by Susan Rice
Rarely, if ever, have I felt more relief. I didn’t let womankind down. Fox wasn’t going to be able to loop me throwing a dirt ball. I could come back to the White House and report to the president that I hadn’t humiliated him or myself.
Seven months earlier on a Sunday morning in January, I’d found myself unexpectedly sitting in the Oval Office, my back killing me. I could barely sit. The soft sofa adjacent to the president’s chair was the last place I needed to be. That same day, I’d thrown my back out lunging for a backhand volley during my weekly tennis game with Karim Najdi, the coach at St. Albans School, who for years sacrificed his Sundays to help keep me sane as a service to his adopted nation. When President Obama’s assistant called me that morning to ask if I could come to see the Boss, I had no idea what the topic was or why we needed to have a rare, off-the-calendar, private meeting in the Oval.
Trying to mask my severe pain, I appreciated that, as usual, Obama quickly got to the point. He noted that, for his second term, Deputy National Security Advisor Denis McDonough would take over as White House chief of staff, and he now needed to consider potential replacements for Denis. While Denis’s successor would initially serve under the current NSA, Tom Donilon, Obama wanted my view, because, as he indicated, “It’s important that you can work well with the new deputy—whomever it is I choose.” He added matter-of-factly, “once you take over Tom’s job.” Back pain notwithstanding, I sat up a little straighter. This was the first direct confirmation from Obama that he intended to name me NSA, which I appreciated but let pass unremarked.
Over the past weeks after withdrawing from consideration for secretary of state, I’d been continuing in my role as U.N. ambassador—content to stay a while longer. The president had hinted earlier that he might choose me to be his second-term national security advisor. But anything can change, and in Washington you can never be certain.
The president floated two potential names for his principal deputy national security advisor. Though I liked and respected them both, I expressed my preference for the one he ultimately chose, Tony Blinken. Tony was Vice President Biden’s national security advisor and his longtime aide from the Senate. We had served together in the Clinton administration and, under Obama, we had found ourselves frequently aligned on major issues at the Principals table. Tony was affable, formidably smart, and superbly prepared for the role but also a trusted friend with whom I enjoyed working. Funny and serious, nice but firm, and always unflappable, Tony would effectively run the crucial Deputies Committee, which is (normally) the hardest working team in Washington and reports to the Principals Committee, which I would chair.
Left unsaid by the president, but obvious, was that I was meant to keep this conversation in utter confidence, except from Denis. The time frame for my start at the NSC was unclear, but it appeared that the president might wish Tom to stay for the bulk of 2013 to provide continuity, since much of the rest of the national security team was turning over. No one on my USUN team knew if or when I might move back to Washington. Nothing is done until it’s done, and folks needed to see me fully grounded at the U.N. until I was no longer. Following that confidential Sunday meeting in the Oval, it was back to New York first thing Monday morning to find a good doctor who could fix my back.
Strangely enough, when the president called in late May to tell me it was time to prepare to come home to Washington—in advance of Tom’s late June departure—my private reaction was muted. I was pleased, not thrilled—gratified that this opportunity had finally come but sobered by the trials that had preceded it. Above all, I felt ready to step in, glad to be reunited with my family, and sad to leave my wonderful USUN team.
The president also sought my views on my successor at the U.N. He was inclined toward Samantha Power, then senior director for multilateral affairs at the NSC, whose portfolio during the first term included all U.N.-related issues. She and I had worked amicably and closely over my tenure, and I knew Samantha really wanted the job. I told the president I thought she would do well.
On June 5, 2013, in the White House Rose Garden, fully in bloom on a perfect Washington summer day, President Obama thanked Tom Donilon for his dedicated service and announced before our families and the assembled press corps that I would succeed Tom as national security advisor, effective July 1. Samantha would replace me at the U.N.
In his remarks, President Obama, recalling my role in his 2008 campaign, said: “I’m absolutely thrilled that she’ll be back at my side.” Perhaps as a subtle counterpunch to my Benghazi detractors, he called me a “consummate public servant—a patriot who puts her country first.”
After reviewing my experience on the NSC staff and as assistant secretary of state, President Obama gave me (and Johnny) the highest compliment, “She is fearless; she is tough. She has a great tennis game and a pretty good basketball game. Her brother is here, who I play with occasionally, and it runs in the family—throwing the occasional elbow—but hitting the big shot.” Pretty apt, I thought, at least as it pertained to Johnny and our elbows. Obama ended by acknowledging Ian, Jake, and Maris for their sacrifice and quipped that I would be “the first person ever in this job who will see their family more by taking the National Security Advisor’s job.”
During the rest of June, I split my time between New York and Washington, where I joined the customary daily meetings with Obama and spent hours with Tom, as he briefed me on the various sensitive issues he handled, many of which were not discussed at the Principals table. Smart, meticulous, and politically astute, Tom had served in every Democratic administration since Jimmy Carter’s, including as deputy national security advisor from the start of Obama’s tenure. He was steeped in both policy issues and the national security decision-making process. As we conducted a thorough handoff over the course of a month, I quickly realized that, while at the U.N. I had literally been covering the world, and in the Principals Committee we discussed a wide range of policy issues, the job of national security advisor was broader than both.
