Known and Unknown

by Donald Rumsfeld

  Bombs weren’t the only things we were dropping on Afghanistan, however. The country had long been suffering from drought and in a number of areas food was in short supply. In the first forty-eight hours alone, American aircraft dropped some 210,000 individual food rations.14

  After the first wave of air sorties was complete, unmanned Predator aircraft outfitted with high-resolution cameras remained, loitering silently and unobserved above Afghanistan and feeding back images of additional targets. Early on the evening of October 7, Franks called me with urgent information. A Predator drone flown remotely was following a convoy believed to be carrying the leader of the Taliban, Mullah Omar. Franks told me the convoy fit the profile of that used by the Taliban’s leadership. It had stopped at what appeared to be a mosque.

  In the weeks leading up to the war, Franks briefed me on various targeting categories and the risks of unintended, or, as it is also called, collateral damage to mosques, schools, hospitals, and urban areas. Franks had developed a detailed template for assessing the risk of collateral damage. Each of his target files included a photo and several metrics that gauged the likelihood of injuring civilians at various times of the day, his level of confidence in the intelligence sources, and the various angles at which munitions could be directed at the target. The experts at CENTCOM calibrated the type of weapon, the size, fuse, trajectory, and time of the attack to the circumstances of each target, with the goal of limiting collateral damage. Without question, more effort was devoted to avoiding collateral damage in Afghanistan than in any previous conflict in America’s history.

  Before making a targeting decision, CENTCOM consulted their legion of lawyers for advice. The concern for civilian casualties was understandable for humanitarian as well as strategic reasons. Every time a civilian was accidentally killed or injured, the loss of innocent life was lamented—and our cause suffered. The United States was held to a much higher standard than the enemy, who did not seek legal counsel before they struck purposefully at civilians.

  Still, I wanted commanders making go or no-go decisions on targeting with the advice of lawyers—not the other way around. The legal impulse by nature was to be restrictive and risk averse, which was not always compatible with waging an effective war against vicious fanatics. I had seen how the rules of engagement issued by President Reagan during the Lebanon crisis of the 1980s had been diminished at each layer of command until the result bore little resemblance to what the President had intended. Though I wanted commanders like Franks to benefit from legal advice, he needed to make the calls himself.

  I had told the combatant commanders even before 9/11 that I expected them to lean forward. I said that I would be too, and that they could be certain I would back them up on tough calls, even if they did not work out. I was concerned that America’s risk aversion in prior years had emboldened terrorists and rogue regimes worldwide.

  Immediately after Franks called to inform us of the plan to attack the convoy, I placed a secure call to Bush to inform him of the sketchy facts as we knew them: a likely high-value target, possibly Mullah Omar, was in a building that looked like a mosque. The President gave the green light. I told Franks he was authorized to hit the target. I did not say I had received Bush’s authorization, however. If something went awry, I thought it would be better if those down the chain of command believed that only I was responsible for what turned out to be a poor decision.

  In the end, the operation was, as Franks put it, “no joy”—meaning that it was unsuccessful. And I got no joy from learning why it failed. To avoid damaging the building, those who controlled the armed Predator decided to fire a Hellfire missile at a vehicle outside the suspected mosque instead of into the compound itself. The vehicle explosion sent men pouring out of the building, scattering for the hills. Presented with a chance to hit a target that might have been the top Taliban leader, we had failed.

  In the days after that operation, Franks and I discussed how to accelerate the speed at which he could decide on whether to attack a high-value target. Figures like Osama bin Laden, Mullah Omar, or al-Qaida’s number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri, could disappear from our intelligence picture as quickly as they appeared, often keeping themselves in the vicinity of civilians both to deter an attack and to increase the likelihood of civilian casualties if we were to strike.

  “The payoff for getting a key leader is high,” I said. “Look for a new process—anything to speed it up.” We couldn’t let precious seconds pass as dozens of people offered their views on whether to hit the target or not.

