by Bob Woodward
A public case had to be made that bin Laden was the guilty one, Powell said. That was important. Evidence mattered.
Rumsfeld was next. We must not undercut our ability to act over the long term, he said, which meant they should keep thinking about what to do about terrorism in general. Patience was important. Rooting out bin Laden would take very different intelligence than they had. The doctrine of "hit, talk, hit," in which the United States would strike, pause to see the reaction, and then hit again, sounded much like Vietnam.
"The military options look like five or ten years ago," he said, a direct swipe at the uniformed military planners. Rumsfeld said there was a need for unconventional approaches, especially the Special Forces operations, in gathering intelligence on the ground. "Get a group functioning fast. Lift out of conventional mind-set."
Responding to Powell's comment that the coalition would dissolve if Iraq were attacked, Rumsfeld said that any "argument that the coalition wouldn't tolerate Iraq argues for a different coalition." But significantly, he did not make a recommendation on Iraq.
"We have to do a better job at target selection," he said. "This will be a sustained campaign. We need an operational cell that doesn't exist at present."
He offered some thoughts on controlling information. "Need tighter control over public affairs. Treat it like a political campaign with daily talking points. Sustaining requires a broad base of domestic support. Broad, not narrow. This is a marathon, not a sprint. It will be years and not months." In a war that was going to be remote, lengthy and relatively secret they would need message discipline.
"The people who do this don't lose," Rumsfeld said, "don't have high-value targets. They have networks and fanaticism." It was a somewhat obvious but important point that got to the heart of the problems they were facing - lack of good targets, lack of inside intelligence sources, the worthlessness of a deterrence strategy.
"We need to stress homeland defense," the president said. "One, we need an early blueprint for response." He assigned that task to Cheney. "Have to coordinate public affairs," he agreed. "Have to update our communications." For months Bush had been complaining about crappy communications systems, which had deteriorated in recent years from lack of investment. On the morning of September 11, the phones didn't work well.
Tenet summarized. "Seems to be a three-part strategy," he said. First would be the demands on the Taliban and others. Second would be "strike and strangle." Third would be "surround and sustain."
He added a depressing thought. "Our situation is more like that of the Israelis," he said. The United States could be entering a period of routine domestic terror attacks. The problem isn't going to go away. "We need a strategy at home that disrupts."
"Start Taliban military options." Tenet agreed with Powell that initially they should pursue military targets rather than their leadership. "Meet at least the al Qaeda target. Take out the majority of Taliban military structure."
He mentioned his own plans for a global approach but supported the position that the initial military focus should be exclusively on Afghanistan.
Card was next. He did not have much foreign policy experience, so he began by speaking generally. "What is the definition of success?" he asked. He said it would first be proving that this was not just an effort to pound sand - as the president had repeatedly made clear. "People are either with us or against us. If the line isn't clear and there aren't clear consequences, people migrate to the wrong side of the line." Echoing Powell and Rumsfeld, he said, "Don't define it as UBL. Al Qaeda can be the enemy."
"An enemy," Bush said, interrupting his chief of staff, reminding them all it was war way beyond al Qaeda.
Card said consideration should be given to simultaneous actions in other parts of the world such as Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Yemen or Somalia. "If you had 15 SEAL teams hitting 10 different targets on the same day, all at once, around the world that would send a message that we're reaching out globally."
Card also proposed they "build up troops big-time" in the Persian Gulf. It would show they were there to stay and would put them in a ready position to strike Iraq later on. But he said he did not think the case had been made that Iraq should be a principal, initial target.
Tenet interjected that he was concerned about what he called "the failure blame game," knowing there would be all kinds of finger-pointing and investigations like the endless rehashing of Pearl Harbor, trying to find a culprit, someone who had dropped the ball. "People are working their butts off," he said. His people were, as were others. "They've saved thousands of lives." It was essential to give them support. Then Tenet did something unusual. He looked at the president and said, "The men and women who are doing the job need to know you, Mr. President, believe in them."
Bush made it clear he did.
The vice president went last. We need to do everything we can to stop the next attack. Go after anyone in the U.S. who might be a terrorist. Are we being aggressive enough? We need a group now that's going to look at lessons learned from where we've been. And in going after bin Laden we need to consider the broader context. A week ago, before September 11, we were worried about the strength of our" whole position in the Middle East - where we stood with the Saudis, the Turks and others in the region. Now they all want to be part of our efforts, and that's an opportunity. We need to reach out for that opportunity.
Building a coalition to take advantage of the opportunities, he said, suggests that this may be a bad time to take on Saddam Hussein. We would lose momentum. "If we go after Saddam Hussein, we lose our rightful place as good guy."
Cheney thus joined Powell, Tenet and Card in opposing action on Iraq. Rumsfeld had not committed. To anyone keeping a tally, it was 4 to 0 with Rumsfeld abstaining.
Still, the vice president expressed deep concern about Saddam and said he was not going to rule out going after Iraq at some point.
