Bush At War

by Bob Woodward

  Mahmoud said that his country had faced tough choices in the past but Pakistan was not a big or mighty power.

  Pakistan is an important country, Armitage cut in.

  Mahmoud returned to the past.

  "The future begins today," Armitage said. Pass the word to General Musharraf, the Pakistani president - with us or against us.

  AT 4 P.M., the NSC reconvened. The persistent question was the exact definition of the mission.

  Rumsfeld insisted on a point he had made before. "Are we going against terrorism more broadly than just al Qaeda? Do we want to seek a broader basis for support?"

  Bush again said his instinct was to start with bin Laden. If they could strike a blow against al Qaeda, everything that followed would be made easier. But Rumsfeld worried that a coalition built around the goal of taking out al Qaeda would fall apart once they succeeded in that mission, making it more difficult to continue the war on terrorism elsewhere.

  Powell, agreeing with Bush, argued that it would be far easier initially to rally the world behind the specific target of al Qaeda. They could win approval of a broad U.N. resolution by keeping it focused on al Qaeda.

  Cheney again focused on the question of state sponsorship of terrorism. To strike a blow against terrorism inevitably meant targeting the countries that nurture and export it, he said. In some ways the states were easier targets than the shadowy terrorists.

  Bush worried about making their initial target too diffuse. Let's not make the target so broad that it misses the point and fails to draw support from normal Americans, he said. What Americans were feeling, he added, was that the country had suffered at the hands of al Qaeda.

  Cheney countered that the coalition should be a means to wiping out terrorism, not an end in itself - a view that others shared. They wanted support from the rest of the world, but they did not want the coalition to tie their hands. The mission should define the coalition, not the other way around.

  In that case, Rumsfeld argued, they wanted coalition partners truly committed to the cause, not reluctant participants.

  Powell offered what one colleague later described as the "variable geometry" of coalition building. The coalition should be as broad as possible, but the requirements for participation would vary country by country. This would entail, as Rumsfeld put it, a coalition of coalitions.

  Rumsfeld raised the question of Iraq. Why shouldn't we go against Iraq, not just al Qaeda? he asked. Rumsfeld was speaking not only for himself when he raised the question. His deputy, Paul D. Wolfowitz, was committed to a policy that would make Iraq a principal target of the first round in the war on terrorism.

  Before the attacks, the Pentagon had been working for months on developing a military option for Iraq. Everyone at the table believed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was a menace, a leader bent on acquiring and perhaps using weapons of mass destruction. Any serious, full-scale war against terrorism would have to make Iraq a target - eventually. Rumsfeld was raising the possibility that they could take advantage of the opportunity offered by the terrorist attacks to go after Saddam immediately.

  Powell, who opposed striking Iraq at this point, countered that they were focusing on al Qaeda because the American people were focused on al Qaeda. "Any action needs public support. It's not just what the international coalition supports; it's what the American people want to support. The American people want us to do something about al Qaeda."

  Bush made clear it was not the time to resolve the issue. He emphasized again that his principal goal was to produce a military plan that would inflict real pain and destruction on the terrorists.

  "I don't want a photo-op war," he told them. He wanted "a realistic scorecard" and "a list of thugs" who would be targeted. Everyone was thinking about the Gulf War, he said, which was the wrong analogy. "The American people want a big bang," he said. "I have to convince them that this is a war that will be fought with many steps."

  His reference was Vietnam, where the U.S. military had fought a conventional war against a guerrilla enemy. He later said he "instinctively knew that we were going to have to think differently" about how to fight terrorists. "The military strategy was going to take a while to unfold," he said. "I became frustrated."

  LATER THAT AFTERNOON, Pavitt sent a second SECRET cable from CIA headquarters to all stations and bases around the world with the heading "Action Required: Your Thoughts."

  The agency was continuing its massive worldwide effort to find the perpetrators of September 11, Pavitt wrote. "The CIA is also in the process of developing an unprecedented new covert action program with the clear goal of wreaking havoc upon and eliminating the sponsors and supporters of radical Islamic terrorism."

  Pavitt pressed his clandestine officers in the Directorate of Operations, those on the street, closest to the action, to put forward their boldest, most radical thinking on how to conduct the massive terrorist manhunt. No restrictions. Think about "novel, untested ways" to accomplish the mission, he said.

  "This covert action program will include paramilitary, logistical, and psychological warfare elements as well as classical espionage," the cable said. No holds barred, in other words.

  The Directorate of Operations was back in business.

  ABOUT 9:30 A.M., Thursday, September 13, the president met with the NSC in the White House Situation Room, one floor below the chief of staff's office in the southwest corner of the West Wing. Tenet brought counterterrorism chief Gofer Black to present more detail on the CIA proposals.

  Tenet's concept called for bringing together expanded intelligence-gathering resources, sophisticated technology, agency paramilitary teams and opposition forces in Afghanistan in a classic covert action. They would then be combined with U.S. military power and Special Forces into an elaborate and lethal package designed to destroy the shadowy terrorist networks.