  Franks understood. “I will make the hard calls on collateral damage and not use the need to call you as a reason to slow it up,” he said. “I’ll take the hit on that.”

  “I’ll be right there with you when you make the call,” I assured him.

  “We’re going to catch these bastards sooner or later,” Franks added. “It’s just going to take time.”15

  As Air Force bombers and Navy strike aircraft destroyed Afghanistan’s limited air defenses, the Taliban offered little effective resistance. We worried that the enemy might have obtained U.S.-built Stinger antiaircraft missiles that had been used to shoot down Soviet helicopters fifteen years earlier. As it turned out, the Taliban had little antiaircraft weaponry. Not a single American aircraft was lost to enemy fire in those early days. Only the hazards of weather, dust, and geography posed a serious threat to our pilots and crews.

  Despite the heavy bombing, Taliban forces were holding their lines against the Northern Alliance, which, two weeks into the campaign, still had not achieved a single significant battlefield success. They were not moving forward aggressively to liberate Afghanistan’s northern cities.

  Meanwhile, allies of the Taliban from the tribal regions of Pakistan poured into Afghanistan, reinforcing the enemy lines. The international news media broadcast images of white pickups with men in black turbans roaming the streets of major cities, sending the message that the Taliban was still in control. Bombs dropped from aircraft could inflict damage to be sure, but they could not liberate a people.

  Still, there were some bright spots. In those first days of combat in Afghanistan, the Predator and other unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) conclusively proved their value to our military and intelligence personnel.* The information UAVs sent to our commanders about troop locations, at no risk to American lives, was invaluable. But as with all technology, it had to be used for its proper purpose. At some point in the months after 9/11, I was asked whether I wanted to have the video links from Predator drones and other live video images piped directly to my office in the Pentagon. Feeds were being sent to the White House Situation Room and to the operations centers of the military services. Recalling how LBJ picked out bombing targets from the White House, I was uncomfortable with people all over Washington congregating around the screens and second-guessing the decisions of commanders in the field—second-guessing that I suspected would eventually find its way into the press. Those making the life-and-death decisions on whether to destroy a target did not need a raft of onlookers outside the chain of command constantly looking over their shoulders. Nor did I want people treating the feeds as an object of curiosity. War was not a spectator sport or a video game. I declined to have the feeds piped into my office and asked that they be turned off in any offices that had no compelling reason to receive them.

  By mid-October, with the air war well underway, some of the many nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in Afghanistan were complaining about U.S. military actions. Some were quoted in press reports saying that the American bombing campaign was limiting their ability to provide food for needy people and putting their workers at risk. Most of the food aid from the NGOs was coming through Pakistan to southern Afghanistan, where the Taliban was in control. The NGOs, often supported by the American taxpayer through programs run by the U.S. Agency for International Development and the State Department, wanted the United States to help them distribute food in towns and villages that were held by the Talib
an. When the Department of Defense declined to help feed the enemy, some NGOs accused us of using food as a weapon.

  I had no interest in using food as a weapon, and it was an oft-repeated admonition from President Bush that we should not do so. But it didn’t make sense to me that American military personnel should risk their lives so food could be delivered to Taliban strongholds, especially when there were urgent needs for food in areas controlled by our Afghan allies. Some humanitarian organizations further argued that U.S. food aid paid for by U.S. taxpayers should not be identified as coming from the United States. Their contention was that America had a bad reputation and Afghans would react negatively if they knew the source of the food. Again, I disagreed. One purpose of the aid was to build goodwill among ordinary Afghans, so they would support our coalition’s effort to liberate their country from the Taliban and al-Qaida. We even took pains to communicate to the Afghans that the food was fit for consumption according to Muslim religious law. I did not believe hungry people would refuse to eat food because it was known to come from the United States. And the humanitarian organizations provided no evidence that that was the case.

