I went upstairs to one of the bedrooms on the residential floor. I turned on the television, which was playing the attack over and over, but I didn’t really watch. Though I was really tired, I slept only a little, maybe a couple of hours. At about 4:30 A.M., I gave up, got dressed, and went downstairs to my office.
When I arrived, I had a message from Nicholas Burns, our ambassador to NATO. I returned his call, and Nick said that the NATO allies wanted to vote an Article V resolution: “An armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all.” I choked back tears at that one and told him that we would welcome the action. As a longtime student of NATO, I knew immediately that it would be the first time that NATO had ever invoked the collective-defense clause that was the essence of the Alliance. When the North Atlantic Treaty, which established NATO, was signed in 1949, Article V was the source of much debate because it committed the United States to defend Europe at a time of great tension and what was believed to be almost certain conflict with the Soviet Union. Now, ten years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Alliance was expressing the highest form of solidarity with us. I was deeply moved. It’s really good to have friends, I thought.
As time went on, the allies felt frustrated that they hadn’t been fully included in our response to 9/11. I have wondered many times if we somehow missed an opportunity to make the declaration of Article V have meaning for the Alliance. It is true that we were capable largely on our own to initiate war against the Taliban. It is also true that, after years of neglecting their military capabilities and concurrent failure to modernize for the war we’d eventually fight, most members of the Alliance were unable to move their military forces quickly. And we were single-minded, bruised, and determined to avenge 9/11 and destroy al Qaeda and its dangerous sanctuary as quickly as possible. Nonetheless, I’ve always felt that we left the Alliance dressed up with nowhere to go. I wish we’d done better.
“Every Day Since Has Been September 12”
THAT’S THE PHRASE that has always come to mind when, over the years, I’ve tried to explain the impact of the attack on the Bush administration’s thinking and on me personally. No security issue ever looked quite the same again, and every day our overwhelming preoccupation was to avoid another attack. The United States was the most powerful country in the world—militarily and economically. And yet, we had not been able to prevent a devastating attack by a stateless network of extremists, operating from the territory of one of the world’s poorest countries. Our entire concept of what constituted security had been shaken. The governmental institutions simply didn’t exist to deal with a threat of this kind. And so in the first days and months ad hoc arrangements had to fill the void.
For the first time, the FBI director and the attorney general attended the President’s intelligence briefing along with the CIA director. The divide between domestic and foreign intelligence was for a while bridged, literally, in the Oval Office. The threat report was hair-raising because overnight every conceivable threat, no matter how unlikely, seemed to come to the President. Having missed the attacks, the intelligence agencies were determined not to be wrong again.
That morning of September 12, George Tenet briefed us on the evidence of al Qaeda’s complicity in the attacks. The President listened to the recitation of the case against al Qaeda and let the War Council know that we’d crossed a Rubicon and we would destroy them. The most important task, however, was to make sure that it could not carry out another attack.
I remember being struck by the President’s clarity concerning priorities. First, secure the country. Second, reassure the American people and get the country back to normal as soon as possible. If America’s way of life ground to a halt, the terrorists would have won. Third, plan to destroy the terrorist networks and give their sponsors a choice to be with us or against us. Fourth, prepare to go to war against al Qaeda in a meaningful way—that meant destroying its safe haven in Afghanistan. There would be no spasm attack, lashing out with cruise missiles into empty tents. He wanted an option for boots on the ground. We would go after al Qaeda at a time of our choosing.
THE PRESIDENT’S clarity stood in stark contrast to the chaotic decision-making structures supporting him. After calls to several world leaders and the intelligence briefing, the President called the NSC together in the Cabinet room. The attendance had been expanded dramatically because of the multifaceted nature of the problem we faced. In addition to the NSC core—State, Defense, Joint Chiefs of Staff, and CIA—there were several other agencies present: the FBI and the Justice Department to deal with domestic intelligence and security; Treasury and the National Economic Council (NEC) to deal with the shock to the economy; Transportation to deal with the airports and highways.
There seemed to be people everywhere, and the more clarity the President sought, the more chaotic the meeting became. The Australian prime minister, John Howard, was stuck in the United States and needed to get back home. We needed to get Alan Greenspan, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, back from Europe. The President wanted to know how soon he could safely open the airports. How long would it be before Wall Street and the banking system were up and functioning? Did we have any plans for protection of power plants, which had been named as a target in the threat reporting? Who was dealing with the forty-seven governors whose states had not been hit but who were desperate to hear from the White House concerning what they should do? I looked around and thought, I’m the national security advisor. I’m supposed to make sense of this for the President!
A second meeting that afternoon was only marginally better. New problems had arisen. We’d essentially closed our borders, and it was already evident that economic activity was grinding to a halt. The integrated nature of our industrial supply chain with Canada was evident as calls began to come in from Detroit that GM and other automakers, shut off from their Canadian suppliers, would soon cease to produce. The President was pushing very hard to reopen the airports and to find a way to assure the American people that it was safe to fly.
