Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War

by Gates, Robert M

  General Cartwright patiently sat beside me through the entire presentation in the Pentagon press room, added his own remarks in support, and then helped me in answering questions. His technical understanding of the issues and problems affecting many of the programs was invaluable at that moment, as it had been in the decision-making process itself.

  In the days following my press conference, I traveled to the war colleges of all four services—Quantico, Virginia, for the Marines; Maxwell AFB, Alabama, for the Air Force; Carlisle Barracks in Pennsylvania for the Army; and Newport, Rhode Island, for the Navy—to talk about what I was trying to do and to discuss decisions specific to each service. The middle-grade officers I addressed were the future of each of the services, and I hoped by engaging them directly I might be able to plant some ideas and perspectives that would have long-term impact. We’ll see.

  We fought Congress all summer and fall of 2009 over the 2010 budget and over all the program changes that I had recommended and the president had embraced. To stay on the offensive, Geoff Morrell, my press spokesman, suggested I give a major speech before the Economic Club of Chicago in mid-July, which Rahm Emanuel arranged with the help of William Daley, a member of the club’s board (and Rahm’s subsequent successor as Obama’s chief of staff). Given that it was midsummer, I was amazed at the size of the crowd they assembled, its enthusiastic response to what we were trying to do, and the widespread press coverage we received. The event symbolized the full support of the White House.

  When I had reviewed with the president at the end of March the specifics of what I was going to propose, both Biden and Emanuel said we’d be lucky to get half or 60 percent of what we wanted. When the dust settled, of the thirty-three major program changes I had recommended to the president, Congress ultimately acquiesced in 2009 to all but two. A year later we were successful in getting our way on those. It was unprecedented.

  From some quarters, I received harsh criticism. One retired general said that I had “ripped the heart out of the future of the Army.” Others said I had gutted missile defense. According to one retired Air Force general, “He has decimated the Air Force for the future.” Former secretary of the Air Force Mike Wynne, not a member of my fan club, wrote, “I am sure … the Iranians are cringing in their boots about the threat from our stability forces. Our national interests are being reduced to becoming the armed custodians of two nations, Afghanistan and Iraq.” At the same time, a significant number of members of Congress of both parties were supportive, as were most of the media, who were amazed that a secretary of defense was able to kill even one military program, much less thirty or so.

  These battles would continue for as long as I was secretary and beyond. Meanwhile the new president and his team were focusing on other, more politically potent issues such as health care and foreign policy, and that would include addressing my fourth priority, getting Afghanistan on track.

  THE PRESIDENT’S AGENDA

  As I said earlier, for the first several months under Obama, it took a lot of discipline to sit quietly at the table as everyone from the president on down took shots at Bush and his team. Sitting there, I would often think to myself, Am I invisible? During those excoriations, there was never any acknowledgment that I had been an integral part of that earlier team.

  It was especially grating when the others would talk about how terrible our relations were with so many countries around the world, how our reputation as a country had been so damaged, how our standing had never been so low, and how much repair work lay ahead. While I would concede that the war in Iraq, in particular, had hurt many of our relationships, the world they described was not the world I had encountered when traveling as Bush’s secretary of defense. Instead, I had found most countries in 2007–8 eager to strengthen their relationship with us. I thought our partnerships in Europe, Africa, and China were in pretty good shape, and the fairly sour state of affairs with Russia had more to do with their bad behavior—including the invasion of Georgia—than with missteps by the United States. Asian leaders, however, had told me they felt neglected by the Bush administration, and we obviously still had big problems in the Middle East.

  Discussions in the Situation Room allowed no room for discriminating analysis: everything was awful, and Obama and his team had arrived just in time to save the day. Riding back to the Pentagon after White House meetings, Mike Mullen and I would discuss how everyone seemed completely oblivious to the possibility that both of us might take offense to some of the things being said. Just as likely, they didn’t care. It was the dues we paid for staying on, but we didn’t have to like it.

