The Room Where It Happened

by John Bolton;

  We needed to do two things: first, we needed a Trump Administration cyber strategy, and second, we needed to scrap the Obama-era rules and replace them with a more agile, expeditious decision-making structure. Considerable work had already been done by the time I arrived, but it still took an enormous effort to make the last few bureaucratic first downs to achieve finality. I often thought that if our bureaucrats struggled as hard against our foreign adversaries as they did against each other when “turf issues” were at stake, we could all rest a lot easier. Despite considerable hard slogging, it still took five months, until September 20, before we could make the new cyber strategy public.15 Although our determination to enable offensive cyber operations got the headlines, the overall strategy was comprehensive, thoughtful, and a good beginning.16 Even an Obama Administration cyber expert said, “This document shows what a national strategy can look like on an issue that truly is nonpartisan. It strikes a good balance between defensive actions and seeking to impose consequences on malicious actors. Further, it’s clear that this strategy is a reflection of a strong policy development process across administrations.”17

  Revamping the strategy was hard enough, but shredding the old rules was actually even harder. The interagency process was frozen solid. The Department of Homeland Security and others wanted to keep a stranglehold on the Defense Department, as did the intelligence community. The Pentagon didn’t want oversight from anyone, including the White House, and took an “all or nothing” approach in negotiations that only infuriated everyone else involved. As a result, policy positions had become ever more hardened in the eighteen months since the Administration began. I felt like Ulysses S. Grant before Richmond, saying, “I propose to fight it out on this line, if it takes all summer,” which looked optimistic. Mattis repeatedly claimed we wouldn’t be able to undertake any offensive cyber operations before the November elections (which he knew was my top priority) if his view didn’t prevail, which was standard operating procedure for him: stress that the timing was urgent, which is what Mattis said when it suited him, and predict doom and gloom if he didn’t get his way.

  We needed to move. On August 7, we had a Principals Committee meeting that I opened by saying that for nineteen months, after scores of unproductive lower-level meetings, the Trump Administration had failed to replace Obama’s rules. We now had a draft presidential memorandum that gave policymakers more flexibility and discretion, but without excluding from decision-making those with legitimate stakes in the outcome. I said that if there were still dissents, I would put them before the President to get a decision. That got everyone’s attention. As in many of these Cabinet-level meetings, however, several of the “principals” could only speak from prepared talking points, relying on their staff to help them. I felt there should be a rule that if it wasn’t important enough for Cabinet Secretaries personally to understand the issues, they should not be in the meeting at all. Mattis still wanted major changes, but Gina Haspel, Sue Gordon (Dan Coats’s Deputy), and Jeff Sessions (and the FBI) all liked the draft as it was. Pompeo and Mnuchin had little to say but did not disagree. Unfortunately, Mattis either couldn’t or wouldn’t explain the reasons for the changes he wanted. In the Administration’s first year-plus, I had been told, the common pattern was that Mattis would hold forth, Tillerson would agree, everyone else would fold without significant comment, thereby ending the meeting. That may have worked earlier, but I wasn’t having it. I ended the meeting saying we had broad consensus on the way ahead (even if Mattis didn’t agree), and I hoped we could move rapidly to finalize the draft decision memorandum.

  Mattis left quickly, but Defense lawyers and others hung around and agreed we were very close to something the department could live with, Mattis notwithstanding. Over the next few days of detailed negotiations, Mattis remained obdurate and there was some backsliding by elements of the intelligence community, which was jealous of the National Security Agency’s authority. This reflected a long-standing, almost existential, CIA-Pentagon tension. Nonetheless, I told Trump we were making progress. After internal White House bureaucratic delays too tedious and inexplicable to recount, on August 15, Trump signed our directive and we were launched. We focused initially on election-related matters to get a fast start on creating deterrence against interference not only in 2018 but also in future US elections. Other steps would follow to lay the foundation for a comprehensive cyber capability.

  We also drafted a new Executive Order, under existing presidential authorities, making it easier to carry out sanctions against foreign efforts to interfere with elections.18 This avoided obtaining new legislation, which almost certainly would have been gridlocked in partisan wrangling. Even some Republicans, fearful of Trump’s weak responses to Russian provocations, wanted to pursue legislation, but we patiently explained why our Executive Order would actually be more effective, without the partisan sniping any legislation would inevitably produce. Most important, there was no guarantee Congress could even get its act together before the 2018 election, and the imperative had to be moving quickly. On September 12, sitting in his small dining room with a number of people discussing the Mexico border-wall issue, I explained to Trump the thinking behind the Executive Order: it was a way to show our diligence and rebut criticisms about the Administration’s not being aggressive in defending election integrity, as well as to hold off ill-advised action by Congress. He asked, “Whose idea is this?” and I said it was mine, whereupon he said, “Oh,” and signed the order. As Shahira Knight, then the White House Director of Legislative Affairs, said to me later, happy to have the prospect of elections legislation effectively foreclosed, “Congratulations, that was amazing.”

