Hubris

by Michael Isikoff

  Yet later on the same day The Weekly Standard posted its story, the Pentagon, in a highly unusual move, immediately distanced itself from Feith’s secret memo and released a statement noting the undersecretary’s report was based on “raw reports or products” and was “not an analysis of the substantive issue of the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda.” In other words, the Defense Department didn’t stand by it. The Pentagon statement also denounced the leak of the classified memo as “deplorable” and possibly illegal.

  Not long afterward, the CIA sent Feith a list of corrections that needed to be made to his memo—and disputed the reliability of several of the alarming reports he had cited. The memo, for instance, had recycled from Feith’s earlier slide show the suspect story about bin Laden’s meeting with Iraq’s intelligence chief in Sudan in 1996, and his memo had attributed the information to a “well placed source.” Not so, the CIA said—noting the information had come from a thirdhand source through a foreign intelligence service. The CIA disputed the Feith memo’s claim that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the notorious terrorist leading a segment of the insurgency in Iraq, had been harbored by Iraqi intelligence before the war. Prior to the invasion, the White House had cited Zarqawi’s alleged presence in Iraq as evidence of an Iraq link to al-Qaeda. Now the CIA believed it wasn’t certain that Zarqawi’s travels through Iraq had been known to Saddam’s government, as Zarqawi may have been traveling under an alias.*70

  The case for the Saddam–bin Laden connection was as flimsy as it had always been. Feith and The Weekly Standard were doing what they could to keep it afloat—as the main reason for war was slipping away. And they found at least one major champion: Dick Cheney. In an interview with the Rocky Mountain News—one day after Powell said he had seen no “smoking-gun, concrete evidence” on the al-Qaeda–Iraq connection—the vice president pointed to the Weekly Standard article based on the Feith memo as the “best source of information” on the supposed relationship. Just as he had done with The New York Times’ story on the aluminum tubes more than a year earlier, Cheney (who usually deplored leaks) was touting a leak of classified information to buttress the administration’s case for war—a leak that yet again rested on dubious intelligence.*71

  IN LATE October, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz flew to Baghdad to take a look for himself. The Saturday he arrived, a convoy of civilian contractors came under mortar attack from insurgents, and a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter was shot down, killing one of its crew members. That evening, at a reception at the al-Rashid Hotel, Wolfowitz was greeted by his old ally Chalabi. “They know you’re here,” Chalabi told him, according to a source present for the conversation. “I wouldn’t stay at the al-Rashid tonight.”

  The warning struck some in Wolfowitz’s party as creepy. Did Chalabi know something? But it was too late for Wolfowitz to change his lodgings. That night six to ten explosive projectiles struck the hotel, hitting the floors below where Wolfowitz and his party were staying. The attack shattered scores of windows, blew off doors, and filled hallways with smoke—but Wolfowitz, though shaken, was uninjured. The next day, a suicide bomber drove a car into the Red Cross headquarters, killing twelve people; two dozen others were killed in attacks elsewhere that day.

  Speaking to reporters on October 27 after meeting with Bremer in Washington, Bush declared progress was being made in Iraq and that the rising number of attacks was a reaction to this progress—a sign that the insurgents were desperate. He added, “The overall thrust is in the right direction.” At a press conference the next day, he said that in the coming year—an election year, he noted—Americans would have to be “patient” regarding Iraq.†3

  Then, on November 2, a grisly horror occurred: a U.S. Chinook helicopter was shot down over Fallujah. Sixteen U.S. soldiers were killed and another twenty wounded, making it the bloodiest day for Americans since major combat operations had ended in April. The insurgents’ use of a missile signaled that the United States was facing a more sophisticated and dangerous enemy.

  Iraq was now not only the number one policy worry for the White House but the biggest potential political problem for the up-and-running Bush reelection campaign. And within the Bush campaign, it was an issue of great sensitivity.