Cheney said the CIA must push every button it could. "One disappointment are the NGOs, bin Laden's one real asset" - the charitable groups and nongovernmental organizations that helped finance al Qaeda. He recommended strengthening the Northern Alliance and hitting the Taliban - but not necessarily in a massive way at first. We need to knock out their air defenses and their airpower at the start, he said. We need to be ready to put men on the ground. There are some places only Special Operations Forces will get them, he added. And we need to ask: Do we have the right mix of forces?
Finally, Cheney returned to the question of homeland defense. They must do everything possible to defend, prevent or disrupt the next attack on America. The issue was very worrisome. He had reviewed the work of five government commissions that had recently studied terrorism. The president had assigned him the task of coming up with a homeland security plan back in May. It's not just borders and airline security, but biological and other threats that they had to think about.
At the end of the meeting, Bush went around the table and thanked everyone. It was not clear where things stood.
"I'm going to go think about it, and I'll let you know what I've decided," he said.
POWELL AND RUMSFELD left Camp David, but most of the others and their spouses stayed over for dinner. Rice led the group in a sing-along of American standards including "Old Man River," "Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen" and "America the Beautiful." The president spent some time at a table nearby, joining others trying to assemble an elaborate wooden jigsaw puzzle.
HIS HOME in the Washington suburbs the next morning, Tenet took out a pen, some paper and began writing in longhand. He was pumped up, and wanted to send a message to his own team of advisers. He wrote at the top: "We're At War."
It was an all-fronts war on al Qaeda, he wrote. "There can be no bureaucratic impediments to success. All the rules have changed. There must be an absolute and full sharing of information, ideas and capabilities. We do not have time to hold meetings or fix problems - fix them quickly and smartly. Each person must assume an unprecedented degree of personal r
esponsibility." Any problems with other agencies, the military or law enforcement must be "solved now.
"We must all be passionate and driven - but not breathless. We must stay cool.
"Together we will win this war and make our president and the American people proud. We will win this war on behalf of our fallen and injured brothers and sisters in New York and Washington and their families."
He sent it over the secure fax in his home to headquarters to be typed and distributed. The memo was a call to action but it was also an acknowledgment that his agency had some problems, a tendency to deal with problems by holding meetings.
THE PRESIDENT ARRIVED back at the White House at 3:20 P.M. from Camp David, made a brief statement to the press on the South Lawn and took five questions. He referred to "evil" or "evildoers" seven times and three times voiced amazement at the nature of the attacks.
"We haven't seen this kind of barbarism in a long period of time," Bush said. "No one could have conceivably imagined suicide bombers burrowing into our society and then emerging all in the same day to fly their aircraft - fly U.S. aircraft into buildings full of innocent people and show no remorse.
"This crusade, this war on terrorism is going to take a while," he added. The characterization of the war as a "crusade" would be recognized as a blunder because of its serious negative connotations in the Islamic world, where it is still associated with invading medieval European Christian armies. Aides would later have to take back the comment and apologize.
BUSH WAS AWARE of the monumental communications problem he and the administration faced. September 11 was not only the deadliest attack on the American homeland, surpassing Pearl Harbor in body count, but the most photographed and filmed violent assault in history. Who could forget the crystal-clear video reruns of the gently banking United Airlines Flight 175 plowing into the 80th floor of the South Tower of the World Trade Center, depositing its lethal fireball and nearly emerging from the other side. Or the image of the smoking Twin Towers. Or the video of the collapsing towers, one then the other, and the cloud of debris and smoke suffocating Lower Manhattan. Or the pictures of the people jumping from the uppermost floors to their deaths to escape the unbearable heat inside. Or the despair on the faces of all Americans. It was almost as if the terrorists had a perfect sense of the American thirst for the theatrical and the dramatic. It seemed they realized that the country had a news media and value system that would push all these images back in every face time and time and time again.
Bush sensed that he was not going to be able to offer an equivalent spectacular event in response. Much of his war and his response would be invisible, and a long time in coming.
He summoned Rice, Hughes, Bartlett and press secretary Ari Fleischer to join him in his office on the second floor of the residence, known as the Treaty Room.
Bush told Hughes, "You're in charge of how we communicate this war." How the White House explained its goals and thinking about the war effort would be critical to the overall success of the campaign. It would be central to retaining public confidence in his leadership, to holding together the international coalition. The problem was that the communications team was not going to know the details, especially about the covert CIA operations, and the American response was going to be delayed.
"I knew full well that if we could rally the American people behind a long and difficult chore, that our job would be easier," Bush said later. "I am a product of the Vietnam era. I remember presidents trying to wage wars that were very unpopular, and the nation split." He pointed to a portrait of Abraham Lincoln that hung in the Oval Office. "He's on the wall because the job of the president is to unite the nation. That's the job of the president. And I felt like, that I had the job of making sure the American people understood. They understood the severity of the attack. But I wasn't sure if they understood how long it was going to take and what a difficult process this would be."
Bush told his advisers, We're going to be entering missions where U.S. military personnel will be at risk. We need to be careful. He wanted Defense and State and other agencies all operating from the same plan. Make sure the left hand knows what the right hand is doing.
