The Politics of Truth_Inside the Lies That Put the White House on Trial and Betrayed My Wife's CIA Identity

by Joseph Wilson

  As much as I continued to hope for a peaceful solution, however, it was clear to me that we were on a collision course for war.

  However rational the August 2 invasion might have been from the Iraqi perspective, Saddam had miscalculated every step of the way since November 8, when President Bush had announced that he was sending the U.S. Army’s Seventh Corps from Germany to the Gulf to prepare to roll back the invasion. The Seventh Corps was a big, heavy military machine made to roll over an enemy. The president would not commit the corps unless he was serious. Moreover, what Saddam failed to understand was that we would not have moved forces from the European theater if we were not comfortable that the Soviets would not meddle in Europe in our absence. Saddam always assumed that the Soviets would save him; he was wrong on that, as on so many other things. Despite two visits to Baghdad by Yevgeny Primakov, then the Soviet envoy, selected to mediate because of his longstanding personal relationship with Saddam, it was clear that Moscow understood that its long-term interests lay with the United States, not with Iraq.

  Shortly after the invasion, I had suggested to Washington that we should try to find ways to drive a wedge between Saddam and his military command by convincing the latter that if a war were to take place, it would not be set-piece trench warfare—as the Iran-Iraq war had been—but a fast-moving conflict with all the awesome firepower that the United States could bring to bear. I proposed a video be made showing what we could do from land, sea, and air; everything from cruise missiles hitting sites hundreds of miles apart to tanks rolling over sand dunes while their turrets turned to hit targets that could not even be seen.

  I wanted the Iraqi high command to lie awake at night knowing that their troops were going to be utterly decimated. Our Special Operations Commanding General Wayne Downing liked the idea and produced the video, a copy of which he later gave me. Unfortunately, as he later told me, the State Department held up the distribution until December because of concerns that it was too “bellicose.” I couldn’t believe it. We had close to 500,000 troops in the Gulf primed and ready to attack, and we were squeamish about a video designed to give Saddam’s high command second thoughts. By the time it was finally distributed, it was too late to do any good. The stage was set.

  Throughout the month of December, I also worked on the proposal put forth by President Bush that we “go the extra mile for peace” by holding meetings between Secretary of State James Baker and Tariq Aziz in Washington and in Baghdad.The Iraqis again miscalculated,taking what was essentially an ultimatum as an invitation to debate. By the time we arrived at agreement, the two meetings in the respective capitals had been collapsed into one in Geneva, scheduled for early January 1991.

  By the middle of December, the beating of the war drums in Washington actually left the Iraqis thinking that we really were not going to attack. One well-informed journalist for the London Sunday Times reported to me: “The Iraqis have concluded that you are bluffing. If you were serious, you wouldn’t keep beating your chests. You would let your actions speak for you.”

  I took that to heart and relayed her thoughts to Washington, recommending that we tone down our threats. I remember the cable as being appropriately polite; but Larry Grahl, who hand-carried my message to Secretary Baker, later told me, “I thought you had lost your mind, telling the president and the secretary in effect to shut up.” Then, a couple of days later, when he realized the U.S. government had gone silent, “I concluded you were brilliant,” Grahl said. It was, of course, the British journalist who had had the brilliant idea, but soon the benefit was nullified, as every pundit and member of Congress had jumped on the chattering bandwagon, and silence was not maintained.

  At the embassy, it was not clear if Washington was going to withdraw the six of us before the war, or even if the Iraqis would allow us to leave if we tried. That was fine with me. I had every intention of remaining as long as necessary to provide diplomatic support, whatever the circumstances that unfolded. I received a message from Washington advising that there would be military means at the ready—to extract us—in the event Saddam tried to prevent us from departing, when and if a decision on our removal was made. We would drive into the desert to the east of Baghdad, near the Iranian border, where a helicopter and a contingent of Special Operations forces would be standing by to whisk us to safety. My reply was that close to a hundred other diplomatic missions were depending on us to tell them when the time had come to leave. I was not going to betray their confidence by sneaking out under the cover of darkness without letting them know, unless personally ordered to do so by the president. That reaction ended the discussion and, I understand, the serious planning. I wanted to leave by the front door or not leave at all.