Josh Bolten, the deputy chief of staff, Steve Hadley, and I decided to develop “pods,” groups of officials who would take responsibility for different elements of the response. Josh took over domestic issues and relations with the states. We turned to Larry Thompson, the deputy attorney general, to develop a plan for the protection of critical infrastructure. Larry Lindsey of the NEC took charge of trying to coordinate the many aspects of economic survival and then revival. Steve and I turned to managing the suddenly overwhelming work of the War Council. Years later, Larry Thompson and I were having lunch. “Why did you assign me critical infrastructure?” he asked. “I didn’t know anything about it.” I told him that no one knew how to protect critical infrastructure. He was capable, and everyone trusted him. In the immediate days after 9/11, that was enough.
On the afternoon of September 12, I accompanied the President to the Pentagon. As we drove toward it, we could see where the plane had slammed into the side of the building. Where there had once been a wall, now there was just a gaping hole of twisted metal and concrete. There were rescue workers still there, and the President wanted to thank them. I walked alongside him for a while and then broke off and began to talk to the doctors, nurses, and other first responders who’d pulled victims from the rubble—both those who could be saved and those who’d already perished. I was shaking when I got back into the motorcade. I returned to the White House and worked until after ten that night. When I got out of the car at the Watergate, I thought, What is that smell? It was my clothes, deeply penetrated by the soot and smoke of the Pentagon.
I just kept going the next day, not devoid of emotion but holding my feelings in check. There was work to be done. But slowly my emotions were emerging. I tried to ground myself by going back to some of my daily routines, such as exercising. I finally set aside time to get a long overdue haircut. As I sat there, John Lennon’s “Imagine” came on the radio. I choked back te
ars, went back to the White House, and focused again on my work. I left that night at 11:49 P.M.; seventeen-hour days were now routine.
When I woke up the next morning, I turned on the TV. The scene was from London, and the Coldstream Guards were playing in the square outside Buckingham Palace. It took me a moment to focus, but then I realized that they were playing our national anthem. I broke down and cried.
I HAVE always felt as if I operated in a kind of fog, a virtual state of shock, for two days after 9/11. That was my state of mind on September 14 as we prepared for the National Day of Prayer and Remembrance service at National Cathedral. The presidential motorcade felt like a funeral procession. I was in the “control” or communications car with Andy Card; the national security advisor and chief of staff always rode together, along with the President’s military aide. As we made our way up Massachusetts Avenue, I spotted a man holding a sign that said, “God Bless America. We will not be terrorized.” We passed the Russian Orthodox church, where the priests were ringing the huge bells. Slowly we pulled into the circle in front of the cathedral. Entering the church, I saw an exceptional gathering: former presidents and Cabinet secretaries, Supreme Court justices, members of Congress, the military, all there together in a national day of mourning. It was an interfaith service with the three great monotheistic religions represented, including Islam. The nation’s preacher, Billy Graham, was very frail, but he rallied to deliver a sermon at the service.
Just before the President spoke, the magnificent mezzo-soprano Denyce Graves sang the Lord’s Prayer. I didn’t see how the President would get through his remarks without breaking down. At the Cabinet meeting preceding the service, he had been emotional. Colin Powell, seated next to him as the secretary of state always is, passed him a note that said, in essence, “Dear Mr. President, don’t break down at the service.” The President, relating this to the Cabinet, said that he would be okay. He was right. He delivered his remarks sensitively but was completely in control. I thought to myself that I could never have done that.
The service was cathartic. I am the daughter of a Presbyterian minister, and my mother was a church organist. Music has been at the center of my life since I was born. I cannot to this day sing “O God Our Help in Ages Past,” without flashing back to National Cathedral. I focused on the music and the extraordinary words of our great national songs. What had begun as a day of sadness ended, for me, with a sense of rising defiance. The last hymn was “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” The original words of the Civil War hymn had been “As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free.” Over the years congregations (hoping not to sound offensive, I guess) had changed the words to “As he died to make men holy, let us live to make men free.” Much to my surprise, we sang the original version. As the military choir sang the climatic “Amen, Amen,” I could feel my own spirit renewed. We’d mourned the dead. Now it was time to defend the country.
THE PRESIDENT left for New York after the service. I had asked if I should accompany him, but he said that he wanted me to go directly to Camp David to meet the Vice President, Colin, and Don. I flew up to Camp David with Don on a military helicopter. That evening the four of us had a dinner of buffalo steak (a favorite of the Vice President’s) and discussed how we’d organize the next morning’s session with the President. We all knew that the outcome would be a declaration of war against the Taliban and an invasion of Afghanistan. But the discussion was useful in teasing out questions the President would need to address.
For the first time, though, I felt a bit out of place. These men, who collectively had accumulated decades of experience in government, had known one another for years. They’d been through numerous crises separately and together. The enormity of what had happened on 9/11 and the sheer weight of the challenge that we now faced hit me very hard. These were not normal times and not exactly what I’d envisioned doing that March day in Austin, Texas.