  By the end of September, we had a substantial election-security policy framework in place, and we could accelerate our efforts to safeguard the November 2018 elections, not that we hadn’t already been hard at work on defenses well beyond cybersecurity alone. Just a month after I arrived, on May 3, 2018, Sessions, FBI Director Wray, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, Director of National Intelligence Coats, and others briefed Trump on what was already under way to increase security for November. Trump wanted the operating agencies to be more visible in generating news about the extensive work being done, which the media was underreporting. And indeed, the departments and agencies themselves felt they were doing a good job, they knew what the threat was, and no one was holding them back from trying to defend against it. We held a second NSC meeting on July 27 to take another look at our efforts, with all the operating agencies reporting they were substantially better prepared than they had been at this stage of the 2016 campaign and much more aware of the kinds of threats they would face in their respective areas.

  We followed up this NSC meeting with a briefing in the White House press room on August 2, featuring Coats; Nielsen; Wray; General Paul Nakasone, Director of the National Security Agency, which was also the home of US Cyber Command; and myself. Each official told the story of what their agency was doing, which we should have done earlier, and the briefing was well received, if grudgingly, by the press. One story called the briefing an Administration “show of force” to prove we were actually doing something on election meddling. Unable to criticize the adequacy of the overall effort, the media therefore turned to saying Trump was following one policy and we were following another.19 Unfortunately, there was something to that, as Trump repeatedly objected to criticizing Russia and pressed us not to be so critical of Russia publicly.

  All this preparatory work was essential, especially because it might be necessary to brief Congress on particular threats. Within the limited group of agencies that had offensive cyber interests at stake, there were clear divisions of opinion on what to share with Congress and how quickly it would get into the press. These were often complex issues, since one of our adversaries’ objectives was not just to affect particular elections, but to sow fear and mistrust throughout the body politic, thus undermining citizen confidence in the integrity of
the system as a whole. With uncertain, incomplete information, from which hard conclusions did not immediately emerge, it could cause more damage to disclose it prematurely and too broadly, thus risking its becoming ammunition in partisan political battles. I did not believe we should be doing the attackers’ work for them, spreading misinformation, whether to Congress or campaigns potentially under attack. Fortunately, foreign interference was sufficiently reduced in 2018 that the few incidents we had were ultimately resolved satisfactorily. But it was clear that the “posterior covering” instincts of some officials and bureaucracies were potentially serious problems if the stakes ever increased.

  * * *

  The Trump Administration had imposed substantial new economic sanctions on Russian citizens and entities in 2017, related to the Crimea annexation, adding to what Obama had done, as well as extending other sanctions; closed the Russian consulates in San Francisco and Seattle; expelled more than sixty Russian intelligence agents (operating in the US as “diplomats”) after Moscow’s attack on the Skripals;20 imposed sanctions for violating the Chemical and Biological Weapons Control and Warfare Elimination Act, also required by the attack on the Skripals; sanctioned Russia’s Internet Research Agency, an arm of Russia’s cyber-offense machinery; and penalized over three dozen Russian officials for violations of US Syria-related sanctions.21 As new violations were uncovered, further sanctions were imposed on each person and corporate entity involved.

  Trump touted these as major achievements, but almost all of them occasioned opposition, or at least extended grumbling and complaining, from Trump himself. One example involved the sanctions related to the chemical-weapons attack on the Skripals. This statute had only recently been used for the first time, after Kim Jong Un ordered his half brother murdered in Malaysia via chemical weapons, and after the Assad regime’s chemical-weapons attacks in Syria. There was criticism that the sanctions imposed were not sweeping enough, but Trump objected to having any sanctions at all. Trump finally approved sanctions before the Helsinki summit but postponed announcing them until the summit ended. We explained to Trump that these sanctions were only the first in what was likely a series, since the applicable statute provided for ever-more-stringent sanctions if the accused nation did not provide convincing evidence it had given up chemical and/or biological weapons, including allowing international inspectors to verify compliance. No one believed Russia would do so. When Helsinki concluded, State announced the sanctions, since no new decision was required. Trump, upon hearing the news, wanted to rescind them. I wondered if this entire crisis was caused by Rand Paul’s recent visit to Moscow, which generated significant press coverage for him and where the Russians doubtless stressed that they were very unhappy about the sanctions. This was ironic, with libertarian politicians like Paul so worried about the Kremlin’s tender sensibilities. Hearing of the controversy, Mnuchin called Pompeo and me to blame us for not telling him about the new sanctions, which was inaccurate because the sanctions had previously gone through a National Security Council review process without objection from anyone. Within hours, Trump concluded he was relaxed about this particular decision, but he still thought we were being too tough on Putin. Trump told Pompeo to call Lavrov and say “some bureaucrat” had published the sanctions—a call that may or may not have ever taken place.