  The Baker-Aziz meeting finally took place in Geneva on January 9, 1991. Secretary Baker later told me that he asked Aziz four times for assurances that Iraq would permit the remaining American diplomats to leave if the U.S. decided to suspend our diplomatic representation. Each time Aziz demurred, saying only that he had to refer the question to “higher authority.” “When I left that meeting, I did not know if we were going to get you out or not,” Baker said.

  On January 9, I received a call from Nizar Hamdun confirming that “higher authority” had agreed not to prevent our departure if we decided to go. When I informed Washington, I was instructed to buy economy-class tickets to Amman for the remaining six of us and told that we should make our way home from there as best we could. Since the Jordanians had announced that in the event of the outbreak of hostilities they would close their airport, and since there were already more than three hundred Americans waiting for flights in Amman, this struck me as a particularly unhelpful idea. Did the State Department intend for us to be stuck in Jordan throughout the war? I countered with the suggestion that we should charter the lone Iraqi Air 747, fly to Amman and pick up as many of the three hundred Americans stranded there as possible, then fly everybody to Germany to meet commercial flights back to the States. The department relented, and we compromised on chartering the smaller Iraqi Air 727 to fly directly to Germany, bypassing Amman but at least moving us completely out of the region.

  Our indefatigable general services officer, Jeanette Pena, who had been the embassy’s logistical genius from the beginning, organized the final charter flight for January 12. We invited the American press to join us, noting that when we left, there would be no embassy to turn to for support. Only two journalists took us up on the offer, both of whom had been caught behind the lines when the American embassy was evacuated in Saigon in 1974 and who had no intention of reliving the experience. I also informed all the remaining diplomatic missions in Baghdad of our decision and offered seats on our plane, on a space-available basis, to those who wanted to leave with us.

  On the afternoon of January 11, I delivered to Nizar the diplomatic note that suspended our diplomatic relations and turned over our mission to the Polish embassy, which would act as our protecting power. Tariq Aziz declined to receive me, perhaps still sore at being called a liar. Nizar and I had a brief and melancholy exchange in his private office, with CNN on the television behind us, the first time I had been in that office and seen CNN since August. Looking at the screen, it was apparent to us both that there was no longer any way to avoid war. I told him I took no joy in having to close the embassy but that I hoped the time might come when I could return to be part of an effort to rebuild our relations.

  On January 12, I lowered the flag over the embassy, folded it, and tucked it under my arm before driving to the airport. I also said farewell to the Iraqi staff we were leaving behind. It was probably the most difficult thing I have ever had to do. They had been unfailingly loyal to us, even as they came under tremendous pressure from the authorities, and from their own families, to quit their jobs. Now I had to leave them to fend for themselves. The last hugs all around left me flat and emotionally drained, wondering what would become of these brave and decent souls.

  Getting on the airplane, I was elated
that our ordeal was finally over, and buoyed by the gratitude of the diplomats from other nations who had taken us up on our offer of seats on the flight. And yet, I was saddened that our efforts had ended as they did, without Saddam’s peaceful withdrawal from Kuwait. I had done everything in my power to avoid war, and Saddam could never claim that he did not understand the consequences of continuing to occupy his neighbor after the January 15, 1991, deadline established by the U.N. But that did little to ease the deep foreboding I felt on the eve of the coming war.

  After a night in Frankfurt, we arrived in Washington late in the evening of January 13, a Sunday night, to a warm reception from families and colleagues. The shock of being in Washington and no longer in the pressure cooker of Baghdad, as well as the jet lag, kept me awake most of the night. Early on the morning of the fourteenth, not knowing what to do with myself, I strolled from my Dupont Circle apartment down to the State Department twenty minutes away, thinking that I would have a leisurely morning, chatting with colleagues and thanking the task force for all the hard work they had done.

