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

by Joseph Wilson

  On the positive side, we wanted to redouble our efforts to support economic reform and foster a more robust commercial relationship with Africa, building on the successes we had seen in some African nations. Africa is a landmass large enough to accommodate all of the United States and Western Europe, with a good piece of Southeast Asia and Australia tossed in, and is home to enormous reserves of natural resources—metals, minerals, oil, timber—that have yet to be exploited to the benefit of the local populations. Oil reserves off its west coast alone, for example, provide an attractive alternative to dependence on the Arabian Gulf. With a population of 700,000 people, the challenge is to take a region that has been a consumer of global government resources for forty years and turn it into a contributor to global wealth. In the Clinton administration, we were committed to awakening the economic development of this slumbering giant that comprises the largest world population still on the outside looking in at the phenomena of globalization.

  This is an enormous undertaking, with 90 percent of the indigenous population still subsistence farmers and most of the remaining 10 percent working in small-business activities or in government. At the time independence began taking hold about forty years ago, African governments, largely in reaction to the colonial experience, made poor public policy choices. Instead of pursuing market-based economic policies, the first generation of independent African leaders by and large adopted socialist centralized planning solutions, and the anemic results were predictable. Bureaucracies that responded to their own agendas rather than to the needs of the people have engendered stagnant or declining economies ever since.

  There had been some exceptions: Côte d’Ivoire, Gabon, and Kenya all had resisted the socialist solution and had economies that performed well, until corruption and sclerotic regimes undermined performance. In recent years, Ghana, Uganda, and Botswana were examples of both political stability and economic growth. Mozambique had surprised everybody with its resurgence after a bloody civil war, and South Africa, under the steady hand of Nelson Mandela, had survived a wrenching transition with a minimal amount of dislocation. It was incumbent on the entire international community to build on these islands of progress and to assist other governments to replicate them.

  One of our early challenges was to formulate an approach to the new government of Laurent Kabila, the rebel who had driven Mobutu Sese Seko from power in Zaire. Now ensconced in Kinshasa, and having changed the name of his country to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kabila was always going to be a problem. He had evolved little from the days when he holed up in the mountains of Eastern Congo, smuggling, kidnapping, and eking out a highwayman’s living. Fate, in the name of Rwandan Vice President Paul Kagame, landed him in the president’s palace, though he was uniquely unqualified for the challenges of a country brought to its knees by the kleptocracy of his predecessor. It was immediately clear to all of us that any progress in the Congo would have to be despite Kabila, who was more interested in the perquisites of power than in the responsibilities of office.

  We simply could not overlook either the geostrategic location of the Congo in Central Africa or the consequences, for a population of 47,000,000 people, should the nation fall into even greater chaos. AID came up with an ingenious approach to deliver assistance to the people of the Congo while keeping Kabila at bay. Creating a number of hubs in the provinces rather than centralizing the operation in Kinshasa, AID stayed out of the capital altogether and delivered assistance within the respective provinces. Our efforts to move quickly, however, were being hindered by Kabila’s defiance of United Nations attempts to investigate allegations of ethnic cleansing and genocide committed by his troops on their march to Kinshasa. The U.S. Congress worried that we would be rewarding another terrible dictator with our aid. The administration agreed that the U.N. should vigorously pursue all allegations of genocide, but we did not want to tie the delivery of much-needed assistance for the long-suffering population to Kabila’s compliance. The plan developed by AID allowed us to do both. The NSC shepherded interagency agreement on the plan, and we met almost weekly to hammer out agreement on the approach—not all agencies agreed this one was best—and then to follow its progress and adapt it as necessary. It was very satisfying to watch my fellow public servants work day and night to relieve the tragedy of war, dictatorship, and deprivation in a country so far away from ours.

  The Angolan civil war, still being waged after nearly thirty years, occupied my attention once again. The U.N. secretary general’s special representative for Angola, Blondin Beye, came frequently to Washington, and we worked together to try to bring pressure on all sides to end the conflict. UNITA and Jonas Savimbi retained some residual support among conservatives in Washington, who continued to see the government in Luanda as communist, and UNITA as pro-Western and democratic, even though Savimbi himself had been trained by Chinese communists. In the administration, however, we did gain support for U.N. sanctions on UNITA, prohibiting trade with it in diamonds, weapons, and spare parts for its military, and restricting the travel of its leadership.

