Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House

by Peter Baker

  The scene was so intense that even Secret Service agents had tears in their eyes. Karen Hughes had to leave after twenty minutes because she could not take the overpowering grief. When she returned, a man approached, saying the mother of a dead Port Authority officer wanted to give her son’s badge to the president. Bush met Arlene Howard, who reached into her purse and pressed the metal object into his hand.

  “This is my son’s badge. His name is George Howard. Please remember him.”

  The president promised he would.

  As Bush left to return to Washington, Ari Fleischer told him Congress had passed the resolution authorizing force in response to the attacks and asked if it was okay to put out a statement welcoming the vote.

  Bush looked weary. “Put it out,” he said simply.

  Aides had never seen him so drained. “You could tell he was wiped out,” Eric Draper, the White House photographer, said later. As the motorcade made its way back to the helipad, thousands of normally jaded New Yorkers lined the route eight- and nine-deep, holding candles, applauding, cheering. “I didn’t vote for you,” read one sign, “but thank you so much for coming.”

  When Bush got back to his helicopter, he collapsed into the seat, slumping down, thoroughly spent.

  THE PRESIDENT AND first lady flew that night to Camp David, where he would spend the weekend conferring with Cheney and the rest of what was becoming known as the war cabinet. Camp David, a 148-acre compound in the Maryland mountains, was first used by Franklin Roosevelt as a getaway named Shangri-La, then rechristened by Dwight D. Eisenhower after his grandson, David.

  By the time Bush inherited it, there were eleven stone-and-wood cabins, plus tennis courts, swimming pools, a dining facility, movie theater, bowling alley, skeet range, gymnasium, chapel, and putting green. Most important, there was solitude. The deeply secluded rustic retreat, not recorded on official maps, was one place where a president could get away. While Bill Clinton did not care for the place, Bush like his father relished the woodsy escape and retreated there any weekend he could; he liked surrounding himself with family and told his two siblings living in the Washington area, Marvin and Doro, that any weekend he went up, they were always welcome to join him. His brother came often enough that Bush jokingly renamed the place “Camp Marvin.”

  But this would be a different kind of getaway. Bush wanted to use the setting to spark a broader conversation about how to respond to September 11 over the long run. Cheney was already there when other cabinet officers began arriving for the meeting the next day, and the vice president invited Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, and Condoleezza Rice to join him in Holly Lodge for a private dinner. Over buffalo steak, a Cheney favorite, the four informally discussed the decisions to come. It was a powerful tandem; three of the four of them had served in multiple high-ranking positions through a multitude of crises before. Rice for once felt out of place.

  The next morning, Bush convened the war cabinet in Laurel, the main lodge used for office work and meetings. He wore a casual blue shirt and a rugged olive jacket with a presidential seal on it and sat at the middle of a long oak table in a wood-paneled conference room. To his right were Cheney, John Ashcroft, and Scooter Libby. To his left were Powell, Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld’s deputy. Also present were Rice, Andy Card, George Tenet, John McLaughlin, Cofer Black, Robert Mueller, Paul O’Neill, Alberto Gonzales, General Hugh Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and General Richard Myers, the vice chairman. Laid across the table was a large map of Afghanistan, a place so remote and forbidding that Rice, the Russia expert, could not help but think of it as “the place where great powers go to die.”

  Bush started the discussion by turning to Powell, who reported on his efforts to build a coalition for the war to come. O’Neill talked about reopening the stock market and going after terrorist finances. Tenet handed out a package titled “Going to War” with information about al-Qaeda and a draft presidential order authorizing the agency to go after it in a way the agency never had before. Rumsfeld turned the table over to Wolfowitz, who began making the case for going after Saddam Hussein. He declared that there was a 10 percent to 50 percent chance that Hussein had been involved in the attacks, although he presented no evidence. Afghanistan would not be a particularly satisfying place to wage a war since it was so primitive that there were few targets; Iraq, on the other hand, had plenty of targets and military action there would be a powerful demonstration that the United States would not sit by idly while a danger like Hussein operated with impunity.