  When I arrived at the office of Iraqi Affairs at the opening of the business day, I was surprised to learn that the White House had already telephoned with an invitation to a one o’clock meeting with President Bush. Assistant Secretary John Kelly took Jeanette and me to the White House, where we were met by the chief of protocol, Ambassador Joseph Verner Reed, who escorted us in to meet the president of the United States.

  As the door to the Oval Office from the Roosevelt Room opened, President Bush was standing there to greet me. He shook my hand warmly, and I said to him, “We never personally spoke during my time in Baghdad, but I felt from the very beginning that we were on the same wavelength.” He replied, “You’re absolutely right,” and turned to introduce me to the others in the office, his war cabinet: Vice President Quayle, Secretary of State Baker, National Security Adviser Scowcroft, CIA Director Webster, Chief of Staff Sununu, and several staff people.

  I have no memory of the president’s introduction, but John Kelly told me later that he said, “Gentlemen, let me introduce you to true American heroes.”

  We then shook hands all around. The press came in, took a lot of pictures, and left. After they were ushered out, the door was closed and the briefing began. Peppered first with questions from the president, then the others, I responded as well as I could. I described the fear and the fatalism in the streets and markets in Baghdad and the continuing hostility of the regime. For the first fifteen minutes of the meeting, I was devoid of any emotional feeling whatsoever, utterly unconscious of the trappings of power in the Oval Office and the level of the group I was addressing. A mixture of jet lag, culture shock, and sheer exhaustion had overwhelmed my nervous system.

  Finally, I took a second to look around the room and woke up. After all, Jim Baker was sitting beside me on the sofa; the president was seated in a chair to my right, in front of the fireplace. Across the room, sitting next to the desk, was Brent Scowcroft taking notes on a legal-size yellow pad. It looked to me like he was writing down everything I said. My first conscious thought, since the moment I had been introduced to President Bush, occurred when I looked at Scowcroft and his legal pad.

  “Who would have ever thought,” I said to myself, “that this ex-hippie-surfer from California would someday find himself in the Oval Office with the president of the United States and his war cabinet, with the president’s national security adviser, a retired three-star general, serving as note taker?” Then I got nervous, and it was suddenly crystal-clear to me just where I was and whom I was with.

  Just as the butterflies in my stomach started to take over, my fearless colleague Jeanette took over and carried the ball for us both. She described to our attentive audience what it was like to live in prewar Baghdad, with an openly hostile regime monitoring every move and putting obstacles in the way of everything she needed to do to keep the embassy functioning. She was affable, articulate, and funny as she offered vignettes from our daily lives. All too soon, Secretary Baker looked at his watch, the signal that the meeting was over.

  Walking out of the Oval Office, the president’s personal aide took me aside to invite me to the White House living quarters to meet Mrs. Bush. I was delighted. We walked over to the residence, and she came outside in a wheelchair with one leg propped up—she had recently been in a sledding accident. She reached up and gave me a warm hug. To be hugged by Barbara Bush is an experience not to be missed, and I was savoring it when a shadow hovered over us. Still in her embrace, I looked around to find the president right behind me. He had caught me hugging his wife.

  For the next fifteen minutes, the three of us talked about Baghdad, its citizens, and the emotions they would be feeling on the eve of war. The president asked all the questions one would hope to hear from one’s leader. He expressed real concern and compassion. It was clear to me that he truly felt the weight of the decisions he had been obliged to take.

  Thirty-six hours later, the United States launched Operation Desert Storm. I watched CNN nonstop for the next several days, my stomach turning with the images of bombs exploding in Baghdad and the Iraqi antiaircraft batteries firing aimlessly in the air. I felt no joy in the fact that we had to go to war to achieve our objectives. However justified—and in my judgment Desert Storm was fully justified—the consequences of military assault on the people of Iraq could not be ignored. War is the bluntest of all weapons in our national security repertoire. The decision to use it is an awesome one. President Bush understood that, as did his senior advisers. So did I.

