by Bob Woodward
“The big challenge is going to be the loss of human intelligence,” Pompeo said, alluding to a possible impact on sensitive CIA sources.
“I hope we go slow on this,” said Mattis. He knew the details of the Special Access Programs. “That loss of human intelligence would be a big thing.”
“Continued travel poses the risk of hostage taking,” Tillerson said, but he did not disagree with Pompeo and Mattis about the importance of the human sources.
The consensus was that without taking bold action, the U.S. risked being seen as tepid and lacking in the new normal of an ICBM-equipped North Korea.
North Korea’s missile launch was a full-scale crisis: Kim Jong Un now had mobile ICBM capability and missiles that could potentially reach the homeland. U.S. intelligence had incontrovertible evidence that the Chinese had supplied the eight-axle vehicle that was a key component of these complex missile systems. The CIA risked losing sensitive sources if the U.S. tightened travel restrictions. And if the president decided to order some sort of significant military response, the assets would not be immediately available.
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I later learned that the person I had spoken to in May believed the information to be so sensitive, it had been decided that it was better to lie.
Less than two months later, September 3, North Korea conducted an underground test of its most powerful nuclear weapon, its sixth. This was at least 17 times more powerful than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima in 1945.
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During the campaign, on February 10, 2016, Trump said on CBS This Morning he would get China to make Kim “disappear in one form or another very quickly.” He called Kim “a bad dude—and don’t underestimate him.”
An executive order signed in 1981 by President Reagan stated, “No person employed by or acting on behalf of the U.S. government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, assassination.” But government lawyers had concluded that a military strike on a leader’s command-and-control headquarters during hostilities would not violate the assassination ban.
One of the early applications of leader-command-and-control targeting occurred near the end of the Clinton presidency. The military strike is little remembered because it came in the midst of the congressional debate on the impeachment of the president. In December 1998, Clinton ordered a military strike in Iraq.
The Desert Fox operation included 650 bomber or missile sorties against fewer than 100 targets over three days. It was billed as a large bombing attack to punish Iraq for failing to allow United Nations weapons inspectors to search for weapons of mass destruction.
Desert Fox was not explicitly designed to kill Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, but fully half the targets were his palaces or other locations he might use that were protected by special intelligence and Republican Guard units. Saddam was not hit, though many in the administration, particularly Secretary of Defense William Cohen, had hoped it would be the end of him.
In the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, President George W. Bush and his National Security officials again pondered whether it was possible to kill Saddam through covert action.
CIA officers in the demoralized Iraqi Operations Group—often referred to within the agency and among themselves as “The House of Broken Toys”—gave a dramatic no. It would be too hard; Saddam was too well protected. The security and intelligence organizations existed to keep him alive and in power. The Operations Group posed a military invasion as the only way to remove the dictator.
On the eve of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, CIA human sources, code-named ROCKSTARS, reported with increasing certainty that Saddam was at Dora Farm, a complex southeast of Baghdad on the banks of the Tigris River. Told that Saddam was holed up in a bunker, Bush ordered a strike with bunker-busting bombs. Hours later, CIA director George Tenet called the Situation Room. “Tell the president we got the son of a bitch.” They had not.
Days later, the CIA base chief in northern Iraq visited Dora Farm, which looked like the ruins of a flea market. He found no bunker, just a subterranean pantry for food storage. One thing was clear: Saddam had escaped, or he had never been there. He was captured nine months later when U.S. forces found him hiding in a spider hole under a small shack.
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The CIA engaged in some high-level introspection over the next several years. Officials asked the crucial after-action question: Suppose Saddam had been killed by covert action or military strike? Would that have made the invasion and long war unnecessary? The cost in lives included more than 100,000 Iraqis by conservative count and 4,530 Americans. The U.S. cost was at least $800 billion and probably $1 trillion. How much Middle East instability did the war cause and enable Iran? The Middle East and world history seemed to pivot around the Iraq War for years.
This self-examination peaked years later during the time John Brennan was CIA director, 2013 to early 2017. An agency man to the core with a smooth, confident and austere manner, he had vast CIA experience and a track record for being right. On television he rarely smiled.
Brennan had been daily intelligence briefer for President Clinton; CIA station chief in Saudi Arabia; executive assistant and chief of staff to CIA Director Tenet. As the White House counterterrorism chief in Obama’s first term, he had developed a strong relationship with the president, who rewarded him with the CIA directorship in his second term. Brennan was known as “The Answer Man.” He read deeply in the intelligence reports, often asking to see agent reports and raw communications intercepts.
Mindful of the Iraq “mistake,” Brennan ultimately concluded that the CIA had not done its job. The House of Broken Toys had dodged its responsibilities, insisting, “You need troops! You need troops!” Well, that was not the CIA’s job. Their energy could better have been focused on what the CIA could do to present options. Given the magnitude of the mistake, Brennan concluded that the Saddam problem could have been solved with what he called “indirect assassination.”
