Eleven days later, the 9/11 Commission released its report. Among its many recommendations was the creation of a director of national intelligence who would oversee the entire intelligence community, including the CIA.
Judge Silberman and some other members of the WMD commission felt they had been preempted by the 9/11 Commission. What was their purpose now? But if the commission pulled the plug on itself, the White House would lose its political cover on the Iraq WMD intelligence issue just months before the U.S. presidential election.
Card called Silberman. The president wants you to know that just because the 9/11 Commission came out with a report, he doesn't want you to stop. He suggested, Can you give us some kind of structural analysis of the 9/11 report, its structural recommendations?
Silberman and Robb wrote a memo addressed to their fellow commissioners on the 9/11 Commission's recommendations and sent it to Card. Soon afterward, Silberman and his wife were traveling in the western U.S. They stopped to have dinner at Cheney's house in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Enormously helpful, Cheney said of the memo.
We don't implement was one of Hadley's refrains to Frank Miller. Implementation was the job of the various departments and agencies, like the Pentagon and State Department. The role of the National Security Council was to coordinate. If Miller couldn't get people to implement a solution to one problem or another, Hadley instructed, Bring it to me, and I'll get it done at deputies, meaning the deputies committee. Miller thought that was a bit of a farce. Nothing ever got done at the deputy level.
Rice's refrain was entirely different. If things weren't happening through normal channels, she told Miller, You know how to do it. You make things happen.
It was one of the many contradictions of daily life for Miller in the Bush White House.
One of the most inexcusable examples of failure to get things done, Miller felt, had to do with the classified Secret Internet Protocol Router Network (SIPRNET), which was used to store and communicate information about intelligence, operations orders and other technical data. The classified information on the SIPRNET had a caveat— NOFORN —meaning no foreigners were allowed access, a restriction that included even the British and Australian troops fighting alongside the Americans in Iraq.
At times it went beyond the absurd. British pilots flying American warplanes, F-117s and F-15Es, weren't allowed to read parts of the classified pilot manuals and maintenance manuals because they were marked NOFORN. In another case, raw intelligence data gathered by British operatives in Iraq was given to the U.S. intelligence fusion center that was supposed to merge all-source intelligence into one product.
The report came out and the British couldn't see it, let alone get a copy, because it was marked NOFORN.
Prime Minister Blair and Australian Prime Minister John Howard complained directly to the president about the issue several times. In July 2004, Bush signed a directive, supported by Rumsfeld and John McLaughlin as acting director of Central Intelligence, that said NOFORN would no longer apply to the British and Australians when they were planning for combat operations, training with the Americans or engaged in counterterrorism activities. Bush told Blair and Howard about the directive, saying, I've just signed something out. Problem solved.
But Miller soon discovered that instead of giving the Brits and Aussies access, the Pentagon began creating a new, separate SIPRNET for them. The SIPRNET had years of information stored on it and the U.S. military didn't want to give it to the British and Australians. It could take years to sort and comb through it all. The president's orders were to put the British and Australians on the real SIPRNET, not create some new version for them.
The problem dragged on. Months later, it still wasn't fixed.
We've got a really bad situation over here, General Abizaid told Armitage in frustration one day in the summer of 2004. Can't win it militarily.
Armitage passed this on to Powell. Later, Powell came back from a video conference that included the president and Abizaid.
He didn't say it here, what he told you, Powell said to Armitage.
I know, Armitage said. Worse, when he sat in on NSC meetings, the principals were now talking about body counts. The number of insurgents killed was a regular feature of the briefings. Either Bush asked or the military just started telling him. It had a bad and familiar ring to Armitage and the other Vietnam veterans in the meetings.
Abizaid had told the president earlier that there were about 5,000 violent insurgents. Mr. President, we've killed scads of them here, but I know that I told you at one time that there were 5,000 enemy, he later said, adding, We've killed well over 5,000 of them and there's a whole bunch still out there. At still another point Abizaid said they had killed three times the 5,000.
When there was a big battle around the Syrian border, the president, looking for any sign of progress, asked, How many did we kill?
Wanting to show progress, Abizaid rattled off the number.
In 2003, a year or so before these meetings, I interviewed Vice Chairman General Peter Pace of the Joint Chiefs several times. What stood out during several sessions was his emphatic denunciations of body counts. Not once in this building have we ever reported a number, he said. Probably because guys like me from Vietnam know what happens when you start counting. You completely skew the way people think, the way folks on the ground operate. What we want the people on the ground to understand is that we want to get the job done with the least amount of killing, but with whatever is needed to be done to protect our own guys.
Body counts continued to be reported and used as a measure of progress.
In August 2004, Frank Miller returned to Iraq, this time traveling with Pace, who was a Rumsfeld favorite.
Miller thought Pace was a wonderful man and officer, but found that he would not stand up to Rumsfeld. For four days the two men went around to Iraq's major cities and combat zones. On August 5, they stopped in at Camp Fallujah, where Pace pinned Purple Heart medals on seven Marines wounded in the seemingly endless siege. Miller kept asking the ground commanders at all levels the same question: What do you need?