  Powell, Rice, Card, and Shelton were aggravated. “No one will understand or support us doing anything but going after those who attacked us,” Powell said. Going after Iraq would shatter the emerging coalition.

  If it was a coalition unwilling to face Iraq, Rumsfeld countered, maybe “it is not a coalition worth having.”

  Moving back to Afghanistan, Shelton outlined three military options. The first was a cruise missile strike. The second was a cruise missile strike accompanied by manned bombers.

  Before Shelton could even get to his third option, Wolfowitz interrupted. “But we really need to think broader than that right now,” he said. “That’s not big enough. We’ve got to make sure we go ahead and get Saddam out at the same time—it’s a perfect opportunity.”

  By Shelton’s later account, Bush became incensed. “How many times do I have to tell you we are not going after Iraq right this minute?” he snapped at Wolfowitz. “We’re going to go after the people we know did this to us. Do you understand me?”

  Shelton’s third option combined the cruise missile strike with bombers and ground forces, although of course that would be the one that would require the most preparation and it was not entirely clear what troops would be used for. Bush and Cheney, determined not to repeat Clinton’s approach to fighting al-Qaeda, found the first two options unacceptable and the third unimaginative.

  Only toward the end did they return to the matter of preventing future attacks on American soil. Ashcroft said it was important to disrupt terrorists immediately. Someone asked what he suggested. “I’m so glad you asked,” he said, pulling out a framework for legislation greatly expanding law enforcement powers.

  After more than three hours of unusually freewheeling discussion, Bush finally called for lunch and told his team to take a few hours to walk around, exercise, and think. After lunch, Bush pulled Card aside and told him to tell Wolfowitz not to interject like that again; he expected to hear from his cabinet secretaries, not the deputies. Cheney went back to his cabin and called Lyzbeth Glick, the widow of Jeremy Glick, a passenger on United Airlines Flight 93 who had been among those who rushed the hijackers, to express appreciation for her husband’s heroism. The conversation kept him centered on what he considered the primary mission. Never again. This could never happen again.

  THEY RECONVENED AT 4:30 p.m., and Bush kept a tighter rein on the conversation as he went around the table soliciting recommendations. Powell again went first, suggesting they give Afghanistan an ultimatum to hand over bin Laden and al-Qaeda figures or face war. He argued again for sticking to Afghanistan for fear of pushing away the allies. “Whatever problem Iraq is, it is not the cause of what happened,” Powell said.

  Rumsfeld said the military options all seemed antiquated, but he made no concrete recommendation, flabbergasting Powell. Card and Tenet, on the other hand, agreed with Powell about going after Afghanistan, not Iraq. Rice, at Bush’s request, withheld her opinion to share privately with him. Going last was Cheney, who agreed that now was not the time to focus on Iraq. “If we go after Saddam Hussein, we lose our rightful place as good guy,” he said. Bush thanked everyone and said he would let them know what he decided.

  That night, the team gathered for a social hour and dinner. Standing near the fireplace, Bush and Cheney listened as Wolfowitz again pressed his case. He was not arguing for an invasion of Iraq at that point, he said, but demanding that Hussein hand over terrorists known to be on his t
erritory and readmit UN inspectors. If he refused, the United States could take action that would be more imaginative than a full-scale war, like establishing an enclave in the south that would deprive Hussein of most of his oil fields and give Shiites a base to wage their own rebellion against him.

  “Well, that is imaginative,” Bush said.

  That wasn’t the word Powell would use; privately, he would come to lampoon the notion as the “Bay of Goats.”

  Finally, talk of war receded momentarily. Ashcroft noticed a piano and sat down to play spirituals. Rice sang “His Eye Is on the Sparrow,” a gospel hymn popular in African American church services. Sitting down to dinner later, Bush asked Rice to lead a prayer. “We have seen the face of evil,” she began, “but we are not afraid.”

  The next morning, September 16, Cheney was taken to Camp Greentop, not far from Camp David, where he sat down with Tim Russert of Meet the Press for his first interview since September 11. The purpose was to use Cheney’s credibility from a career in government to reassure the country that all was under control, but the interview emphasized the centrality of his role in the emerging new era. It also signaled where Cheney would help take the nation in his drive to guard against future attacks.

