Finally, with the planning done, the President went before the American people on October 7, 2001, to announce what had long been expected: the United States of America was declaring war on the Taliban because it had refused to meet our demands to surrender al Qaeda’s leaders and close terrorist training camps. But the first phase of Operation Enduring Freedom, as the campaign was called, brought new frustrations. U.S. fighter planes bombed the few installations that could be hit from the air. Yet because Afghanistan was so rural and underdeveloped, the military quickly ran out of targets. It was time to begin the ground assault, but our “cavalry” wasn’t moving. For days after October 7, every NSC meeting went as follows: “When is Fahim Khan going to move?” “They say they need more equipment and better intelligence,” Tenet would answer. “Why don’t they have the intelligence they need?” someone would ask. “The intelligence will come as they begin to move forward and engage the Taliban forces,” Tenet would reply. Impatient, the President would complain, “They just need to move!” The absence of action on the ground led to days of news coverage trumpeting the “quagmire” into which U.S. forces had fallen.
Finally, in late October, General Dostum got tired of waiting for Fahim Khan and started an assault on Mazar-i-Sharif. The President had departed for Shanghai and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting, which had been postponed after the September 11 attacks. Within days Taliban forces were being routed throughout Afghanistan. We were meeting with Vladimir Putin on the day that Kabul was about to fall. Together with the Russians, we discussed whether the alliance forces should take Kabul or invest (surround) the city and demand that the Taliban surrender. Because we worried that the Taliban might resist by laying waste to Kabul, there was a mild preference for the former. The Pakistanis had also registered their concern that the sudden appearance of the Tajik- and Uzbek-led Northern Alliance in the capital might upset the ethnic balance of the city.
Before that decision could be communicated, however, the Northern Alliance broke through the Taliban lines and took the capital. As the President told Putin, once the assault began, the Taliban unraveled “like a cheap suit.” I wasn’t quite sure of the Russian translation, but Putin clearly understood and roared his approval.
8
THE WAR ON TERROR AND THE HOME FRONT
WE DID NOT HAVE the luxury of concentrating exclusively on Afghanistan. In his address to the nation on the night of September 11, President Bush had made clear that the United States would be engaged in a “war against terrorism.” The scope of the struggle, however, had yet to be determined. Was it a broad war against any terrorist group, no matter what its origin or justification, or was the enemy limited to al Qaeda and its affiliates? What were the implications of a narrow view? What about one that was broader?
In the end we held to a more expansive view, focusing on terrorists with global reach who threatened our way of life and that of our friends and allies. The President decided after much deliberation that only a broader global definition would enlist the international community in establishing the worldwide dragnet that we needed to stabilize the international system and secure the United States and its allies. How could we tell others to help us but not help them fend off terrorist attacks? The decision reflected the need both to establish an international norm against terrorism in order to delegitimize it as a tactic and to paint vividly an enemy against which the world could mobilize. That is, I believe, why some have failed to understand why we used the term “war on terror” rather than “war on al Qaeda.” The war had to be fought against both the tactic and the people who practiced it.
In some cases, that led us to become involved in distant struggles that were in fact linked only loosely to al Qaeda. This was the case with Jemaah Islamiyah in Indonesia and the Abu Sayyaf group in the Philippines. Though organizationally distinct from Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network, they sometimes collaborated with al Qaeda to launch attacks, such as the 2002 bombing of a Bali nightclub that killed more than two hundred people.
That also meant confronting Chechen terrorists, even though we were uncomfortable with Moscow’s heavy-handed treatment of the conflict in the Caucasus. Occasionally we accepted a responsibility to respond to groups with no observable tie to al Qaeda and no global reach, such as the Basque separatist group ETA in Aznar’s Spain, our close ally.
While defining the target broadly, we judged the tactics that we employed on a case-by-case basis. We would not rely exclusively or even primarily on military might but leverage all instruments of U.S. power—diplomatic, economic, intelligence—to defeat the terrorists. For instance, certain lethal options were reserved for groups and individuals directly and inextricably linked to al Qaeda. But when it came to rhetorical support and, in some cases, tools such as freezing terrorists’ assets, we were liberal in the definition of who was in and who was out. We believed that we had to discredit terrorism as a weapon, with no exceptions. There would be no carve-out for “freedom fighters.” No cause could justify the use of terror.
NEW TERRORIST PLOTLINES were surfacing almost daily as the intelligence agencies struggled to determine what was real and what was not. On October 15, an anthrax-laced letter was opened at the office of Senator Tom Daschle in the Hart Senate Office Building, shortly after a similar package was received at NBC News. The discoveries bolstered suspicions that a Florida man, who had died days earlier after mysteriously contracting anthrax, had been a victim of terrorism. The United States was again under attack. In all, five letters laced with anthrax entered the postal system that fall, each containing a cryptic handwritten note that made reference to 9/11. Five people would die in those attacks, making them the worst incidents of bioterrorism in U.S. history. The FBI would later determine that the anthrax attacks had been the work of a domestic, not foreign, actor. But one month after September 11, that seemed like a remote possibility. We were all convinced that it was al Qaeda’s second wave.
