Morales was trying to provoke me into walking out in protest. Tempered by the fires of countless tirades from members of Congress over the years, I sat expressionless throughout Morales’s performance. After he finished and departed, a number of Latin American ministers came up to me to apologize because they felt Morales had violated the region’s rules for hospitality. I just wanted the damn meeting to end so I could get out of Bolivia. The return trip to the airport was just as exciting and nerve-racking as the trip into town, and I was never so glad to feel that Air Force plane lift off from a runway.
Every administration must deal with difficult allies and difficult foes. I thought President Obama and the administration in 2009 and 2010, for the most part, handled both kinds of relationships well, although I would often cringe at the rhetorical excess of how wonderfully we were doing, especially compared to the Bush administration. Fortunately, the rancor and bitterness of the Afghan debate in late 2009 did not spill over into other areas, and the team worked together better than most I had observed.
There were only two major personnel changes during the period. In May 2010, Denny Blair was forced out as director of national intelligence. He was replaced by my old friend and colleague Jim Clapper. Blair had never been able to develop strong relationships at the White House, and I think the final straw was his single-handed attempt to negotiate an agreement with the French intelligence services limiting activities in each other’s country. The idea had zero support anywhere in the administration and, frankly, was considered kind of bizarre.
And then, after publication of Bob Woodward’s book Obama’s Wars in September 2010, Jim Jones left as national security adviser. He had never been a good fit in the Obama White House, as I said, and frankly, I was surprised he lasted as long as he did. I believe the timing of his departure was influenced significantly by Woodward’s book. Jones appeared to be a major source; there were many disparaging comments about the rest of the White House staff and even his own staff that could only have come from Jim. Based in no small part on what he had been telling me all along about Donilon, I was quoted as saying that Donilon would be a “complete disaster” as national security adviser. That quote could only have come from Jones. There were a number of other comments I felt had come from Doug Lute, particularly many of the negative references to Mullen and me and to the military’s purported efforts to box in the president on Afghanistan. After an auspicious beginning in the Bush administration and although I felt indebted to him for taking on the NSC war coordinator role, Doug had turned out to be a real disappointment in the Obama administration. In both the Bush and Obama administrations, the NSC/NSS seemed to be a rich lode of information for Woodward, a level of cooperation I never understood.
On October 1, the president and I met privately in the Oval Office. He was sitting as usual in a wingback chair in front of the fireplace, and I was seated on the couch to his left. He grabbed an apple from the bowl on the coffee table, took a bite, and then, out of the blue, asked me who should replace Jones. He said he was looking at Donilon, General Cartwright, and Susan Rice. I said, “In the privacy of this room, I suspect Hillary would have a problem with Susan as national security adviser.” He laughed and said, “That’s well known outside of this room. Hillary’s forgiven me, but not the people who came over to me.” He then said he had read my comments about Donilon in the Woodward book and asked why I felt so negatively. I told him I had made those comments to Jones after the Afghan review and Tom’s disparaging comments about senior military officers—especially during the Haiti operation. Tom had recognized I had a problem with him and called me; we had met privately several months earlier and cleared the air: I said, “I’d be fine with Donilon as national security adviser.” I asked the president to tell Tom what I had said. Donilon and I would develop a strong, cordial working relationship, although his suspicion of the Pentagon and the military would not diminish.
I had expected to be another departee in mid-2010. The president and I originally had agreed that I would stay on about a year, and by late 2009, especially after the Afghan travail, I really wanted to leave in the spring of 2010. I intended to tell the president that, right after I returned from a Christmas holiday in the Northwest. He beat me to the punch. Obama called me into the Oval Office on December 16, 2009, the day before I was to fly west. After he shut the door, he said, “I want to talk about you. I’d like you to stay on indefinitely, but that’s probably too much to ask of your family. So I’d like you to stay at least until January 2012.” He was very generous, saying, “I honestly just don’t know where I would even begin to look for a replacement, not just [because of] the effective way you manage the Defense Department but [because of] the other skills and experience you bring to the administration.” I told him I was very flattered and that he had preempted me. I told him I had intended to propose in January that I leave at the end of May 2010. I thought we were proceeding reasonably well in Iraq, Afghanistan should be on the right track by then, and we would have completed a second year of budget reforms. “I will have done all I can do,” I said, but that I had talked to Becky and that if he said I was needed longer, I would stay until January 2011. He smiled broadly and said, “And we’ll evaluate again then.” I thought I had ended my sentence with a period, but he ended his with a comma.