  Tenet said the key concept was to fund and invigorate the Northern Alliance. The Alliance's roughly 20,000 fighters were decidedly a mixed bag dominated by five factions, but in reality probably 25 sub-factions. It was a strained coalition of sometimes common interests. The assassination two days before September 11 of its most charismatic leader, Ahmed Shah Massoud, was a major setback, leaving the Alliance more fractured than ever. But with the CIA teams and tons of money, the Alliance could be brought together into a cohesive fighting force, Tenet said.

  The agency's paramilitary teams had periodically met clandestinely with Alliance leaders over the past four years. Tenet said he could insert paramilitary teams inside Afghanistan with each warlord. Along with Special Forces teams from the U.S. military, they would provide "eyes on the ground" for U.S. military bombing. American technological superiority could give the Northern Alliance a significant edge.

  Gofer Black was next. Black had found at these meetings with the most senior officials that there was an unfortunate tendency to talk in generalities. They were not used to ordnance on target, so to speak, to hitting hard and directly. But he believed he knew what they craved.

  He had a PowerPoint presentation and a narrative.

  "Mr. President," he said, "we can do this. No doubt in my mind. We do this the way that we've outlined it, we'll set this thing up so it's an unfair fight for the U.S. military."

  Black faced Bush, who was at the head of the table. "But you've got to understand, people are going to die. And the worst part about it, Mr. President, Americans are going to die - my colleagues and my friends.

  "That's war," Bush said.

  "We've got to accept that we're going to lose people in this deal. How many, I don't know. Could be a lot."

  "All right," the president said. "Let's go. That's war. That's what we're here to win."

  Black was theatrical as he described the effectiveness of covert action. He kept popping up and down from his chair as he made his points, throwing paper onto the floor as he described putting forces on the ground in Afghanistan.

  Black wanted the mission to begin as soon as possible. He had no doubt
that it would succeed. "You give us the mission," he said, "we can get 'em." Echoing the president's public language about smoking out the terrorists from their caves, he said, "We'll rout 'em out."

  Now, he noted, the desired end was to capture the al Qaeda and render them to law enforcement so they could be brought to justice. With regret, however, he had learned the al Qaeda do not surrender, and they would not negotiate. The great martyred Northern Alliance leader Massoud had once told him, "We've been fighting these guys for four years and I've never captured one of these bastards." The reason was that anytime one of their units was overrun, they bunched up together and detonated a hand grenade. So the task would be killing the al Qaeda, Black said.

  "When we're through with them, they will have flies walking across their eyeballs," he said. It was an image of death that left a lasting impression on a number of war cabinet members. Black became known in Bush's inner circle as "the flies-on-the-eyeballs guy-Black also said that they were going to have to go not only after al Qaeda but the Taliban because the two were joined at the hip. The CIA had been unable to come up with a covert action plan that, for love or money, would allow them to keep the Taliban at bay so the al Qaeda could be engaged.

  How much do we know about the individual Northern Alliance leaders? Bush asked.

  Black provided some thumbnail sketches, and then noted some glaring weaknesses too, to show that the agency wasn't all rosy scenario. One key Alliance general, Abdurrashid Dostum, had been on everyone's payroll - Russia, Iran and Pakistan.

  Bush asked how long it would take to get the paramilitary teams inside Afghanistan.

  Pretty quick, Black said. It would be escalatory - once one team was in, the second would follow more easily and so forth.

  "How long will it take?" the president asked - the "it" meant victory.

  Once we're on the ground, Black said, it should go in weeks.

  No one else in the room, including Tenet, believed that was possible.

  It was nonetheless a memorable performance, and it had a huge effect on the president. For two days Bush had expressed in the most direct way possible his determination to track down and destroy the terrorists. Now, for the first time, he was being told without reservation that there was a way to do this, that he did not have to wait indefinitely, that the agency had a plan.

  Black's enthusiasm was infectious, though certainly optimistic. It would never be as quick or as simple as he made it sound, but at that moment it was what the president wanted to hear. It also sounded logical - using the CIA, the Northern Alliance and the American military as a kind of triad.

  Powell, for one, saw that Bush was tired of rhetoric. The president wanted to kill somebody.

  "It became clear to me that we were going to be able to fight a different war than the Russians fought," Bush commented later. Invading Afghanistan with a traditional army, as the Soviet Union had unsuccessfully done in the 1980s, would not be the United States's only military option. "I was impressed by their [the CIA's] knowledge of the area. We've had assets there for a long period of time. They had worked, had been thinking through things."

  SHORTLY BEFORE 11 A.M., White House aides ushered the press pool into the Oval Office for a scheduled conference call with New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and New York Governor George E. Pataki.

  The previous day, the White House communications team, Hughes and company, had decided to televise the conversation. They wanted the president to be seen reaching out to the families of the thousands of victims who had died when the towers collapsed, as well as the rescue workers who were struggling around the clock in a desperate search for survivors. Since Bush didn't plan to get to New York that week, the televised conference call was seen as the next best gesture.

  When he got on the phone, however, Bush told the mayor and governor that he would fly to New York the next afternoon, immediately after a prayer service at Washington National Cathedral.

