When the President invoked wartime powers, some questioned whether we were really in fact at war. As I freely admitted and made a point of saying publicly in the early days After 9/11, the challenge we faced from violent Islamist extremists was profoundly different from the wars Americans had fought in the past. It wasn’t a war in the traditional way most Americans understood the concept. The struggle against the terrorists could not be discussed in terms familiar to Americans: battles and fronts, advances and surrenders. The war did not have a distinct beginning and it would not have a clear ending. We knew there would be no peace treaty that would bring the conflict to a ceremonious close. The war’s duration was indefinite.
I knew that holding people indefinitely would become increasingly controversial, especially when indefinitely looked like forever to some people. I didn’t want our country to hold a single detainee one day longer than necessary. I knew of no good alternative, except to keep moving each individual detainee’s case toward resolution by military commission or transfer to their home nations, while examining and reexamining why we were holding them. The American people would need to understand the complexities of the problem and why neither our domestic criminal justice system nor the Uniform Code of Military Justice was adequate for the new challenges.
Our nation’s campaign against Islamist extremists would be, as I wrote to the President in a memo only days After 9/11, “a marathon, not a sprint.”5 We were under no illusions that the terrorists would surrender After a few days of bombing in Afghanistan. If the war was going to be the work of a generation, that argued for developing broad and sustainable national and congressional support through a skillful public communications effort, consultation, and a proactive legislative strategy. There was at least temporary bipartisanship at work in the immediate Aftermath of 9/11, which might have been leveraged better. Members of both parties were demanding in unison that the President take all the actions necessary to prevent another attack. Congress worked cooperatively—and reasonably quickly—with the President on wartime spending, the creation of new governmental organizations and posts, the Patriot Act, and other matters.* But on wartime detention, that was not the case—it took a series of Supreme Court decisions five years into the Bush administration to provoke interest in the issue.
As a former member of Congress, I might have been better attuned to the need for congressional buy in on such potentially difficult and controversial matters. More than a year before the Supreme Court’s decision in Hamdan forced the administration to go to Congress for detainee legislation, I pushed the Defense Department to reach out to Congress. In March 2005, I sent a memo to Jim Haynes and the incoming deputy secretary of defense, Gordon England—who was replacing Paul Wolfowitz, then leaving to head the World Bank. England brought with him a management background from business and as secretary of the Navy and then deputy secretary at the Department of Homeland Security. England also had good political instincts. He believed, as I did, that our detention policies would be subject to further scrutiny and criticism absent congressional involvement. As I wrote to Haynes and England in my memo:
I wonder if we ought to consider proposing to the White House that they propose legislation to try to untangle all of these court decisions relating to unlawful combatants and detainees. It seems to me that getting the Congress involved might help put a lot of clarity into it, give them a role, and keep the confusion resulting from disparate court decisions to a minimum.6
Although Congress was not calling for a larger role, we might have sought their input and worked to pin down their support more formally. Because we did not do so, members of Congress felt free to abandon their support for administration policies when we hit bumps in the road.
Partisans in Congress, self-styled human rights advocates, anti-Bush journalists, lawyers of suspected terrorists, and others have argued relentlessly that the war on terrorism detainees at Guantánamo Bay and elsewhere should be viewed not as detainees held off the battlefield pending the end of the conflict, but rather as domestic criminal defendants presumed to be innocent and entitled to a speedy trial in civil courts or immediate release.7 Because those arguments were not countered effectively, they prevailed in the public debate. Half truths, distortions, and outright lies were too often met with little or no rebuttal. There is plenty of blame to share for the failures in communication. The responsibility was first and foremost with those of us who served as the senior officials in the administration. War is more than secret intelligence, combat, and military operations. To use a military phrase, the center of gravity in a long war shifts from battlefields overseas to the home front. In a democracy, a war can be lost in Congress and in the news media at home, even if battles are won abroad. On the important issue of communicating and formulating detainee policy, we did not confront with sufficient energy or skill the political challenge represented by those who argued for using our own courts and legal system against us.
When it came to detainee policies, it proved easy for outsiders to criticize the Bush administration’s perceived mistakes, sometimes in unusually harsh terms. When Barack Obama, for example, assumed the responsibilities of commander in chief in 2009, he found that making policy was much different from making speeches. To the disappointment of some of the President’s supporters, his administration has kept in place the most contentious and widely derided Bush administration policies. Terrorists are still not accorded POW status under the Geneva Conventions. Guantánamo Bay—the so-called “gulag of our times”—remains in operation as the best available facility for holding dangerous terrorists. After flirting with trying captured terrorists in civilian courts of law, and even bringing Khalid Sheikh Muhammed to a courthouse in lower Manhattan, the administration changed course in response to a growing public outcry. As a result, military commissions—patterned on those established under the Bush administration—continue to be used to try terrorists. The Army Field Manual on interrogation developed by the Bush Department of Defense in 2006 has been embraced (though unwisely imposed on the CIA). The electronic surveillance of suspected terrorists, once roundly denounced by civil libertarians and by then Senator Barack Obama, continues. Risking allegations of war crimes by international law advocates, the administration has continued UAV (unmanned aerial vehicles) attacks against suspected terrorists, reportedly even targeting U.S. citizens. It is worth noting that killing these individuals by drone missile attacks affords them fewer legal rights than the military commissions President Obama opposed for years.
