The Commanders

by Bob Woodward

  Wolfowitz thought Scowcroft had, right then, changed the entire focus. It even seemed to stem Sununu’s tendency to take shots at any option under consideration and to question any uncertainties he could identify.

  Darman felt that Scowcroft’s introduction was a plea for the cabinet to unify, to fall in line.

  The President indicated that he agreed with his national security adviser. The participants discussed economic sanctions, and the ways the administration might work with the allies and the United Nations to erect a wall around Saddam to isolate him.

  They discussed a CIA report arguing that the invasion posed a threat to the current world order and that the long-run impact on the world economy could be devastating. Saddam was bent on turning Iraq into an Arab superpower—a balance to the United States, the Soviet Union and Japan. Control of 20 percent of the world’s oil would give him more than enough leverage. There was also an ominous assessment of Iraqi capability: the CIA believed that Saddam could easily swing his armies in Kuwait south and be in Riyadh, the Saudi capital 275 miles away, within three days.

  Scowcroft stated that there had to be two tracks. First, he believed the United States had to be willing to use force to stop this, and that it had to make that clear to the world. Second, he said that Saddam had to be toppled. That had to be done covertly through the CIA, and be unclear to the world.

  Bush ordered the CIA to begin planning for a covert operation that would destabilize the regime and, he hoped, remove Saddam from power. He wanted an all-fronts effort to strangle the Iraqi economy, support anti-Saddam resistance groups inside or outside Iraq, and look for alternative leaders in the military or anywhere in Iraqi society. He knew that covert action would be difficult if not impossible given that Saddam ran a police state and brutally repressed any dissent or opposition. Still, he wanted to see what could be done. If ever there was a case for covert action undertaken in the national interest, he said, this was it.

  Bush said that he wanted Cheney, Powell and Schwarzkopf at Camp David the next day to brief him on the military options.

  • • •

  Later that day in the Pentagon, one of the chiefs told Powell that Rear Admiral Owens and others on Cheney’s staff were calling their parent services to dig out the surgical-strike plans on Iraq for the Secretary. Powell bounded up to the Secretary’s suite on the third floor and into Owens’s office, where Powell himself had sat for three years.

  “I don’t like freelancing out of this office,” Powell told Owens, a slim, mild man who was now on his last day in Cheney’s office. “Don’t you ever do that again.” The Chairman was waving his finger in Owens’s face. Powell had visions of Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North’s Iran-contra operations. Like North, Owens was going out of channels and playing to the short-term requests and emotions of the boss. It was a path that could lead both boss and country down the drain. That hand from the past was not going to touch Powell if he could help it. He felt he had contained such impulses while in this very office under Weinberger. He had survived Iran-contra and had come into the Reagan White House in the aftermath to help clean up the NSC as the deputy security adviser. Untainted by that scandal, he was not going to let some equivalent out-of-channels dealings flourish while he was Chairman.

  Owens, caught between the two most powerful people in the Pentagon, didn’t tell Powell that he had been following Cheney’s orders.

  “We will give you any important thing you want,” the Chairman said. All he wanted, he said, was that all information and options from the services to the Secretary come through him and the Joint Chiefs. He said, “The last thing I want is to execute something someone dreamed up that I just heard of.”

  Calming down, Powell reminded Owens that the military assistant had to absorb the pressure coming from the Secretary. Don’t do silly things to meet an immediate need, Powell admonished. Absorb the pressure and do it right. The Joint Staff was working, the chiefs were working, Schwarzkopf was working.

  Owens took the rebuke quietly.

  Powell still held to his views that the use of force was immensely tricky. He deplored the attitude that you could just drop a few bombs, launch a few Tomahawk missiles, and keep the attack “surgical” and limited. The very word “surgical” and the concept behind it drove Powell nutty. It was the modern military illusion, the brass-balls approach some people wanted to take when the country was in a pinch with a Saddam: let’s launch one of these that will show him what we can do, and no one on our side will get hurt. Pure fantasy.

