Bob Woodward

by State of Denial (lit)

  An at-sea commander, Clark had served General Shelton in the premier Joint Staff billets: director of operations, or J-3, overseeing all actual military operations, then later as his director of the Joint Staff. Some 25 years earlier Clark, as a Navy lieutenant, had been the commanding officer of a patrol gunboat, the USS Grand Rapids (PG-98). His executive officer had been a lieutenant junior grade named Scott Fry, now the Joint Staff director.

  Though Rumsfeld had profound doubts about the Navy and Fry, he believed that CNO Admiral Clark was on the road to fixing the Navy.

  I've got an issue here that's developed with my military assistant, Rumsfeld said when he reached Admiral Clark. You know, it's just not working out.

  Well, I can understand, Clark said. He knew about Rear Admiral Quinn's struggles. Anything we need to do. You need to have the best support up there that we can get you.

  Well, I don't want him to get hurt, Rumsfeld said.

  Mr. Secretary, I can do something about that, Clark said. I can assure you that I will order him to command of a carrier battle group, which is the premier thing that could be done in his grade. It will be no harm, no foul. And it will be up to him to make the rest of his future. I can do this in a matter of minutes. So this is done. We've got to protect you and the office, and obviously the people leaving there must do well. So this is a done deal.

  Okay, Vern. Great. Well, thanks.

  Clark was about to hang up.

  Whoa, Vern. Wait a minute. I've got to have a replacement.

  Yes.

  They are telling me about an Admiral G that works for you.

  You've got to be kidding, Mr. Secretary.

  Is he any good?

  Of course, he's good. He ran my transition team. He's fabulous.

  Clark said that Rumsfeld didn't have a three-star billet for his military assistant but it could be worked out. Same rules apply, he said, You've got to be taken care of.

  Admiral G was in his office when he received the call.

  The secretary of what? Giambastiani asked.

  The secretary of defense.

  I don't know the secretary of defense.

  Well, he wants to see you.

  i’ve written these two things, Rumsfeld said to Giambastiani. Would you read them and critique?

  The first document was just a page but the other was about five pages reflecting on the differences in the Pentagon between Rumsfeld's first tour in 1975-77 and 2001, the latest version of the Anchor Chain memo. Critiquing the papers was just the kind of little test Giambastiani loved, the meticulous nuclear-power-trained mind forced to pry apart the exact meaning and discover what had been left out and what questions were unasked. He spent about 45 minutes reading and critiquing. Rumsfeld asked him to stay for lunch and the next day called and asked him to become his military assistant.

  In early May, Rear Admiral Quinn left to command the USS Truman carrier battle group, and three-star Admiral G moved to Rumsfeld's office as senior military assistant. One distinct advantage he immediately had was that as a 1970 Naval Academy graduate he outranked the 1971 Naval Academy graduate Scott Fry.

  The previous month, Rumsfeld had sent a two-sentence snowflake to the deputy defense secretary, Paul Wolfowitz. A person in Illinois sent me this interview from 22 years ago, where I talk about government. You might want to read it. A photocopy of an article from a 1979 Fortune magazine was attached. Rumsfeld was opining on what it was like to be a former top government official in the world of business. He talked about setting up task forces, getting rid of underperforming businesses, and management style.

  I was a flight instructor in the Navy, Rumsfeld had said. The first thing a fledgling pilot usually does, when he climbs into a plane, is to grab hold of the stick and squeeze it so hard that he gets a sore arm. With a grip that tight, every movement is jerky. When government officials get into a tight situation, they have a tendency to do the same thing. They get jerky, over-control, micromanage.

