Bob Woodward

by State of Denial (lit)

  The critics or the opiners, as Rumsfeld called them, the people who don't have responsibility for making the decisions, don't understand. Many of them say, 'Oh, it's Rumsfeld,' as though I'm sitting around with a black box figuring all this out. And anyone who knows me or watched me do anything knows that I don't do it that way. I come here to this job knowing that there's no one smart enough to do this job. So he relied on smart people, he said, and on advice from multiple sources.

  But half a dozen of the generals and civilians who worked most closely with Rumsfeld made it clear in interviews that Rumsfeld drove the train.

  By the summer of 2006, Rumsfeld had softened his position on the issue of whether there were enough troops.

  It's entirely possible there were too many at some point and too few at some point, because no one's perfect, he said. All of us that were trying our best to make these judgments were doing it in a context of concern about having enough to get the job done, and enable a process, political and economic process, to go forward, and not so many that it persuaded people that we were there to steal their oil and occupy their country and disrupt and cause disturbances in the neighboring countries that cause the overthrow of some of those other regimes. And so we made the best judgment we could. In retrospect I have not seen or heard anything from the other opiners that suggests to me that they have any reason to believe that they were right and we were wrong. Nor can I prove we were right and they were wrong. The only thing I can say is they seem to have a lot more certainty than my assessment of the facts would permit me to have.

  David Kay returned to Washington in time to give an interim report to Congress on October 2, 2003. We're not going to give it to the White House until the morning that you're testifying, Tenet told Kay. If the

  White House didn't see the testimony beforehand, it would be harder to pressure Kay to shape what he would say.

  We have not yet found stocks of weapons, Kay said in his prepared testimony, but we are not yet at the point where we can say definitively either that such weapon stocks do not exist or that they existed before the war and our only task is to find where they have gone. The new twist Kay put on his work was to say that he had found dozens of WMD-related program activities. In essence, Kay was trying to have it both ways: No stockpiles had been found but they might someday be found.

  News reports of Kay's remarks correctly focused almost exclusively on his acknowledgment that no weapons had been found. Kay was interviewed by PBS news anchor Jim Lehrer that night. We found quite a bit of activity in the weapons area, but we have not, again, we have—haven't found the weapons.

  Powell, who had much at stake, called up Tenet, outraged that the administration had done such a poor job spinning the report. Facing escalating criticism, Bush tried to spin things himself the next day, saying that Kay's report states Saddam Hussein's regime had a clandestine network of biological laboratories, a live strain of deadly agent botulinum, sophisticated concealment efforts, and advanced design work on prohibited longer-range missiles. The botulinum was not in a weapon or near one, though the president seemed to imply it was about to be put on a missile.

  A memo creating Rice's Iraq Stabilization Group—the new NSC effort to coordinate Bremer that would be run by Blackwill—wound up in the hands of David Sanger, the resourceful New York Times White House reporter. On October 6, the Times ran a front-page story headlined White House to Overhaul Iraq and Afghan Missions.

  Bremer read the story online in Baghdad. It was the first time he'd heard of the Iraq Stabilization Group, or that Rice would be taking a larger role.

  Rice insisted to Bremer when they spoke that the reorganization was not really a reorganization. It reflected no unhappiness with Bremer, she said, and was designed only to mobilize the bureaucracy.

  At a news conference the next day, Rumsfeld was plainly irritated.

  I think you'd have to ask Condi that question, he said when a reporter asked about the Iraq Stabilization Group, insisting he'd not heard of the reorganization before it leaked in the press.

  A reporter tried to follow up.

  I said I don't know. Isn't that clear? You don't understand English? Rumsfeld said. I was not there for the backgrounding.

  Rumsfeld thought it was outrageous that Rice would declare she was in charge. Over the next several days he observed with some satisfaction that she was backpedaling.

  His concern was that the stories created the impression there was a new strategy and that somehow the national security adviser, the NSC staff and the president's staff were now responsible for the 130,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, and not he. How many times did he need to remind everyone? The National Security Council was not in the chain of command. The problem was not that there might be a new strategy. The problem was that there was not much of a strategy at all other than to leave Bremer in charge.

  In Iraq, David Kay had a call from Scooter Libby.

  The vice president wants to know if you've looked at this area, Libby said. We have indications—and here are the geocoordinates— that something's buried there.

  Kay went to the mapping and imagery experts on his team. They pulled up the satellite and other surveillance photos of the location. It was in the middle of Lebanon.

  That's where we're going next, joked one of the imagery experts.

  At another point Kay got a cable from the CIA that the vice president wanted him to send someone to Switzerland to meet with an Iranian named Manucher Ghorbanifar.

  I recognize this one, Kay said when he saw the cable. This one I'm not going to do.

  Ghorbanifar had been the Iranian middleman in the Reagan administration's disastrous secret arms-for-hostage deals in the Iran-contra scandal. Though he had been a CIA source in the 1970s, the agency had terminated him in 1983 and the next year issued a formal burn notice warning that Ghorbanifar was a talented fabricator.

  This time, Kay read, Ghorbanifar claimed to have an Iranian source who knew all about Iraqi nuclear weapons, but who wanted $2 million in advance, and who would not talk directly to the U.S., only through Ghorbanifar.