  In addition to objecting to sanctions, Trump stopped an anodyne statement criticizing Russia on the tenth anniversary of its invasion of Georgia, a completely unforced error. Russia would have ignored it, but the Europeans noticed its absence and became even more concerned about American resolve. This was typical of Trump, who in June 2019 also blocked a draft statement on the thirtieth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacres and criticized the State Department for a press release issued before he knew about it. Trump seemed to think that criticizing the policies and actions of foreign governments made it harder for him to have good personal relations with their leaders. This was a reflection of his difficulty in separating personal from official relations. I’m not aware of any case where Russia or China refrained from criticizing the United States for fear of irritating our sensitive leaders.

  * * *

  Trump’s inconsistent views and decisions on Russia made all our work complicated, and cyber and noncyber issues often bled into each other. Moreover, establishing cyber deterrence was easier said than done, since almost all the cyber-offensive operations we wanted to undertake necessarily remained classified. So, those directly affected would know they had been hit, but not necessarily by whom unless we told them. Accordingly, there had to be some public discussion of our capabilities, to put our adversaries on notice that our years of passivity were over and to reassure our friends that America was on the march in cyberspace. In late October, I made public remarks in Washington intended to convey in broad terms what we had done to eviscerate the Obama-era rules.22 Other Administration officials, such as General Nakasone, did the same.23 This was a complicated field of decision, with difficult tradeoffs between what to make public and what to keep classified. The more we could tell, the greater the deterrence we could establish in the minds of publics and decision-makers around the world. But, unfortunately, the more we said publicly, the more we would reveal about capabilities that others could use to improve their own cyber programs, offensive and defensive. This is obviously an area of debate for future Administrations. But whatever Trump’s own personal attitude, we had done substantial work to protect US elections, from Russia and everyone else.

  CHAPTER 7 TRUMP HEADS FOR THE DOOR IN SYRIA AND AFGHANISTAN, AND CAN’T FIND IT

  War by radical Islamist terrorists against the United States began long before 9/11 and will continue long after. You can like it or not, but it is reality. Donald Trump didn’t like it, and acted like it wasn’t true. He opposed “endless wars” in the Middle East but had no coherent plan for what followed withdrawing US forces and effectively abandoning key regional allies as the withdrawal unfolded. Trump liked to say, wrongly, it was all “thousands of miles away.” By contrast, during my time at the White House I tried to operate in reality, with mixed success.

  Syria: Lawrence of Arabia, Call Your Office

  After our April retaliation for Assad’s chemical-weapons attack on Douma, Syria reemerged indirectly, through Turkey’s incarceration of Pastor Andrew Brunson. An apolitical evangelical preacher, he and his family had lived and worked in Turkey for two decades before his arrest in 2016 after a failed military coup against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Brunson was a bargaining chip, cynically charged as conspiring with followers of Fethullah Gulen, an Islamic teacher living in America, once an Erdogan ally but now an enemy obsessively denounced as a terrorist. Just after Trump’s return from Helsinki, Erdogan called to follow up on their brief encounter at NATO (and later phone call) about Brunson and his “relationship” to Gulen. Erdogan also raised another favorite subject, frequently discussed with Trump: the conviction of Mehmet Atilla, a senior official of the state-run Turkish bank Halkbank, for financial fraud stemming from massive violations of our Iran sanctions.1 This ongoing criminal investigation threatened Erdogan himself because of allegations he and his family used Halkbank for personal purposes, facilitated further when his son-in-law became Turkey’s Finance Minister.2 To Erdogan, Gulen and his “movement” were responsible for the Halkbank charges, so it was all part of a conspiracy against him, not to mention against his family’s growing wealth. He wanted the Halkbank case dropped, unlikely now that US prosecutors had their hooks sunk deep into the bank’s fraudulent operations. Finally, Erdogan fretted about pending legislation in Congress that would halt the sale of F-35s to Turkey because Ankara was purchasing Russia’s S-400 air defense system. If consummated, that purchase would also trigger mandatory sanctions against Turkey under a 2017 anti-Russia sanctions statute. Erdogan had a lot to worry about.

  What Trump wanted, however, was very limited: when would Brunson be released to return to America, which he thought Erdogan had pledged? Er
dogan said only that the Turkish judicial process was continuing, and Brunson was no longer imprisoned, but under house arrest in Izmir, Turkey. Trump replied that he thought that was very unhelpful, because he had expected to hear Erdogan tell him that Brunson, who was just a local minister, was coming home. Trump stressed his friendship with Erdogan, but implied it would be impossible even for him to fix the hard issues facing the US-Turkey relationship unless Brunson returned to the US. Trump was genuinely agitated. After a riff on Tillerson, and puzzled expressions about Gulen (which Trump claimed was the first time he had heard about it), he said incredulously (and inaccurately), that Erdogan was telling him that Brunson wouldn’t be coming home. That was why no one would do business with Erdogan, Trump complained, especially because America’s entire Christian community was upset about this one pastor; they were going crazy. Erdogan answered that the Moslem community in Turkey was going crazy, but Trump interrupted to say they were going crazy all over the world, which they were free to do. If possible, the conversation went downhill thereafter.