  Some of the senior civilians Rumsfeld appointed were astonished and alarmed at how hard he was now squeezing the Pentagon controls. He micromanaged daily Pentagon life and rode roughshod over people. Rumsfeld had picked Powell A. Moore, 63, a Georgia native with more than four decades in Washington, to be his assistant secretary of defense for legislative affairs, the key link between the Pentagon and the Congress. Moore had a long and colorful history in Washington, including serving as one of the spokesmen for the Nixon reelection committee who had had the unenviable task of issuing categorical denials to Watergate stories. He knew how to work for difficult people. Moore had accepted the job as congressional liaison with an agreement that he would have direct access to Rumsfeld. They had many discussions about the care and feeding of the elected representatives.

  Few better understood the Congress or how to oil the machine to make it work than Moore. But former Congressman Rumsfeld was not interested. Moore was surprised at Rumsfeld's contempt for Congress. He did not attempt to disguise his feelings.

  In one public confrontation at a hearing with Senator Susan Collins, the earnest Maine Republican, Rumsfeld had put her down in a manner that was stunning even for him. Collins's voice had quivered at one point. Later, Moore suggested to Rumsfeld that he call her, try to smooth things over.

  Hell, Rumsfeld said, she needs to apologize to me.

  Another time Moore saw a draft of a harsh letter Rumsfeld had dictated to Representative Ike Skelton of Missouri, the senior Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee. Tone it down, Moore recommended.

  If you let people kick you around, Rumsfeld told him, they'll do it again and again and again.

  Rumsfeld's micromanaging was almost comic. On one occasion, he led a delegation from Congress to the funeral in Columbia, South Carolina, for Representative Floyd Spence, a Republican who had been a pro-Pentagon hawk for three decades. Moore had arranged the seating on Rumsfeld's plane the way everything was done in Congress, by seniority.

  I don't want this, Rumsfeld declared and personally rearranged the seating, putting Representative Duncan Hunter, the California Republican who would soon become the House Armed Services Committee chairman, in the back.

  In May, Mississippi Senator Trent Lott, the majority leader, wanted one of his former aides named assistant secretary of the Navy for acquisitions. There was a big shipbuilding installation at Pascagoula, Mississippi, so for Lott it was home-state politics.

  Steve Herbits had another candidate in mind, someone he thought had more experience, and he was trying to get the appointment through. Herbits had planned to leave the Pentagon to go home to Florida by mid-May. According to some of the arcane rules for government contractors, it wasn't even clear he could legally stay at the Pentagon beyond May 15.

  Lott apparently didn't know about Herbits's impending departure, and put a hold on many confirmations from Defense.

  If you want your people confirmed, send Herbits back to Florida, Lott told Rumsfeld.

  The secretary was in a bind. If I cave in to that blackmail, I'll be blackmailed all the time, he told Moore. He called Herbits in.

  You can't leave, he said.

  Why?

  Because I can't be looking like I'm bowing to Lott.

  Eventually Herbits's time was up, though, and he went back to Florida for a while. Senior Pentagon civilians were soon being confirmed by the Senate.

  Rumsfeld had been a champion wrestler at Princeton in the 154-pound class, and Moore found that nearly every conversation with him was a wrestling match. Who's going to get on top? Who's going to take the other person down? Once Moore asked Rumsfeld about his golf game. I play it like I wrestle. Moore took that to mean that Rumsfeld gripped too tight and swung too hard at the ball, classic mistakes in golf.

  The secretary was never satisfied with what came out of the building, so he sent over a draft of upcoming congressional testimony on a new defense strategy to one of his best friends, Kenneth Adelman.

  Adelman had first worked for Rumsfeld in 197
0 when Rumsfeld headed the Office of Economic Opportunity, a federal anti-poverty agency, under President Richard Nixon. Another of Rumsfeld's assistants at OEO had been Dick Cheney. Adelman had also been Rumsfeld's civilian special assistant during his first tour as secretary of defense, and later served as head of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency during the Reagan administration. Adelman had a doctorate in political theory and was an outspoken, pro-military hawk.