  No president has the luxury of focusing on just a few issues, but it is hard to think of a president who entered office facing more challenges of historic magnitude than Obama. The nation’s economic meltdown and the possibility of another great depression while we were engulfed in two wars certainly were at the top of the list. But there were myriad other pressing problems as well, among them the Iranian nuclear program and the related growing possibility of a new Middle East war; a nuclear-armed North Korea; a European economic crisis; increasingly nationalistic policies in both Russia and China; and Pakistan in possession of dozens of nuclear weapons and growing more dysfunctional by the day. Then there were Obama’s own initiatives, such as reshaping the federal budget and far-reaching health care reform. During his first four months, he had to deal additionally with the launch of a long-range North Korean missile over Japan on April 5, which fortunately failed; the killing of three Somali pirates and the rescue of an American ship captain by Navy SEALs on April 12; a North Korean nuclear test (which apparently fizzled) on May 25; and working with the Canadians to rescue two of their UN envoys who had been kidnapped in Mali by al Qaeda. These and other such unforeseeable events made every day interesting, but they also made demands on the president’s time and, accordingly, the time of his senior national security team.

  Given the president’s campaign pledges, Iraq had to be high on the agenda for prompt action. As a candidate, Obama had promised to withdraw all U.S. combat forces within sixteen months and, as provided in the Strategic Framework Agreement, to have all U.S. troops out of Iraq by December 2011. General Ray Odierno, the commander in Iraq, had started looking at different options for drawing down his forces well before the inauguration. As usual, there was a leak—almost certainly from the Pentagon—and The New York Times ran an article on January 15 discussing Ray’s efforts. The story implied that there already was a difference of view between Obama and the military. This was not helpful. Geoff Morrell talked with Obama’s adviser David Axelrod and press secretary–designate Robert Gibbs, who were very concerned about Obama appearing to be at odds with the military “right out of the gate,” as had happened with President Clinton. They agreed that Morrell would tell the press that Mullen’s and my discussions with Obama “had been broad in nature and they will not begin the process of presenting specific options on the way ahead in Iraq and Afghanistan until after the inaugural.” In the months to come, there would be real, not imagined, problems between the White House and the military.

  In a videoconference, Odierno told me he thought a recent preinaugural trip to Iraq by Biden and Senator Lindsay Graham had gone well, and he hoped if there was continued progress in both the security and political arenas, it might persuade the president to be flexible about his sixteen-month timeline. He said Biden told him that Obama would not be communicating directly with Prime Minister Maliki nearly as much as Bush had. I told Odierno I hoped to set up two sessions with Obama on the subject of drawdowns, one a videoconference with him and Petraeus, and the second a meeting at the Pentagon with the chairman, the chiefs, and me. I cautioned Odierno—and others—that Obama likely would not make a decision “on the spot,” as Bush had done so often, but would probably want to consult with other advisers first.

  Iraq was the subject of the first Obama National Security Council meeting on January 21, 2009. The president said he wanted to draw down tro
ops in a way that “preserves the positive security trends and protects U.S. personnel.” He asked for at least three options, one of which had to be his earlier sixteen-month timetable. In a press conference the next day, a reporter asked me what they should take from the fact that a White House statement after the NSC didn’t mention sixteen months. I replied, “I wouldn’t take anything from it.”

  In early February, ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker and Odierno submitted three options: (1) a twenty-three-month drawdown period, reducing U.S. forces to a residual training and advisory presence by December 2010, an option they recommended as offering the lowest level of risk and highest probability of achieving our objectives; (2) a nineteen-month drawdown, reaching the residual force level by August 2010, that would meet most but not all requirements for development of the Iraqi security forces; and (3) a sixteen-month-drawdown, which would be completed in May 2010, an option they said presented “extremely high risk” to overall mission accomplishment. Crocker and Odierno recommended a residual force of 50,000 to 55,000 troops, restructured into six advisory and assistance brigades, with the primary mission of training and advising Iraqi forces, deterring external threats, conducting counterterrorism operations, and protecting themselves and U.S. civilians. As provided in the Strategic Framework Agreement with the Iraqis, all American forces would be out of their country by the end of December 2011.