For nearly an hour, they talked about what the president expected from his communications team. His advisers remember the conversation as mostly one-way. Bush stressed the unconventional aspects of the war - the role of law enforcement, of intelligence sharing, of disrupting the terrorists' financial network, the role of the CIA and the overriding imperative that much of the war be invisible.
He asked his advisers to think about how to explain the mission, the risks and the time it might take to complete the tasks ahead. There would be parts of the campaign that they could not talk about, he said again, and they should think of ways to showcase all elements of the war they could -talk about, particularly the financial piece, the effort to squeeze the money out of the terrorists' networks.
We cannot tolerate leaks, the president said insistently. Lives will be at stake. Rumsfeld and the Pentagon would talk about operations; White House officials would not. We will not be able to confirm some actions or operations. Your jobs will not be easy.
Later, Bush recalled being very certain and clear about what they needed to say at the time: "We're in for a difficult struggle; it is a new kind of war; we're facing an enemy we never faced before; it is a two-front war initially - Afghanistan and at home.
"I also had the responsibility to show resolve. I had to show the American people the resolve of a commander in chief that was going to do whatever it took to win. No yielding. No equivocation. No, you know, lawyering this thing to death, that we're after 'em. And that was not only for domestic, for the people at home to see. It was also vitally important for the rest of the world to watch." He was particularly concerned about how world leaders would interpret his actions. "These guys were watching my every move. And it's very important for them to come in this Oval Office, which they do, on a regular basis, and me look them in the eye and say, 'You're either with us or you're against us.' "
Twice Bush was interrupted for calls with foreign leaders, including one with Mexican President Vicente Fox, whose ranch he had visited shortly after taking office. As the two ranchers spoke,
Bush slipped into the vernacular of the Old West. "Wanted dead or alive. That's how I feel," Bush said.
Bush excused his communications team and asked Rice to stay behind.
"I know what I want to do and I'm going to do it tomorrow at the NSC," he told her. He dictated a list of actions he would order the next morning.
Rice returned to her office to draw up a one-page summary of 11 items, a war plan on a single sheet of paper.
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, at 9:35 A.M., Bush and the NSC reconvened in the Cabinet Room. Overlooking the Rose Garden, the room looks like the library of a venerable law firm. It is dominated by a large, sturdy oval mahogany conference table which was a gift from President Nixon in 1970.
It was not clear to the others what the crucible of Camp David had yielded. This morning, Bush opened. "The purpose of this meeting is to assign tasks for the first wave of the war against terrorism," he said. "It starts today."
He was approving every one of Tenet's requests for expanding the role of the agency, rejecting most of Rumsfeld's efforts to scale back. CIA subordinates would have authority to act covertly.
"I want to sign a finding today," the president said. "I want the CIA to be first on the ground.
"The attorney general, the CIA and the FBI will assist in protecting America from further attacks." The new policy would stress preemption of future attacks, instead of investigation, gathering evidence and prosecution. He directed Ashcroft to request new legal authority from Congress for the FBI to track, wiretap and stop terrorists - a project already under way.
He told Rumsfeld, "We need plans for protection of U.S. forces and installations abroad.
The secretary of state should issue an ultimatum against the Taliban today," he addre
ssed Powell, almost barking orders. He wanted something "warning them to turn over bin Laden and his al Qaeda or they will suffer the consequences.
"If they don't comply, we'll attack them," Bush said. "Our goal is not to destroy the Taliban, but that may be the effect.
"We'll attack with missiles, bombers and boots on the ground," he said, choosing the most extensive of Shelton's options. "Let's hit them hard. We want to signal this is a change from the past. We want to cause other countries like Syria and Iran to change their views. We want to hit as soon as possible."
The Pentagon should develop and present a detailed plan, he said, but it was clear some basic questions about the operation - raised six days before by Rumsfeld - had not been resolved. Bush repeated them: What targets, how soon? What allied forces do we want? When? How? What's in the first wave? What's later?
Putting men on the ground before bombing in Afghanistan would be a good idea. "We are going to rain holy hell on them. You've got to put lives at risk. We've got to have people on the ground."
Powell had been slightly taken aback that Bush wanted to give the Taliban an immediate ultimatum. It was nighttime in South Asia. Since the United States did not have diplomatic relations with the Taliban, any private message would have to be issued through the government of Pakistan.
There were complications. Powell had to write the ultimatum. Everyone had to understand the consequences. He was concerned about what might happen in Pakistan. They would have to button up their embassies and talk to the allies. "I'd like an hour to think it through, whether we should delay until tomorrow morning," the secretary said.
Bush agreed, but he wanted the language to be tough. "I want to have them quaking in their boots."
Bush said he wanted a plan to stabilize Pakistan and protect it against the consequences of supporting the U.S.
As for Saddam Hussein, the president ended the debate. "I believe Iraq was involved, but I'm not going to strike them now. I don't have the evidence at this point."
