Holbrooke is wide awake now. He hangs up the phone. He dials Hillary.
“Stan McChrystal has submitted his resignation to Bob Gates.”
“What?” Hillary says.
McChrystal continues to make phone calls. He gets through to Vice President Biden. Biden is on Air Force Two. It’s around five thirty P.M. in the United States.
“Sir, I failed the mission,” he tells Biden.
It’s a quick call. Biden doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Hell, Biden has said a few things in his time to reporters that caused him trouble.
Biden asks his aide to get him a copy of the story. Biden reads the story. Biden is furious.
At the White House, Tommy Vietor, Obama’s press aide, gets a copy forwarded to him from another government official. The PDF of the story is bouncing around the Internet on e-mail—it’s not posted publicly yet. Vietor e-mails it around to others in the press and national security team. They can’t read it on their BlackBerrys, so he prints out copies for the national security staff to read. He gives a copy to Robert Gibbs, the president’s press secretary, with passages highlighted, as recounted in Politico. The president has already gone to the second floor of the residence, working from his office in the Treaty Room. Gibbs walks a copy in.
“Joe Biden called me,” Obama would later tell Rolling Stone. “He was the first one to hear about it.” Obama spends five minutes on the phone calming him down. Obama reads the story. Stan McChrystal has to go. It’s not certain yet, but the national security team, which stays at work until around ten thirty that night, is thinking the same thing. Okay, there are the stupid things they said—there’s the “bite me,” and the “clown,” and slamming Holbrooke. All that is bad—it’s bad, too, that they think we’re wimps, a White House insider will tell me. But what’s most troubling to a few of the members of the national security team, according to White House officials, is an aspect that doesn’t get much attention in the press: The scene where the troops are in near revolt against McChrystal.
It’s morning in Kabul now. McChrystal’s staff gathers in the planning room.
Dave Silverman wants to kill that fucking guy. I’d just called him, a week before, left a funny voicemail on his answering machine. I can’t believe he did this. Dave Silverman wants to fucking kill that guy. Dave Silverman expresses this out loud. A military official who works with Admiral Mullen tells him to shut the fuck up: You’ve done enough damage.
Another U.S. State Department official asks the Flynns: What were the ground rules when he interviewed you? They say they don’t know what the ground rules were. The official is horrified—this is basic press handling 101. You protect the principal.
McChrystal spends the morning working on his apology. Holbrooke’s staff helps him draft it. He gets called back to Washington for a meeting. He asks that the meeting be held over VTC. The White House tells him: Get your ass back to Washington.
McChrystal releases an apology. The apology reads:
“I extend my sincerest apology for this profile. It was a mistake reflecting poor judgment and should never have happened. Throughout my career, I have lived by the principles of personal honor and professional integrity. What is reflected in this article falls far short of that standard. I have enormous respect and admiration for President Obama and his national security team, and for the civilian leaders and troops fighting this war, and I remain committed to ensuring its successful outcome.”
Apologize, repent, move on. He’s done it before. Gates has got his back. And Gates has the president’s ear, right?
Holbrooke has dinner with Eikenberry that night at the embassy, with a host of Afghan and UN officials. Eikenberry had just gotten back from a meeting with Karzai. Karzai wants McChrystal to stay—both Karzai and his half brother Ahmed Wali Karzai, like McChrystal and think he’s good for Afghanistan. They convey this message to Obama.
At dinner, Eikenberry is relaxed, he’s chatting away, very charming. Holbrooke is tense, jet-lagged, tired. He looks withdrawn and pale, birdlike. He’s worried his job might be on the line. Hillary wants to keep Stan. Mullen wants to keep Stan. Gates wants to keep Stan. That wouldn’t be good for him—if he stays, it means the four-star got away with dissing him with no consequence. That doesn’t look good in the Beltway. How is this going to play out?
Holbrooke’s phone rings—he excuses himself from the table. It’s his wife. His phone rings again—it’s the White House. There’s going to be a meeting on Wednesday, and he’s asked to be in it over the video teleconference.
Duncan Boothby blames himself. Running around the world, breaking china, pushing hard, at the center of things. Who could have anticipated the result?
