Obama’s Wars

by Bob Woodward

  Near the end, I read the general’s overall conclusion: “Failure to provide adequate resources also risks a longer conflict, greater casualties, higher overall costs, and ultimately, a critical loss of political support. Any of these risks, in turn, are likely to result in mission failure.”

  By the time I had finished reading, there was little doubt in my mind that the report should be published immediately.

  That same Friday night, I e-mailed Marcus Brauchli, who had been executive editor of The Washington Post for slightly more than a year, to let him know I had the report and thought he ought to read it. We met at the Post the next morning, Saturday. Brauchli read the report quickly and said he thought it should be published at once and in full.

  I called my source and asked that the ground rules be changed.

  “When my book comes out next year,” I said, “this assessment will be such old news, it will not be news at all. It will be irrelevant.” It is news now, I said.

  After a few questions, my source agreed and I promised to not identify that person in any way.

  Brauchli asked me to call both the White House and the Pentagon to explain that we had a full copy and planned to publish it in the next day or two but wanted them to address which parts, if any, should not be made public and for what reasons.

  The June 30, 1971, Supreme Court decision on the Pentagon Papers case, nearly four decades earlier and just three months before I joined the Post, opened the door for such conversations with the government. In its 6 to 3 ruling, the court essentially said the government could not restrain the press before publication of classified documents, which permitted The New York Times and The Washington Post to continue publishing the top secret 47-volume Vietnam War study, which showed that the government had repeatedly lied to the public about the war.

  Because the government could not legally stop us from publishing the McChrystal assessment, we had the upper hand in listening to arguments for deleting passages from the report. For the Pentagon Papers, the Times and Post did not consult the government in advance. To do so would have alerted the government and likely resulted in a court action to stop publication, which is exactly what the government did in federal court after the initial articles ran. The beauty of the Supreme Court’s Pentagon Papers ruling—which forbids prior restraint—is that it encourages us to ask the government for their specific objections to the publication of classified documents.

  I reached General Jones by phone on Saturday. He was on his boat in the Chesapeake Bay. I explained that I had the full 66-page McChrystal assessment and planned to publish it but wanted to hear from him and the Pentagon first.

  “It will make the president’s job more difficult,” he said. Publication would give “insight to those who are working against us,” meaning the Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan.

  I said I thought it sounded a dramatic alarm from the new commander about the course of the war, and the public ought to be informed. We would not publish the page outlining future operations. We wanted to hear arguments if there were other parts we should consider deleting on national security grounds.

  “I’m not thrilled,” Jones said. “It is classified.” He also noted that he had lots of questions about the report. McChrystal was “a young four-star,” Jones said. “He is naive.”

  I said that on a careful read and reread, I did not see the harm, but we were willing—even eager—to listen to their arguments.

  “I have some calls to make,” Jones said.

  I called Morrell, the Pentagon spokesman, who said, “They want to fight this,” and that we should expect to hear from someone soon.

  Within an hour, about 2 P.M. on Saturday, Gates, Jones, Donilon, and General Cartwright, the vice chairman of the JCS, were on the phone in a conference call to Post editor Brauchli, a Post lawyer and myself.

  Gates, who was out of town, said he was asking us to hold off on any article or publication of the assessment for 24 hours. Publication, he said, would be “quite damaging to our efforts in Afghanistan and put the lives of our soldiers at risk.”

  General Cartwright added that the report was “an operational and tactical assessment” and publication would allow “the enemy to see where we were going.” He asked me for time to review.

  We repeated what I had told Jones about not publishing the page that contained future operations.

  Donilon said, “I have not heard an answer to the secretary’s request”—that we wait 24 hours.

  Brauchli and I both said it seemed reasonable, and Brauchli wanted to know when and where we could hear all their objections. He would withhold publication of the story, he said, but he wanted to make sure we could meet with someone who would have authority to speak for not just the Pentagon but the White House and the intelligence agencies.

  We had an appointment at the Pentagon the next morning, Sunday, at 11 A.M.

  • • •

  We realized that we would have to listen carefully but be on the alert, ready to separate real claims of national security from bogus ones. We were concerned that the administration didn’t want this damning report to be published. At a press conference two weeks earlier on September 3, right after Gates received the report, the secretary had said, “I don’t believe that the war is slipping through the administration’s fingers.” The McChrystal assessment contradicted that.

  In addition, Obama was appearing on five television talk shows that morning to make a plea for his health care reform. Obviously the White House would not want other news stepping on its message.

  On Sunday, Brauchli, Rajiv Chandrasekaran, a senior Post reporter who covers the war, and I drove to the Pentagon for the 11 A.M. meeting. Because Gates was away, the representatives from the Pentagon were Cartwright, Morrell and undersecretary of defense for policy Michèle Flournoy. We sat around the conference table in Cartwright’s office.

  Cartwright, outgoing and exceptionally personable, said there were three major objections—disclosing future operations, intelligence gaps and anything that might compromise McChrystal’s ability to work with the Afghanistan government or other international partners.