  Powell met with the chiefs that afternoon. There was a new dynamic. The new Air Force chief, General Michael J. Dugan, and the new Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Frank B. Kelso II, both had only a month on the JCS. Vuono and Gray—the ones with Army and Marine ground forces—were now the old hands. The very large question on the table was: What was the ultimate result that the United States wanted as a nation? It was unclear for the simple reason that President Bush had not decided, or had not yet told them his decision.

  The chiefs and services had to act together on this, Powell said. Work a consensus, work with Schwarzkopf, no one-service solutions, no freelancing.

  • • •

  That afternoon, Scowcroft arranged for Prince Bandar to come to the White House.

  Bandar had been in London when he received word of the invasion of Kuwait some 40 hours earlier. He immediately ordered his private jet to take him back to the United States. As he sat on the plane recrossing the Atlantic, he tried to digest what had happened. He flashed back to his meeting with Saddam less than four months earlier and Saddam’s search for assurances that Israel would not attack Iraq. As soon as Bandar was back in Washington, he had his staff retrieve the 18-page memo recounting the meeting. As Bandar read the words, he said to himself, My God, this guy was setting the stage to attack. Saddam had sought and received American and Israeli assurances he would not be attacked. He had protected his western flank with Israel, freeing him to do what he wanted on the east with Kuwait. Bandar’s conclusion was that he and the Bush administration had been set up. It was only reinforced when he learned that Saddam did not have a single soldier on the western flank.

  Bandar was very concerned when he arrived at the White House to see Scowcroft on Friday.

  Scowcroft had a more positive view of Bandar than Powell did; as national security adviser he had found Bandar a pretty clear channel. Bandar had repeatedly demonstrated that he had direct access to King Fahd, and could provide a nearly instantaneous read on the king’s attitudes. If anything, Bandar seemed to come down on the U.S. side on most matters. Accordingly, Scowcroft made sure Bandar had direct access to Bush when necessary.

  During this meeting, Scowcroft said he was speaking for the President. The Saudis had not given an answer on the U.S. offer of a squadron of F-15s, and Scowcroft knew that such a non-answer was, for the moment at least, a Saudi no. He said that Bush was willing to up the ante. The Bush position was that the United States was inclined to help in any way possible.

  Bandar reminded Scowcroft that only a decade before, when the shah of Iran had fallen from power, President Carter had told the Saudis, let me send over a couple of squadrons of F-15s to Saudi Arabia as a gesture. His Majesty had agreed. When the planes were in the air, halfway over, Carter had announced they were unarmed. Bandar said the consequences had been devastating to the Saudis and lived on. Frankly, he said, we’re worried. Do you guys have the guts or don’t you? “We don’t want you to put out a hand and then pull it back,” the ambassador said, “and leave us with this guy on our border twice as mad as he is now.”

  “Let me tell you, we won’t do that,” Scowcroft said. “We’re serious and we’ll do what is necessary to protect you.” But he added that the Saudis would have to demonstrate that they too were serious and would accept U.S. forces.

  At that moment, President Bush dropped into Scowcroft’s office.

  “This is your friend?” Bush said to Bandar, clearly referring to Bandar’
s earlier pleas for assurances for Saddam.

  Bandar chuckled.

  “Do you remember?” Bush asked. “This is the guy you came to me telling me he’s okay.”

  “Water over a dam, Mr. President,” Bandar said. He acknowledged that both the Saudis and the United States had been used.

  Bush turned to the problem at hand. He said he was upset that Kuwait had not asked for help from the United States until apparently a half hour or a few minutes before Iraq invaded. He was scared that the Saudis, who might be next on Saddam’s list, would ask too late and the United States would not be able to help.

  What sort of help can be provided, Bandar asked. How many aircraft? What sort of weapons? If it was going to be considered, King Fahd would have to know precisely.

  Bush and Scowcroft said they didn’t have those answers. Cheney and Powell would have to provide them.