My additional responsibilities would span coordination and oversight of sensitive intelligence matters that I had not previously been read into, defense policy, military operations, counterterrorism and cyber security issues, and certain national security legal and law enforcement issues. I also had to master the national security elements of the federal budget, international economic issues from trade to sanctions to export controls, our nuclear policy and procedures, and continuity of government protocols in case of a major crisis.
I felt well-prepared for the NSA role, given that in my prior jobs I had seen the national security decision-making process from every vantage point. Having served as both a junior and senior NSC staffer, I understood the extraordinarily important role the staff plays in crafting policy options and coordinating the agencies. As a regional assistant secretary, I had joined the secretary of state and her deputies as a backbencher in countless Principals and Deputies Committee meetings and saw policymaking succeed and fail. Finally, as U.N. ambassador and a principal myself, I had an appreciation for what works from the perspective of the other senior policymakers around the table. Most valuably, I was walking in with an established relationship with the president, which was already grounded in mutual trust and respect.
My work in New York had afforded me a hands-on feel for the interests and attitudes of Russia and China, as well as valuable experience with other important global players—from the Europeans to India, Japan, South Korea, and Australia, from Mexico and Brazil to Israel and the Gulf Arab countries. And, Africa was well-known to me. In sum, I was confident in having the necessary grasp on the major countries with which I would do business.
Still, the job of the national security advisor is very different from that of U.N. ambassador. The U.N. role is outward-facing—representing the U.S. to the world, prominently speaking to the public, press, and Congress, negotiating with scores of foreign countries, traveling abroad frequently in service of U.S. and, as appropriate, U.N. business. The NSA rol
e is primarily an inward-facing job—advising and supporting the president, formulating and coordinating policy among the agency heads, guiding strategy, and managing the NSC staff.
While the NSA gives some public speeches and interviews, he or she neither testifies before Congress nor customarily takes on such a high public profile as to risk overshadowing the secretaries of state or defense. I knew that I performed well in both types of jobs but soon would be reminded as I settled in the role of national security advisor that, temperamentally, I preferred being less in the public spotlight.
When I returned to the White House, I brought with me a deep and personal respect for the NSC staff, knowing firsthand how skilled and hardworking they are and how critical their role would be in enabling me to perform optimally. The staff consists mainly of career professionals assigned for a year or two from their home agencies (e.g., State, Defense, the Intelligence Community, USAID, Justice, Homeland Security). There are a few political appointees sprinkled throughout, but most are apolitical, highly talented career professionals.
The NSC gets its pick of the best, and that was what I worked to ensure we had. I brought just a couple of my great team from USUN to join me at NSC initially. Salman Ahmed, my brilliant, gentle, and wise USUN chief of staff, became my senior advisor and NSC senior director for strategy and planning. Taara Rangarajan, a young but trusted and mature personal aide in my Washington office, served as my special assistant and right-hand administrator. Later, I recruited a number of other staffers from USUN.
To enable a smooth transition and allow myself time to evaluate key members of the NSC staff, I made no immediate personnel changes. Only after months of observation did I move to swap in some players with strengths more suited to my vision. The staff had grown from about 150 people during the Clinton years to about four hundred by the time I became NSA. The increase was due mainly to the growth of the technology/systems staff and the international economic team, which is jointly shared with the National Economic Council, as well as the creation after 9/11 of the Homeland Security Council and its subsequent incorporation by President Obama into the “National Security Staff” (NSS).
I swiftly learned that my team detested being termed “NSS.” Many shared the view that it was “demeaning,” and ahistorical. In a small but not insignificant way, I sensed that it sapped their pride in serving at the White House. As a former NSC staffer, I too disliked the term “National Security Staff.” We were the staff of the statutorily constituted National Security Council and should be so designated. So, once I was well-ensconced in the job, I asked President Obama to sign an executive order changing our name back to its hallowed original. Few things he did made the president (and me) more popular with the dedicated men and women of the NSC.
Similarly, while I came to the White House with a personal bias in favor of reducing the size of the unwieldy NSC staff, I waited a year and a half to launch an NSC “right-sizing and reform” process in order to pressure-test my hypothesis and to ensure that we made any changes gingerly and wisely so as not to disrupt our ability to serve the president. By the time I left, I was proud that I managed to shrink the NSC staff by 15 percent through attrition and rebalancing portfolios, without firing or curtailing anyone simply to cut positions.
When I started my tenure officially on July 1, 2013, it was hard to believe that twenty years had passed since I’d first gone to work in government as a twenty-eight-year-old entry-level staffer at the NSC. My early NSC mentors—Dick Clarke, Tony Lake, and Sandy Berger—had each helped me build a foundation and prepared me in the fundamentals of national security policymaking. Much had changed in the interim. Back then, the internet was not widely accessible, infant CNN was the only cable news network, and cell phones were the size of bricks. It was a different world entirely.
