Obama’s Wars

by Bob Woodward

  “Forever,” the CT chief said. Forever went back more than 60 years, and there was probably no way anyone—even with extensive research—could have made such a categorical claim. But it was another “slam dunk,” a statement in absolute terms. This is the way some CIA people, including past directors, talked, suggesting they were all-knowing in a world of doubt and uncertainty.

  Hayden thought they had caught a break because the hearing was cut short by Senate votes, so Panetta would have to return the next morning. He contacted Jeff Smith, a former CIA general counsel who was helping with the transition for Panetta.

  “He walks that sentence back tomorrow in his public testimony,” Hayden threatened, “or we will have the spectacle of the current director of the Central Intelligence Agency saying the prospective director of the Central Intelligence Agency doesn’t know what he’s talking about.” He said he would say this publicly. “That’s not in anybody’s interest.”

  The next day, Friday, February 6, Senator Kit Bond of Missouri, the senior Republican on the Intelligence Committee, pressed Panetta.

  “Thank you for the question, Senator, because I think there is some clarification required. … We may very well direct individuals to third countries,” Panetta said. “I will seek the same kind of assurances that they will not be treated inhumanely.”

  Would he retract his statement from the previous day about torture? Bond asked.

  “Yes, I would retract that statement.”

  Bond rubbed it in. So “liberal blogs” and “rumors or news stories” were insufficient sources for someone nominated to be CIA director. “I would ask you to assure this committee that you will not make rash judgments based on hearsay.”

  “Senator, you have my assurance that I intend to do that.”

  Hayden met Panetta for a last heart-to-heart. He wanted to clear the air, correct the record as he understood it.

  “Leon,” Hayden said, “I’ve been reading some of your writings while out of government. You claim the [Bush] administration cherry-picked the intelligence for Iraqi WMD.” Panetta had blamed a special unit set up by Rumsfeld at the Pentagon. “That’s not true. We got it wrong. Okay? It was a clear swing and a miss. It’s our fault.”

  Panetta said he got it. There had been a catastrophic intelligence failure at the agency he was taking over.

  During Hayden’s last week as CIA director, he gave the president one final Situation Room report about the latest Predator strikes in Pakistan. There had been two attacks on January 23 in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). Neither strike killed the intended “HVT,” or high value target, but at least five al Qaeda militants died.

  The president said good. He had fully endorsed the covert action program and made it clear he wanted more.

  Afterward, Hayden spoke to Emanuel. It was good stuff, Emanuel said, praising the CIA program.

  “Rahm,” Hayden said, hoping his last piece of advice didn’t fall on deaf ears, “you have to understand what we just talked about was a counterterrorism success.” It was intoxicating, but only tactical and short-term. “Unless you’re prepared to do this forever, you have to change the facts on the ground. That requires successful counterinsurgency.” And the counterinsurgency must be on both the Afghan and Pakistani sides of the border to be effective. “You’ve got to change the facts on the ground.”

  Petraeus wasn’t sure that his protect-the-population strategy was looked on with favor in the Obama White House. So in early February 2009, he had the national security adviser, Jim Jones, approve every word in advance of a speech he was scheduled to give in Germany. Jones went along with the whole draft, in which Petraeus made it clear he was seeking a rerun of the Iraq strategy. The approval made him confident that his approach was getting traction. But the pending 30,000-troop request had hit a bump in the road.

  At an NSC deputies committee meeting—the seconds in command at the major departments and agencies—Tom Donilon, Jones’s deputy, said he wanted to understand the basis for the 30,000. Troops constantly flowed in and out of Afghanistan. The amount of traffic made it hard to get a perfect snapshot.

  “Wait a minute,” he said, “let’s build it in a way that’s completely, totally transparent, and that we’ve identified the pieces here.” He wanted a firm answer to Obama’s question about how many troops were absolutely necessary. Why should the president send more troops before finishing a strategy review?

  “Time out,” said Marine General James “Hoss” Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “We need to go back and let’s get the numbers exactly right and then we’ll reconvene this.”

  The stated reason for deploying more troops before the strategy review was to provide security for Afghanistan’s August presidential election, to keep the polls open for what could be a major turning point for the country.

  The Pentagon had sent a troop breakdown to General Lute. The immediate need was for only two brigades, around 13,000 troops. Another 10,000 wouldn’t be ready until later in the year. The initial 30,000 had already been scaled back, making Donilon even more distrustful of numbers from the Pentagon. Lute had put together these kinds of figures from his previous job as director of operations for the Joint Staff. The 13,000 actually looked low, so Lute went to Donilon.

  “These numbers are really soft,” he said. “For example, there’s no helicopters in here. How do you get around Afghanistan with no helicopters? And where are the counter-IED teams? Where’s the intel that goes with this? Where’s the UAV [unmanned aerial vehicle] support?” There was nothing for medical evacuations. “We should make them go back,” the general said.

  Donilon told the Pentagon, “Unacceptable. Do over. You know what? We’re starting all over again. You guys want this decision today, but you can’t get the numbers straight. So you’ve got thousands of people over there. Do it again and send it back, and we’ll get you the decision in a timely way, which is our commitment to you.”