  Beye, a former Malian foreign minister, was a tremendous force in the U.N.’s efforts. I marveled at the strength of his commitment, even as his efforts had been frustrated time and time again by the belligerents. He worked closely with Paul Hare, Jim Jamerson, and, of course, Don Steinberg, still our ambassador in Luanda. I saw Beye every time he came to Washington, including the last time, in early June 1998. We met in my office, and after our discussions, I reminded him about his habit of saying a little prayer every time his airplane took off or landed. I had traveled with him several times while I served in Libreville, Gabon, as we were trying to put together a meeting of the high commands of the two Angolan militaries. He would inevitably break off all conversation to pray just before takeoff and touchdown, and once we were safe, he would return to the subject at hand, missing nary a beat. I thanked him now for all the prayers he had uttered on my behalf. Three weeks later, I was crushed when he perished in a plane crash en route from Togo to Côte d’Ivoire. Africa had lost one of its finest public servants, a leader capable of envisioning a truly inspirational future.

  By the late 1990s, the insurgency had become so entangled with the person of Savimbi that there was little to justify the ongoing conflict, other than his ambition to rule from Luanda. But we continued trying to bring pressure to bear, in the hope that UNITA could be transformed from a rebel guerrilla movement into a legitimate political party. As it became increasingly clear that Savimbi was the impediment to any resolution, the U.S., Russia, and Portugal—constituting the troika partnership that worked together to implement and monitor the peace process known as the Lusaka protocol—along with the U.N. and its special representative, all agreed that we needed more sanctions against Savimbi.

  New sanctions were proposed in the spring of 1998, but, curiously, the State Department did not initially support them, and it was leaked that the United States might actually oppose them. The analysis may well have been that additional sanctions would be of limited effect—after all, Savimbi had proven that he was adept at circumventing them—or even counterproductive at a time when there was still faint hope that Savimbi could be cajoled into finally playing a positive role in the peace process.

  The veto threat, when the Angolan government learned of it, served to reinforce its paranoia about American intentions, as the leadership feared that we still harbored the insidious notion of installing Savimbi in power. I strongly believed that enhanced sanctions on UNITA, as supported by the troika and by Beye, were important to pursue. Savimbi’s time had long since passed. He had little international legitimacy, and while he was still dangerous, it was clear that over time he would be defeated. I also worried about the implications of the U.S. threatening to veto a resolution that our partners in the peace process had recommended, whatever the merits of the State Department’s concern. The entire process would be undermined by such an action.

  I shared these concerns with Tom Pi
ckering informally after a meeting at the White House, as we were walking out of the West Wing. He had not known about the leaked threat and was incensed, uttering a colorful obscenity. The U.S. did not in the end veto the sanctions resolution, but the leak itself poisoned our relations with the Angolan government for several months and damaged our credibility as a mediator. When I left government in 1998, the war, which had begun before I even began my diplomatic career two and a half decades earlier, was still ravaging that once-prosperous nation. It would take several more years and the killing of Savimbi by the Angolan army in February 2002 before the war would finally wind down.

  Problems brewing in West Africa were equally disturbing. Nigeria was in the firm clutches of Sani Abacha, a corrupt and brutal general who helped himself to hundreds of millions of dollars and capriciously imprisoned his political opponents. Ken Saro-Wiwa, a prominent activist, was one who had died in police custody. Olusegun Obasanjo, an internationally respected former president languished in jail. Abacha was a classic thug, but there was little we could do—imposing sanctions on the oil sector in Nigeria, for example—without the support of the international community, and that support was not forthcoming.

  We endlessly debated the possibility of unilateral sanctions, which would have had limited impact and only given Abacha an external enemy to rail against. I also worried that sanctions would make it more difficult for us to work on the other national security issues presented by Nigeria, such as international criminal activities like money laundering and narco-trafficking. Others took the position best articulated by Jesse Jackson, then President Clinton’s special envoy for Africa, that we needed to be on the “moral side of history.” But in June of 1998 Abacha died a suspicious death—reputedly poisoned while in the company of two prostitutes—so we were spared the need to take action. In the aftermath, Nigerian politics moved quickly and we were positioned to play a positive role. Obasanjo emerged from jail and was re-elected president in the subsequesnt elections in 1999.

  Meanwhile, Liberia was in the hands of Charles Taylor, a vicious warlord who refused to be defeated and finally won a rigged election over an exhausted opposition. Next door, in Sierra Leone, the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), led by Foday Sankoh, with no apparent political agenda, terrorized the general population in the most despicable ways, cutting off the legs and arms of innocent citizens, small children and women included, as well as mutilating his opponents. A reign of terror had settled over that country.

  In Côte d’Ivoire, the efforts of President Henri Konan Bedie to thwart the electoral process would lead to his overthrow and civil war in the country.

  Africa has long been known to Americans only as a source of terrible violence, poverty, and disease, with pockets of dramatic game parks for well-off safari seekers and wildlife preserves for tourists. Though it is a continent containing fifty-three states, it is often referred to by the geographically illiterate as a “country” and described by many with no experience as “hopeless.” It is a poor continent to be sure, and many of its nations find themselves in the throes of violent upheaval, consistent with the inability of the central governments to ensure security throughout their countries. But that is not the whole story.

