The Untold History of the United States

by Oliver Stone

  This Bush administration, as Ralph Nader put it, was “marinated in oil,”86 with two oilmen at the helm and Chevron board member Condoleezza Rice, who had a double-hulled oil tanker named after her, as national security advisor. Cheney quickly put together an energy task force and began formulating a new national energy policy based on securing control of Persian Gulf and Caspian Sea oil. He later fiercely resisted efforts to force the disclosure of task force participants’ names and their discussions. A top NSC official instructed NSC staff to cooperate with the task force as it tried to “meld” together its review of “policies toward rogue states” like Iraq and “actions regarding the capture of new and existing oil and gas fields.”87 Cheney told an audience of oil industry executives in 1999, “There will be an average of two percent annual growth in global oil demand over the years ahead along with conservatively a three percent natural decline in production from existing reserves. That means by 2010 we will need on the order of an additional fifty million barrels a day. So where is the oil going to come from? . . . the Middle East, with two-thirds of the world’s oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies.”88 The task force urged the administration to pressure Middle Eastern nations whose governments controlled their oil industries “to open up areas of their energy sectors to foreign investment.”89

  Congressman Dennis Kucinich spelled out the implications:

  Oil is a major factor in every aspect of U.S. policy in the Persian Gulf. Ask yourself: What commodity accounts for 83 percent of total exports from the Persian Gulf? What is the U.S. protecting with our permanent deployment of about 25,000 military personnel, 6 fighter squadrons, 6 bomber squadrons, 13 air control and reconnaissance squadrons, one aircraft carrier battle group, and one amphibious ready group based at 11 military installations? . . . the disproportionate troop deployments in the Middle East aren’t there to protect the people, who constitute only 2 percent of the world population.90

  Cheney and Bush spent their first eight months in office aggressively pursuing the PNAC agenda. They paid little if any heed to the terrorist threat. The attacks on September 11, 2001, could have and should have been prevented. NSC Counterterrorism Chief Richard Clarke tried to alert top administration officials, including Cheney, Rice, and Powell, to the Al-Qaeda threat from their very first days on the job. He warned that an attack was imminent. On January 25, he requested that Rice call an urgent cabinet-level “principals” meeting to discuss the threat. He finally got his meeting on September 4.

  Warning signs abounded in the summer of 2001. Intercepted Al-Qaeda messages stated that “something spectacular” was about to occur.91 FBI agents reported suspicious behavior by individuals who wanted to know how to fly passenger airplanes but were not interested in learning how to land. Tenet received an August briefing paper titled “Islamic Extremist Learns to Fly” about the arrest in Minnesota of Zacarias Moussaoui after officials at the flight school he was attending reported his strange behavior.92 Clarke testified that CIA Director George Tenet was running around Washington with his “hair on fire,” trying to get Bush’s attention.93 In late June, Tenet told Clarke, “I feel it coming. This is going to be the big one.”94 Intelligence agencies issued threat reports with headlines such as “Bin Laden Threats Are Real,” “Bin Laden Planning High Profile Attacks,” “Bin Laden Planning Multiple Operations,” “Bin Laden Public Profile May Presage Attack,” and “Bin Laden’s Network’s Plans Advancing.”95 Alerts warned of a high probability of near-term “spectacular” attacks resulting in numerous casualties and causing turmoil in the world. According to writer Thomas Powers, in the nine months before September 11, intelligence personnel “had warned the administration as many as forty times of the threat posed by Osama bin Laden, but that is not what the administration wanted to hear, and it did not hear it.”96

  The President’s Daily Brief that Bush received at his Crawford, Texas, ranch on August 6 was headlined “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US.” It discussed the threat of Al-Qaeda operatives hijacking planes. Bush was as uninterested as ever, telling his CIA briefer, “All right. You’ve covered your ass, now.”97 Tenet later testified that “the system was blinking red.”98 Still, Bush had the temerity to tell a news conference in April 2004, “Had I any inkling whatsoever that the people were going to fly airplanes into buildings, we would have moved heaven and earth to save the country.”99

  Rice was equally culpable and equally disingenuous. During summer 2001, Tenet and CIA counterterrorism chief J. Cofer Black pushed her to adopt a plan to thwart bin Laden’s pending attack, but Rice was preoccupied with ballistic missile defense. Frustrated, Black later remarked, “The only thing we didn’t do was pull the trigger to the gun we were holding to her head.”100 Rice later commented, “I don’t think anybody could have predicted . . . that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile.”101

  Bush and Rice’s lack of interest was shared by others in the administration. Acting FBI Director Thomas Pickard told the 9/11 Commission that he had briefed Attorney General John Ashcroft twice that summer about the terrorist threat, but that, after the second briefing, Ashcroft told him he didn’t want to hear about it anymore.102 Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz also discounted the warnings. Rumsfeld went further, threatening, as late as September 9, to get the president to veto Senate Armed Services Committee plans to transfer $600 million from the missile defense budget to counterterrorism.

  Nor at that time did many predict that Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and their cronies would use this criminal assault on the United States as an excuse to launch wars against two Islamic nations—wars that would cause far more damage to the United States than Osama bin Laden ever could—or to begin shredding the U.S. Constitution and the Geneva Convention.

