Bob Woodward

by State of Denial (lit)

  Zelikow went back to Iraq, for Rice in May 2005, to focus on how the U.S. was training Iraqi police—the local solution to the security problem. She had discharged the bureau head in the State Department responsible for such training. In a word, it was broken. He traveled outside Baghdad to places such as Mosul. The U.S. had set up an Iraqi police training academy and even staffed the school. A little training, a uniform, a pistol and the message Go forth and be policemen. It was the same old story. The sole metric of progress was numbers trained. Zelikow found that no one knew if the newly minted policemen even showed up for their assignments. There was no follow-on training in the field—as critical for police as for military training.

  Several hundred International Police Liaison Officers had been hired, mostly from the U.S., to do field training, but they did not expect to work in a combat zone. They visited Iraqi police stations, inventoried the guns, and did routine inspections rather than training. They were not embedded in the Iraqi police units, where Zelikow was sure they could be more effective.

  He also discovered how closely the police and intelligence issues were linked, including the quality of intelligence and the degree to which anyone could find out about the insurgency or its plans.

  Zelikow found that the CIA was focused on al Qaeda and effectively used the technical side of intelligence—communications intercepts and overhead photography—but was not actually involved in the major aspects of counterinsurgency intelligence at the local level.

  Though more specific, these findings echoed the failure to engage the local Iraqi police that Frank Miller of the NSC staff had identified for Rice more than a year before, following his inspection trip to Iraq for her. The more Zelikow got down into the weeds, the more obvious it was that these liaison officers needed to be embedded, live on operating bases and interact more fully with the Iraqi police.

  But the State training of police was only one third of the effort. General Petraeus had another third of police training. The final third belonged to the basic U.S. military divisions, which had military police who were used in their battle space or particular areas of the provinces or cities.

  Zelikow recommended that all three be combined, and essentially given over to the U.S. battalions and brigades running the military operations and the foot patrols in particular regions. He had studied insurgencies, and realized all they were doing was discovering the lessons that others had learned: Politics is local, even during an insurgency. It was also the ancient problem: unity of command. Several people were responsible so in the end no one was.

  Cheney was on CNN's Larry King Live on May 30. I think they're in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency. It was a total denial of reality and of the trend. The overall insurgent attacks in April had been about 1,700, and 52 Americans dead. In May, the attacks went up to 2,000, and 82 Americans had died.

  Senator Chuck Hagel, 58, a short, serious-minded Nebraska Republican, didn't get a lot of invitations to the Bush White House. Though he had voted for the resolution authorizing the war, he had become an outspoken critic of the handling of the postwar phase. The White House had to include him in the invitation for all Senate Republicans to have their weekly Tuesday policy lunch at the White House June 21, 2005.

  Hagel had been a decorated Army sergeant during the Vietnam War and he understood that the use of military force was the most important, defining decision for a president and for a nation. Months before the Iraq invasion he had publicly asked questions such as Who governs after Saddam? and Have we calculated the consequences? In his speech on October 9, 2002, favoring the war resolution, he said he recognized the solemn obligation involved and added, We cannot do it alone. . . . How many of us really know and understand Iraq, its country, history, people, and role in the Arab world. I approach the issue of a post-Saddam Iraq and the future of democracy and stability in the Middle East with more caution, realism and humility. A month before the war he said, First, a post-Saddam transition in Iraq must focus on security, economic stability and creating the conditions for democratic change. We should put aside the mistaken delusion that democracy is just around the corner.

  Bused to the White House before the luncheon on June 21, the senators went through the buffet line at noon, and Bush arrived at 12:30.

  The president spoke for about 25 minutes on Social Security, spending, deficits—everything except the big elephant in the room.

  Senator John Warner, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, took the floor, said some nice things about Bush, and addressed the elephant. I had dinner with my former boss when I was secretary of the navy, Warner said, referring to former Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger. My former boss is very concerned about Iraq because he sees some very eerie parallels developing with Vietnam.

  Bush then launched into his defense—9/11, the continuing threat of terrorism, his conviction that Saddam was a threat. Nothing new.

  Senator Ted Stevens, the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, then said, I want to echo part of what John Warner has just said. I think there are some serious issues here.

  Bush fell back on his standard rhetorical flourish that it was the right thing to do, that they had to stick it out.

  After the lunch Hagel walked out with Bush and they went off to a corner.

  Mr. President, Hagel said, let me ask you a question. I believe that you are getting really bubbled in here in the White House on Iraq. Do you ever reach outside your inner circle of people, outside your national security council? Then he added the obligatory softening. This is not a reflection on, in any way, or an assertion of inadequacy. That's not my point here. I think it's important for presidents, especially in a time of war, to get some other opinions—of people that maybe don't agree with you, or you don't agree with. Call them in. Sit them down. Listen to them. Do you ever do that?

  Well, I kind of leave that to Hadley.

  I know that your national security adviser talks to people, but do you talk to people?

  Well, maybe I should talk to Hadley about that.