That “comma” led to further discussion between us, and I eventually agreed to remain until the end of June 2011. Thinking ahead, I suspected that if I couldn’t help him identify a successor, I might get extended until after the 2012 election. And so, in the same meeting on October 1 when I supported Donilon to replace Jones, I told Obama, “I have a seed to plant in terms of my successor—Leon Panetta.” I said he had led CIA and OMB and had been White House chief of staff, so he knew how to lead big organizations; he was good with Congress; it was clear from CIA that he cared about the troops; he would continue the Defense reform effort; he would work well with the Joint Chiefs; and he was up to speed on the issues. I said I’d talked to Leon about succeeding me, and he didn’t say “Hell, no.” “I think he’d be willing to do it for eighteen months.” The president responded, “Very interesting. I hadn’t thought of that.”
Difficult allies and difficult foes were not limited to our relations abroad. I had my hands full with both in Washington, D.C., as well. For me, 2010 was a year of continued conflict and a couple of important White House double-crosses.
CHAPTER 12
Meanwhile, Back in Washington
DON’T ASK, DON’T TELL
Two thousand ten began inauspiciously for me with the president’s State of the Union address, on January 27. I absolutely hated going to this political theater. The president stands before both houses of Congress in the Capitol with packed galleries (the first lady’s box is filled with people handpicked to highlight one or another parts of the president’s message and always several uniformed military). He tells Congress and the American people that everything in the country is going—or will go—swimmingly with him as president (or at worst, “unprecedented” challenges will be tackled “boldly”) and lays out his agenda for the coming year. Major elements of the address are inevitably partisan. His supporters in Congress rise—over and over—to applaud and cheer while the opposition sits on its hands except in the rare moments when the president mentions something they like, or makes the obligatory references to the U.S. military. The Supreme Court justices sit stoically, unsmiling and almost never applauding, never standing except when the president enters and leaves. The Joint Chiefs of Staff follow the lead of the chairman in terms of whether to applaud and whether to stand. Mostly they just sit, rising and applauding only when the troops are mentioned or there is some utterly innocuous declaration about what a great country the United States is. The president’s cabinet, on the other hand, must rise with virtually every paragraph and every jab intended to outrage the opposition. I disliked doing these political deep knee bends under both Bush and Obama. Being part of a political cheering squad was
embarrassing for me, especially standing to applaud highly controversial domestic initiatives and views. A close observer would have seen how often I was the last to rise and first to sit.
One such moment occurred on January 27, when the president announced toward the end of his address, “This year, I will work with the Congress and our military to finally repeal the law that denies gay Americans the right to serve the country they love because of who they are. It’s the right thing to do.” I had already agreed that repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT) was the right thing to do, but in what I considered a serious breach of trust, the president had blindsided Admiral Mullen and me with this announcement, informing us of what he intended to do just the day before the speech. He dropped this bombshell without consulting with the service chiefs of staff, who would have to implement the policy change, and without allowing Mike and me time to consult the chiefs ourselves. All we could do was tell them the announcement was coming. The U.S. military leadership had adamantly opposed gays serving openly since the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” law had been enacted in 1993, and the service chiefs, if not opposed outright, continued to have strong reservations about the timing and implementation of a change to DADT. The president’s preemptive strike, perhaps intended to head off leaks from the Pentagon ahead of the State of the Union, had irked the military—and me—on this sensitive initiative.
My position, as I said earlier, had been clear from the start. I felt that to have legitimacy with the troops, a matter as sensitive as reversing DADT had to be enacted through a change in the law by Congress, the elected representatives of the American people, not through presidential edict or a court order. We also had to give the troops, at every level, the chance to provide their views so we would better understand the challenges facing us and them in implementation. We needed time to train both leaders and troops so there would be minimal, if any, impact on unit cohesion, discipline, morale, or recruitment and retention. The military never gets a “vote” on what it must do, and I was not advocating anything like a plebiscite. But every argument made about what men and women in uniform felt or thought about DADT, pro or con, was either based on assumption or was entirely anecdotal. I would often get questions about DADT from the troops in town halls, and my response was always the same: we would do what the commander in chief and Congress directed, but we had to prepare properly.