  Before every good inauguration—meaning inaugurations of Republican presidents—Adelman and his wife hosted a black-tie dinner at their home. Rumsfeld and Cheney regularly attended, but in 1981, Rumsfeld wanted to have a brunch at the Jockey Club before the inauguration of Ronald Reagan, and instructed Adelman, Invite someone new, and just make sure that he's interesting. Adelman brought a 38-year-old professor at Johns Hopkins University named Paul Wolfowitz, who had been a deputy assistant secretary of defense during the Carter administration. After the brunch, both Cheney and Rumsfeld reported that they had been very impressed. They wondered where Wolfowitz had come from and how he knew so much.

  Afterward, the Rumsfeld and Adelman families often vacationed together, staying at Rumsfeld's homes in Taos and Santa Fe, and his apartment in Chicago. In 1986, Rumsfeld took the Adelmans to his vacation home in the Dominican Republic.

  I'm running for president, Rumsfeld told Adelman. I want you to run it.

  It's a specialized field, Adelman protested. He wouldn't know the first thing about managing a presidential campaign.

  You'll learn it, Rumsfeld said.

  No way. Rumsfeld didn't need an amateur.

  You can do the issues.

  Adelman laughed. No, you know you'll do that yourself.

  You can write speeches then.

  No, I've already done that. He would of course support his old friend's candidacy and help out, but he wouldn't run the campaign.

  Rumsfeld's presidential ambitions sputtered early the next year when he couldn't raise the money, but the friendship flourished.

  Now, Adelman, 54, read the planned testimony for the big rollout of Rumsfeld's new national defense strategy. The testimony is getting there nicely, he wrote in a three-page snowflake of his own to Rumsfeld, but still needs labels for the Secretary's new approach. He proposed A MARGIN OF SAFETY FOR AMERICA.

  He also offered two warnings. After our democracies defeated the

  twin totalitarian monsters of Nazism and Communism, Americans expected an era of peace. Not so fast, Adelman said, noting that in 1914 the

  same expectation had prevailed. He quoted the young but ever-wise

  Winston Churchill, who sarcastically summed up such optimism:

  War is too foolish, too fantastic, to be thought of in the twentieth century. ... Civilization has climbed above such perils….The interdependence of nations . . . the sense of public law. . . . have rendered such

  nightmares impossible. Adelman noted that Churchill delivered the

  punch line in his most ironic voice: ‘Are you quite sure? It would be a pity

  to be wrong.'

  Adelman added, It was a pity, with the First World War breaking out that very year, only to be followed by an even more disastrous Second.

  Unimagined wars become unimaginable tragedies. Some sixty million deaths showed what a huge pity it was to be so wrong.

  Rumsfeld wrote use in the margin by the Churchill quote.

  The last paragraph of the Adelman memo said: ADD IN SOMEWHERE: On not knowing where the threat will come—surprise element. My successor and then predecessor, Dick Cheney, when taking office, could not have imagined that his main military confrontation would be the then-friendly country of Iraq. The country was never mentioned in Cheney's confirmation testimony and no senator thought to ask him any question about Iraq.

  Rumsfeld's May 16 snowflake on Adelman's comments remarked that they were first-rate and should be incorporated. I think this Churchill quote definitely should be used.

  Twelve days later, in a Memorial Day speech at Arlington National Cemetery, Rumsfeld used the Churchill quote in full and then added that to expect the end of wars in the 21st century, would be much more than a pity.

  Ten days later Rumsfeld used the Churchill quote at a NATO meeting in Brussels. At his Senate testimony on Defense strategy, he noted that Cheney had not mentioned Iraq in confirmation testimony in 1989, and used Adelman's margin of safety language to define the strategy.

  In May, Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia publicly refused an invitation to the White House, saying the United States was blind to the plight of the Palestinians. Don't they see what is happening to Palestinian children, women, the elderly—the humiliation, the hunger? the Crown Prince said.