These decisions by the Obama administration, in my mind, are the correct ones. They undoubtedly were made After careful scrutiny, an examination of the possible alternatives, and with the sure knowledge that our country remains vulnerable to terrorist attack. There is one difference, however: President Obama had the benefit of succeeding a president who in the chaotic weeks After 9/11 had to put all these plans in place quickly, withstanding bitter partisan criticism and unpopularity for having done what he believed was best for the country. President Obama’s latter-day support of these decisions is evidence that on most of the big questions regarding our enemies, George W. Bush and his administration got it right.
PART XIII
Pulling On Our Boots:
Challenges and Controversies Beyond the War Zones
Annapolis, Maryland
JULY 4, 2006
I was expecting fireworks on Independence Day, but not at 2:30 in the afternoon and not from a despot in North Korea. The multistage Taepo-Dong 2 missile had been on its pad in the northeast corner of the ironically named Democratic People’s Republic of Korea for several days. Overhead reconnaissance indicated it was being fueled and possibly prepared for ignition. Smaller, medium-range missiles were in place at other launch sites. We couldn’t be sure where any of them were aimed, when they might be launched, what types of warheads they were equipped with, or exactly how far they could go. Military and intelligence officials judged Alaska and Hawaii to be almost certainly within strikin
g distance of North Korea’s long-range ballistic missiles.
The leaders of the so-called Hermit Kingdom had a penchant for rattling sabers around American holidays. In the weeks running up to July 4 there had been some speculation that the North Korean regime might fire a long-range missile. No one was certain of their intentions, but the possibilities included a simple test, a demonstration firing, or a launch to place an object in space. The North Koreans could do something even more provocative, and our allies in South Korea and Japan didn’t want to be ill prepared in case missiles were aimed toward their territory. The erratic Kim Jong Il might even swing for the fences and attempt to hit our country.
President Bush came into office vowing not to put our country at risk of blackmail by ballistic missiles tipped with nuclear, biological, chemical, or conventional warheads. Since late 2001, when America withdrew from the ABM Treaty and began installing a missile defense system, we had made solid strides in putting a developmental system in place. More than a dozen interceptors were in the ground in Alaska and California that could be launched at a moment’s notice. Though critics continued to downplay the capability of our system—some said it was like “hitting a bullet with a bullet”—the program wasn’t science fiction anymore.1 Tests had proven that our interceptors could locate, track, hit, and destroy incoming ballistic missiles.2
The President and I were pleased with the progress that had been made. We had overcome the legal obstacles of the ABM Treaty by withdrawing. We had overcome the diplomatic obstacles by offering assurances to allies that we were no longer developing a national missile defense system but one that could be fashioned to deter and defend them as well. We had overcome the technical obstacles and consistent assertions from critics that it couldn’t be done by continuing research and development After it was installed; though it wouldn’t be a perfect system, it could continue to be improved and calibrated through testing over time.
One of the more challenging obstacles was figuring out the arrangements to actually issue the order—the first in history—to launch an interceptor to destroy an incoming intercontinental ballistic missile. President Bush and I had had many discussions about the precise procedures and delegations of authority for how, when, and by whom the trigger could be pulled. We both appreciated that launching an interceptor in a real-world situation could have grave or unexpected consequences. If the interceptors missed or were launched too late or not at all, an incoming missile could destroy an American city. If the interceptor did hit an incoming missile, deadly debris could spread out over a large area. Given the short time available to make such decisions—every second would be critical After an enemy missile was launched—the President and I concluded that it made sense for him to delegate the launch authority to the secretary of defense.
I had been spending that July Fourth holiday weekend in St. Michaels, Maryland, some seventy miles outside of Washington. Joyce had wisely insisted we find a place outside the capital so I would be away from the Pentagon on some weekends, which would give the staff a respite from the grueling twelve-hours-per-day, seven-days-a-week schedule I had established After 9/11. Joyce and I—with our two miniature dachshunds, Reggie and Chester—had found the old redbrick house on a small branch off the Chesapeake Bay a welcome haven.