There is plenty of blame to go around—command climate and all that. It was McChrystal himself who started making fun of Biden. (Biden will consult with six four-star generals, and all tell him the same thing: McChrystal has to go.)
Duncan tries to contain the damage; if he takes the fall, maybe that will save the rest of them. Spin it as a PR fuckup, that’s all. He offers his resignation—McChrystal accepts. CNN blasts the headline: PRESS ADVISOR FOR MCCHRYSTAL DUNCAN BOOTHBY RESIGNS.
That week, Duncan Boothby heads over to the New York Times Kabul bureau for dinner. It’s a sad affair—everyone there feels pity for Duncan. They liked him. He’s a good source and a good friend to one of the reporters. Who the fuck is this Hastings guy? Duncan tells a guest that there was a “gentleman’s agreement,” and Hastings broke it. Dexter Filkins—who, Duncan notes, has never paid for a beer in all the time he’s known him—and John Burns, the New York Times London bureau chief, file stories slanted toward McChrystal keeping his job, saying he’s the most hardworking general they’ve ever met. They take to the airways, slamming the story. Filkins makes excuses—they were stressed out, they have a tough job, they were venting steam, they are young guys. Filkins tells Charlie Rose that he’d never heard any kind of talk like this. “To what extent can we change the way we behave in such a way that this sort of thing doesn’t happen again?” Burns later says on PBS, while telling a right-wing talk-show host that the story “will impact so adversely on what had been pretty good military/media relations.”
On Fox News, Geraldo Rivera takes the same tack. He compares the Rolling Stone story to Al-Qaeda’s attack on Ahmad Shah Massoud, an assassination that occurred on September 9, 2001, two days before the September 11 attacks. A few days later, a CBS News reporter Lara Logan will say, “Michael Hastings never served his country the way McChrystal has.”
In Washington, Bob Gates calls National Security advisor Jim Jones. Gates is suggesting that McChrystal should stay. Jones isn’t so sure—Jones got tagged as a “clown” by one of McChrystal’s closest aides, a guy “stuck in 1985.”
Jones sends a clear message to Gates: McChrystal is going down. This isn’t the time to stand in the way.
On the plane to Washington, McChrystal gets e-mails of support from friends. One is from Greg Mortenson, the author of the best-selling Three Cups of Tea. The humanitarian worker and the general have become friendly over the past year. Mortenson offers him his backing. McChrystal e-mails back: “Will move through this and if I’m not involved in the years ahead, will take tremendous comfort in knowing people like you are helping Afghans build a future.”
On June 23, McChrystal arrives at the Pentagon to meet with Gates. He runs into NBC News Pentagon correspondent Jim Miklaszewski. Miklaszewski is a legendary reporter—his voice has carried Americans through the past decade of turmoil, starting on September 11, 2001, when he was reporting live from the Pentagon when it got hit. Jim is the most well-respected of newsmen, and, naturally, he happens to be in the right place at the right time—the moment Stan arrives at the Pentagon.
“Have you already submitted your resignation?” he asks him.
“You know better than that,” McChrystal says, rushing up the steps. “No!”
The White House is watching: They do not see remorse in that
clip. Stan doesn’t seem to get it.
No one knows whether McChrystal will keep his job. NATO officials have prepared two press releases—one for if the general stays, another for if he is fired. Even the military’s top brass is kept out of the loop: Pentagon spokesperson Geoff Morrell, viewed as particularly untrustworthy by the Obama administration, is frantically calling Brussels to find out what’s happening across the Potomac at the White House.
At the White House, they start discussing names, possible replacements. Reasons for him to stay, reasons for him to go. The biggest reason for him to stay, White House officials think, is that it won’t disrupt the mission. But the comments in the story reflect a direct attack on civilian control of the military—and the frat boy–like banter doesn’t look very good.
Petraeus’s name comes up—that solves a bunch of problems.
After meeting with Gates, McChrystal gets driven in a black SUV from the Pentagon to the White House.
