure suited to handle eighteenth-century international problems. They established cabinet departments for diplomacy (State), for defense and deterrence (War and Navy), and for finance (Treasury). That was sufficient two centuries ago, when problems in the world generally fell into one of those categories at any given time.
But by the end of World War II, America’s interests and activities around the world could not be categorized distinctly as diplomatic or military. Scholars invented the term “national security” to apply to matters that often combined diplomatic, military, financial, intelligence, law enforcement, and other considerations. In 1947, during the Truman administration, Congress approved the National Security Act, which among other things created the Department of Defense (by merging the War and Navy departments), the CIA, and the National Security Council.
The National Security Act, however, did not abolish the basic eighteenth-century structure of the U.S. government. It recognized that the president, before making decisions about world affairs, should hear not only from the secretaries of state or defense, or from the leadership of any other single department, but rather from the heads of all the relevant offices of the government. Though the National Security Act did not knock down the several major “stovepipes” of diplomati
c, military, and financial policy in the U.S. government, it did bend them at the top so that the policy thoughts coming from each would come together in a committee known as the National Security Council. The NSC’s purpose was to help ensure that the president would be able to regularly look at all facets of a complex, multidimensional issue.
If anything, problems in the world since the mid-1940s have become even more intertwined. Most major national security challenges—from terrorism, weapons of mass destruction (WMD), arms proliferation, drug trafficking, piracy, ungoverned spaces to cyberwarfare and threats of and ongoing wars in general—represent intricately combined diplomatic, military, intelligence, economic, and other considerations. The State, Defense, Treasury, and Justice departments, with their distinct competencies and separate statutory responsibilities, are in most instances even less well suited to our national security requirements today than they were when the 1947 act was adopted. For American policy to succeed, multiple agencies of the government have to receive strategic guidance from the president and be required to work together to implement that guidance. This puts a premium on timely, clear instructions and continuous management of the government’s multiple, separate bureaucracies.
The interagency policy process is understandably bumpy in the early days of an administration. The president can make things better by active engagement and by bringing his own views and approaches to bear. The NSC of George W. Bush confronted many hard questions, especially after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The NSC did work of which all its members can be proud. Its chief deficiency, in my view, was not that it sometimes produced imperfect approaches to challenging issues, though it sometimes did. That is to be expected. Rather, in my view the President did not always receive, and may not have insisted on, a timely consideration of his options before he made a decision, nor did he always receive effective implementation of the decisions he made.
By statute, there are four members of the National Security Council: the president, the vice president, the secretary of state, and the secretary of defense.1 Though not a member of the NSC, the national security adviser and the NSC staff have the role of managing the entire process for the president. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the director of the CIA also generally serve as advisers to the NSC.* And, of course, at the president’s invitation, others may sit in periodically as well, such as the secretary of the treasury, the attorney general, the director of the FBI, or the White House chief of staff.
During the George W. Bush administration, the NSC generally met in the Situation Room in the basement of the West Wing. We sat at a wood table, with the President presiding; the national security adviser would chair the committee of principals meetings, which included the same participants as the NSC but without the President. At seats along the walls of the Situation Room were senior NSC staff and often staff members supporting the principals at the table, who would take notes, and on occasion provide support for their principals during the discussions. The small room would often be quite full. One NSC meeting was so brimming with staff along the walls that we joked, “Why don’t we just have our meeting at Sam’s Club?”
George W. Bush conducted NSC meetings without pretension. Though he always demonstrated respect for the office he occupied, he was not formal or officious. He led the discussion, asked questions frequently, sometimes aggressively, often kept his own opinions and views to himself during the discussion, and, when he gave guidance to his team, did so with confidence and authority. He didn’t take kindly to latecomers to his meetings, which, at his insistence, began and ended on time.
Presidents often are caricatured in ways that belie their true qualities. In the case of George W. Bush, he was a far more formidable president than his popular image, which was of a somewhat awkward and less than articulate man. That image was shaped by critics and by satirists, but also by his aw-shucks public personality and his periodic self-deprecation, which he engaged in even in private. His willingness to laugh at himself—and especially to poke at his occasional unsuccessful wrestling bouts with the English language—was a sign of inner comfort and confidence. Bush used humor to ease underlying tensions and was effective at it. In our meetings, I found Bush incisive. He showed insight into human character and, I found, often had an impressive read of the nature and intentions of foreign officials. He was firm without being unfriendly. He asked excellent questions and deftly managed the discussion. Still, NSC meetings with the President did not always end with clear conclusions and instructions.