  Bandar pressed and alluded sarcastically to Jimmy Carter’s unarmed F-15s. Bush seemed almost hurt, as if there was some doubt and the Saudis suspected his resolve. He seemed to be taking the questioning personally.

  “I give my word of honor,” Bush finally told Bandar, “I will see this through with you.”

  Bandar felt his hair stand up. The President of the United States had just put his personal honor on the line.

  • • •

  Scowcroft called Cheney and said that the President wanted to help the Saudis. Show him the best we have, Tier Two—the massive operations plan. “Get Bandar in and brief him on what we can do for him.” The President did not want any half measures. He had given his word. This was as serious as anything they might undertake. To convince the Saudis, the President wanted Cheney to show Bandar the top-secret satellite photos. They would demonstrate the peril as Saddam massed his forces in the direction of Saudi Arabia.

  Cheney made the arrangements for Bandar to come to the Pentagon later that afternoon. But first, Cheney had to have what he considered a come-to-Jesus meeting with Powell about the necessity of getting the military options to the President.

  The Secretary and the Chairman sat down alone. There could be no more stalling, foot dragging or even the appearance of either, Cheney said. Serious talk was coming out of the White House, and they had to present the military alternatives. It was time for military advice commensurate with the seriousness of the situation. The President would be better served if there was more military advice. The Pentagon had to stick to its knitting, Cheney said firmly.

  “I can’t do it unless I know what the pattern is,” Powell replied.

  Cheney explained they now had it. Scowcroft had just called to say the President wanted them to brief Bandar on Tier Two—Operations Plan 90–1002. According to the orders of the President, Bandar was to see the latest top-secret overhead photography.

  The tension soon drained away. Both men knew that they needed each other.

  • • •

  Before the Bandar briefing, Cheney pulsed the system some more. Lang, the DIA’s Middle East specialist, had written another of his electronic messages that day reviewing the possible outcomes of the crisis. Chief among them was the high likelihood that the Saudis would turn inward and refuse visible assistance, although their large country was protected only by a military of less than 70,000 men. They were turning down requests for overflights of U.S. military planes, and had also denied a U.S. request to augment coverage of the region by U.S. AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System) radar planes.

  Cheney called Lang to his office. Lang seemed to be the only analyst who had taken the Iraqi troop buildup of the previous weeks with the seriousness it had evidently deserved. Cheney said he wanted to talk about the Iraqis. He had one essential question: “What are these people really like?”

  Lang, who had been pumping up the intelligence community for several years about the Iraqi threat, was delighted at the opportunity. “They are formidable,” he said. “They have a very capable military and a developed industrial base. They are modern for a Third World country. They are nationalistic. They are dangerous.” He backed up his analysis with statistics and anecdotes.

  • • •

  Cheney had known Prince Bandar for years and liked him. He was intrigued that a mere ambassador was able to have such a wide impact in the U.S. government, Washington and the world; Bandar also acted as the de facto Saudi connection with Prime Minister Thatcher, the Soviets and the Chinese. But Cheney worried that the prince had his own agenda. Left to his own devices, Bandar would attempt to manage the foreign policy of the United States, Saudi Arabia and, for that matter, any and all countries. In short, Cheney considered Bandar a little bit off the wall and not necessarily a 100 percent clear channel to King Fahd. Messages might get distorted for other purposes that Cheney might not even be able to imagine.

  When Bandar arrived in Cheney’s office in the afternoon of August 3, he took a third seat in a captain’s chair at the small round conference table with Cheney and Powell. Paul Wolfowitz and NSC Middle East expert Richard Haass also joined them.

  “The President has instructed me to brief you on what the United States can do to help the kingdom defend itself,” Cheney said. He added that if the United States came in it would be with a hell of a lot, and promised that if invited in to defend the kingdom, it would be a very, very serious commitment. The United States was clearly in a position to fly a mission off one of the aircraft carriers and drop a few bombs on Saddam’s head, but that would just make him mad, Cheney said. That wouldn’t solve any real problem. The key would be forces on the ground.