  Some NGOs tried to ingratiate themselves with Taliban authorities by criticizing the actions of the U.S. military and our coalition partners in the press. But rarely, if ever, did I hear an organization complain publicly about the brutality of the Taliban or al-Qaida. At one point the Taliban raided the offices of a major international humanitarian organization, taking medical supplies and stripping the office bare. The organization did not say a word about it, presumably for fear of retaliation.16 The same organization freely publicized its complaints about the United States.

  Throughout the twelve days of the bombing campaign, members of the Northern Alliance questioned whether we were being effective. Targeting the Taliban and al-Qaida required information and tactics that only our special operations forces could provide for precision air strikes. Without the coordination of our laser targeting against the key Taliban and al-Qaida emplacements, Afghan commanders were reluctant to go on the offensive.

  Meanwhile, at the Pentagon, we waited anxiously for CIA and special operations teams to link up with Northern Alliance commanders and the Pashtun opposition leaders in the east and south. At K-2 in Uzbekistan, the Army Special Forces A-Teams under the command of Colonel John Mulholland also waited for the signal to move. The special operators were champing at the bit, ready for their assignment as “the tip of the spear.” But the signal to deploy into Afghanistan was not forthcoming.

  The press was impatient as well. Once combat operations began, I received variations on the same question from Pentagon reporters: When would American ground forces be deployed? I counseled patience. Wars have their own tempo, I said. “Patience” was a proper theme, and I invoked it sincerely, even though I knew I often lacked that quality myself.17

  By mid-October, communications by satellite phone had been established with several Northern Alliance commanders, but only one CIA team had managed to connect with them on the ground. Code-named Jawbreaker, the team had linked up with General Fahim Khan, Massoud’s successor and the de facto leader of the Northern Alliance. The delays in teaming up with the other Northern Alliance commanders were excruciating for me.

  “My goodness, Tommy,” I repeatedly said to Franks. “The Department of Defense is many times bigger than the CIA, and yet we are sitting here like little birds in a nest, waiting for someone to drop food in our mouths.” It seemed we couldn’t do anything until the Agency gave us a morsel of intelligence or established the first links on the ground.

  In truth, the frustration extended well beyond Tommy Franks. In the month after 9/11, I had been continually disappointed that the military had been unable to provide the President with military options to strike and disrupt the terrorist networks that were planning still more attacks. In one memo to Chairman Myers and Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Marine General Peter Pace, I wrote that “for a month, DoD has produced next to no actionable suggestions as to how we can assist in applying the urgently needed pressure other than cruise missiles and bombs.” My October 10, 2001, memo continued:

  I am seeing nothing that is thoughtful, creative or actionable. How can that be?…The Department of Justice and its counterparts in other nations have arrested hundreds of suspects. The Department of the Treasury and its counterparts in other nations have frozen hundreds of bank accounts totaling hundreds of millions of dollars. The Department of State has organized many dozens of nations in support. But DoD has come up with a goose egg….

  You must figure out a way for us to get this job done. You must find out what in the world the problem is and why DoD is such a persistent and unacceptably dry well…. We are not doing our jobs. We owe it to the country to get this accomplished—and fast. Your job is to get me military options. It is the [President’s and my] job to balance risks and benefits. We cannot do our job unless you do your job. If we delay longer, more Americans could be killed. Let’s get it done.18

  Myers and Pace pushed all of the combatant commanders to come up with more options. In Afghanistan, Franks explained that there were factors outside anyone’s control contributing to the delays. Blinding dust storms and white-out conditions in the high mountain passes had forced several teams to turn back. The CIA and CENTCOM were trying to use several older Soviet helicopters, similar to those the Taliban had in its possession, to fool the Taliban. But the old Soviet choppers were unreliable and not well suited for the weather conditions.