  The day of the Fallujah crash, an Associated Press reporter, Scott Lindlaw, called the campaign for comment. Lindlaw mentioned to press secretary Terry Holt that he had previously talked to another campaign official, who had casually said to him—on background—that the campaign hoped there wouldn’t be more days like this one in Iraq. It was an innocuous remark. Nevertheless, Lindlaw’s prospective story sent the campaign office into a panic. There had been a stern directive issued to all the staffers: Don’t talk about Iraq at all. Someone had disobeyed that command. The Bush campaign ordered its own leak investigation.

  All of the campaign’s phone records were reviewed. These records showed that one staffer, Brad Dayspring, a media coordinator for the northeastern states, had been in phone contact with Lindlaw in recent days. Holt called Dayspring into his office and had the phone records on his desk. He could see there had been two calls—one to and one from Lindlaw’s number. Dayspring acknowledged that he had spoken to the AP reporter—but about a Pennsylvania steel issue, not Iraq. It didn’t matter. “This isn’t going to work,” Holt brusquely told him. He was being fired.

  Dayspring was stunned. He had worked for George W. Bush for four years. He appealed his dismissal to campaign higher-ups but was told it was pointless. Ken Mehlman, who had just moved from Rove’s office to become the Bush-Cheney campaign manager, had signed off on his dismissal. Holt later said that Dayspring had violated a “basic ground rule” forbidding campaign staffers from talking to the press.

  The incident never became publicly known. But word of Dayspring’s firing spread among Bush aides. Some were amazed and even alarmed that the campaign had instant access to staff members’ phone calls. The episode reinforced the edict that Rove and Mehlman wanted enforced: Nobody should even mention Iraq. Inside campaign headquarters, the war in Iraq—the signature initiative of George Bush’s presidency—was a forbidden subject.

  IN EARLY November, a new National Intelligence Estimate arrived on the state of the Iraq insurgency. This was the document INR analyst Wayne White had tried to strengthen, starting in August, to reflect his “Pissed-Off Iraqis” analysis. The NIE, according to White, ended up being a “very strong warning” to the White House and the Pentagon about “the seriousness of the insurgency.” But it left open a fundamental question: What should be done about it? There were no easy answers, said White: “One thing was clear right from the beginning. We did not have enough troops in Iraq.” This was not stated in the NIE; such documents weren’t supposed to prescribe policy. But that was the document’s message. Yet the White House and the Pentagon continued to issue statements that the troop level was fine.

  The reports from the field were dire as well. In early November, the CIA station chief in Baghdad sent Washington his latest review of the conditions in Iraq. This report—called an “aardwolf”—depicted a deteriorating situation. According to John Maguire of the CIA’s Iraq Operations Group, the aardwolf described recent trends as profoundly troubling. One ominous development was that small units of insurgents had begun confronting coalition forces in tactical maneuvers—meaning the insurgents were beginning to act like a cohesive military force. The aardwolf reported that the Iraqi people—angry (or pissed off, as White would say) about the lack of electricity and the slow pace of reconstruction—were becoming worried and fearful. It stated that the U.S.-led coalition forces were losing control of some areas of the country. The report maintained that an increasing number of Iraqis were concluding the United States could be defeated in Iraq and were starting to support the resistance. Bush’s effort to rebuild the country and birth a democracy, the aardwolf warned, was in danger of collapse.

  The Baghdad station’s report landed in the White House with a bang and sparked anger—at the
CIA. When a NSC staffer read the document, he was blown away. “It was a very dark day,” this official later said. The report, he recalled, said that “all the trends were in the wrong direction, and it could get far worse.” According to this NSC staffer, the predominant reaction to the report at the White House was that the CIA was “fucking us again.”

  Days later, Bush asserted, “We’ve made a lot of progress on the ground.”