  Kay discovered that the latest Ghorbanifar stunt involved Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute, a former NSC colleague of Oliver North who had been involved with Ghorbanifar in the Iran-contra days.

  Kay sent a cable to the CIA saying, Unless you give me direct instructions to talk to him, I will not have any member of the ISG talk to this guy. The guy is a known fabricator-peddler, and it will ruin someone. If the DCI wants to send me direct instructions to do it, I will of course do it. But it's got to be direct.

  The idea was dropped. Cheney was acting as a kind of super-investigator, trying to ferret out the elusive WMD, Kay concluded. But there were always loose ends in intelligence, disparate bits of information that could lead to all kinds of wild conclusions. But by focusing in on only a few items and assigning them great significance, they could wind up with a skewed picture. It continued to remind Kay of the blockbuster novel The Da Vinci Code, in which a Harvard professor and a French policewoman piece together clues in the Bible and in great works of art and myths that supposedly reveal a giant conspiracy to hide the true nature and life of Jesus Christ.

  Kay was going to stick with the basics—human sources, people who might really know something.

  Bremer flew back and forth between Baghdad and the U.S., trying to keep things moving and dealing with what he called the 8,000-mile screwdriver that was twisted by Washington officials and bureaucrats.

  On October 27, 2003, he was at the White House to meet with Bush. Rice, Card, Rumsfeld and Myers were in the room.

  On the video screen, General Abizaid argued that they needed to bring back officers from Saddam's army.

  There are risks in that, said Bremer, who had signed CPA Order Number 2 formally disbanding the army as one of his first acts in Iraq. We've got to proceed with great care so we don't give the impression that we're reconstituting the old regime.

  Well, one thing is clear
, the president said, according to Bremer's book. We stay the course in Iraq. We don't show any weakness in the wake of these new attacks. There'll be no loss of resolve.

  Doubt was corrosive and would lead only to hand-wringing. The president had been the head cheerleader for the football team in his prep school days. There is little or no evidence that he engaged in much substantive policy debate at this point in the war cabinet meetings. His role was to express confidence and enthusiasm.

  At the Pentagon, Rumsfeld presented Bremer with what was being called the Wolfowitz-Feith Option, a plan to turn over sovereignty as early as April 9, 2004, the one-year anniversary of the fall of Saddam.

  Too early, Bremer replied. We'd risk Iraq falling into disorder or civil war. He wanted to wait until there was an elected government and a constitution. There was no way they could do that by April.

  Rumsfeld pushed. The next day, at a principals meeting, he said they had to turn over sovereignty to remove the label that the United States was an occupier. General Pace, the JCS vice chairman, made the same point to Bremer.

  The most important military strategy is to accelerate the governance track, Pace said. So the generals, responsible for security and a military strategy, were looking for early sovereignty and politics as a solution.

  Pace later said it was a comment that Bremer might have taken out of context. You can kill folks for the next 27 years, Pace said, and you're not going to have a better environment. What you have to do is provide enough security, inside of which the governance can take place, and that's why the governance piece is so important. They are intertwined.

  Powell consistently argued to Bush that all the talk about reconstruction and the political process, oil exploration and electric generation, and economic development and privatization is wonderful, but security is most important.

  This is all great, but there's only one issue, Powell told Bush on one occasion. And if you solve this one, this is going to look like the greatest thing anyone's ever thought of. That's security. If you don't have security, none of this follows. Everything has to be focused on security, more so than oil or electricity or water or anything else.

  Yeah, Bush said. I understand.

  It's not going to happen if you don't get the security situation, Powell said.

  Classified reports showed that the insurgent attacks had jumped to 1,000 in the month of October, more than 30 a day. Many did not succeed, but it was an extraordinary level of violence. The numbers were kept secret.

  To attempt to answer the questions the president had posed after the U.N. headquarters bombing, John McLaughlin put together a briefing entitled Who Is the Enemy? that he gave the deputies and principals. He identified four groups: former Baathists with a restoration agenda to bring back Saddam; foreign fighters; Iraqi nationalists who hated the occupation; and tribal members angry over the death of family members and the heavy-handed door kicking of the coalition military.

  At the full NSC meetings Bremer presented the options on sovereignty. He backed off a bit and was now willing to turn over sovereignty by the end of 2004—more than a year away and after the U.S. presidential election.

  Bush kept cheerleading, according to Bremer, who said the president closed the meeting almost from his public script. We are going to succeed in Iraq despite the difficult times we are going through. Nobody should be in any doubt. We will do the right thing irrespective of what the newspapers or political opponents say about it. Success in Iraq will change the world. The American people need to have no doubt that we're confident about the outcome. We may not succeed by the time of the election. So be it.

  Afterward, Bush invited Bremer to work out with him in the private third-floor White House gym. Bush asked Bremer about Rumsfeld.

  What kind of a person is he to work for? Does he really micromanage?

  I like Don, Mr. President. I've known him thirty years, admire him, consider him highly intelligent. But he does micromanage.

  Bush looked surprised, according to Bremer's account.