  I had discussed the options in detail with Odierno in January and knew what he could live with. I also knew Obama wouldn’t accept a twenty-three-month drawdown. So in a private meeting with the president on January 26, I strongly recommended the nineteen-month-drawdown option. That moved his timetable back by 90 days and Odierno’s up by 120 days. I told him this option would demonstrate that he was not blindly committed to a campaign promise, that it would show he had listened to his commanders and adjusted his approach, and that it would provide a definite date to move to an “advise and assist” mission. This also would provide maximum U.S. military strength through the March 2010 Iraqi elections. “You will be a prisoner neither to your campaign nor to your commanders,” I concluded. He replied tersely: “I’m okay with that. It’s also good politically.” Obama and I had informally agreed on the Iraq drawdown timetable six days after the inaugural.

  Unaware of the conversation between the president and me, the Deputies and Principals Committees met on several occasions during the first three weeks of February to discuss the options. On February 26, the president met with two dozen Democratic and Republican congressional leaders in the State Dining Room at the White House for “consultations” on the drawdown decision. As with virtually every president I worked for, such an occasion was less a consultation with Congress than a preview of what he was going to do and then hearing them out. All the president’s senior advisers were there, including Mike Mullen and me. Everyone sat at one huge table.

  Politically, it was not a great evening for the president. The Republicans were almost unanimously supportive, including John McCain. The Democratic leadership was shocked not so much by the timetable but by the fact that some 50,000 troops would remain in Iraq until nearly the end of 2011. I was sitting across from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and thought she alternately looked like she had swallowed an entire lemon or was simply going to explode. She drummed her fingers on the table and had a white-knuckled grip on her pencil. She said she just could not understand why so many troops had to remain. Among the Democrats there, only Senator Dick Durbin, a close Illinois ally of Obama’s, supported the president’s plan.

  The president flew to the Marine base at Camp LeJeune, North Carolina, the next day to announce his decisions and place them in a larger regional context. Mike Mullen, Jim Jones, and I accompanied him. His references to the sacrifice and bravery of the troops drew warm applause, but he got his biggest round of cheers when he told the Marines he was going to raise military pay. That day, February 27, General Odierno sent a message to all his troops: “After extensive consultation with the Iraqis, [the] U.S. military chain of command, and civilian leaders, the president announced his plan for the responsible drawdown of U.S. forces in Iraq.… The president has provided clear guidance regarding the change of mission for our forces, and his plan provides significant flexibility to military commanders on the ground to implement this guidance.”

  At the outset of the surge in Iraq in 2007, as we’ve seen, I had told Petraeus I would get him as many troops as I could for as long as I could. In Odierno’s case, I was trying to ensure that he would keep as many troops as he could for as long as he could. While he was not entirely comfortable with the deal I struck, he would be able to hold on to significant troop levels until after the March 2010 Iraqi elections. He would manage it brilliantly.

  The president moved quickly on the several foreign policy initiatives he had talked about during the campaign. Reaching out to Europe, he sent Biden, Jones, Holbrooke, and Deputy Secretary of State Steinberg to the Munich Security Conference in early February. Their tone, particularly on Biden’s part, was that the Neanderthals were no longer in charge in Washington and the “good guys” were back. In exchange for more consultation and strengthening partnerships and international organizations, Biden said, the Obama administration was hoping for less criticism and more constructive ideas; for help in enforcing the rules of international organizations; for greater willingness to consider the use of force when absolutely necessary; and for concrete contributions, even if not military. He and the other senior Americans met to good effect with a number of European leaders at the conference. I was happy I didn’t have to go. I had been to that conference twice under President Bush and that was enough. (On my second trip to Munich, I told my staff to pull me out of the dreaded formal dinner before dessert on the pretext of a call from the White House. Then I told them to get me just as the main course was served. Finally, just before going into the dinner, I said to come for me after the salad. As I left, heads turned, wondering what crisis compelled me to leave such a wonderful occasion so early. Pete Chiarelli made me stop by my hotel room to “take the call” before we made a beeline for the hotel pub for beer and sausages.)