Vice President Cheney was a thoughtful and influential presence—far more influential than other vice presidents I had observed up close. In contrast to other members of the NSC, the embedded power of the office of the vice president is modest at best. A vice president is not bolstered by a large senior staff and bureaucracy. He does not command a major instrument such as the diplomatic corps or the U.S. armed forces. He does not issue formal intelligence analyses and does not control the law enforcement apparatus of the federal government. He cannot award multimillion-dollar contracts. But Dick Cheney was uniquely influential as a vice president because he thought systematically, did his homework, and presented his ideas with skill, credibility, and timelines.
In general, Cheney tended to keep his counsel during NSC meetings, taking notes quietly. He was the opposite of the often boisterous Nelson Rockefeller and the seemingly disinterested Spiro Agnew. A careful listener, he would sharpen the discussion by asking questions to provide the President and others with additional information or a perspective that had not yet been discussed or possibly considered. His broad experience added considerable value around the conference table.
In meetings, Cheney would not differ with the President, even when he might not have been entirely in agreement. He attached high importance to preserving the President’s options. That argued for keeping any difference of view he might have with the President a private matter between the two of them. Dick did not share with me his private conversations with the President. Nor did I ask about them. The combination of keeping his opinions to himself, and yet being influential, gave Cheney an air of mystery. And for people who concluded that they did not like the substance of his views—or concluded they did not like the views attributed to him by others—this could make him seem to be a negative influence.
I realize that it is hard to overcome a personal bias about a friend I’ve known for more than four decades. But the caricature of Cheney as the man wielding the reins of power, playing his colleagues and even the President as marionettes, is utter nonsense. Perhaps to his detriment, Cheney seemed not to feel a compelling need to rebut the criticism or improve his popularity. In part this was because he was the rare vice president who did not aspire to his boss’ job or seek glory for himself. But what he gave up in not clarifying his views or correcting misinterpretations publicly, he made up for with outsized influence. President Bush knew he could trust Cheney to give him advice that wasn’t colored with any personal or political ambition.
The third full member of the NSC in George W. Bush’s first term was Secretary of State Colin Powell. I had met then Colonel Powell twenty-five years earlier, when as secretary of defense I visited the army base at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. In the early 1970s, the Army’s officer corps was overwhelmingly white, and Powell proved himself to be a barrier breaker. His poise, confidence, and leadership skills made him one of the Army’s most promising younger officers. I followed his career with interest through the Reagan and George H. W. Bush administrations. Powell was reported to have considered the idea of running for president himself in 1996. By that time, he was admired by a great many Americans. I counted myself among them.*
Because of his popularity, Powell brought political heft to a new administration led by a relatively young and untested president. I felt that Powell, with his stature and bipartisan support, might be in a unique position to lead the State Department to serve the President, as Shultz had for Reagan and Kissinger had for Nixo
n and Ford.
He got off to a fast start in his remarks in Crawford on December 16, 2000, when Bush named him as his nominee for secretary of state. Powell took clear aim at what I believed was one of the most critical national security issues facing the country: the proliferation and use of weapons of mass destruction.
As much as I applauded Bush’s choice of Powell and Powell’s comments during their first appearance together that December, there was an uneasy subtext to the announcement. The appointment brought to my mind an event that had occurred twenty-six years earlier. In August 1974, hours after Richard Nixon had told the country he would resign the following day, Vice President Gerald Ford went out on the lawn of his Alexandria, Virginia, home and announced that Henry Kissinger would stay on as secretary of state and national security adviser. Like George W. Bush, Ford was facing questions about who he was, the breadth of his foreign policy experience, and even his legitimacy. In Bush’s case, the long circus that was the Florida vote recount had made him the victor of a controversial—and in the eyes of some, an illegitimate—election.
I’m sure Ford and Bush each intended the announcements of their secretaries of state to provide reassurance to the country and to the world. Still, I was concerned that Ford’s announcement made him seem as if he might be dependent on Kissinger, who was much better known. I wondered if Bush might have left a similar impression in the manner he had introduced his nominee for secretary of state. Stressing how impressed he was with Powell’s prominence and prestige, Bush may unintentionally have signaled that he not only wanted Powell, but needed him.
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