  Chapter 13

  THE BUSH-CHENEY

  DEBACLE:

  “The Gates of Hell Are Open in Iraq”

  George W. Bush was legendary for his misstatements and malapropisms. But sometimes, through the mangled syntax, a bit of truth would slip out. Such was the occasion in 2004 when he declared, “Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.”1

  When Bush’s party was unceremoniously booted out of office in 2008, he was rated by historians as among the very worst presidents in U.S. history if not the absolute worst.2 His popularity and approval ratings set new lows for the modern era but were actually higher than those of his even less popular vice president, Dick Cheney. Bush and Cheney left the country in shambles, its economy collapsing and its international reputation at an all-time low. After invading two countries, threatening many others, and undermining the rule of law at home and abroad, the once-admired United States was now universally feared and widely condemned. People wondered whether the wrongheaded policies of the Bush-Cheney administration had resulted from ineptitude, hubris, and blind ambition or if perhaps there was something more sinister about its plans for the United States and the world.

  Although the ever-cautious Barack Obama chose not to investigate the crimes of his predecessor, others would adhere more closely to the strictures of international law. In February 2011, George W. Bush was forced to cancel a speaking engagement in Switzerland for fear of massive protests against his torture policies. Activists were also planning to file a criminal complaint with Swiss prosecutors. Katherine Gallagher of the Center for Constitutional Rights explained, “Waterboarding is torture, and Bush has admitted without any sign of remorse, that he approved its use. . . . Torturers—even if they are former presidents of the United States—must be held to account and prosecuted. Impunity for Bush must end.”3 Protest organizers urged demonstrators to bring a shoe in honor of the Iraqi journalist who was jailed for throwing his shoes at Bush in 2008. Referencing the 1998 London arrest of the late Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, Gavin Sullivan of the European Center for Constitutional a
nd Human Rights said, “What we have in Switzerland is a Pinochet opportunity.” Amnesty International announced that similar steps would be taken if Bush traveled to any of the 147 nations that were party to the UN Convention Against Torture.4

  The events of September 11, 2001, and the United States’ reaction to them changed the course of history. On that day, Islamic extremists dealt the United States a crushing blow. With the president and his top aides asleep at the switch, Al-Qaeda hijackers flew planes into the premier symbols of U.S. imperial power: the World Trade Center and Pentagon. More than 2,750 people were killed in New York City, including some 500 foreign nationals from 91 countries. The nation watched in horror as flames engulfed the twin towers before their stunning collapse. Another 125 perished at the Pentagon. But the damage to the United States would pale in comparison to the damage the Bush administration wreaked in response to Al-Qaeda’s heinous attack.

  Bush subsequently ignored demands to investigate how such a colossal intelligence and leadership failure could have occurred. When the pressure finally became too great, Bush turned to Henry Kissinger to produce an official whitewash. Even the New York Times wondered whether the choice of Kissinger, the “consummate Washington insider,” with his “old friendships and business relationships,” to chair the commission was anything more than “a clever maneuver by the White House to contain an investigation it long opposed.”5

  Kissinger received a visit from a group of New Jersey women who had been widowed in the attack. One asked him if he had any clients named bin Laden. Kissinger spilled his coffee and nearly fell off his office couch. While his visitors rushed to clean up his mess, Kissinger tried to blame his clumsiness on his “bad eye.” The next morning, he resigned from the commission.6

  Kissinger was replaced by former New Jersey Governor Thomas Kean, who, along with his cochair, former Indiana Congressman Lee Hamilton, delivered the largely exculpatory report in 2004. In his book on the commission, New York Times reporter Philip Shenon placed the principal blame for the commission’s gentle treatment of the responsible parties in the White House on the guiding hand of the commission executive director and Condoleezza Rice confidant, Philip Zelikow, whom some of the staff members considered to be a “White House mole.”7 Washington Post international correspondent Glenn Kessler described him as a “one-person think tank for Rice”—her “intellectual soul mate.”8 Rice’s negligence in ignoring pre-9/11 warning signs that an attack was imminent was undeniable.

  Soldiers brief President Bush on a heavy machine gun in July 2002.

  For most Americans, 9/11 was a terrible tragedy; for Bush and Cheney it was also an incredible opportunity—a chance to implement the agenda that their neoconservative allies had been cooking up for decades. The Project for a New American Century’s recent report “Rebuilding America’s Defenses” had stated that “the process of transformation . . . is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event—like a new Pearl Harbor.”9 Al-Qaeda had given PNACers their Pearl Harbor. Within minutes of the attack, the Bush team, minus the absent president, leapt into action. Vice President Cheney and his legal counsel David Addington took charge. Addington soon joined forces with Timothy Flanigan and John Yoo to argue that the president, as wartime commander in chief, could act virtually unfettered by legal constraints.10 Proceeding on that basis, Bush would sharply increase the powers of the executive branch and curtail civil liberties, declaring “I don’t care what the international lawyers say, we are going to kick some ass.”11

  Bush and the PNACers in his administration knew precisely whose ass they wanted to kick. On September 12, already looking past Al-Qaeda’s Osama bin Laden and his Taliban collaborators in Afghanistan, Bush instructed counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke, “See if Saddam did this. See if he’s linked in any way.” Clarke, incredulous, responded, “But, Mr. President, al Qaeda did this.” Bush persisted. Detailing the encounter, Clarke reported that when Bush walked away, Clarke’s assistant Lisa Gordon-Haggerty “stared after him with her mouth hanging open.” “Wolfowitz got to him,” she said.12

  The smoldering rubble of the fallen World Trade Center buildings in New York City two days after the Al-Qaeda attacks of September 11, 2001.

  Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz had a lot of help. His boss, Donald Rumsfeld, had already ordered the military to draw up strike plans for Iraq. “Go massive,” he said. “Sweep it all up. Things related and not.”13 Clarke assumed that Rumsfeld was joking when he said Iraq had better targets than Afghanistan. He wasn’t. On the morning of September 12, CIA Director George Tenet ran into Richard Perle, who was leaving the West Wing of the White House. Perle declared, “Iraq has to pay a price for what happened yesterday. They bear responsibility.”14 On September 13, Wolfowitz announced that the response to the 9/11 attacks would extend well beyond Afghanistan to “ending states who sponsor terrorism.”15

  That afternoon, when Rumsfeld spoke of expanding the mission to “getting Iraq,” Secretary of State Colin Powell insisted that they focus on Al-Qaeda. Clarke thanked him and expressed his befuddlement over the obsession with Iraq: “Having been attacked by al Qaeda, for us now to go bombing Iraq in response would be like our invading Mexico after the Japanese attacked us at Pearl Harbor.” Knowing whom he was dealing with, Powell shook his head. “It’s not over yet,” he said.16

  As Ike looks on, Paul Wolfowitz speaks with Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, and Scooter Libby during a Cabinet Room meeting on September 12, 2001.

  Powell was right. The neocons would soon abandon the fig leaf of Iraqi involvement in 9/11. On September 20, the PNAC wrote a letter to Bush stating that “even if evidence does not link Iraq directly to the attack, any strategy aiming at the eradication of terrorism and its sponsors must include a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq.”17 The October 15 issue of William Kristol’s Weekly Standard ran a cover story making “The Case for American Empire” in which Max Boot blamed the September 11 attack on the fact that the United States had not sufficiently imposed its will on the world. Boot knew how to remedy that mistake: “The debate about whether Saddam Hussein was implicated in the September 11 attacks misses the point. Who cares if Saddam was involved in this particular barbarity?”18

  Having been attacked by Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, the United States was preparing to retaliate against Iraq, whose leader, Saddam Hussein, was an avowed enemy of both Al-Qaeda and the anti-U.S. regime in Iran. Clarke admitted, “At first I was incredulous that we were talking about something other than getting al Qaeda. Then I realized with almost a sharp physical pain that Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz were going to try to take advantage of this national tragedy to promote their agenda about Iraq.”19

  Clarke underestimated Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz. Their agenda went far beyond Iraq. From atop the rubble at the World Trade Center, Bush proclaimed, “Our responsibility to history is already clear. To answer these attacks and rid the world of evil.”20

  Cheney appeared on Meet the Press and said, “We also have to work, though, sort of the dark side. . . . We’ve got to spend time in the shadows in the intelligence world. A lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly, without any discussion, using sources and methods that are available to our intelligence agencies, if we’re going to be successful. That’s the world these folks operate in, and so it’s going to be vital for us to use any means at our disposal, basically, to achieve our objective.”21

  The administration moved to the “dark side” with alacrity. The following day, Bush authorized the CIA to establish detention facilities outside the United States where torture and other harsh interrogation techniques would be employed. Four days later Bush announced before a joint session of Congress that the United States was embarking on a global war on terrorism—extending to “any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism.”22 Through its policy of extraordinary rendition, the CIA began seizing suspects without any legal proceedings being brought aga
inst them and flying them to secret “black sites” around the world.

  The CIA requested and received presidential authorization to hunt down, capture, and kill members of Al-Qaeda and other terrorists anywhere in the world. In October, a senior official told the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward that the president had directed the CIA to “undertake its most sweeping and lethal covert action since the founding of the agency in 1947.” “The gloves are off,” the official said. “The president has given the agency the green light to do whatever is necessary. Lethal operations that were unthinkable pre–September 11 are now underway.” Cheney noted another important change. “It is different than the Gulf War was,” he told Woodward, “in the sense that it may never end. At least, not in our lifetime.”23

  In fact, many things that were unthinkable before September 11 were happening now. First and foremost, the White House began usurping unprecedented powers, powers that threatened the U.S. constitutional order. To make that possible, Bush exploited the post-9/11 climate of fear and uncertainty. In the days after 9/11, the government arrested and detained 1,200 men in the United States, most of whom were either Muslims or of Middle Eastern or South Asian extraction. Another 8,000 were sought for interrogation. Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold demanded a halt to such profiling. “This is a dark hour for civil liberties in America,” he warned. “What I’m hearing from Muslim Americans, Arab Americans, South Asians and others, suggests a climate of fear toward our government that is unprecedented.”24