But it was not a haven that weekend, as the probability of a North Korean missile launch left a long shadow over the holiday. I was receiving frequent updates over a secure phone on the latest developments. I had with me a Defense Department communications officer—someone able to put me in touch over a secure line with the President and combatant commanders anywhere in the world. He was never more than yards away in times of high alert. At night a security agent with the secure line waited in a car in our driveway, prepared to sprint inside if NORTHCOM—the combatant command for missile defense for the United States—needed me to make the decision on whether to launch our interceptors.
After lunch on Sunday, July 4, Joyce and I left St. Michaels to go to a holiday party. We drove northwest along Route 50, our three-car convoy making good time toward the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. Just After crossing it, we pulled over to the shoulder. The communications officer had Admiral Tim Keating at U.S. Northern Command and Marine General James “Hoss” Cartwright at U.S. Strategic Command on the line. They advised that a long-range Taepo-Dong 2 missile had just been launched from its pad. If it appeared to be on a trajectory toward the United States, I was prepared to give the order to launch our interceptors, which were on high alert. We understood that such an action could invite retaliatory moves from North Korea.
As it turned out, I didn’t have to fire that day. The North Korean ballistic missile failed forty-two seconds After launch and fell back on North Korean territory. Later in the Afternoon North Korea fired a half-dozen shorter-range missiles, which splashed into the Pacific. Though I did not have to make the call to send our interceptors into space to destroy an incoming ballistic missile, the United States was the first nation in the world to have the ability to make that decision.
The uncertain situation with North Korea was one in a series of challenges that faced the Department of Defense, even as it was engaged in difficult wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Some of those challenges were easy to foresee, while others came with much shorter notice, such as an ominous gathering of winds off the shores of New Orleans.
CHAPTER 42
Katrina and the Challenge of New Institutions
“A lie will go round the world while the truth is pulling its boots on.”
—As quoted in Rumsfeld’s Rules
Tropical storm Katrina intensified to a category 5 hurricane on August 28, 2005, while it was still several hundred miles out in the Gulf of Mexico. Expecting landfall in the next forty-eight hours, the new NORTHCOM commander, Admiral Tim Keating, began issuing orders and alerts to military units across the United States.* He deployed an advance headquarters to Camp Shelby, Mississippi, and created a staging area for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana. The Department of Defense activated a hurricane operations cell in the Pentagon to monitor developments. Search-and-rescue aircrews were alerted that they might soon be needed. Navy ships with relief capabilities were ordered to proceed to the area.1 Lieutenant General H. Steven Blum, chief of the National Guard, began alerting state Guard forces.
Katrina thundered into Louisiana and Mississippi just before dawn on the following day. As the storm’s fiercest wind gusts—approaching 150 miles per hour—died down, Army National Guard and Coast Guard helicopters began rescue operations. Available DoD assets were pushed toward the Gulf Coast. Hundreds of active-duty troops and thousands of National Guardsmen began arriving in Louisiana and Mississippi.
Because the Department of Defense is by law a supporting department, not the lead agency in the case of a catastrophic domestic event, the U.S. military was not in charge of coordinating the federal response.2 Instead, the responsibility for managing the federal government’s response rested with the massive new Department of Homeland Security (DHS).3
DHS was established with little, if any, input from anyone outside a small circle of White House aides and congressional staffers. The first I heard of the plan was in a phone call from White House Chief of Staff Andy Card in early 2002, the night before it was announced publicly.
Card said officials at the White House—he didn’t say who—had quietly worked with key members of Congress to establish a new department and that the President would be making the announcement the next day. DHS promised to be a sizable organization and would absorb a number of components of existing departments and agencies, including, I was told, several from the Department of Defense. This would be among the most extensive reorganizations of the federal government since the National Security Act of 1947.
Card was not asking for my views. He was informing me of the plan on the eve of the announcement. I was surprised. Clearly a decision had been made to put the proposal on the fast track. Bec
ause DHS was created in secrecy and haste, there were bound to be unforeseen consequences. I knew how slowly the federal bureaucracy moved, even on a good day. A new cabinet department would need its own facilities and thousands of personnel. It would have to manage relations with labor unions, weed through a thicket of federal regulations, and incorporate a host of agencies that had long been accustomed to different rules, regulations, and modes of operation. These changes would take a long time—likely years, not weeks or months. I also knew that despite its charter, the new department would not have the resources to meet its new statutory responsibilities in the case of a truly catastrophic natural disaster. As I had written in a memo more than a year before Hurricane Katrina struck:
DoD currently will not be called until all of the first responders—sheriffs, police, FEMA, FBI, Homeland Security, Transportation Security Administration, etc.—have tried and failed. . . . Then and only then will the phone ring at the Department of Defense. . . . We know that DoD, whatever its ultimate role in homeland security, will always be called in late, [and] will be imperfectly equipped. . . .4
These would prove to be the foreseeable results of the creation of a new federal institution made up of a patchwork of existing organizations from other departments and agencies. Good intentions had abounded. Wisdom had been in shorter supply.
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