  Donilon’s tone didn’t help. His condescension offended some Pentagon staffers.

  JCS Chairman Mullen suggested that the White House butt out of Pentagon business. “We’re in charge of the numbers,” he said. “We’ve got the numbers. We’ve done our homework.”

  Well, okay, was the NSC response. The request was about to go for a presidential signature as is when Gates intercepted it.

  “We don’t have the numbers right,” the secretary of defense said, somewhat chagrined. “The complaints that you raise, I went back and looked into. And I’ve got to tell you, I now don’t have confidence in those numbers. So please pull the package from the president, and I’ll get you the right numbers.”

  After a couple of days, the Pentagon provided a revised number—17,000. They acknowledged they needed an additional 4,000 enablers for intelligence and medical evacuation that Lute had identified. The scaled-down request and incomplete math added to the suspicion Donilon and others had of the military. It shook their confidence in the charts and numbers the Pentagon churned out. It almost appeared as if someone was trying to pull a fast one on a new president. The 30,000 had gone down to 13,000, then up to 17,000. Gates seemed to understand the White House’s concern, but Mullen did not.

  Donilon was thankful to have Lute at the NSC. “This is exactly why we kept these guys, because they know what the hell’s going on,” Donilon said. “And we never would’ve caught this. We would’ve had the president and press releases approve one number, only days later to have to come back and increase the number, make us look foolish.”

  On Friday, February 13, the president met with the National Security Council, and Jones, the national security adviser, presented four options on Afghanistan troop deployments.

  Option one: Decide only after Riedel completes the strategy review. The argument for: It was logical to define the strategy and then make the troop decisions. Jones believed that if everything was equal, this is what the president would do. The arguments against: Security was deteriorating in Afghanist
an and a delayed decision meant the troops would arrive after the August election. Plus, a deployment decision, according to the options paper, “would send a strong statement to the allies, the Pakistanis and the world.” It was a belief in the declaratory impact of such a decision; just ordering troops would help.

  Option two: Send all 17,000 at once.

  Option three: Send the 17,000, but do so in two parts. This would be something of a compromise between the first two options. The argument against was that this decision would send a message of hesitancy and uncertainty to the allies, Afghans and Pakistanis.

  Option four: Send 27,000, which, given the troop flows, would fill General McKiernan’s entire request. This included about 10,000 troops that would not be needed until later in the year.

  Given those options, the president had the appearance of a choice, when for practical and political purposes there really was none. Clinton, Gates, Mullen and Petraeus backed the full 17,000 deployment, which in the end was Jones’s recommendation as well.

  The core argument was that it could be disastrous if the president declined to send the 17,000, or split it into two parts, and the election was a bloodbath with the Taliban overrunning the Afghan government defenses.

  Richard Holbrooke, on the secure video from Kabul, noted that 44 years ago President Lyndon Johnson and his advisers were debating the same issues for Vietnam.

  “History should not be forgotten,” he said. Vietnam had taught him that guerrillas win in a stalemate, and he strongly supported the 17,000 option.

  A confused silence greeted the Vietnam reference.

  “Ghosts,” Obama whispered.

  Biden opposed any deployments before the Riedel review was wrapped up.

  What is your view? Obama asked Riedel. Should we do it?

  “Yes, to some extent,” Riedel said. “In a perfect world, we’d like to put every Afghan decision in the refrigerator for two months. But it’s not a perfect world, and making this decision now will actually give you more options, come August. Because with more troops on the ground in August, your capacity to have a real election will increase. If you don’t do it, you may find yourself in August unable to hold an election.”

  The 17,000 was an insurance policy, so that the president would have the flexibility to make choices in the future.

  A poker-faced Obama said he would wait to let them know his final decision.

  When Lute returned from the NSC meeting, staffers asked him, What did the president decide?

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  When do you think we’re going to have a decision?

  “I don’t know. Stand by.”

  Over the weekend, Obama considered his options.

  Obama later said that the worries about the Afghan election largely drove his decision. “There were strong warnings, both from the military as well as our intelligence agencies,” the president told me, “that if we did not bolster security in Afghanistan rapidly, that the election might not come off, and in fact you could see a country that splintered.

  “This is always the toughest decision that I make as president,” he told me. “I just think that the first time that you sign off on an order to send young men and women into a battle theater, you feel the weight of that decision. And it is …”

  “Do you pause?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “How many times?”

  “You pause.”

  The president added, “Look, I think that you make sure that you have thought through all the alternatives, and that you feel confident enough that this is the best decision, that it justifies potentially some of those kids not coming back. And the challenge is that you never have 100 percent certainty.”

  He said he decided the 17,000 was the best option he could see. The president told me he made this decision “knowing that some of those kids may not come back, or if they come back they’re going to be grievously injured, it is still in the country’s interests to do it.”

  On Monday, Obama notified the Pentagon that he had decided on 17,000.