  Though there may be civil wars in ten countries at any one time, there are also thirty-seven states south of the Sahara in various stages of national evolution, striving to master the politics and economics of multi-tribal geographic entities, while living within borders inherited from colonial powers that bear little relationship to traditional tribal lands or any commonality of interests. A journey across this huge continent, with its great natural diversity, would take a traveler from ocean to ocean, through tropical forests and grassy plains with abundant herds of wildlife, to the top of snow-capped mountains, across barren deserts and some of the swiftest rivers on the planet. On the way, he would encounter peoples from a wide range of cultures and backgrounds, speaking hundreds of different languages, and pass through small villages where daily life is largely unchanged after hundreds of years. From there he might go on to sprawling urban areas with skyscrapers, traffic jams, and a mix of national and international cultural influences. In short, a visitor would be bombarded by myriad new sensations, smells, and tastes, and would be forever changed by the experience.

  And through it all, a common thread of humanity would be discerned, with the continent’s inhabitants eternally striving despite the obstacles that history and human foibles continue to pose. Africa has to be seen, touched, tasted, heard, and smelled to be believed. President Clinton understood that, and since he had never been there, he wanted very much to go and experience it all for himself, all the more so after First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton had made her own trip in 1997.

  Time is the most precious asset in a president’s possession, and it is jealously guarded, parceled out minute by minute to competing interests. The responsibility falls to those around the president to determine what he should do, whom he should see, and how much time he should spend on each task and each visitor.

  Early in January 1998, I was in my office on the third floor of the OEOB, with its high ceilings and, windows looking out into an inner courtyard, its historic grandeur diminished by the need to carve the original space into two rooms to accommodate a growing staff in our cramped quarters. The phone rang. It was a call from President Clinton’s schedulers.

  The caller informed me that the president could commit to traveling to Africa for the last two weeks in March for certain, or alternatively he might be able to travel there during two weeks in August, depending on other priorities. In making our decision, the scheduler said, we should take into account that it normally takes six months to plan a presidential trip. The bottom line was that if we could put together the most significant trip a president of the United States had ever made to the most logistically challenging continent on Earth in just ten weeks, then the dates were ours. Otherwise, we could take the twenty-six weeks usually required for the preparation of such a trip and hope that nothing else came along to bump the trip off the president’s calendar.

  While we had known that a presidential trip to Africa was a possibility, and had been actively pushing him to make one, the length of time President Clinton was prepared to spend there surprised us greatly—and the little time for organizing the enterprise was daunting.

  Nonetheless, my three intrepid directors were unanimous in their recommendation that we take the March date and work day and night to make the trip a success. I was not surprised. The NSC was, at the best of times, a highly charged organization requiring long hours and intense effort from those who work there. It was not for the faint of heart. This presidential trip was the chance of a lifetime for professionals working on Africa, and we were not going to even think of letting it get lost in the mix of other priorities eight months down the road. We informed a skeptical Sandy Berger and the scheduler that we would be ready to go by the March date and had no need to wait until August.

  We had barely ten weeks to prepare a trip that would take the president and his entourage to six countries in an eleven-day period. Only once since the founding of our republic had a president of the United States set foot on sub-Saharan African territory with the express purpose of visiting with African leaders: in 1977, Jimmy Carter had visited Liberia and Nigeria on his around-the-world tour of emerging nations. Other than that, Franklin Roosevelt had once stopped in Liberia en route to Morocco, and George H. W. Bush had traveled to Somalia to visit U. S. troops at the end of his administration. This would be a history-making trip with profound impact on the continent, and there was no precedent for it, either logistically or from a policy perspective. We would be breaking new ground—and in a hurry.

  The first challenge we faced was deciding which countries to select for the president to visit and determining the dates we were going to be there. Naturally, every African ambassador called to plead on behalf of his country: just a stopover, a night, a meal, an airport refueling, anything at all
to commemorate the historic friendship between his nation and our own.

  The Malian ambassador, Chiek Oumar Diarrah, had a particularly good case to make. His president, Alpha Oumar Konare, had already been received by President Clinton, at which time they had established quite a good rapport. The Malians were eager for the United States to show support for Konare’s efforts to bring democracy to their country, long a military dictatorship before the elections that had swept him to power. Diarrah and I had been friends since we were together in Brazzaville, Congo, where he was a professor at the local university. I had known him through Seydou Badian, the Malian adviser to Congolese President Sassou Nguesso, when we were working on Angolan issues in 1987. Diarrah was an expert on African issues, and I frequently consulted with him and welcomed his understanding of the nuances of African politics.