His meeting with Obama lasts twenty minutes. McChrystal apologizes. Explains that it won’t happen again. Obama is unmoved. “You’ve done a good job, but—” he tells McChrystal, and accepts his resignation. McChrystal leaves through the back door and ducks into his SUV to return to his Fort Myer home.
Around that time, Petraeus arrives at the White House. Petraeus is following the McChrystal thing closely, but he more or less expects a slap on the wrist. He’s “surprised” by the comments McChrystal made, and “disappointed,” according to a source close to him. If Obama wants a replacement, Petraeus is thinking, maybe General James Mattis, the Marine general currently running the United States Joint Forces Command. What Petraeus doesn’t expect is that he’ll be going into a National Security meeting that will radically alter his life. “No one’s crystal ball is that good,” says a senior military official close to Petraeus. “He had no indication whatsoever that he was about to be offered the job.”
At eleven A.M., Obama’s National Security Council convenes. It’s just the principals—the support staff has been left out of this one. “I’ve accepted Stan McChrystal’s resignation,” Obama tells those gathered in the room, according to a senior administration official who attended the session. There is a shocked silence. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Defense Secretary Bob Gates, and Admiral Mike Mullen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff had all lobbied hard to keep McChrystal on board. But Obama didn’t do that—he listened to Biden. He listened to Jones. He listened to his gut, which told him, on a fundamental level, McChrystal had to go.
Obama’s next meeting is with General Petraeus. Petraeus is waiting down in the White House basement. Two military officers are chatting. A White House aide looks into the office, according to an account in Newsweek. “Does anyone know where General Petraeus is?” “I’m right here,” Petraeus says, raising his hand. “They want you in the Oval, sir.” He walks up the narrow staircase into the Oval Office, passing Leon Panetta, Gates, and Clinton, who “avoided eye contact, like physicians about to give a grim diagnosis,” as Newsweek put it. Obama greets him and offers him a seat near the fireplace. “As your president and commander in chief, I’m asking you to take over command in Afghanistan.” Petraeus is surprised, to put it mildly. He knows he can’t say no. He’s not built to say no, anyway. It’s another one of those moments. It was like the Baghdad job: He got the call on the California interstate, sitting in the passenger seat of a rental car, plowing through e-mail as his wife drove the three-star and their son to visit his elderly father. He thought he was going to end up in Europe, and he got Baghdad—that moment turned him into the most famous and celebrated general of his generation. And here, the country and the president have turned to him again. Patraeus had only one way to answer. “Yes, sir,” he answers the president.
He signs up for a thirteen-month tour.
Obama and Petraeus meet for forty minutes. They schedule a press conference in the Rose Garden for Obama to break the news. But the announcement couldn’t be made public until Obama allows the general to fulfill one simple request.
“Before we announce this,” Petraeus tells the president, “I better call my wife.”
Obama walks out to the Rose Garden. He reads from a prepared statement. Mullen, Gates, Biden, and Petraeus stand behind him.
“Today I accepted General Stanley McChrystal’s resignation as commander of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan. I did so with considerable regret, but also with certainty that it is the right thing for our mission in Afghanistan, for our military, and for our country,” he says. “But war is bigger than any one man or woman, whether a private, a general, or a president. And as difficult as it is to lose General McChrystal, I believe that it is the right decision for our national security.”
For White House officials watching, it’s one of Obama’s strongest moments as commander in chief. It’s cruel irony for McChrystal and his staff—their complaint about the president had been his weakness, his unwillingness to make tough decisions, his hesitancy. They tested him on it, they called him out publicly, and Obama stood firm. McChrystal’s intended targets—Holbrooke, the vice president, and Jim Jones—were not the folks who went down, though. McChrystal did. “It was incredible seeing Obama like that,” says a senior U.S. official intimately involved in Afghanistan policy. “The way he spoke about the war—it was a forcefulness that we hadn’t heard before.” At another meeting around that time, when remembering a visit he’d made to Walter Reed where he’d spoken to a teenage triple amputee, Obama would say, “We have a lot of kids on the ground acting like adults and we have a lot of adults in this room acting like kids.”