The division commanders with between 10,000 to 20,000 men and women said: Translators. The brigade commanders with several thousand said: Translators. The battalion commanders with 600 to 800 troops: Translators. Small teams or platoons were being sent to search homes, seal off areas, knock on and break down doors without translators who could speak Arabic.
The shortage was unconscionable, Miller thought. If American troops and Iraqis couldn't talk to each other, the possibilities for misunderstanding were compounded. Monumental communication failures were occurring every day. Sometimes the troops on patrol might as well go in blind. Nothing could solidify the image of Americans as imperial occupiers more than teams of heavily armed soldiers with helmets and flak jackets careening around the country, unable to communicate, and seemingly uninterested in what the Iraqis thought, felt or wanted.
Miller was once again reminded of the value of ground truth. After they returned to Washington, he watched Pace, who had also got the message, expecting him to get the ball rolling. Nothing happened. Miller called Lieutenant General Walter L. Skip Sharp, the director of Strategic Plans and Policy, the J-5, on the Joint Staff.
Translators, Miller said. You need translators.
No, we don't, Sharp said. We need interrogators. His focus was on higher-skilled linguists who could not only speak Arabic but also knew how to elicit intelligence from captured Iraqis.
Fine, you need interrogators, Miller said, but added that they also needed more basic translators.
I'll talk to some of my people, Sharp promised. He reported back later that he had checked with some brigade commanders. We're fine, he said.
Goddamn it, Miller said, you're not fine.
Finally the Joint Staff sent a brigadier general to Mosul to check things out before he was scheduled to become the second in command of the U.S. military in that region.
I owe you an apology,
the general later reported to Miller.
Great. Why?
We need translators.
Miller wondered why an old civilian bureaucrat like himself on the NSC staff had to alert the military that they needed translators at the unit level. Kids were dying because of the shortage. He raised the issue with the commandant of the Marine Corps and the vice chief of staff of the Army, and finally with Rice.
Fix it, Rice said. Miller was to use his authority, although sometimes he wondered what exactly his authority was. Getting translators was hard; it could take years to train them, years they didn't have. He decided the solution was to get the State Department to hold an international job fair for translators. It didn't have to be in Iraq. They could go to Algeria or Morocco. Translators didn't need security clearances; they just needed people to speak both English and Arabic. Send them to Iraq, he thought, quarantine them at night inside a secure compound, take away their cell phones. Use them for six months and send them home with a big bonus. Money would talk.
Months later, the problem still had not been solved. It was now worse than a scandal, Miller believed. I think we fucked it up, he said later in growing despair. Still later, at the end of 2005, the we became an I, and he put the blame on himself. I failed and did not get it done, he said.
In August 2004, Moqtada al-Sadr, the young militant Shiite cleric, decided to challenge the U.S. Grand Ayatollah Sistani, the real Shiite power center in Iraq, was in London for medical treatment, and Moqtada had infiltrated his people into the city of Najaf and eventually into the holiest of Shiite shrines, the Imam Ali Mosque.
Moqtada had always been a troublemaker as far as the U.S. was concerned, and about 4,000 U.S. Marines and Army troops surrounded the area and were getting closer and closer to the Shrine of Ali.
Arab and Muslim leaders called the White House and sent messages that said, in effect, Whatever you do, do not attack the Shrine of Ali Mosque. Rice realized that an attack on the shrine would create such a problem with the Shiites that the United States would never be able to deliver on a unified Iraq. Her heart was in her throat. If that went bad, they might not be able to win.
Orders from Washington—the White House, the Pentagon and State—flooded into Baghdad. Negroponte was on leave, so General Casey and Jim Jeffrey attempted to juggle the mixed messages, which were variations of Deal with the guy, Don't inflame the Shiites, Work it out—that's why we have embassies and generals.
Jeffrey met every night with Acting Prime Minister Allawi. The secular Allawi, who didn't like the turbans, didn't want to let Sistani back in the country. Even if it meant storming the mosque, Allawi wanted to solve the problem without Sistani. We've got to crush them, Allawi told Blackwill.
With clearance from Washington, Jeffrey told Allawi, You can't do that. Sistani, the leader of millions of Iraqi Shiites, had to be allowed back into Iraq. Period. Please?
Allawi relented. His security adviser, Qasim Dawood, who had better relations with Sistanti, met the ayatollah when he came back through Basra in the south.
Casey ordered nearly every U.S. sniper team in the country to Najaf— Special Forces, Navy SEALs. They were cutting down dozens of Moqtada's men in the citylike compound around the mosque.
Where the hell is John Negroponte? asked Jeffrey, who realized it could be the whole ball game. Negroponte, who was in the Aegean Sea on vacation, was trying to get back. Allawi sent a soft ultimatum to Moqtada that Jeffrey thought was essentially a they-win, we-lose proposition. His anger was exceeded only by his nervousness.
Sistani then ordered a march on Najaf and the siege of the Shrine of Ali.
What are you doing out there? was the question that came in from the White House, Pentagon and State Department.
We're kind of calling our shots from the huddle, Jeffrey answered, and we think it's going to be okay. You've got to trust these guys.