  FBI AGENT Jack Eckenrode was committed to taking the leak probe as far as he could. Late in the year, he came up with a plan to have White House aides sign statements waiving any confidentiality agreements they had with journalists. It was an idea drawn from his recent experience in the FBI inspection division, which investigated alleged misconduct by his fellow FBI agents. In those cases, Eckenrode routinely asked the agents under suspicion to sign statements waiving their rights to counsel. After all, if they worked for the FBI (and wanted to keep working for the FBI), they should have nothing to hide. And they were expected to cooperate fully with bureau investigators. Since the president had instructed White House aides to cooperate fully in the CIA leak case, shouldn’t they sign similar waivers undoing whatever agreements they had with reporters? With such waivers in hand, Eckenrode would have some leverage with the journalists whose testimony he would need. He could say to the reporters, your source says he or she has no problem with your talking. So talk.

  The waivers, signed by White House staffers under prodding by Eckenrode, would be dismissed by most reporters as inherently coercive. A reporter couldn’t rely on such a document to determine if his or her source really wanted the reporter to talk to the FBI. But there was little doubt that the waivers, the wording of which Eckenrode worked out with Justice Department lawyers, made members of the White House staff squirm. Libby’s lawyer later said his client had had no choice but to sign the waiver; otherwise, he’d probably be fired. The waivers were a signal. Most leak cases weren’t vigorously investigated. This one would be.

  WITH Eckenrode chasing Rove (and others), his inquiry, which was being monitored by the criminal division of the Justice Department, created a problem for Attorney General John Ashcroft, who was receiving Eckenrode’s progress reports. Rove had formerly worked for Ashcroft as a campaign consultant in the 1980s and 1990s. Ashcroft’s political committees had paid Rove nearly $750,000. Democrats were howling that Ashcroft couldn’t be trusted to oversee an investigation of the White House and the man who had helped him become a governor and a senator. They argued that Ashcroft ought to step aside and hand the case to a special counsel.

  In late October, during the confirmation hearings of James Comey, who had been nominated to be deputy attorney general, Senator Chuck Schumer held up a chart that looked like octopuses wrestling with one another. It was entitled “A Tangled Web…?” and it showed the various connections between Ashcroft, his chief of staff, the White House, Rove, Gonzales, and others. (The chart noted that Bush and acting Deputy Attorney General Robert McCallum had gone to Yale together and had been members of “the ultra-secretive brotherhood of the Skull and Bones society.”) Schumer, who had helped Comey become U.S. attorney in New York two years previously, wanted a special counsel for the leak case, and he wanted to hear Comey say he was amenable to that.

  Comey wouldn’t discuss the particulars of the leak case. But he assured Schumer he believed in erring “on the side of caution” on ethics issues. “I don’t care about politics,” he said. “I don’t care about expediency. I don’t care about friendship. I care about doing the right thing.”

  Comey was confirmed by the Senate on December 9. Schumer called to congratulate him and added, I’m giving you a month to get settled—meaning that Schumer would not hassle him about the leak case for several weeks. But Schumer made it clear: he expected Comey to do the right thing.

  DAYS earlier, Joe and Valerie Wilson had been in the news again. Vanity Fair magazine had sent out advance copies of a long article on the Wilson affair, and the piece included a two-page photo of the Wilsons sitting in his Jaguar convertible with the White House in the background. In the shot, Valerie Wilson was wearing large sunglasses, and a scarf was wrapped around her head—intended as a disguise. But Joe Wilson’s critics pounced. Two months earlier, Wilson had said on Meet the Press that his wife “would rather chop off her right arm than say anything to the press, and she will not allow herself to be photographed.” His critics accused the Wilsons of being publicity hogs, and they pointed to the photo as evidence Valerie Wilson was not too concerned about her cover and personal security.

  With bloggers and journalists following every twist in the Wilson affair, any new development was fodder for instant analysis and argument. Referring to the Vanity Fair photo, popular conservative blogger Glenn Reynolds wrote: “Sorry—if you’re really an undercover spy, and really worried about national security, you don’t do this sort of thing. Unless, perhaps, you’re a self-promoter first, and a spy second. Or your husband is.” Tim Noah, the “Chatterbox” columnist for Slate, noted that the photo had followed the Wilsons’ joint appearance at several high-profile Washington events and wrote, “Plame’s extended striptease, enthusiastically barked by her husband, now has Chatterbox wondering how much of Wilson’s story to believe. (It also has Chatterbox wondering when the couple will start renting themselves out for birthday parties.)”