  Bush appeared uncomfortable, almost distracted as he talked on the televised conference call. "I wish I was visiting under better circumstances," he said in closing. "But it will be a. chance for all three of us to thank and hug and cry with the citizens of your good area." When the call was over, Bush decided to take questions from the reporters who were standing only a few feet away.

  "Mr. President," one asked, "could you give us a sense as to what kind of prayers you are thinking and where your heart is, for yourself, as you - "

  "Well I don't think about myself right now," Bush said, and it was instantly obvious that he was struggling with his emotions. "I think about the families, the children." He turned his head and his eyes filled with tears.

  "I am a loving guy," he said, as he started to regain his composure, but only partially, "and I am also someone, however, who has got a job to do, and I intend to do it. And this is a terrible moment. But this country will not relent until we have saved ourselves and others from the terrible tragedy that came upon America."

  Still with tears in his eyes, Bush ended the session with a slight nod of his head, and the pool reporters were escorted out.

  "Presidents don't particularly like to cry in front of the American public, particularly in the Oval Office, but nevertheless I did," Bush said later. But he believed his "mood reflected the country in many ways. People in our country felt the same way I did."

  The public tears were perhaps very important. For two days Bush had been responding as president, genuinely but still within the norms of expected presidential behavior. It was perhaps too detached and impersonal. What he had been saying didn't seem quite like him. He had assumed the aura of president, had imposed it on himself. Standing there in the Oval Office and crying made it clear that human emotions trumped even the office of president.

  BEFORE NOON, BUSH left with his wife for a tour of the burn unit at Washington Hospital Center, where some survivors from the Pentagon attack were being treated. Men and women were bathed in oils and swathed in bandages, some almost unrecognizable. Many who were burned over large percentages of their bodies talked about crawling through fire.

  It was another emotional wallop, and at about 12:30 P.M. when his limousine pulled into the White House driveway, the president was in no mood for quibbles. Before he could get out of the car, Andy Card put his hands up, motioning the president back down in his seat.

  "Mr. President," Card said, "sit back down for a minute. I've got to tell you something." He climbed into the back seat next to Bush and closed the door.

  "We've got another threat on the White House," the chief of staff said. "We're taking it seriously." The CIA had just sent over a warning from the Indian intelligence service saying that Pakistani jihadists - Muslim extremists - were planning an imminent attack on the White House.

  "Why are you telling me in here?" snapped Bush, irritated that Card had unnecessarily risked a scene that could be observed by the press pool just down the driveway. "You could have waited until I got into the Oval Office."

  Bush stepped out of the car, and he and Card walked directly to the Oval Office, where Secret Service Director Stafford and the head of Bush's personal Secret Service detail were waiting for them.

  "We need to evacuate you," Stafford said. The threat was credible and consistent with other intelligence that established an immediate danger. The Indian intelligence service was well wired into Pakistan. Stafford wanted to take Bush to the Presidential Emergency Operations Center, the bunker beneath the White House.

  "I'm not leaving," Bush said. He wanted more information if they got it. For now, he wasn't going anywhere. "And by the way," he added to no one in particular, "I'm hungry." He located Ferdinand Garcia, the Navy steward on duty in the West Wing. "Ferdie," he said, "I want a hamburger."

  Card knew that Bush was a bit of a fatalist. If something was going to happen they could only do so much. And hiding in the bunker was just not an option. Prior to the attacks, Bush had been eating lighter - fruit and other healthy foods - to lose weight.

&nbs
p; "Well," said Hughes upon hearing the hamburger order, "you might as well have cheese."

  RICE HAD JOINED the group and they all agreed that, even if the president wasn't prepared to leave, they had an obligation to the rest of the employees in the White House. Many on the staff, particularly some of the younger, lower-level aides, were still suffering from anxiety after the trauma of September 11, when the White House had been evacuated.

  The president and his advisers decided they should allow all nonessential, employees to go home that afternoon. Card relayed the information at a senior staff meeting and announced that the Secret Service would implement additional measures to protect the building, such as expanding the secure perimeter around the White House complex.

  Card said the vice president would be moved to an undisclosed location as a precaution against having the president and vice president together in the event of another attack. Continuity in government - ensuring the survival of someone in the constitutional line of succession to the presidency - was an essential priority.

  The decision to move Cheney was the clearest indication of how seriously they were taking the threats of another attack. It would lead to questions about the vice president's whereabouts and his health - he had had four heart attacks - but he insisted on staying away from the White House when threats were high.

  "We have got the responsibility to make sure that the government can go on," Cheney told the president.

  THE STATE Department, Powell and Armitage were focused on Pakistan - the linchpin for any strategy to isolate and eventually attack al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. Pakistan was one of only two major nations in the world that formally recognized the Taliban as the official government of Afghanistan. The radical Islamic movement had a substantial following within its borders.

  The United States did not have good relations with General Pervez Musharraf, who had come to power in a bloodless military coup in 1999, one year after the U.S. had imposed sanctions on Pakistan for conducting a nuclear test.