So as the North Korean problem escalated during the Obama presidency, Brennan developed an aggressive argument. The CIA should not seek regime change, but “man change,” the elimination of Leader Kim Jong Un. Brennan concluded the Iraq Operations Group of the preinvasion period of 2002–03 had little guts, know-how and imagination. So the equivalent group for North Korea in the CIA operations directorate went to work. Was “indirect assassination” or “man change” possible? It was an option worth examining.
The CIA’s North Korea group came up with the Peninsula Intelligence Estimate (PIE), which would provide warnings that the North was going to initiate an attack. The Pentagon’s top secret contingency U.S. war plan, the response to an attack, was for regime change in North Korea and was called OPLAN 5027.
A tasking order assigned targets and missions of the air, naval and land forces. It was a massive plan designed to win the war and one of the most sensitive in the U.S. government.
The Time-Phased Force Deployment (TIPFID) showed that it would take 30 days to get all the forces in.
A simpler but vastly more risky option included strikes at the North Korean leadership targets, specifically Kim Jung Un, under a more refined war plan, OPLAN 5015.
The Air Force had several leadership attack options, including sending a stealth bomber attack in and out of North Korea before North Korea could do anything about it. This would require knowledge with “great clarity,” as one general put it, to execute a pinpoint attack on leadership.
From October 17 to 19, 2017, the U.S. Air Force ran an elaborate series of simulated air strikes in the Missouri Ozarks. The region has a similar topography to North Korea.
The encrypted communications system between the bombers, the Airborne Early Warning aircraft, and the tankers was not working, so the pilots’ communications were heard by locals who monitored the military frequencies.
One communication referred to a “possible DPRK [North Korea] leadership relocation site.” In another, the pilot referred to “a command post possible DPRK leadership relocat
ion site.”
One airdrop exercise was from just 150 meters, which is dangerously low but designed for maximum underground destruction. In another related exercise the bomber carried a 30,000-pound MOP (Massive Ordnance Penetrator), the type used earlier in Afghanistan in April 2017. In the exercise simulations the map coordinates pinpointed a hangar at a Jefferson City airport. The pilots also discussed the timing of the bomb fuses to maximize impact on the targets.
By any reasoning, the exercise was serious preparation, but it was, at this point, one available contingency on the shelf being practiced.
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McMaster sounded hawkish on North Korea, arguing internally in the White House that if Trump was going to attack, better to go early before the North improved its missiles and nuclear weapons. Or before it built more. Time would make the threat greater. To those less inclined, McMaster asked, “Do you want to bet a mushroom cloud over Los Angeles over it?”
This question echoed the pre–Iraq invasion comment of Condoleezza Rice, Bush’s national security adviser, that it was uncertain how quickly Saddam could acquire nuclear weapons. She added, “But we don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.”
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General Kelly, the homeland security secretary and retired four-star Marine general, was furious when he learned that the White House was working on a compromise on immigration for “Dreamers”—a central issue in the immigration debate. Dreamers are immigrant children brought to the United States by their parents who as adults had entered illegally.
Under the 2012 legislation called DACA—Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals—President Obama had given 800,000 Dreamers protection from deportation and made work permits available to them, hoping to bring them out of the shadow economy and give them an American identity.
Kelly, a hard-liner on immigration, was supposed to be in charge of these matters now. But Jared Kushner had been working a backchannel compromise. He had been inviting Senator Dick Durbin, the Illinois Democrat who was number two in his party’s leadership, and Lindsey Graham to his office to discuss a compromise. Graham later asked Kelly, “Didn’t Jared tell you we’ve been working on this for months? We’ve got a fix.”
Kelly called Bannon. “If the son-in-law is going to run it, then have the son-in-law run it. I don’t need to run it. I need to come see the president. I’m not doing this anymore. I’m not going to be up there and be blindsided and humiliated on something that I’ve got to be in the loop on.”
Bannon believed the administration owned the hard-line immigration posture—except for Trump himself. “He’s always been soft on DACA. He believes the left-wing thing. They’re all valedictorians. They’re all Rhodes Scholars. Because Ivanka over the years has told him that.”
Kelly voiced his distress to Priebus, who along with Bannon feared Kelly might quit.
“Get Kelly some time on the calendar,” Bannon proposed. “Let him come see the boss and light Jared up. Because this is Jared’s shit, doing stuff behind people’s back.”
Priebus didn’t do it.
“Get it on the fucking calendar,” Bannon insisted.
Priebus continued to stall. It would expose disorganization in the White House.
“What are you talking about?” Bannon asked. This was laughable! Of course Priebus didn’t have control of Jared. And people were always going behind someone’s back.
So Bannon and Priebus both told Kelly, We’ll take care of it. To go to the president would cause unnecessary consternation. We’ll make sure it won’t happen again and you’re going to be in the loop.
Kelly, team player for the moment, didn’t push it further. When he later mentioned it obliquely in the president’s presence, Trump didn’t respond.
Lindsey Graham wandered into Bannon’s West Wing office. “Hey, here’s the deal. You want your wall?” Trump would get wall funding in exchange for the Dreamers.
“Stop,” Bannon said. A deal on the Dreamers was amnesty. “We will never give amnesty for one person. I don’t care if you build 10 fucking walls. The wall ain’t good enough. It’s got to be chain migration.”