  Valerie Wilson apologized to her superiors for having allowed herself to be photographed. But Joe Wilson later argued that the photo had in no way affected his wife’s already blown cover: “With proper precautions taken, I saw no reason to deprive ourselves of the pleasure of being photographed together as the happily married couple that we are.”

  ON DECEMBER 13, there was—finally—good news out of Iraq. Saddam Hussein was found by a team of U.S. Special Forces hiding in a hole six feet underground nine miles from his hometown of Tikrit. The once brutal sixty-six-year-old tyrant looked bewildered and pathetic. He had a pistol with him but never fired it. He also had $750,000 in $100 bills. In Baghdad, as the news spread, Iraqis took to the streets to celebrate, dancing, honking their horns, and shooting guns into the air. In Washington, officials were exultant. The president gave a short televised speech. “This afternoon, I have a message for the Iraqi people,” he said. “This event brings further assurance that the torture chambers and the secret police are gone forever.”

  Commentators speculated that the capture of Saddam would break the back of the insurgency. Perhaps the president’s vision of a free, democratic, and peaceful Iraq would prevail after all. Perhaps the dictator would even cooperate and tell coalition forces where his missing weapons of mass destruction were.*72

  COMEY didn’t need a month to figure out what to do about the leak case. The attorney general’s top aides were political operatives whose first allegiance was to Ashcroft. They realized that any further involvement on Ashcroft’s part would hurt their boss, who hadn’t abandoned the idea of running for office again. Comey discussed the matter with Ashcroft, and on December 30, the deputy attorney general called a surprise press conference at the Justice Department. Comey announced that in “an abundance of caution,” he and Ashcroft had decided the attorney general and his entire personal staff should remove themselves from the case.

  Comey then revealed a bigger surprise: he was going to hand over the leak case to his close friend and colleague Patrick Fitzgerald, the U.S. attorney in Chicago. Fitzgerald would be appointed special counsel. Comey praised Fitzgerald, noting that he had a “sterling reputation” and was “absolutely apolitical.” Comey and Fitzgerald had years earlier worked cases together at the U.S. attorney’s office in New York. He was, Comey remarked, “Eliot Ness with a Harvard law degree and a sense of humor.”

  The deputy attorney general told the reporters he was delegating all authority for the investigation to Fitzgerald. This special counsel wouldn’t have to report to him or anyone else at Justice. Comey was granting Fitzgerald extraordinary powers that no other federal prosecutor in the cou
ntry had. Even independent counsels of the past, such as Kenneth Starr, had at least been accountable to a three-judge panel that oversaw their work. Fitzgerald would be answerable to no one.

  Eckenrode didn’t know Fitzgerald. But he met him at the Justice Department that day and gave him a crash briefing on the case. He handed his new boss a thick binder filled with forty dense FBI reports, known as 302s, that summarized the interviews Eckenrode and his team had conducted to date. Eckenrode then drove him to Reagan National Airport, and the two had a beer while waiting for Fitzgerald’s plane. They talked about their New Year’s Eve plans. Eckenrode would be spending it with his family. Fitzgerald, a longtime bachelor, mentioned he had a date with a woman he’d been seeing.

  On New Year’s Day, Fitzgerald called Eckenrode at home. He wanted to talk about those 302s. Fitzgerald had read them all. Having mastered the most obscure details, he started questioning Eckenrode about the interviews. He tossed out ideas—brilliant ones, Eckenrode thought—for moving the case forward.

  Pat, Eckenrode interrupted, how was your New Year’s Eve? How did your date go? Oh that, Fitzgerald said. He explained that he had worked late at the office. Eckenrode had the impression that the date never came off—and that Fitzgerald had spent New Year’s Eve reading 302s. (A Fitzgerald spokesman later denied that the prosecutor had “stood up” his date.)