  On June 1, a suicide bomber attacked a Tel Aviv nightclub, killing 21, the largest attack in nine months. I condemn in the strongest terms the heinous terrorist attack in Tel Aviv this Sabbath evening, Bush said in response. There is no justification for senseless attacks against innocent civilians. Two days later, Prince Bandar and Rihab Massoud had dinner in the White House residence with Bush, Powell and Rice.

  Bandar brought a lengthy outline of a paper on how the Arab world viewed the United States. It was all part of Bush's education on the ways of the world—as seen through Saudi eyes—a remarkable, five-hour session that started at 7 p.m. and kept Bush up well past his bedtime.

  The situation in the Middle East was getting worse, Bandar said. “This continuous deterioration will give an opportunity for extremists on both sides to grow and they will be the only winners. The United States and the Arab mutethila —friendly moderates— will pay a very high price. He continued, There is no doubt that moderate Arab countries, as well as the United States, have lost the media war and the Arab public opinion. What the average Arab person sees every day is painful and very disturbing. Women, children, elderly are being killed, tortured by the Israelis.

  Israeli military units, often armed with U.S.-made weapons, were making raids into Palestinian territory as reprisals for attacks. The previous year a Palestinian boy had been killed by Israeli troops while his father tried to shield him—an image played over and over on Arab television.

  Bandar said it added up to an image that the U.S. stood behind the Israelis, with the goal of destroying the Palestinian Authority and the Palestinian economy. The continuous use of American-made weapons against civilians, against Palestinian institutions and entities confirms to public opinion that resisting Israeli occupation by all possible means is then considered legitimate in the mind of the Arab Street.

  Bush, Powell and Rice tried to rebut, but Bandar went on. He was not necessarily talking about facts but impressions. Such impressions become fact in the Arab minds, Bandar said, and that will have a total devastating and extremely dangerous impact on U.S. interests in the region. And unfortunately, the impression the Arab world has now of the United States, the only superpower in this world, isn't of a just and fair country but as one totally on the side of the Israelis.

  Bandar cited examples of the United States condemning violence when Israelis were killed—as Bush had done two days before— and at the same time, total silence when something similar happens that caused the killing of Palestinians. This jeopardizes the work of the countries that are too close to the United States, such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan.

  Bandar said these countries realized the special relationship between the U.S. and Israel, but it looked one-sided. The United States has to find a way to separate the actions of the Israeli government and its own interests in the region.

  Overall regional deterioration had, he said, even threatened the internal situation in Jordan and therefore King Abdullah's position internally is shaken. President Mubarak is also having a very difficult situation. In a highly unusual but careful admission, he said that even in Saudi Arabia, for the first time in 30 years we are facing a very questionable internal situation.

  Bandar knew which buttons to push. The continuous deterioration is creating a gol
den opportunity for Saddam Hussein: one, to create an artificial petroleum crisis and disturb the market. Second, he said, Saddam's continuous calling for jihad against the Zionist enemy and the imperialist America will create a very fertile ground. The Arab Street will act, he said, particularly in the absence of real, genuine American involvement and balanced policies.

  The collapse of the Palestinian Authority, he said, as well as the loss of hope among the Palestinians will create a very dangerous situation and not only difficulty for the United States and the moderate Arab states but even for Israel.

  Bandar launched into a searing critique of Israel's policy of destroying the homes of anyone involved in terrorism against Israel. How would you, Mr. President, think the American people would react if McVeigh who did the Oklahoma City bombing, you go and destroy all the McVeigh family's homes?

  Bandar was imploring. Mr. President, you've got to do something. You've got to do something. I mean, you're killing us basically. We are being slaughtered right and left, and you're not doing anything.

  Bush had vehemently criticized Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and his decision at the last minute to walk away from a settlement with Israel at the end of the Clinton administration. Arafat is a liar, Bush said. He was impossible to work with, to trust. He would not negotiate with him.

  Fine, Bandar said, he's a liar. We know that. You know that. He's a schmuck. But he is the only schmuck we have to deal with. The problem was larger than one man.

  Bandar's final message was: The region is boiling and it's building and it's building.