  “If you provide sanctuary to terrorists, you face the full wrath of the United States of America,” he told Russert, his aggressive words belied by his calm, low-key tone. He warned this would be a war unlike any other, unlike the Gulf War he had led, one that would go beyond simply marshaling armies and air forces.

  “We also have to work sort of the dark side, if you will,” he said. “We’re going to spend time in the shadows in the intelligence world. A lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly, without any discussions, using sources and methods that are available to our intelligence agencies if we’re going to be successful. That’s the world these folks operate in.”

  He hinted at the new security architecture he had in mind, casting aside old barriers that seemed quaint in the face of this new enemy. “It’s going to be vital for us to use any means at our disposal, basically, to achieve our objective,” Cheney said. “It is a mean, nasty, dangerous, dirty business out there, and we have to operate in that arena. I’m convinced we can do it. We can do it successfully. But we need to make certain that we have not tied the hands, if you will, of our intelligence communities in terms of accomplishing their mission.”

  Cheney did draw one limit, for the moment, the same one the president had drawn that weekend. When Russert raised Iraq, the vice president batted it down.

  “At this stage, the focus is over here on al-Qaeda and the most recent events in New York,” he said. “Saddam Hussein’s bottled up at this point.”

  Asked if there was evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the attacks, Cheney answered simply, “No.”

  Bush flew back to the White House on Sunday afternoon. As Marine One touched down on the South Lawn just after 3:20, he found a clutch of reporters waiting, and he paused long enough to take a few questions. “This crusade, this war on terrorism is going to take a while,” he said. “And the American people must be patient. I’m going to be patient. But I can assure the American people I am determined. I’m not going to be distracted.”

  With that, Bush had, unthinkingly, branded the war on terror a “crusade.” To the Muslim world, the word evoked the religious wars fought until the end of the thirteenth century, Christian armies marching to recapture the Holy Land from Islamic infidels. Bush meant no historical allusion, but a leader more seasoned in foreign policy might have anticipated the consequences of using such a freighted term. After advisers explained it to him, Bush never again used the word to describe the war on terror, but the onetime unscripted utterance proved a defining moment to many Muslims for years.

  That night Bush kept a social engagement scheduled long before the attacks, a tenth-anniversary dinner for his longtime friend and aide Debra Dunn and her husband, Alan. Dunn had worked for Bush during his father’s presidential campaign and was now working in the White House for Cheney. Everyone had expected the dinner to be canceled, but Laura Bush insisted they go ahead to provide her husband with a break from the tension and a small window of normalcy in those crazed, confused days. Dunn could not believe they were still having the dinner. “No, we want to do this,” Bush told her. “You know me—I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t want to.”

  Seven couples sat at the table in the Family Dining Room, Dunn on one side of the president and her six-year-old daughter, Helen, on the other. Bush led them in a brief prayer for the country and the Americans who had died the week before but then turned the conversation to the sorts of things that come up at an anniversary dinner. The wear on his face was evident, but no one brought up the obvious.

  Bush, always good with children, lavished attention on young Helen. He cut her roast beef for her and advised her not to drink from the finger bowl.

  “So what are you reading?” he asked her. “Are you reading?”

  “Yes, I’m just beginning to read.”

  “I read books too,” he said with a twinkle, “though nobody thinks I do.”

  Afterward, Bush went downstairs with some of the guests as they filed out to the South Lawn. Bush had brought Spot. It was eerily quiet, no sound of traffic, or much else. Suddenly a plane roared overhead.

  Bush looked up. “Is that supposed to be there?” he asked. It was the question on everyone’s mind. The plane disappeared in the distance, and it would later turn out to be a fighter jet patrolling the skies.

  Bush did not know that. He looked down and said quietly, “I’m fighting an enemy that I can’t see.”