We later learned of another plotline suggesting that the United States was facing the threat of a smallpox attack. Ironically, because the disease had been eradicated, the country was vulnerable, since there was no longer a program of general vaccination. I called together the NSC Principals and the newly created Homeland Security Council, led by former Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge, to review the situation.
The President was told that the inoculation of the whole country would be a herculean task and there was some nonnegligible risk of death to those who might be allergic to the vaccine. The thought of a significant number of fatalities due to an inoculation program—which might ultimately prove unnecessary, given the tenuous nature of the threat—haunted the President. Someone mentioned the potential for class-action lawsuits if the program went badly. The President let it be known that that was the least of his concerns.
The questions on the table were ones that we would face many times throughout the Bush presidency: How could we tell the American people of a possible threat without engendering panic? Was the information even solid enough to constitute a legitimate threat? What were the risks of acting? What were the consequences of inaction? I thought to myself that he was being confronted with unprecedented dilemmas.
Eventually we decided on an intermediate course. First responders and the military would be vaccinated, starting with those who were in the field. A division of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), under the exceptional leadership of Julie Gerberding, was tasked with developing a plan for widespread inoculation of the population should the intelligence warnings intensify. The Vice President was charged with overseeing the effort.
The question then arose of whether to vaccinate the President and his closest advisors. The decision was made to do so, and a list was developed of those who would be inoculated. We were each informed individually of whether we’d be vaccinated but not told who else was on the list.
When Dr. Richard Tubb, the White House doctor, asked whether I had ever been vaccinated and my reaction to it, I
remembered vaguely having rolled up my sleeve in elementary school but didn’t recall if it had been for smallpox in particular. My parents were deceased, so there was no one to ask. I took the vaccination with some trepidation but assumed that it would have no adverse effect. In that case, my sense of personal vulnerability was only fleeting. But occasionally we confronted it more directly.
IN OCTOBER 2001, I was with the President in Shanghai for the APEC summit. Each day we’d have a secure videoconference, with the Vice President and Steve Hadley in Washington and the President, Colin, Andy, and me in China. On that particular morning, the screen opened to the Vice President, dressed fully in white-tie attire for his coming speech that night at the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation dinner in New York (it was twelve hours earlier on the East Coast). His face was tense and ashen.
“Good morning, Dick,” the President said. Then, noticing the Vice President’s demeanor, he asked if everything was all right.
“Mr. President,” the Vice President intoned, “the White House biological detectors have registered the presence of botulinum toxin, and there is no reliable antidote. Those of us who have been exposed to it could die.”
“What was that, Dick?” the President asked, sinking back into his chair.
Colin intervened. “What is the exposure time?” he asked, clearly calculating from his last time in the White House. After learning that he too had been exposed, Colin also sank back into his chair.
We hastily finished an abbreviated review of the situation in Afghanistan and a few other matters and closed the conference. “Go call Hadley and find out what the hell is going on,” the President said to me.
I called Steve. Indeed, the White House detectors had registered the presence of the deadly nerve agent. The substance was being tested on laboratory mice, but it would take about twenty-four hours to get an answer. “Let’s put it this way,” Steve said. “If the mice are feet down tomorrow, we are fine. If they’re feet up, we’re toast.” He would monitor the situation along with Attorney General John Ashcroft and Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson and call us as soon as they knew anything.
We went about our business in Shanghai as if nothing had happened. I told myself that it was probably a false alarm, though darker thoughts would flash through my mind as I sat through the endless meetings and events. At one point I remember wondering whether we’d get home before the toxin acted. I didn’t particularly want to die in China.
Finally, the next day at lunch, an aide handed me a note saying that Hadley was on the phone. I passed the President’s table. “It’s Steve,” I said. “This is it.” The President said nothing in reply.
“Hi,” I said to Steve.
“The mice are feet down,” he said. It had been a false alarm.
I went back to the table. “Feet down, not up,” I said. The President smiled. I’m sure the Chinese thought it was some kind of coded message.
I’ve been asked many times if I worried about my personal safety in the aftermath of 9/11. Occasionally, a scare like that one would remind me of my own vulnerability. But for the most part, such thoughts were buried deep behind the need to just get the work done.
The more vexing problem was the moral dilemma posed by often knowing information that was both frightening and incomplete. The question of what to say to the American people so that they could protect themselves was a constant concern.
