HRC: State Secrets and the Rebirth of Hillary Clinton

by Jonathan Allen

  On her first day in Paris, Hillary sat down with Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed al-Nahyan, the foreign minister of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and the head of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), in the living room of her suite at the top of the Westin, just a few blocks from the three-thousand-year-old obelisk known as Cleopatra’s Needle that, like Abdullah, had traveled to France from the Middle East. The couches in the room were soft, but Abdullah’s tone was not. Having gained an audience with the American secretary of state, he intended to take full advantage of it, knowing that an American ask was forthcoming.

  He gave Hillary an earful over what he saw as American meddling in Bahrain, one of the Gulf countries he was in town to represent. The day before, in a statement addressing a violent Bahraini government crackdown on demonstrators, White House press secretary Jay Carney had singled out the Gulf Cooperation Council for condemnation. “In particular,” he had said, “we urge our GCC partners to show restraint and respect the rights of the people of Bahrain, and to act in a way that supports dialogue instead of undermining it.”

  Now Hillary was asking the head of the organization the White House had just slammed to join a partnership dedicated to intervening in Libya.

  The room was uncomfortable. Abdullah was “not shy about expressing criticism about some of the things we had said publicly about Bahrain,” said an American source who was there. But the important thing was that Abdullah got to make his point; he could tell officials in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, another ally, that he had lectured Hillary Clinton. (In point of fact, during the tense early weeks of the Libya campaign, the United States softened its criticism of Bahrain and the GCC.)

  The Libya portion of the discussion was much more agreeable. Abdullah confirmed for Hillary that Persian Gulf countries, including the UAE, would provide more than rhetorical support for a mission. Arab planes would fly. But it wasn’t a one-way street. The UAE and other Persian Gulf countries needed to know that the United States wasn’t just blowing smoke. It was one thing to say Qaddafi was a problem; it was another to remove him from power. If Arab planes were going to fly—and the GCC represented the rich Arab nations that would put up money and planes—Abdullah wanted to know that the United States was ready to take the dictator out.

  If Abdullah was looking for a hawk, he had come to the right person. While European countries were still stuck on no-fly zones, Hillary was thinking about a comprehensive military action that included strikes on Qaddafi’s ground forces—basically an all-necessary-means operation to give cover that the rebels needed to turn the tide.

  The term of art at the United Nations, “all necessary means” authority, is, as it sounds, a blank check to go to war. “What the Gulf Arabs were looking for was American leadership on this, follow-through on the public statements about Qaddafi having lost legitimacy,” said a source who was present at Hillary’s meeting with Abdullah. “In that sense, he was reassured by what the secretary had to say, by her activist approach to it.”

  In the same room later that night, Hillary sat down with Mahmoud Jibril, the leader of the Libyan Transitional National Council. Deputy Secretary Bill Burns, U.S. ambassador to Libya Gene Cretz, and Chris Stevens, a Libya expert in the foreign service, were among the small group of advisers with Hillary.

  Jibril, a low-key Benghazi native with a doctorate in political science from the University of Pittsburgh, had sneaked into Paris from the TNC’s headquarters in Qatar to meet with Hillary. Passionate but also lucid and composed, Jibril told her that if the opposition didn’t get military assistance, Qaddafi’s forces would wreak havoc in Benghazi and likely kill the rebellion. That, he said, wasn’t in anyone’s interest. Qaddafi had called the rebels “rats,” and his threat to destroy them was on the verge of coming to fruition. Jibril offered Hillary what the source called a “chilling reminder” that Qaddafi’s past sins against his people “left no doubt that he was to be taken at his word.”

  But Hillary wanted to be sure that the United States wasn’t getting dragged into a revolution that would replace Qaddafi with either chaos or another government that didn’t respect the rights of out-of-power groups. She pushed back on Jibril, forcing him to detail his vision of a new Libyan society, a view that she would have to articulate to skeptics in Washington and elsewhere in advocating the use of military force.

  “Part of the challenge was to get Jibril and others to lay out a clear sense of what they stood for, which was one of the things she pushed him on,” said one source who participated. “She made clear that they needed to be clear and consistent in public about the kinds of things that they stood for, too, their vision of a post-Qaddafi Libya, which was an important way to be inclusive, so that they were reaching out to people across Libya.” Hillary told Jibril that his entreaties would be given full consideration but stopped short of making a commitment of support.

  Jibril later confided to associates that Hillary’s stern demeanor had made him feel like he’d blown his opportunity. He had not.

  “I remember her being impressed afterward that this was a group of opposition leaders who were beginning to pull themselves together,” said one of the officials who was present. “And then she used that not only in Washington but with other coalition partners to try and generate support from them, that the [opposition leaders] were pointed in the right direction, even though they needed a lot of support. She came away from it convinced that we had to plan actively” for an intervention.

  In sidebar meetings with her French, British, and German counterparts, and in phone conversations with them later that week, Hillary pressed the case for the more robust intervention. “What she wanted to find out,” Steinberg said, “was, were others prepared to take stronger and effective measures that would make it worthwhile—that is, going beyond no-fly zones to take the kind of forceful action that would provide protection for the people of Libya who were under threat by Qaddafi.”