Despite all that I had learned in the intervening years, it was hard to feel ready for the full-blown shitstorm that hit me on Day One. In all those hours of pre-briefing, no one had warned me that Egypt would implode on my first day in office. On July 1, Tom was already gone. Obama was away, completing a major trip to Africa, and I was getting settled at my large wooden desk in my northwest corner office on the ground floor of the White House’s West Wing. Home alone.
In Cairo, millions massed in the streets demanding the ouster of Egypt’s first democratically elected president, Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed Morsi, who had taken office one year earlier. Thousands of counter-protesters rallied in support of Morsi, who remained defiant, refusing several opportunities to compromise with the opposition, including an appeal from Obama delivered in an urgent phone call from Tanzania. So far, there had been only sporadic violence, but the risk of civil conflict was real. The military, led by General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, gave Morsi an ultimatum: make peace with his opponents within forty-eight hours, or else. President Obama urged Morsi to “Be bold,” to be a leader for all Egyptians and to forge a unity government before it’s too late.
Soon after Obama’s call, I spoke by telephone with Morsi’s foreign affairs advisor, Essam el-Haddad, to warn that the window for accommodation was quickly closing. I stressed that they needed to take urgent steps to deescalate the crisis and avert military intervention. While reiterating that the U.S. strongly opposed any extraconstitutional moves, I reinforced President Obama’s point that the Egyptian military “is not taking direction from us.”
By the time Obama returned from Africa late on July 2, Egypt was in the midst of a nonviolent, popularly driven coup stoked by Gulf Arab leaders that resented Mubarak’s departure and feared Morsi’s election. The next day, Sisi declared Morsi deposed, placed him under house arrest, installed an interim president, and pledged new elections. While many Egyptians had grown weary of Morsi’s failed economic policies and his autocratic tendencies, a sizable portion of the population, including those sympathetic to the Islamists, insisted (correctly) that Morsi was legitimately elected and must continue to govern. The country was combustible, and the U.S. (always focused on the security of our personnel) ordered all nonessential embassy staff and their families to leave Egypt.
This crisis was the subject of the first Principals Committee meeting I chaired—on Day One as NSA. I would have preferred a few days to settle into the job, meet the staff, and read briefing materials before convening the Principals. In this instance, as in many others, crisis interceded to upend my best-laid plans. When Obama returned, he swiftly requested a meeting of his full National Security Council, in which he chaired the assemblage of cabinet Principals.
But first things first. It was July 4, and I had to uphold the family tradition of marching with our neighbors, the “Millwood Mob,” in the Palisades Independence Day parade. After completing that duty and downing my annual hot dog, I showered and rushed to the White House to staff my first NSC meeting.
As NSA, I always sat to the immediate left of the president in these meetings—close enough to exchange notes or a quiet comment and to take his temperature with respect to the issues and my agency counterparts. Alternatively, as had long been the case, we were able to communicate without reliance on words.
On this day, it was plain from the outset that the Situation Room was not the place Obama wanted to be. July 4 is his elder daughter, Malia’s, birthday, and the president was due to host not only a family birthday celebration but also thousands of military families and staff for the evening fireworks display on the White House lawn.
We quickly got down to business. The proximate issue was how should the U.S. respond to the military takeover in Egypt? On one level, the answer appeared obvious: a coup had occurred, and U.S. law requires that we halt all assistance to extralegal governments, like Egypt’s new military-backed regime. Yet it wasn’t so simple. Egypt was the second largest beneficiary of U.S. aid after Israel, receiving $1.5 billion a year, including $1.3 billion for the military. While corrupt, repressive, and undemocratic, the Egyptian military had long been a reliable partner for the U.S.—a bulwark against terrorism,
a valued neighbor to Israel and our Gulf partners, and an important contributor to security in the Sinai and Suez. If we cut all assistance, the U.S.-Egypt partnership would grind to a halt. Moreover, we viewed the Morsi government as more than a disappointment, having lost our sympathy, if not its legitimacy. Still, it was hard to justify circumventing the coup designation.
Several principals, including Secretary of State John Kerry, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, and CIA director John Brennan argued we should not deem this a coup. Others, including Deputy NSA Ben Rhodes and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Martin E. Dempsey, emphasized the difficulty of pretending otherwise. The president listened intently, challenging the arguments on both sides, and then decided: We will not call it a coup, nor will we say that it was not; we will remain silent on the question, thereby not invoking the law that would cut off all assistance and effectively acquiescing in the coup without saying so.
It was an artful, if contorted, finesse, which I endorsed at the time. Yet the nondesignation both strained credulity and infuriated some members of Congress, like John McCain, who in this instance preferred legal orthodoxy (calling it a coup) over pragmatism. Reaching that fundamental decision sufficed for the moment on the 4th of July. It enabled me to take a break long enough to enjoy Malia’s poolside birthday gathering and the fireworks with my family.
Yet the turmoil in Egypt continued to consume us. Days later, Morsi supporters took to the streets in large numbers demanding his restoration to power. The military responded by firing into crowds, killing over fifty people and wounding hundreds on July 9 alone. By August, when the president took his week-long vacation in Martha’s Vineyard, the situation in Cairo was spinning out of control.