  After one particularly long day in the first week of October, Franks called. The distress over the delays, expressed by everyone he was talking to in the chain of command from the President on down, was wearing on him. Franks questioned whether I still had confidence in him and asked if I thought the President should select a different commander. I admitted that the waiting was difficult but assured him flat out that he and his operation had our full confidence.

  I had to keep reminding myself that we were still only a few days into this campaign. Meanwhile, critics of the administration were plunging into despair. Some in the press, reflecting the concerns they were hearing, resurrected the word “quagmire,” an echo of the bitter domestic opposition to the Vietnam War. On September 18, seven days after 9/11 and one month before the first special operations teams would even enter Afghanistan, the Associated Press reported, “Now it may be the United States’ turn to try a foray into the Afghan quagmire.”19 A later editorial in the Dallas Morning News read, “[A]nother generation of American servicemen may be sucked into a quagmire in a foreign land.”20 “Are we quagmiring ourselves again?” the columnist Maureen Dowd asked two days later.21 R. W. Apple, a well-respected foreign correspondent, opined on the front page of the New York Times, “Like an unwelcome specter from an unhappy past, the ominous word ‘quagmire’ has begun to haunt conversations among government officials and students of foreign policy, both here and abroad. Could Afghanistan become another Vietnam?”22

  At one press briefing after another, General Myers and I were asked why the military operations were not progressing faster. I believed it was my job to urge CENTCOM to move forward as quickly as possible, and I did so in private. But much of the public discussion, especially the growing quagmire chorus, lacked restraint and historical perspective.

  I usually enjoyed my exchanges with the Pentagon press corps. There were several dozen reporters who were regularly assigned to the Pentagon beat. They had small offices not far from the room where we gave media briefings. Most were knowledgeable, hardworking, and reasonably objective, though often skeptical. Many had been in the Pentagon when American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the building. I was sympathetic to them. Some periodically said that they had to cope with guidance from their editors, who knew that playing up a potential disaster is what sold. As the saying goes, “If it bleeds, it leads.”

  I often injected humor into our exchanges with journalists. It’s a relief to find occasion to lighten the mood when d
iscussing serious matters. At one point, our press conferences were parodied on the television show Saturday Night Live. I remembered the show for its spoofs of President Ford in the 1970s that did him real political damage. Still, I had to admit that the skits of my press conferences—with comedian Darrell Hammond playing my bespectacled self—were amusing.

  Over the years I had seen many times what happens in politics when a public figure receives a good deal of media attention. Journalists rely heavily on standard narratives that both conform to and shape the conventional wisdom about government officials. If one starts with “good press,” one often gets more and more favorable coverage; early bad stories often spawn additional negative reporting. But journalists also relish dramatic reversals. One memorable observation in this regard was made by World War II general Joseph Stilwell, who warned, “The higher a monkey climbs, the more you see of his behind.”

  Still, a free nation could not survive without a free press and an open, transparent government. It was what we were fighting for against our enemies.23 I felt an obligation to explain to the American people in press conferences what the Defense Department sought to achieve in Afghanistan and what was happening on the ground there.

  CHAPTER 29

  Kabul Falls, Karzai Rises

  On October 19, the first of our Special Forces A-Teams made it into Afghanistan, and the twelve men successfully linked up with the ethnic Uzbek warlord General Abdul Rashid Dostum south of Mazar-e-Sharif. Later that day, two hundred U.S. Army Rangers descended onto a dusty airstrip designated Objective Rhino in southern Afghanistan.1 Franks had learned of the airstrip from Sheikh Muhammed bin Zayed, military chief of staff of the United Arab Emirates, who had outfitted the remote location as a camp for hunting with falcons in the surrounding hills.2 Rhino was strategically positioned between Kandahar and the Pakistani border—an ideal place from which to attack enemy terrorists trying to flee Afghanistan and seek sanctuary in Pakistan’s tribal regions. CENTCOM broadcast to the world the greenish night-vision images of the seizure of Rhino, demonstrating that the U.S. military was moving into Afghanistan.