The next morning the President called at about 6:30, as he often did when we were at Camp David. He asked how the evening had gone and said that he would listen to the presentations from the various Principals and then decide what to do. We came up with the idea of a morning session for presentations, an afternoon break, and then a wrap-up session for recommendations. He was worried about how people were doing under the circumstances. I assured him that the night before had been relaxed despite everything. I asked how he was doing. He said that he was just fine.
The President’s phone call also steadied me. He was relying on me, and I was determined to be there for him. I had to set aside any personal doubts and fears and get on with doing my job.
After the President’s daily intelligence briefing in the Laurel Lodge conference room, the NSC members and their deputies gathered. We put a map down in the middle of the huge oak conference table. There it was: Afghanistan, the place where great powers go to die. Not only was Afghanistan surrounded by troubled and hostile neighbors (in some cases, such as Iran, hostile to us), its rugged terrain was immediately obvious. On the other hand, I thought, a successful campaign in Afghanistan could help redraw the map of the region.
South-Central Asia, starting at the southern tip of India and continuing through Pakistan and Afghanistan and into the “stans” (Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and, most important, Kazakhstan), formed the spine of the region. It in turn opened out to the Middle East and Iran on one side and western China on the other. An American military presence in Afghanistan and surrounding states—necessitated by the events of 9/11—could ultimately contribute to stability in South-Central Asia. And the emergence of a friendly government in Afghanistan and stronger relations with the “stans” would anchor American geostrategic influence in what had once been called by Zbigniew Brzezinski “the arc of crisis.” I told Steve Hadley that we should start to think of the area as an arc of opportunity instead.
But getting to that point would take a lot of work over many years. Afghanistan had been ravaged by decades of warfare. When the Soviet Union invaded the country in 1979, Arab fighters joined local resistance forces who had set aside tribal and ethnic differences to form a loose alliance that became broadly known as the mujahideen. With the assistance of U.S. and Saudi funding and weapons funneled through Pakistan, the mujahideen succeeded in defeating the Soviet forces in the late 1980s.
In the absence of a common enemy, however, the rivalries among feuding warlords resurfaced, and their militias plunged the country into civil war. In the midst of this fighting, the Taliban, a group of Islamist militants led by Mullah Muhammad Omar, swept through the Pashtun South and in 1996 seized control of Kabul.
As the Taliban consolidated its control over the capital city, Osama bin Laden arrived in eastern Afghanistan. Having left Sudan and with his Saudi Arabian citizenship revoked, bin Laden returned to the country where he had once fought in the anti-Soviet resistance to build a base of operations for his terrorist network. Sharing some degree of ideological kinship with the terrorist leader, the Taliban condoned and at times supported bin Laden’s efforts to establish al Qaeda training camps and recruit extremists to his cause.
For its part, Pakistan had trained extremist militants who fought in the resistance against the Red Army in Afghanistan, and it maintained ties to many of them after the Soviet withdrawal. As the Taliban rose to power, officials within Pakistan’s military and security forces, particularly its elite Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), reached out to the group and developed bonds that grew over time. The links were generally ethnic in origin, uniting Pashtuns across the borders that the British had drawn with little regard for cultural or tribal identity. Pakistan largely paid lip service to U.S. demands, dating back to George H. W. Bush, to relinquish ties to the extremists.
The immediate problem we faced after 9/11 was to find a strategy to defeat the Taliban. We were all conscious of the Soviet experience there, and the Pentagon’s presentation of military plans noted the importance of a “light footprint” for
U.S. troops. That would turn out to be a crucial decision. The United States would not fight a big ground war in Afghanistan, even though we needed “boots on the ground.” We would rely largely on Afghan fighters and U.S. Special Forces, intelligence and airpower. The U.S. commitment would contribute to a historical narrative in which we helped the Afghan people gain their freedom from the Taliban, not another foreign invasion of Afghanistan. The discussion was orderly, noting the need to turn Pakistan into an ally in the war on terror and to secure basing rights in Central Asia.
After a series of presentations and some discussion of how to proceed, Don Rumsfeld suddenly turned the floor over to his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, who started talking about Iraq. His argument was not without merit, focusing on the relative strategic importance of Iraq over Afghanistan. Saddam was clearly an enemy of the United States and had supported terrorism. The war in Afghanistan would be so much more complicated than a “straightforward” engagement against a real army such as Saddam’s.
The problem was that everyone had come into the room knowing that our war would be in Afghanistan, which had been the staging ground for the attack on the United States. I remember thinking that Paul’s comment was a huge distraction when there was so much to be done. The President listened but did not comment.
As planned, after several hours the President called for a break. He told everyone to go to lunch (spouses had been invited) and then to take a couple of hours off. “Go for a walk, exercise, clear your minds,” he said. We would reconvene at 4:00 P.M., and he would ask for recommendations.
After lunch, I asked the President what he wanted from me. Did he want my recommendation in the meeting or privately? “Privately,” he said. I also overheard the President tell Andy Card to call Paul aside and tell him not to interject in that way again; he expected to hear from his principal advisors, not their deputies. I don’t know what Andy said, but in the afternoon session, Paul said nothing.
No Higher Honor: A Memoir of My Years in Washington Page 11