  I think this is very important, Mr. President, that you get some outside opinions here. Just to test your theories and how you're doing. Hagel mentioned themes from histories and biographies he had read. When a nation's at war, the president is under tremendous pressure. You go deeper into that bunker, and I don't think it's good for you. There, he had said it.

  That's good advice, Bush said.

  Hagel went back to the Senate. About two hours later Hadley called.

  The president told me about the conversation, Hadley said. Do you want to come talk to me?

  That really wasn't the conversation, Steve, Hagel said. The issue was new or dissenting voices. You know what I'm talking about.

  I know what you're talking about, Hadley said.

  Hagel offered to provide lists of people the president should talk with and said it didn't have to include him. Nonetheless, Hadley invited him down to the White House several days later. Hagel, who is an earnest student of foreign policy, sent Hadley copies of several long memos he had given to Rice. When he got to Hadley's office it was crowded with NSC staffers. Do we really need everyone here? Hagel asked. Apparently so. For an hour, Hagel made his pitch that Iraq was a much bigger mess than they were acknowledging, and the administration should be doing more on security, training, governance and infrastructure.

  He left unsatisfied and gave an interview to U.S. News World Report saying, Things aren't getting better; they're getting worse. The White House is completely disconnected from reality.

  Hadley and others at the White House were angry, but Hagel thought it was one of the clearest things he had ever said. His private assessment was worse: The administration had no strategic thinker. Rice was weak. The military was being emasculated and severely damaged by uniformed sycophants.

  On June 21, Zal Khalilzad was sworn in as ambassador to Iraq, and Jim Jeffrey returned to Washington to become senior adviser to Rice with the title of coordinator for Iraq policy
. He would work side by side with her on the dominant issue.

  In July 2005 the agenda items for many of the deputies committee and principals committee meetings had headings such as Infrastructure Security that included debates on oil pipeline and electrical plant security. They were talking about utility issues like a local government public works committee. One day Baghdad had only six hours of electricity.

  Isn't that where we were 15 months ago? Hadley asked.

  Rumsfeld, General Casey and the military did not want to expend resources on static guard duty at pipelines or electrical power plants, and they resisted. It was finally agreed that the new ambassador, Zal Khalilzad, would take responsibility for addressing the infrastructure security issue, including protection for thousands of miles of aboveground pipeline. But, of course, he did not have the security resources—so it would be almost impossible to do.

  On July 7, 2005, four suicide bombs ripped through buses and trains in London, killing 52. It was the deadliest bombing in London since World War II.

  In Washington two days later, Rihab Massoud, the aide to Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar, got a call from Riyadh telling him to go through the files and look at an intelligence memo dated December 14, 2004, that had been shared with both the CIA and British intelligence.

  When Massoud found the four-page interrogation memo, he had to read it twice. In December, the Saudi government had arrested one of its nationals at the airport in Buraydah, in north-central Saudi Arabia. The man, whose first name was Adel, had entered the country from either Iran or the United Arab Emirates on a fraudulent passport. He was taken into custody and under interrogation revealed that in six months there would be a multifaceted operation in London, using explosives from Bosnia, and said it would specifically include the area around Edgewood Road. Massoud knew that one of the four London suicide bombers had detonated his explosives on a train at the Edgware Road Underground station.

  Within six months . .. Massoud read again. Adel supposedly knew Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian-born head of al Qaeda in Iraq. At that point he claimed that $500,000 was still needed to fund the London operation. Four people would be carrying it out. He did not know their names, but he gave their rough ages, rough heights, descriptions, and said one of them had tattoos on his fingers. He also said the coordinator of the group was a Libyan businessman in London who was to help them to move around, find safe houses and automobiles.

  After getting the $500,000, Adel was to call a phone number in Syria to get further instructions. In February 2005, Massoud read, the Saudis had made a second report to British and American intelligence, this time giving better descriptions of the individuals who were to execute the plan. In addition to the four, Adel said there were also British British and German Germans, meaning European-looking Caucasians, as opposed to Arabs. In the February report, the Saudis had said that Adel claimed that the four would be coming from different countries.

  After the July 7 attacks, the British immediately asked to interrogate Adel themselves. The Saudis agreed. On July 11, Massoud checked in with the CIA, which told him that they'd received the Saudi memo but hadn't found anything to back it up. They'd checked out the telephone number in Syria but it amounted to nothing.

  Massoud then called Fran Townsend, the president's deputy national security adviser for homeland security, and told her about the memo.

  The president needs to know about this, Massoud told her. Bandar was out of the country.

  I think you need to come in, Townsend said.

  Massoud went to the White House and Townsend took him to see Bush.

  Look, Mr. President, here is a copy of the memo, he said, holding the Arabic-language Saudi memo in his hand but reading an English translation.

  Bush wanted all the details. The CIA and British intelligence investigated as fully as they could. It soon looked like another fabricator, and clearly should have been handled at a much lower level. But President Bush, still on edge about al Qaeda, had become his own intelligence coordinator.