  At the beginning of the discussion, it seemed it was a contest among several on the government side to see who could get Brauchli to agree to redact the most. In all, they raised 14 specific concerns. The first real issue was whether to quote McChrystal saying that he needed more forces in the next 12 months or the war “will likely end in failure.” It was his strongest statement. Flournoy argued that publication of the 12-month time frame would allow “the enemy, basically, to kind of hold out” and “redouble” its efforts for just 12 months because it would be taken as an indication that American resolve was limited. She also said that publication of the 12-month limit “if read by the Taliban, could lead to a change of tactics on their part that directly translates into more U.S casualties.”

  It was a very direct warning.

  McChrystal and his team, she said, had been consulted and “They did not want the time frame in there.”

  I argued that it was McChrystal’s core argument and we needed to reflect that.

  Brauchli noted that Gates and others had said the United States had about 12 to 18 months to shift the momentum in the war, so McChrystal’s use of 12 months was hardly surprising.

  Eventually Cartwright agreed and withdrew their objections, but he wanted the last three words redacted from this sentence: “The insurgents control or contest a significant portion of the country, although it is difficult to assess precisely how much due to lack of ISAF presence AND INADEQUATE INTELLIGENCE.”

  To let the Taliban know we had “inadequate intelligence” would only encourage them and allow them freer movement because of the inadequacy.

  Brauchli agreed, saying, “I think on the issues of disclosure of intelligence gaps, I think we’ll look favorably on that because I don’t think we need to be pointing that out.”

  The three words were removed.

  I thought this was rea
sonable, but I chose to publish them in this book because the gaps became increasingly obvious. Overall, Brauchli and Cartwright agreed to redact the details of future ops and the three words on the intelligence gap.

  We were able to publish about 97 percent of the assessment without any objections from the government, and deliver the conclusions and details in the story. That evening, the Pentagon provided us with a declassified version of the assessment with the agreed-upon redactions.

  We returned to the Post to edit my draft article for Monday’s edition. The headline in the September 21 Washington Post the next morning stretched across the top three quarters of the front page: “McChrystal: More Forces or ‘Mission Failure.’” The declassified version of the assessment was available on the Post Web site. Within a few minutes, The New York Times all but copied the story almost paragraph for paragraph.

  The Internet lit up with reactions. Retired Army Colonel Pat Lang wrote on his blog, “This highly classified document was artfully leaked by those who wish to ‘bulldoze’ Obama and Gates into accepting an unlimited commitment to a nation building counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan.”

  Peter Feaver, who had been on George W. Bush’s NSC staff, wrote on a blog for Foreign Policy magazine, “The domestic political-military stakes have been ramped up considerably with this leak. It is not quite a 3-A.M.-phone-call crisis, but it is probably the most serious national security test the Obama team has confronted thus far.”

  At the morning press briefing aboard Air Force One en route to Troy, New York, Gibbs emphasized to reporters that McChrystal had yet to ask for a specific number of additional troops.

  “We’re going to conduct that strategic assessment and do that in a way that lays out the best path forward before we make resource decisions, rather than having this go the other way around where one makes resource decisions and then finds a strategy.”

  In my interview with the president nine months later, he said the McChrystal assessment was useful because “it clarified a gap in what had come out of the Riedel report.

  “I think the Riedel report retained ambiguity about what our central mission was,” Obama told me. “It was interpreted by some as an argument for a beefed-up force that was conducting a counterterrorism strategy.” With Riedel’s emphasis on Pakistan, some, like the vice president, argued that the strategy should focus on the safe havens in Pakistan being used by al Qaeda and the Taliban insurgents. On the other hand, Obama said, it was interpreted by others as a commitment to a full-blown counterinsurgency strategy “as had been classically laid out by General Petraeus.” But the president said he was not buying into a full counterinsurgency because that meant “what you’re purchasing is responsibility for Afghanistan over the long term.

  “And so when the McChrystal assessment comes in,” the president told me, “I think at that point what became clear to me was, we’ve got to get everybody in a room and make sure that everybody is singing from the same hymnal.”

  16

  On September 29, at 1:30 P.M., Jones assembled the principals in the Situation Room for a two-hour discussion before the NSC meeting the next day. He called it a “rehearsal,” where they could sharpen their arguments and presentations without the president there. Jones thought several rambled, especially Biden and Holbrooke.

  A video of the meeting would probably alarm anyone who watched. Eight years into the war, they were struggling to refine what the core objectives were.

  Biden had written a six-page memo exclusively for the president questioning the intelligence reports about the Taliban. The reports portrayed the Taliban as the new al Qaeda. Because the Taliban was taking the fight to the Americans, it had become a brand that drew Arabs, Uzbeks, Tajiks and Chechens who ventured to Afghanistan for their so-called summer of jihad.

  In his memo, Biden indicated that, based on the way he read the intelligence reports, the phenomenon was grossly exaggerated. There were perhaps 50 to 75 foreign fighters in Afghanistan at any given time. That was a magnitude of order below the thousands—including a 22-year-old Osama bin Laden—who had flooded the country after the Soviet occupation started in 1979. The vice president did not see evidence that the Pashtun Taliban projected a global jihadist ideology, let alone designs on the American homeland.