  Cheney knew that Bandar had been on the telephone to Saudi Arabia, and was about to go there to speak directly to the king. He wanted to make sure the ambassador received the message loud and clear.

  To emphasize the problem the Saudis were facing, Cheney and Powell produced copies of the high-resolution overhead photography and pointed out the three Iraqi armored divisions that had been the initial thrust into Kuwait. One was moving through Kuwait to the Saudi border; the others could follow. Still more Iraqi divisions were taking places behind the armored units in the same way they had before the invasion of Kuwait two days earlier. The streak of divisions was like a sword pointing down at the kingdom, which appeared to be in grave danger.

  It took Powell about ten minutes to summarize Operations Plan 90–1002, noting that it included more than four divisions, three aircraft carriers and many attack squadrons. He allowed Bandar a peek at the large book with the top-secret plan and charts showing the movement of forces over the months. “That’s a rather large force,” Powell said.

  “How many are you talking about?” Bandar asked.

  Powell said 100,000 to 200,000 in the theater.

  Bandar let his breath out audibly. “Well, at least this shows you’re serious, and this may make it clear to you why we did not want that tactical fighter squadron.”

  This is serious, Powell insisted.

  “We agree you need to be serious,” Bandar said, trying for the upper hand. If this kind of force was there in Saudi Arabia now, Bandar said, the kingdom would be able to take aggressive actions such as shutting down the Iraqi pipeline. Without a defensive force of this size, His Majesty’s hands were tied because Saddam could come in and overrun Saudi Arabia. Bandar said he agreed with the plan, and favored it. He promised to convey to the king and to his father, the Saudi defense minister, what could be done.

  Bandar made clear that he and other Saudi officials were attempting to talk to Saddam to get a statement of his intentions, and they were not having much success. According to Bandar, King Fahd had not been able to reach Saddam for the first ten hours after the Kuwait invasion. When they had talked, Saddam was dismissive, saying that the movement of his troops to the Saudi border was an exercise. The vice president of the Iraqi Revolutionary Command Council had then come to meet with King Fahd and had indicated he could not shed light on Saddam’s intentions.

  Bandar described a controlled state of panic back home—controlled, he
said, because as everyone knew, royalty never panics. He once remarked, “Composure is very important in our culture, even if it doesn’t make sense.”

  There had been three serious border incursions by the Iraqis, who had crossed five or more miles into Saudi territory, Bandar said. The Iraqi chief of staff had told the Saudis these were mistakes by his troops and had vowed the first time to cut off the arm of any Iraqi soldier who put his finger over the border. After the third incursion, the Saudis had not been able to reach any Iraqi authority on a telephone hotline that had been set up between the two countries. Following one incursion, the Iraqis had withdrawn, but only after blowing up a bridge they had used on a well-marked route.

  As Bandar rose to leave, Cheney said that if the Saudis invited the U.S. forces and President Bush approved, they could send General Schwarzkopf or somebody to coordinate, making sure that, for example, the U.S. Air Force jets landed where the Saudis wanted.

  Bandar assured them that he would be an advocate for an immediate American deployment. He then left.

  Wolfowitz expressed surprise at the suddenly serious mood on both sides. He proposed that they ought to start alerting the U.S. forces, particularly the airborne troops that would go first, given the obvious receptivity of Bandar.

  “He blows smoke,” Powell said. “I don’t think it’s time to start alerting the 82nd Airborne.” After all, one brigade of the 82nd was always on alert.

  Cheney agreed, but he told Powell he wanted Schwarzkopf to bring the key commanders from each of the services up to Camp David. He knew that personal contacts were essential for the President. People didn’t exist for Bush until he had met them. It was important that the President be given eyes-on personal knowledge of the men who might be running such an operation, Cheney said. He asked Owens to arrange for one of the large White House helicopters, the so-called white tops, to take them all to Camp David the next morning for the presentation to Bush.

  • • •

  Later in the day, Cheney was getting a haircut in the Pentagon barber shop when Owens tracked him down. Sununu’s office had said no to the helicopter request, Owens reported.