  THE NEXT DAY, September 17, Bush began the fight. He started the morning by visiting the Eisenhower Executive Office Building adjacent to the White House, where most people who worked for him actually spent their days. “Thanks for coming to work,” he said, shaking hands in the cafeteria. He understood how frightened everyone was.

  Heading back to the West Wing, Bush spotted Richard Keil, the Bloomberg correspondent. Bush reached out to grab his hand and remarked how hard it was to believe they were running together less than a week before.

  “You were the last person I was with,” Bush said softly. “Before—before we were attacked.”

  Keil, normally the most professional of reporters, broke with journalistic detachment. “Just know, Mr. President, that I’m praying for you,” he said. “Everyone is praying for you, sir.”

  Bush squeezed his hand and turned to go.

  Bush joined his war cabinet at 9:35 a.m. and announced the strategy he had settled on over the weekend. “The purpose of this meeting,” he said, “is to assign tasks for the first wave of the war against terrorism. It starts today.”

  Bush laid out the tasks. John Ashcroft, Robert Mueller, and George Tenet would coordinate plans to bolster defense of the homeland. Colin Powell would deliver an ultimatum to the Taliban to stop harboring al-Qaeda, one so tough they will be “quaking in their boots.” Assuming the Taliban refused, Donald Rumsfeld and Hugh Shelton would develop contingencies to “attack with missiles, bombers and boots on the ground.” Paul O’Neill would go after al-Qaeda financing. And Bush signed a classified order giving the CIA vast new authority to conduct covert operations and use lethal force.

  As to the points Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz had been making at Camp David, Bush made clear he agreed with them in spirit, just not on timing. “I believe Iraq was involved,” he said, evidently more from supposition than proof, “but I’m not going to strike them now. I don’t have the evidence at this point.”

  With that, Bush headed over to the Pentagon to give a pep talk to Defense Department workers back on duty just yards from the rubble where their colleagues had died. Later, he visited the Islamic Center of Washington, the largest mosque in the American capital, to make the point just a day after using the word “crusade” that the coming war on terror in fact was not a war on Islam.

  But once again, his o
ff-the-cuff remarks came under scrutiny for their bravado. When a reporter at the Pentagon asked if he wanted Osama bin Laden dead, he looked down and said, “I want justice.” Then, leaning back in his chair, he continued: “There’s an old poster out west, as I recall, that said, ‘Wanted: Dead or Alive.’ ”

  Some aides thought the comment was fine; Ari Fleischer thought it captured the mood of the country. Laura Bush did not agree. When she next saw Bush, she ribbed him as only she could. “Bushie, you gonna git ’im?” she asked. He got the message. He asked Condoleezza Rice whether it had been a mistake. “The language was a little white hot for the president of the United States,” she replied. He nodded. His top national security lawyer, John Bellinger, went so far as to send an e-mail to Alberto Gonzales warning that such a comment could be seen as instigating an illegal assassination. David Addington, Cheney’s counsel, erupted and told Gonzales “to get control of Bellinger.”

  While Bush disavowed any attack on Iraq for now, that did not end the debate. Wolfowitz sent Rumsfeld a memo that day arguing that if there was even a 10 percent chance that Saddam Hussein was behind the 9/11 attack, they should focus on eliminating that threat. Richard Clarke, responding to Bush’s request, sent a memo of his own to Rice the next day, reporting only anecdotal evidence linking Iraq to al-Qaeda and concluding that there was no “compelling case” that Iraq had planned or carried out the attacks. Unsatisfied, Bush told Tenet that he wanted to know about links between Hussein and al-Qaeda and told him to consult with Cheney, who had heard something about Mohamed Atta, the suspected leader of the hijackers, meeting with an Iraqi agent in Prague months before the attacks.

  To defend against further attacks, Bush decided he needed a homeland security adviser. The name that came up was Governor Tom Ridge of Pennsylvania, one of the candidates on Cheney’s list during the vice presidential selection process. In that role, Ridge was problematic because of his support for abortion rights. But in this job, that would not matter. Plus, as a military veteran, manager of a state government, and governor of one of the states affected on September 11, Ridge seemed the right fit.