  She left Europe optimistic that the United States could get support for a much broader UN resolution than the no-fly zone version the British and French preferred. If America led the way diplomatically, Britain and France would go along. Germany was still reluctant to sign on. But Hillary was putting together an ad hoc international military coalition that would, if everything went right, turn into a partnership for building a new and sustainable Libyan government. The alliance would rely heavily on other countries to bear the brunt of the work and the cost of pummeling Qaddafi, from airplanes to armaments. In an ideal world, the United Nations would sign off on a coalition action, giving it the imprimatur of the whole world, not just the West and the Gulf countries with an ax to grind against Qaddafi.

  One politically inept administration official called the new model “leading from behind,” a phrase that would benignly haunt Obama. But it would allow the United States to help shape Libya’s future—to be on the side of a budding democracy movement—without being the face of an attack in another Muslim country and without asking Congress and the American public to support spending exorbitant sums to put more American troops in harm’s way.

  That formula required not just the support Hillary had sought from the wealthy Persian Gulf countries represented by Abdullah but also the backing of the broader Arab League, which spanned the Middle East and North Africa from the Persian Gulf in the East to Mauritania’s Atlantic coast. The day after her meetings with Abdullah and Jibril, Hillary flew to Cairo, where her talks with leaders of the new post-Mubarak government there were not as pressing as her face-to-face meeting with Amr Moussa, a presidential candidate and secretary-general of the Arab League.

  Moussa assured her that the Arab League would back a no-fly zone, but Hillary asked for more. She detailed for him the more extensive military intervention she favored. “She was quite direct with him,” said one of her aides. You’re calling for a no-fly zone, you’re calling for us to get engaged, she said; this is what we’re talking about doing, and you’d better be on board with it. The coalition was coming together.r />
  Hillary called in to the Situation Room that night—it was still afternoon in Washington—to brief Obama and his National Security Council on what she had learned. European and Arab planes would be in the air over Libya; Britain and France would be on board if the United States could push a more powerful resolution through the United Nations than the no-fly zone; and the Arab League had given its blessing.

  Susan Rice, linked up to the White House meeting by videoconference from New York, was ready to draft the “all necessary measures” resolution, in which the United Nations could basically give NATO its approval to pulverize Qaddafi with air strikes and a naval blockade. While NATO, comprised of Western countries, didn’t need a UN resolution to go to war with Qaddafi, the administration considered the force of a world body that included many Arab nations an important element of building credibility for the attack in the Arab world. Later Moussa would complain publicly that he hadn’t intended to green-light a full-scale bombardment of Libya, but he soon backed down from that line of argument.

  Hillary’s report addressed both the desires of those who wanted to intervene and the concerns of those who worried about over-extending the military and the optics of the United States committing to war in a third Muslim country. It wasn’t a perfect solution, and it didn’t bring Gates and the Pentagon around, but it gave the president the information he needed to move forward. Rice, armed with her own intelligence and Hillary’s reporting, said she believed she could push the “all necessary measures” language through the UN Security Council. The meeting broke without a verdict, but Obama now had reason to be confident in both the moral argument to intervene and the likelihood that it could be pulled off with minimal risk and cost to the United States.

  At a second meeting, which Hillary did not participate in because it was the middle of the night in Cairo and it was pretty clear that she was pushing for military force, Obama instructed Rice to seek a broad “all necessary measures” resolution from the UN Security Council, one that would be portrayed in the press as a no-fly zone but really meant that the world was going to stop Qaddafi with every available tool short of an occupation of Libya. Obama’s one caveat: no American troops on the ground.

  Any permanent member of the Security Council could scuttle a war resolution. The Russians preferred a much more modest call for a cease-fire. Working cautiously to avoid offending Russia, Rice said there was nothing wrong with the Russian resolution per se, but it didn’t go far enough. “I think most members of the council [are] focused on the importance of the council taking swift and meaningful action to try to halt the killing on the ground,” she said.

  In Tunis the next day, as Rice continued to work for votes in New York, Hillary candidly discussed America’s hope to do more than just protect civilians and rebels. “We definitely would like to see a democracy come to Libya,” she said in a Nessma TV interview. “And yet at the same time, we know that unless the Security Council authorizes further action, it will be very difficult for the opposition.”

  When Hillary left the stage, she scrambled to a greenroom where Jake Sullivan was holding on an open phone line with Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov on the other end. In the two years since the “reset” button faux pas in early 2009, Hillary and Lavrov had developed a strong professional bond, in part during negotiations over the New START Treaty, according to a source who frequently watched them interact. Hillary didn’t need Lavrov and the Russians to vote for the Security Council resolution, which was ultimately sponsored by France. She just needed them to refrain from vetoing it. She asked Lavrov to abstain, and he agreed. Hillary made another call to Portugal to wrap up a yes vote and departed for the airport.