  It had already appeared in the news that McChrystal was going to ask for about 40,000 troops. The number was being debated on live television before it was being discussed in the Situation Room.

  At 3 P.M. on Wednesday, September 30, Obama sat down for the second meeting of the Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy review. This was a larger group than the first session, about 18 people. Petraeus was in attendance this time. It was clear to everyone in the White House that he had to be there because any decision reached without him would be suspect.

  The media debate about Afghanistan had become polarized, a choice between a massive troop influx and a complete withdrawal.

  “Is there anybody who thinks we ought to leave Afghanistan?” the president asked.

  Everyone in the room was quiet. They looked at him. No one said anything.

  “Okay,” he said, “now that we’ve dispensed with that, let’s get on.”

  One note taker circled what he had written: “POTUS says take off the table the notion that we’re leaving Afghanistan.” POTUS is short for president of the United States.

  But Obama also wanted to steer away from Afghanistan as best he could for the rest of the session.

  “Let’s start where our interests take us, which is really Pakistan, not Afghanistan,” he said. “In fact, you can tell the Pakistani leaders, if you want to, that we’re not leaving” Afghanistan.

  With that out of the way, Lavoy, the DNI’s deputy director for analysis, began his intelligence briefing, clarifying the dynamics between al Qaeda, now primarily in Pakistan, and the Taliban. Al Qaeda was the direct threat to the United States, Lavoy said.

  The significance of the Taliban, added DNI Blair, was that it was an extremist movement allied to al Qaeda that was succeeding. Providing it was winning, the Taliban was happy to have al Qaeda at its side.

  But it was vexing to distinguish perfectly among the Taliban, al Qaeda and other groups, Blair and Lavoy said. As McChrystal’s assessment had noted, the Haqqani network drew foreign money and manpower “from its close association with al Qaeda and other Pakistan-based insurgent groups.” Its links with al Qaeda could foster an environment for other associated extremist movements “to reestablish safe havens in Afghanistan.”

  Al Qaeda would return to Afghanistan under two conditions, Lavoy said. The Taliban had to control the country again, or control areas beyond the reach of U.S. and NATO ground forces. And, the security situation in the ungoverned areas of the FATA in Pakistan would have to become too dangerous for al Qaeda. Despite the frequency and success of CIA drone attacks in the FATA and the Pakistani military taking actions against its own branch of the Taliban, there was no evidence that al Qaeda was migrating back to Afghanistan. Why would they? It was still safer for them in Pakistan.

  Obama laid out his ground rules for the rest of the session.

  “I really want to focus on the issue of the U.S. homeland,” he said. “I see three key goals. One, protecting the U.S. homeland, allies and U.S. interests abroad. Two, concern about Pakistan’s nuclear weapons and stability. If I’m just focused on the U.S. homeland, can we distinguish between the dangers posed by al Qaeda and the Taliban?”

  Biden picked up on the cue—skipping the third goal about Pakistan-India relations—and asked, “Is there any evidence the Afghan Taliban advocates attacks outside of Afghanistan and on the U.S., or if it took over more of Afghanistan it would have more of an outward focus?”

  No evidence, Lavoy said. Biden had scored a significant point.

  The president returned to his previous train of thought and said, “Changing the Pakistan calculus is key to achieving our core goals.”

  The U.S. was in the throes of deciding whether to send mo
re troops into the Afghanistan War, yet the safety of the nation hinged on Pakistan.

  Obama said that there was a military assumption that a lasting presence in Afghanistan would stabilize Pakistan. What was the basis of that? he asked. Why wouldn’t the opposite happen?

  Petraeus spoke up. A little more than a month ago, he had met in Pakistan with General Kayani, head of the Pakistani army, whose influence and power were increasing. For two hours, Petraeus sat with a map as the Pakistanis walked him through their plans and operations. Their calculus was changing, as they now factored in extremist terrorist groups such as TTP. That Pakistani branch of the Taliban had used suicide bombers against government targets and earlier in the year had controlled the area near Tarbela, where Pakistan stored some of its nuclear arsenal. The Pakistani military had already launched a ground operation in Swat and was about to do the same in South Waziristan. That was an encouraging sign.

  McChrystal then delivered a presentation on what he called “The Pathway” to his initial assessment, outlining how he had arrived at what he thought were his missions and how he assessed his ability to accomplish them.

  “Okay,” Obama said, “You guys have done your job. But there are three developments since then. The Pakistanis are doing better, the Afghanistan situation is more serious than anticipated, and the Afghan elections did not provide the pivot point hoped for—a more legitimate government. And now we have to make some decisions.”

  They turned to a chart from McChrystal that listed extremist threats—al Qaeda, the Taliban and other groups. Could some be isolated, and should the administration worry only about those that posed a threat to the homeland?

  Biden and deputy national security adviser Donilon voiced skepticism that the symbiotic relationships among them meant the United States had to go after all of them.