  The next day the White House press secretary issued a four-paragraph release saying the president had decided to deploy more forces. “There is no more solemn duty by a president than the decision to deploy our armed forces into harm’s way,” the release said. It was left to the Pentagon to provide the details on the 17,000 troops going to Afghanistan. There was no presidential press conference, no presidential speech announcing what was one of Obama’s most important decisions in his first 30 days in office.

  Of the 17,000, the first 8,000—a Marine Expeditionary Brigade—would deploy to an area in the rural Helmand province that had less than one percent of Afghanistan’s population. They would provide security in a place with few voters.

  10

  On Wednesday, March 11, Jones invited Gates and Mullen to his West Wing office to give the Pentagon leadership a sneak preview of the Riedel strategy. Gates and Mullen had to be on board if they were going to get anywhere.

  Riedel presented his diagnosis and cure. The focus must shift to Pakistan and away from Afghanistan. Pakistan had to end its complex, schizophrenic relationship with terrorists in which they are “the patron and the victim and the safe haven all at the same time,” Riedel said. In a major shift, the U.S. would confront Afghanistan and Pakistan as two countries but one challenge: AfPak. Extremists based in Pakistan were undermining the Afghan government. And in a self-destructive cycle, Afghanistan’s insecurity fed Pakistan’s instability.

  Riedel had an answer to the president’s question of what the goal should be. “The goal is to disrupt, dismantle and eventually defeat al Qaeda and its extremist allies, their support structures and their safe havens in Pakistan and to prevent their return to Pakistan or Afghanistan.”

  Saying there were no quick fixes in AfPak, the review listed several recommendations. First, the U.S. should execute and resource an integrated civilian-military counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan, and the Afghan army should be increased to 134,000 troops over the two years. Other recommendations centered on Pakistan, including increased financial assistance to Pakistan’s military, economy and civilian government.

  “Have you looked for a silver bullet to solve the Pakistan problem?” Gates asked.

  Yes, Riedel said. His team had examined several carrot-and-stick options. In the carrot category, for example, suppose Pakistan was offered a civil/nuclear power deal similar to the one that President Bush gave India? Pakistan would probably just pocket it, claim they were entitled to equal treatment, and not change their behavior.

  On the stick side, Riedel said, they had looked at the extreme option of invading Pakistan, and, of course, immediately dismissed it. Invading a country that possessed dozens of nuclear weapons would be something beyond madness.

  Everyone agreed.

  The best thing we’ve come up with, Riedel said, is to give the Pakistani military what it needs to fight a counterinsurgency war against the terrorist groups: helicopters. During the Bush administration, the Pakistanis received 12 helicopters. It was practically nothing. But even this would not be a silver bullet, he said. There weren’t enough helicopters in the world to change Pakistani behavior.

  As for his recommendation to work on issues between India and Pakistan, everyone in the room said it had to be done without fanfare or public attention. Otherwise, India would go berserk. India thought the United States was filled with closet Pakistani lovers.

  Mullen found that idea laughable. Riedel was obviously the opposite. He was hard-over against Pakistan. Mullen might have the closest relationship with the Pakistani military. He had the account dealing with General Ashfaq Kayani, the Pakistani army chief who had been the ISI chief from 2004 to 2007, when the al Qaeda stronghold was built and the Afghan Taliban revived. In many ways, the Pakistani military had vastly more authority over the direction and fate of the country than its historically weak civilian leadership.

  Jones and Gates—and Mullen to a l
esser extent—asked whether it was possible to trust the Pakistanis.

  “I’ve known every head of ISI since the mid-1980s,” Riedel said. Kayani either is not in control of his organization or he is not telling the truth. The U.S. should see the obvious and connect the dots.

  The Pakistanis are lying, he said. Addressing Mullen, he said, you’ve met Kayani some dozen times, you know him better than anyone else here. My impression is that he falls into the second category—liar.

  Mullen didn’t disagree. But he valued the personal bond he had forged with Kayani. He knew there were things that Kayani didn’t tell him. But Mullen thought Riedel, like many CIA analysts, had a jaded, cynical view of Pakistan and had lost his objectivity. And as a practical matter, they had to work with Kayani out of necessity. He had the most power in that country.

  Later Mullen asked Dennis Blair, the DNI, for a favor—four-star admiral to retired four-star admiral. “Denny, help me here,” he said, “I need an objective view of Pakistan.” He was not getting it from the intelligence world. Distrust consumed most analysts, but some in the CIA suffered from a severe bout of client-itis with the ISI, having worked with them for so many decades.

  Blair told Mullen that Riedel had it about right.

  Jones met with the NSC principals the next day, March 12, to go over the Riedel review.

  “I want Bruce to talk for 30 minutes and explain what’s in this paper,” Jones began. Let’s have no interruptions. Riedel reprised his presentation from the day before and Jones opened up the meeting for comments.

  “Just let me take two minutes here,” Biden said. “I only have a couple of things to say, and this’ll only take me a minute or two.” Historically, he said, it’s been very difficult—impossible—for foreign interventions to prevail in Afghanistan. With tens of thousands of troops on the ground already, if we can’t do it with this number and we don’t have a reliable partner in the Afghanistan government, then it seems irresponsible to inject additional troops on top of that. We’re just prolonging failure at that point, he said.