  As her plane headed back to Washington, reporters peppered Sullivan with questions about why the United States hadn’t stopped Qaddafi from sacking Benghazi. Somewhere over the Atlantic, Hillary received word that the UN Security Council had voted 10–0 in favor of the “all necessary measures” resolution. China, Brazil, Germany, and India abstained. So did Russia. The coalition building had been a team effort—Obama and Rice had lobbied other nations hard for their votes—but it was Hillary who had done the on-the-ground work to put the puzzle together.

  That Friday Obama informed a small group of relevant congressional leaders about plans to use American missiles and intelligence capabilities—described as “unique assets”—in support of the operation. Less than thirty-six hours later, American and British ships began launching scores of Tomahawk missiles at Qaddafi’s forces.

  After two years of learning her job, traveling the world, and marshaling her political capital in Washington, Hillary had become an ever more influential player on the president’s team. She had cobbled together all the pieces needed to persuade Obama to intervene in Libya. Her international diplomacy had built confidence that America could lead an intervention on behalf of the Libyan rebels without alienating NATO allies or the Arab world. And on a question of using American force, she had split from Gates, the Pentagon chief whom she had courted from the beginning of the administration.

  Hillary had come to the fore in Washington and Paris to create a war—promise, peril, and all.

  ELEVEN

  Below the Waterline

  Leon Panetta had a secret. And it was time for the CIA director to let Hillary in on it. During a Situation Room meeting at the White House, he told her he needed to talk to her one-on-one. So, on March 7, 2011, Panetta paid a visit to Hillary at the State Department to inform her of an operation so delicate and highly charged that she didn’t feel comfortable sharing it even with her husband. Panetta had a long history with Hillary, dating back to his days as a first-term chief of staff to Bill Clinton, when he had tried to keep her out of the decisions being made in the West Wing. Within Obama’s no-drama Situation Room, the pair stood out as characters because they often behaved as old siblings—kindred spirits who could antagonize each other like no one else.

  The kindred spirit part mattered most to Panetta as the two veteran policy makers settled into eagle-carved armchairs in the cozy James Madison Dining Room on the top floor of the State Department. The only other eyes and ears in the room belonged to a $70,000 marble bust of Daniel Webster. Over lunch, Panetta told Hillary that intelligence operatives thought they had located Osama bin Laden at a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. The president had been informed, and only a handful of his top military and intelligence advisers were in the loop. Panetta was telling Hillary because he needed her to make the case for action. There were doubters at the White House and the Pentagon—and the CIA couldn’t say for sure that Bin Laden was actually at the compound.

  But Panetta had become convinced that the opportunity was real, and he needed a strong partner in arguing that it was time to strike. “It was becoming increasingly clear,” a senior intelligence official said, “that we were going to have to move on the intelligence, and any operation would require approval by NSC principals, and since it was in Pakistan, obviously, it would require buy-in from her. Second, I think he just thought that she would have a very good sense of how to finish the job against Bin Laden.” Hillary and Panetta both believed that Obama could be too deliberative, too hesitant, too risk-averse. On the other hand, the official said, Hillary harbored a “huge bias for action.”

  As much as any top official in the Obama administration, Hillary had been personally invested in laying the groundwork for the moment when Bin Laden finally appeared again in American crosshairs. As the person responsible for direct negotiations with the Pakistanis on diplomatic and development matters, she was the velvet glove on the fist of American force in Pakistan. She brought to the debate the unique perspective of a senator who had represented New York when Bin Laden killed nearly three thousand of her constituents; a loyal Democrat who knew the risk the president would take if he let Bin Laden slip away; and a diplomat who had pulled every possible lever to ensure that the CIA, or Pakistani intelligence, would find Bin Laden. Others could debate the exact method
and timing for a strike, but no one spoke with more authority than Hillary about the moral and political reasoning for launching an attack or the justification for violating Pakistani sovereignty. There was nothing more important than getting the top terrorist in the world, she thought. When she hectored David Petraeus at a hearing in 2007, she had framed her attack on President George W. Bush’s Iraq surge in part on his failure to pursue Bin Laden.

  Hillary was thrilled when Panetta laid out what he believed was a credible case for moving on Bin Laden. “Leon and I have worked together a very long time,” Hillary said. “I think he knew from all kinds of conversations we had over the years that—especially since he was at CIA and I was at State—that if we had a colorable, creditable chance to get Bin Laden, we should do it, that it was a matter of keeping faith with the people that we represented in this country. For me, it was very personal because of what I’d lived through with what happened on 9/11.”

  She had been carefully weighing the need for seeking Pakistani cooperation against America’s interest in pursuing and killing terrorists since before she started her job, at least as early as her first transition meetings in the fall of 2008. Hillary had named Holbrooke “special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan” as part of a broader administration effort to acknowledge and deal with the truth that Pakistan, which remained a terrorist haven, was the real root problem in the region. To try to win cooperation from the Pakistani military and the government in fighting terrorism and possibly negotiating a peace in Afghanistan, Hillary and the rest of the Obama administration had showered new attention on the country, to make leaders there believe they were being shown as much respect as their rival India on the international stage. Prestige and American aid were the carrots. But there was plenty of stick on the other side of the equation.