  Bush still enjoyed frat-boy pranks. In July 2005, Ben S. Bernanke, the chairman of Bush's Council of Economic Advisers, who would soon succeed Alan Greenspan as chairman of the Federal Reserve, wore tan-colored socks to a meeting with the president. The socks stood out among a sea of conservative, dark socks, and the president commented on them. Within days, the president had another economics meeting, and everyone else, including Cheney, showed up wearing tan-colored socks. All had a good laugh.

  Bush and Rove in particular dwelled on flatulence —passing gas— and they shared an array of fart jokes. The son of one senior White House staffer had a small toy with a remote control that produced a farting sound. The staffer brought it to the White House and placed it under Rove's chair for the morning senior staff meeting on July 7. But when they learned about the terrorist bombs in the London subways and buses that morning, the prank was postponed.

  Several weeks later on July 20 the device was placed under Rove's chair and activated during the senior staff meeting. There were multiple activations and it took Rove several minutes to locate the toy. Everyone laughed. They needed the humor, one of Bush's top advisers recalled.

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  around this time, General Jim Jones, the NATO commander, paid a call on his old friend General Pete Pace, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs. It was virtually certain that Pace was going to move up to replace Myers as chairman.

  Two people, two Marine generals, could not be more the same and yet so different. They had been in Vietnam at about the same time, a searing and formative experience for both, and then served side by side as first lieutenants in 1970 at the Marine barracks in southeast Washington.

  Pace, a thin, attentive, 1967 Naval Academy graduate, had spent four years as vice chairman, the number two ranking officer in the U.S. military. Jones, a tall, outgoing Georgetown foreign service graduate, spoke French fluently and had lived at the barracks as commandant from 1999 to 2003 before Rumsfeld moved him to NATO.

  Theirs was a professional friendship that extended about as far as it could in the American military among active-duty officers—more than three decades.

  Jones expressed chagrin that Pace would even want to be chairman. You're going to face a debacle and be part of the debacle in Iraq, he said. U.S. prestige was at a 50- or 75-year low in the world. He said he was so worried about Iraq and the way Rumsfeld ran things that he wondered if he himself should not resign in protest. How do you have the stomach for eight years in the Pentagon? he finally asked.

  Pace said that someone had to be chairman. Who else would do it?

  Jones did not have an answer. Military advice is being influenced on a political level, he said. The JCS had improperly surrendered to Rumsfeld. You should not be the parrot on the secretary's shoulder.

  His concern was complete. When Senators John Warner and Carl Levin, the chairman of and ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, visited him at his headquarters in Belgium, Jones told them about all the problems. He said they needed new legislation, a kind of Goldwater-Nichols II, to reempower the service chiefs or make some kind of sense of the crazy system.

  The Joint Chiefs have been systematically emasculated by Rumsfeld, Jones said.

  Pace later said that he and Jones have had many discussions about the problems in the interagency process. There is inadequate coordination, he said, because there's nobody below the president who has the authority to tell people what to do. He flatly denied that Jones had told him that Iraq was a debacle or that Rumsfeld had systematically emasculated the Joint Chiefs. He's a good friend. He was in my wedding, Pace said, noting they had known each other for 36 years. If Jim felt that way he would tell me.

  I called Jones at NATO headquarters in Belgium. He said that he had made all those comments to Pace in their meeting in 2005. That's what I told him, Jones said.

  After Pace was confirmed as chairman, he asked Admiral Vern Clark, who had just retired as chief of naval operations, to stop
by.

  Vern, give me a sense of this, he asked him.

  Okay, Clark said. You're going to give four years of your life to the country and this job. When you leave, what do you want them to say about your time here? I challenge you to sum up in two sentences what was accomplished when previous chairmen were here. You name one. Pick 'em. Go back. Pick one.

  Pace was silent.

  I'll make it easy for you, Clark continued. Start with Colin Powell, a guy like that. What did he accomplish as the chairman?

  Pace remained silent.

  We'll give him that he put the policy of overwhelming force in place.

  The irony was obvious. Rumsfeld had discarded Powell's overwhelming force doctrine in the Iraq invasion.

  So let's go to Hugh Shelton, Clark said. Summarize all of Hugh's accomplishments here. Now describe it in two sentences.

  Pace did not respond.

  I'll give him this, Clark said. He really created an understanding that we had to pay more attention to the Special Forces. Shelton had been the commander of Special Forces before he became chairman.

  Shalikashvili? Army General John Shalikashvili had been chairman from 1993 to 1997. Clark waited for a response from Pace. I can't think of anything either. He said he would not be so unkind as to ask Pace to sum up how Dick Myers had done. You figure it out. You lived up here with him.

  Clark said he believed in his five years as CNO he had brought dramatic change to the Navy. Now here's the question for you, Pete. What do you want them to say about your time as chairman?

  Fundamentally, Clark continued, this job will eat you up day to day doing the inbox and it deserves better than that. The job definition had to go beyond what Rumsfeld decreed or wanted. The few authorities under the law given to the chairman, including a requirement that the Chairman's Program Assessment be sent directly to Congress, had been neutered by Rumsfeld. Though it was just one report, it was symbolic. Rumsfeld had refused to let it go to Congress for over a year.