In Washington, trust was hard.
Thousands descended peacefully on Najaf. Sistani got Moqtada to come in and talk, and they eventually negotiated a withdrawal from the Shrine of Ali. Jeffrey and Casey had to promise only that they would not kill Moqtada's forces as they moved out from the shrine. It looked a lot like victory to Jeffrey, who was once again reminded of Sistani's power. As long as I can just urge policies that keep us close to Sistani, I'll look good, Jeffrey half joked. The president got the message. Where's Sistani on this? became his frequent question. We need to find out. Go find out.
Moqtada retired for the moment to his power base in Sadr City, the northeastern quadrant of Baghdad with its 2 million people.
Frances Fragos Townsend, a 42-year-old former New York federal prosecutor, was appointed head of the Homeland Security Council in mid-2004, making her Bush's top White House adviser on counterterrorism matters. She was holding a number of meetings of the principals to address various sensitive counterterrorism proposals. Rumsfeld sent some second- or third-tier person. A 13-year veteran of the Justice Department, Townsend had learned that surviving meant avoiding unnecessary bureaucratic fights. She decided not to object, and continued with the meetings. About three weeks into her job, she had a meeting of the council with the president at which Rumsfeld laid into her. All these decisions were being made without his input, he said. He claimed that he had never received notice of the meetings. Townsend corrected him, saying that the notices had gone to the regular person in his office who received all such notices, citing the name and contact information.
Shortly afterward, Townsend received an invitation to a cocktail party at Rumsfeld's house. She asked Rice if she had been invited; Rice said she had not. The two women shared a good laugh about the necessity of going mano a mano with Rumsfeld.
Townsend had a more delicate counterterrorism issue to mediate. Over the years, Tenet had negotiated agreements with telecommunications and financial institutions to get access to certain telephone, Internet and financial records related to black intelligence operations. Tenet personally made most of the arrangements with the various CEOs of the companies. They were very secret, among the most sensitive arrangements, and based largely on informal understandings. Tenet had been very good at this, playing the patriot card and asking CEOs to help on matters of national security.
After 9/11, as the FBI got more and more involved in counterterrorism operations in the United States, their agents often went to the corporations with subpoenas to obtain the same or similar telephone, Internet or financial records. In addition, the new Department of Homeland Security, which had been created in late 2002 to bring together 22 federal agencies as diverse as Customs, the Coast Guard and the Secret Service, wanted in on this action.
The CEOs began saying, look, we'll do this once but not three times. The FBI's formal subpoenas tended to trump the other efforts.
The main conflict was between the FBI and the CIA. Part of the arrangement Tenet had made involved the CIA's National Resources Division, which had personnel stationed in a dozen major U.S. cities so that the CIA could interview and recruit foreigners visiting the United States. The NRs, as they were called, apparently were involved in making arrangements so other intelligence agencies, such as the National Security Agency, could get access to the information and records the corporate CEOs had agreed to provide.
The conflict was so intense that Townsend called FBI Director Robert Mueller and acting CIA Director John McLaughlin to the White House and asked them to resolve the conflicts. She then met periodically with them until each appointed a senior official to coordinate so that corporations were not bombarded with multiple requests.
It raised a number of serious legal questions. The CIA was forbidden by law from gathering intelligence in the United States. One official I spoke with said that the arrangements made by Tenet gave access only to passive databanks from the American telecommunications and financial institutions. To gather specific information about specific individuals required either subpoenas, court-authorized FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) warrants or operations un
der the controversial executive order signed by President Bush after 9/11 called the Terrorist Surveillance Program (TSP), authorizing the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on international phone or Internet communications to or from suspected al Qaeda operatives and their affiliates.
Nonetheless, the Tenet arrangements were part of the murky world of intelligence gathering in the 21st century that raised serious civil liberties questions and also demonstrated that the laws had not kept pace with the technology.
Powell and Armitage engaged in a private, running commentary about Bush, Cheney, the White House and what was really going on. Both wanted Bush to succeed, and they believed the Iraq War had to be won for the stability of the Middle East. A precipitous U.S. withdrawal would be followed by chaos. But what about adjusting the policy? they were asking. Shouldn't we all be more realistic?
Don't they have moments of self-doubt? Armitage asked Powell one day. Didn't Bush within his soul wonder if all this was right?
Powell said he had the same question. They always had self-doubt. They lived on it, mainlined it. If you didn't, Powell said, if you didn't get up in the morning wondering if you're doing a good enough job or if you can still hit the long ball, you're not worth much.
Not worth a shit, Armitage said.
Doubt never seeped into the president's public rhetoric. And as far as Powell's and Armitage's experience went, he was the same in private.
Powell said Bush and Cheney didn't dare express reservations. Armitage agreed. They cannot have any doubt about the correctness of the policy because it opens too many questions in their minds.
But the president was at the center. Armitage was baffled. Has he thought this through? Armitage asked Powell. What the president says in effect is we've got to press on in honor of the memory of those who have fallen. Another way to say that is we've got to have more men fall to honor the memories of those who have already fallen.
Bob Woodward Page 38