Petraeus’s critics are few, but he wants to “prove them wrong,” a source close to him tells me. What his critics say is that he shouldn’t get all the credit for Iraq. That he got lucky. That it was a fluke. That violence in Iraq died down for reasons beyond his control. But now, after engineering a face-saving withdrawal from that nightmarish war, he’s going back to another active war zone, with all the responsibility on his shoulders. The president said it: This is Petraeus’s plan too. He helped “design and lead our new strategy.” Obama doesn’t mention he had worked along with Gates and Mullen to “box in” the president in the decision to escalate the war.
The White House knows that if they are going to sack McChrystal, they can’t put some no-name in his place. If Petraeus can’t do it, no one can, or so the thinking goes.
Petraeus stays in Washington for his confirmation hearings. It’s speedy and it’s relatively painless. He drinks enough water this time. He already knows what he needs to focus on: getting more time on the clock and downplaying the next review of the strategy, which is supposed to be due in December. He needs to change the headlines, get the struggles in Kandahar off the front pages and get the soldiers off his back about rules of engagement, the issue that had damned McChrystal in the troops’ eyes.
On June 25, Petraeus calls for a review of the rules of engagement. He points out that not all the troops are in place—very quietly, the much ballyhooed Kandahar offensive slips from public view. He points out that July 2011 will mark the beginning of a process, not the date when the United States will “head for the exits and turn off the lights.”
Petraeus flies down to Tampa to get his things ready. He’ll be leaving CENTCOM, his home for almost two years. At his headquarters there, he gives a farewell speech. “He sounds psyched, looks like a man on a mission,” according to a source close to Petraeus. One June 29, Petraeus has dinner with Biden, who has come down to Tampa to see the general off before he goes to Kabul. It’s Biden, Petraeus’s wife, Holly, and a few other close advisors and military officials. Biden wants to show they are on the same page; Biden wants to show that despite the disrespect McChrystal showed him, he’s not going to be cowed. He’s demonstrating that he is the vice president, and to cross him is to tempt fate. There will be no more jabs or jokes about Biden coming out of Kabul. He’ll later recall that he took McChrystal’s trash-talking as a comp
liment—“I mean, it was clear that I was the only guy they worried about,” he tells a reporter.
Petraeus arrives in Kabul on July 3, 2010. He’s the third new commanding general to take over in less than a year and a half, a turnover in commanders matched perhaps only by Abe Lincoln’s repeated sacking of generals in the Civil War. After a rough two weeks at ISAF HQ—where grown men walked around with tears in their eyes and “heartbroken” thanks to the McChrystal firing—Petraeus’s arrival is a boost to morale. Petraeus is a winner; the troops like a winner.
At the U.S. embassy, Petraeus gives his welcoming address in front of a huge American flag. It’s no accident that he’s speaking there—it’s a way to visually reaffirm the civilian and military partnership. Eikenberry gives him a badge to the embassy, then sits off stage, next to his wife, Ching, wearing a summery hat. The next day at another ceremony, a reporter for the NATO channel describes Petraeus as “cool and confident” upon his arrival. He tells the crowd, “We are engaged in a tough fight. We have arrived at a critical moment.”
An Afghan general talks to a reporter: “There is no difference to us between General McChrystal and General Petraeus. Unfortunately, sometimes politics get much stronger than the professionalism of a soldier.”
Petraeus won’t have that problem—Petraeus is politics.
42 THE PENTAGON
INVESTIGATES
MCCHRYSTAL
JUNE 28 TO AUGUST 2010, NEW YORK, MILTON, AND WASHINGTON, DC
Stephen Colbert pushed a shot of whiskey across his desk. He wanted me to take a shot of booze before we started the interview.
The cameras were rolling. We were in his studio on 54th Street, taping a segment for his Comedy Central show, The Colbert Report.
Within forty-eight hours, I’d gone from the insanity of Afghanistan to sitting for an interview on a cable show.
I pushed the shot back across the desk, telling him no thanks, and that I didn’t drink. The studio audience laughed awkwardly. Colbert took the shots and the bottle and moved them under his desk.
The Operators: The Wild and Terrifying Inside Story of America’s War in Afghanistan Page 30