Chain migration, formally called the family reunification policy, allowed a single legal immigrant to bring close family members into the United States—parents, children, a spouse and, in some cases, siblings. These family members would have a path to legal permanent residency or citizenship. They might be followed by a “chain” of their own spouses, children, parents or siblings.
Two thirds (68 percent) of legal permanent residents entered under family reunification or chain migration in 2016. This was at the heart of Trump’s and Bannon’s anti-immigration stance: They wanted to stop illegal immigration and limit legal immigration. Bannon wanted a new, stricter policy. Graham and he were not able to come close to agreement.
* * *
Ivanka and Jared invited Stephen Miller, the hard-liner on immigration, to their house for dinner along with Durbin and Graham.
“All you do is listen,” Bannon instructed Miller. “Just go and receive. Don’t fight them. I just want to hear it all.”
Miller reported that Ivanka and Jared thought they had Trump on some sort of deal that included funding for the wall in exchange for amnesty for 1.8 million Dreamers. Bannon figured chain migration made the real number double or triple that—3 to 5 million new immigrants. “They can’t think we’re that dumb.”
* * *
Some days, it seemed to Bannon that Senator Graham had moved into the West Wing. He heard his pitch on Dreamers at least three times. He thought that Graham wanted to replace McConnell as majority leader.
Bannon was at the height of his war with McConnell and saw Graham as his biggest ally. Graham and Bannon were on the phone nearly every day. Bannon believed everyone hated McConnell and wanted to put the shiv to him because he ran things too tight.
Graham did talk about finding a replacement for McConnell. “We’ve got to find our guy who’ll replace him,” Graham said. But Graham denied he wanted McConnell’s leadership job.
Bannon believed Graham was the best deal maker for Republicans, but he was the establishment. Graham didn’t like Bannon’s nationalist agenda, telling him, “Bannon, that America First is bullshit. This is all bullshit.”
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In the true and practiced Trump White House style, Bannon was willing to ride any horse to achieve his purposes. He called Attorney General Sessions to the White House. Their problem on immigration was now Trump. “He’s going to be listening to Jared and Ivanka. And Graham is the best salesman around there. He loves Graham. Graham can sell him anything. He’s got Durbin. They’re going to be loving up on him. We’ve got a fucking problem.”
Bannon spoke with Kris Kobach, the secretary of state of Kansas, one of the biggest opponents of the Dreamers and a hero of the Right. Kobach’s idea was that he and other state attorneys general would file suit claiming DACA was unconstitutional. Bannon and Sessions developed a plan not to defend the lawsuit. “It’s over,” Bannon said. “DACA’s finished. All Trump had to say to Congress was, Hey, I work at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. If you’ve got an idea, come up and see me.” Trump only had to stay neutral.
CHAPTER
23
As Trump was laying plans to withdraw from the Paris Accord on climate change, Priebus had had it with Ivanka. The president’s 35-year-old daughter and White House senior adviser effectively had free run of the West Wing. She had launched what amounted to a covert operation in support of the Paris Accord, a nonbinding international agreement to address climate change by voluntarily cutting greenhouse gas emissions that was reached in 2015 and involved 195 countries.
Obama had pledged to cut these emissions about 25 percent below the levels in 2005. This would be accomplished by 2025. He had committed $3 billion to aid underdeveloped countries in a Green Climate Fund.
Only $1 billion had been paid, and Obama had transferred half of that three days before he left office.
Ivanka
strongly wanted her father to stick with the pro-environmental agreement. Priebus would be meeting in his office with a handful of aides from the economic team and the National Economic Council for 15 minutes and in would walk Ivanka. She would sit down and often say nothing.
Who is this person? Priebus marveled. What is she doing?
It was becoming impossible to manage the West Wing. At times it seemed Ivanka’s presence—hours a day, days in a row—was nonstop. Jared had the same squatter’s rights in the West Wing. They were like a posse of second-guessers, hovering, watching, interacting as family and senior advisers with the president. Ivanka planted seeds of doubt about policy and passed her father articles.
When Priebus voiced his dismay, Trump regularly joked, “They’re Democrats.” They were New Yorkers infected with the liberalism of their city roots. The president made no real effort to curtail their freelancing. Priebus believed he had run a very tight and organizationally sound Republican National Committee. The Trump White House seemed designed to upend any order or routine.
At one point Priebus had a decision memo for the president to review and sign on the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Agreement.
Ivanka said to her father, “Mark Zuckerberg wants to talk to you.” She had lined up a call between her father and the founder and CEO of Facebook. Zuckerberg was an outspoken climate change advocate. She did the same with Tim Cook, the Apple CEO, and others. At one point she slipped a personal message from former vice president Al Gore, one of the foremost Paris advocates, into a stack of papers on the president’s desk.
Trump talked to Gore, who reported to others that he actually thought Trump seemed like he might stay in.
Ivanka and Jared gave a newspaper story to the president with highlighted quotes from an unnamed White House source. You know who this is? This is Steve Bannon, they said. In a West Wing filled with leakers, these tactics slowly but surely planted a distrust of Bannon with the president.