  Don terrifies his civilian subordinates so that I can rarely get any decisions out of anyone but him. This works all right, but isn't ideal.

  Bush didn't offer any firm conclusions on the sovereignty issue but his bottom line was obvious. We are not going to fail in Iraq, the president said again.

  Bremer went back to Iraq on October 31. He was reasonably certain he had Bush's backing to hold off on an early transfer of sovereignty.

  Rice voiced concern to Andy Card about Bush's one-on-one meetings with Bremer. What issues were raised? Were any decisions made or instructions given? Such a private meeting gave Bremer incredible latitude to operate. He could invoke presidential authority now for almost anything he did, or at minimum claim he interpreted the president's statements to back his actions.

  Card replied that the job of envoy was so important that the president and Bremer needed to get to know each other.

  Rumsfeld was furious and spoke with Card about being excluded from a meeting one of his subordinates had with the president. He works for me! Rumsfeld bellowed. He's the presidential envoy, Card responded.

  At another NSC meeting with the president, the issue of the Iraqi army came up.

  Powell wanted to use some mid-level leaders of the old army to create the new one. Look, he said, why don't we get these battalion commanders, and since we need to reconstitute a force, get the battalion commanders, give them a bunch of money, and tell them to go re-create their battalions. These people need money.

  Rumsfeld's answer was that they were already recruiting and training police and a new army. Numbers were thrown around. First it was 54,000 and then double that, and at one point 200,000.

  Bremer wondered where the hell the numbers were coming from. On the secure video piped into the White House Situation Room, Bremer could be seen shaking his head in disagreement when the last number was floated. Two hundred thousand? It was news to him. At other times he could be seen writing comments on a mound of CPA paperwork in front of him.

  Bush and Rice wanted to cut short the occupation, but now they were caught in Bremer's long political process. Nobody wants to be occupied. We wouldn't want to be occupied, Bush said time and again. The question was how to get out of occupation.

  In Baghdad, Meghan O'Sullivan and Roman Martinez were wrestling with the complex, three-step electoral process that Bremer and the U.N. had put in place. They had been worried for some time that Bremer's objection to direct elections for a group to write the constitution could spark a governance crisis they would not be able to weather. It looked as if Bremer was going to make it a red line, and that that would cause Sistani to disengage. People close to Sistani told O'Sullivan that he had issued the June 28 fatwa insisting that the constitution be written by properly elected Iraqis because he worried that Iraq would resemble American-occupied Japan after World War II. MacArthur's staff had written most of the nation's postwar constitution, and Japan, which had unconditionally surrendered, had adopted it with only minor changes.

  Sistani wanted full elections, but it would take another six to nine months, likely doubling the time the U.S. would occupy Iraq.

  At the same time, another looming crisis was that the 25-member interim Governing Council might revolt or dissolve over the issue. Getting on the wrong side of Sistani or losing the Governing Council could be a major blow that would leave them without viable alternatives.

  At one NSC meeting in the fall of 2003, the discussion turned to the role of Grand Ayatollah Sistani. Bremer was piped in on the secure video network.

  Are we going to let a 75-year-old cleric decide what our policy is going to be in Iraq? he asked.

  Jerry, Vice President Cheney said, you know, I wonder if there's another way to look at this. I'm beginning to think that we have to deal with Sistani the way you deal in the Congress with a cranky committee chairman if you're in the executive branch. You may not like him. You may not agree with him. But you've got to cultivate him because he
can do you a lot of harm.

  From that point on Sistani was the certified go-to cleric for the Bush administration. Whether cranky or Iranian or beloved, one thing was for sure: He had power over millions in Iraq.

  O'Sullivan and Martinez put together two memos dated November 4 that outlined an alternative plan, and briefed Bremer on it in a bomb shelter during a mortar attack. The idea was to create an interim constitution without calling it that, since Saddam had run the country under an interim constitution and the very idea had a terrible connotation for the Iraqis. Instead, it would be called the Transitional Administrative Law, or TAL. Though it would be drafted and imposed on Iraq in large part by Americans, it would include benchmarks requiring elections and the drafting of a new, permanent constitution by a specific date.

  Someone was sent down to Najaf to run the idea by Sistani. He approved.

  Hadley and Blackwill told Rice that perhaps they could have interim elections in Iraq and then transfer sovereignty. Rice called Bremer.

  Look, Bremer told her. We have a new proposal, I think, an emerging consensus. He outlined it for her.

  Don't you think you should come back here and let us all talk about this first, because this is really kind of a presidential-level decision.

  Sure. I'll be on a plane tomorrow.

  Hadley breathed a sigh of relief. Hallelujah, he told Rice. We just had a real break.

  I told Jerry Bremer he's got to come back, Rice told the president.

  Why'd you do that? Bush asked.

  Because I think we'd better have this discussion here.

  We do not have a military strategy for victory in Iraq, Bremer complained to Cheney in a secure phone call several days later.

  I've been asking the same question, Cheney said. What's our strategy to win? My impression is that the Pentagon's mind-set is that the war's over and they're now in the 'mopping-up' phase. They fail to see that we're in a major battle against terrorists in Iraq and elsewhere.