  Chapter Eight

  Watching the War from a Distance

  THE TRIUMPHANT COVERAGE OF DESERT STORM in the American media gave me no satisfaction whatsoever. After all the efforts my colleagues and I had made to convince Saddam to withdraw peacefully from Kuwait, I was left with a profound sense of sadness and failure as I stared at the televised images of the bombing of Baghdad.

  I had been tougher than anybody in Baghdad, offering no quarter to avoid the war other than the withdrawal of Iraqi troops from every inch of Kuwaiti territory. It was the only position, I felt, that gave us even a glimmer of a chance to avoid war, while also liberating Kuwait, our highest priority. Saddam was never going to leave unless he calculated that the costs of staying were far greater than the costs of leaving. Diplomatic efforts would succeed only if they were supported by the credible threat of force. And in order for the threat to be credible, we had to show we were prepared to use it. Accordingly, the one American the Iraqis saw every day in Baghdad—me—had to be utterly convincing when he warned that the only outcome that could possibly avert war was total withdrawal.

  Even though I understood intellectually that Saddam had brought about the international coalition’s military action by his own miscalculations and brutality, it did not make it any easier for me to watch Baghdad in flames after nightly bombings. I wondered about all the friends, colleagues, and Iraqi employees left behind. I assumed that Nizar Hamdun was probably the first casualty. With televised pictures of me leaving with the American flag tucked under my arm, I thought that Saddam would probably blame Nizar, the architect of U.S.-Iraq relations since his time in Washington in the mid-1980s as ambassador.

  Nizar did survive, but I later learned that another friend of ours at the embassy, a sophisticated woman who owned a popular art gallery frequented by the expatriate community, went mad when she learned that a second son had been killed in the recent fighting. She had lost her first son in the Iran-Iraq war and now the second in Kuwait. It was too much for her, and according to reports, she was reduced to incomprehensible muttering and wandering forlornly through her now-filthy shop.

  My feelings were very confused. During the day, while I was in restaurants or walking on the streets of Washington, people often would recognize me and congratulate me for my efforts in Baghdad. Colleagues in the State Department told me how much they had feared I was going to be killed and how much they admired the way I had manag
ed the crisis. At night I would be glued to the television, disconsolate at what I thought was the failure of diplomacy, and my own efforts.

  My personal life, meanwhile, was in a shambles. Since my French wife had left Baghdad in the first evacuation convoy, we had not seen each other and had only rarely spoken in the intervening five months. The separation and the stress had damaged what had always been a shaky marriage. I was totally exhausted and felt like an alien in my own country. The change from the high-pressure environment in Baghdad to the placid sidelines in Washington was a real letdown. There was no longer anything I could do to try to affect the outcome of events.

  In the first few days of the war, I helped by making bomb-damage assessments, sitting in the Pentagon basement and looking at satellite photos to determine what we had struck in Baghdad. I was invited to appear on Larry King Live and Sixty Minutes, but I declined both invitations, as I did all other requests for interviews. I had said everything I had to say about Desert Shield while in Baghdad. The war spoke for itself. The drama had shifted from the attempt to affect Iraq’s actions through diplomatic leverage to the means of weapons and force. I had been a public figure only because that was what the situation required, and I longed to return to anonymity.

  Finally, I escaped to St. Croix in the Virgin Islands for a long vacation, swimming and skin-diving in the Caribbean and relaxing to the fiery sunsets and the soft breezes wafting through the palm trees. After a couple of weeks decompressing, I realized that the war and its consequences were out of my hands and that I bore no responsibility for the consequences of Saddam Hussein’s belligerent stupidity. Sitting on the white sand beaches looking out on the multicolored sea, darkening to aquamarine, cobalt, and finally midnight blue far from the shore, I came to the realization that I was lucky to be alive, as my colleagues had told me, and should be grateful for that. In fact, after having concluded on August 8 that I probably would not survive the experience, every day that followed had been an unexpected gift. I still feel that way thirteen years later. It is liberating and puts everything into perspective.