That dilemma came into full relief later that month, when reports pointed toward another potential attack on Washington, D.C. Some of the information even suggested that it might be a radiological or nuclear attack. We knew that al Qaeda had been trying to acquire a nuclear capability, even experimenting with homemade devices. The threat was very real.
At the beginning of the week, we convened the National Security and Homeland Security Council principals and took several steps to address the scare, including the moving of radiological detection equipment and teams from the West Coast to the East. After the meeting, I walked down to the Oval Office to brief the President and to tell him that he would get a more complete report at the NSC meeting the next day.
He was in a pensive mood. “I’ve invited some of my friends here to Washington for the weekend,” he said. “Should I tell them not to come?” he asked, mostly rhetorically. I suddenly remembered that I’d invited my friend in California, Susan Ford, and her son Tommy to Washington as well.
I’d worked day after day without a break and under unspeakable pressure. Only a well-timed invitation three weeks after September 11 from Karen and Jerry Hughes and their son, Robert, had broken the string of seventeen-hour days. “You look like you need a home-cooked meal,” Karen had said. Now, a few weeks later, I was looking forward to the release that having a friend in town would bring. I suspected that the President felt the same way.
The President continued, “How can I warn my friends not to come and not tell the American people of the danger?” I suggested that his situation was different since the White House was likely a target of attack. The President was having none of it. He felt an obligation to say something. But what should we tell the population? Would they assume we were recommending an evacuation of the nation’s capital? Were we ready for such a thing?
I suggested that he should tell his friends not to come, not for their safety but because he should go to an undisclosed location. He reacted strongly. “Those bastards will find me right here in the Oval,” he said.
I was taken aback but reflexively said, “Me too.”
I always knew when to leave the President alone. I walked back to my office and called in Steve Hadley to tell him what had transpired. “Are you afraid?” I asked.
“Not for myself,” he said. “But I can’t bear the thought that something might happen to my daughters.”
I decided that whatever the moral dilemma, I had to ask Susan not to come. And in any case it would be a tense and very busy weekend. “It’s just not a good time,” I said to her. Susan later told me that she hadn’t known what was going on, but the tone of my voice had told her that it was indeed serious. We could get together some other time.
THAT WAS how we lived and worked in the months immediately after September 11. It has become fashionable years after the attacks to say that the Bush administration overreacted to 9/11 and took controversial and radical steps in the war on terrorism that were unwarranted. Early in his administration, President Barack Obama would say that in the days after the attacks on New York and Washington, the Bush administration “made decisions based on fear.”
Well, yes, we did, but not from irrational fear or paranoia. Rather, the days after September 11 were marked by the uncertainty and unease that come from operating in dangerous and unchartered territory. We knew far too little about al Qaeda and how it operated. We knew even less about what it was planning next. We were without a map but not without a compass. Our guiding principle would be to do everything within our power—and within our laws—to prevent another attack.
A Framework for the War on Terror
THREE PRESSING ISSUES arose in the post-9/11 period that challenged traditional notions of security: the classification and treatment of detainees; how to try terrorism suspects; and how to gain access to information that they might hold through interrogation and electronic surveillance. We were at war against the people who’d launched the deadliest foreign attack on the U.S. homeland in the nation’s history. I do not remember a single person questioning whether al Qaeda had committed an act of war; it simply never occurred to us that it had been anything else. From the beginning, therefore, there was no dissent from the view that we were operating on a war footing and acting under the President’s authority as commander in chief. But that is where the consensus ended. What did it mean?
That was the question that was put to the lawyers who were charged with legal interpretations of historic significance. John Bellinger, who was the NSC lawyer, is as capable a person as one can find. John had worked for the CIA and the
Justice Department and was loyal and thorough. But in terms of bureaucratic warfare, he was no match for David Addington, the Vice President’s legal counsel. Addington, with the full support of the Vice President, had a view—an expansive view—of presidential prerogatives during wartime and, drawing on opinions by lawyers such as Jay Bybee and John Yoo in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, was determined to push the boundaries of executive authority. The NSC staff (and sometimes the White House counsel) was at times cut out of the process. That meant that the State Department, the military, and even the attorney general were outflanked on occasion. I didn’t fully realize this until, as we will see, the President signed a military order that I had not even seen. From then on, I was more attuned to the bureaucratic process for evaluating these issues. We were not dealing with purely legal matters; there were important policy implications for such decisions, both at home and abroad.
The first question we confronted was what to do with those whom the military had detained on the battlefield. We knew we couldn’t release them because they could still pose a threat to our forces and our citizens. We decided that they should be detained under the laws of war. For those who had committed crimes, we felt that in many cases we could not try them in ordinary civil courts since traditional evidentiary standards might reveal our intelligence-gathering methods to our enemies. We wanted a system of justice that would protect our sources and methods, punish those who posed a threat to the United States, and responsibly release those who, after careful investigation, we concluded did not.
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