  Given the perception of American neglect in Asia, I was both impressed and pleased that Hillary Clinton’s first overseas trip as secretary of state was to Asia, beginning in Indonesia. I thought it sent an important message.

  The more controversial among Obama’s early initiatives were his efforts to reach out to countries where our relationships ranged from poor to outright hostility, principal among them Russia and Iran. In these cases, the president and Clinton played the primary role, although we spent a great deal of time discussing each matter in the Situation Room. I had a lot of bad memories relating to Iran from my earlier life in government. I had been on the advance trip to Tehran in late 1977 for a state visit by President Carter, a city I thought then—just over a year before the Islamic revolution—was the most tense I had ever experienced; I was present as notetaker in the fall of 1979 in Algiers, when Carter’s national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, made the first (failed) U.S. attempt to engage the Iranian leadership (our embassy in Tehran was seized days later); I was in the White House with CIA director Stansfield Turner the evening of our failed attempt to rescue our embassy hostages in the spring of 1980; I witnessed the Iran-Contra disaster in 1986–87; and I was present in the Situation Room during the U.S.-Iranian naval incidents in the Persian Gulf in 1987–88 and the downing of a civilian Iranian airliner by a U.S. warship in 1988. I reminded the president and principals that every president since Carter had tried to engage with the Iranians, that every outstretched American hand had been slapped away, and that two presidents, Carter and Reagan, had paid a significant political price for it.

  There were a couple of exchanges of letters between Obama and Iranian supreme leader Khamenei in the spring of 2009, and Obama videotaped a message to the Iranian people on March 20 on the occasion of the Iranian New Year. The return letters from Tehran were diatribes. There was
a lot of criticism, especially from conservatives, about the outreach to Iran. I had no objection because I thought that when it failed—as I believed it would—we would be in a much stronger position to get approval of significantly stricter economic sanctions on Iran at the UN Security Council. That turned out to be the case. I was convinced that those sanctions held the only possible path to stopping the Iranian nuclear program, short of war. I underestimated the reaction to the initiative from the Israelis and our Arab friends, both of whom nurtured the dread that the United States would at some point cut a “grand bargain” with the Iranians that would leave both Israelis and Arabs to fend for themselves against Tehran.

  Most support inside the administration for engagement ended with the Iranian regime’s rigging of the outcome of the June 9 elections and the brutally harsh repression of protesters that ensued, although the administration would not fully abandon the idea until fall. The president was strongly criticized then and later for failing to speak out more clearly on behalf of the “Green Revolution.” At the time, I was persuaded by the State Department’s experts and by CIA analysts who briefed us in the Situation Room that too powerful an American voice on behalf of the protesters might provide ammunition for the regime to label the protest movement a tool of the United States and CIA and thus be used against them. In retrospect, I think we could and should have done more, at least rhetorically.

  Another Iranian problem we faced had its roots in Bush’s final days in office. On January 7, 2009, I was heading out of my office to celebrate with my infinitely patient wife our forty-second wedding anniversary when I heard Geoff Morrell talking to my chief of staff, Robert Rangel, right outside my door. Geoff had received a call from New York Times reporter David Sanger that afternoon alerting him that Sanger was writing an article that would say Israel had asked the United States early in 2008 for bunker-busting bombs and for permission for overflight of Iraq in order to strike the Iranian nuclear enrichment site at Natanz. Sanger claimed that the United States had refused both requests, believing that the Israelis would be able to delay the Iranian program only a short while but would put 150,000 U.S. troops in Iraq at risk. He also referred to a covert program intended to delay the Iranian nuclear program. Sanger wanted Morrell to ask me what I made of all this. I was furious. I called Bush’s national security adviser, Steve Hadley, to report what Morrell had just told me. I suggested Hadley call executive editor Bill Keller of the Times to try to stop publication of the article. Hadley thought that would never work, and then, at Rangel’s suggestion, I proposed bringing Jim Jones up to speed and then recommended that Hadley and Jones together call Keller. I don’t think that ever happened. Sanger’s article was published on January 11. A month later Obama was still so angry about the leaks to Sanger that he told me he wanted a criminal investigation.