In response to a number of lawsuits challenging DADT, the courts seemed to be moving quickly and inexorably toward overturning the law, which would require a change in policy overnight—the worst of all possible outcomes, as I said earlier, because there would be no time to prepare or to train. The challenge I faced was how to juggle all three branches of government: to get the president to hold off from acting preemptively through executive action, to get Congress to change the legislation (which in early 2010 seemed unlikely), and to effect change before the courts gave us no choice and no time.
Fortunately Mullen and I, fully aware of the president’s determination to eliminate DADT, had asked our staffs to begin preparatory work during the summer of 2009. In June, the Joint Staff gave us a comprehensive briefing on DADT that identified the risks of overturning the policy as: losing control of the change; degraded readiness, unit cohesion, and discipline; implementing a policy for which the force was not prepared; and the unpredictability of implementing a major policy shift in time of war. On the other side of the ledger, the Joint Staff cited several potential mitigating factors: the fact that men and women who join the military expect some reduction in personal freedoms and adjust their behavior accordingly; the determination of gay and lesbian service members “to prove their worth and capability”; force preparation and training with an emphasis on shared values and a focus on commonalities rather than differences; and active leadership at every level. The report offered several alternative approaches to conducting a study of the force and who should lead that study. So while the president surprised us in his State of the Union speech, we were reasonably well prepared to move ahead quickly.
It’s a good thing Mullen and I were ready, because six days later, on February 2, both of us were summoned by the Senate Armed Services Committee, chaired by Senator Carl Levin, to testify on DADT. We had met with the president the previous afternoon and outlined what we intended to say and do, and he was supportive. The hearing was a historic moment, and everyone knew it. I opened with the declaration that “I fully support the president’s decision.” I said the question now was not whether the military would make this change but how best to prepare for it. I announced that, in consultation with Mullen, I had appointed a high-level working group within the Defense Department that would make recommendations in the form of an implementation plan by “the end of this calendar year.” A guiding principle of the effort, I continued, would be to minimize disruption and polarization within the ranks, with special attention paid to those on the front lines.
I said the working group would examine a number of lines of study, all proceeding simultaneously:
First, the working group will reach out to the force to authoritatively understand their views and attitudes about the impact of repeal.… Second, the working group will undertake a thorough examination of all the changes to the department’s regulations and policies that may have to be made.… Third, the working group will examine the potential impacts of a change in the law on military effectiveness.
I told the senators that it would take the better part of a year to accomplish this because the overriding imperative was to “get this right and minimize disruption to a force that is actively fighting two wars and working through the stress of almost a decade of combat.” To underscore the importance of the endeavor, I said it would be cochaired by Defense Department general counsel Jeh Johnson and General Carter Ham, the four-star commander of the U.S. Army in Europe, who had previously led soldiers in Iraq. I concluded with a plea to the senators present and to the entire Congress not to politicize the issue.
The high point of the hearing was the statement by Mullen. He began by saying that the Joint Chiefs owed the president their best military advice on the impact and implementation of repeal, and as chairman, he endorsed the process I had laid out. Admiral Mullen’s next three sentences, after seventeen years of nearly unanimous senior military opposition to gays serving openly, made history:
Mr. Chairman, speaking for myself and myself only, it is my personal belief that allowing homosexuals to serve openly would be the right thing to do. No matter how I look at the issue, I cannot escape being troubled by the fact that we have in place a policy which forces young men and women to lie about who they are in order to defend their fellow citizens. For me, it comes down to integrity, theirs as individuals and ours as an institution.
There was an audible gasp in the packed hearing room as Mullen uttered those words. I do not believe anyone expected such a strong, unambiguous personal endorsement of a change in the law from the chairman. But Mullen had put his finger on the fundamental flaw in the 1993 law: it allowed gays to serve in the military, an institution that places the highest possible value on personal integrity, but only by compromising their integrity. Mullen went on to say that while he believed men and women in uniform could and would accommodate such a change, he did not know this “for a fact.” The review would provide an opportunity to address that uncertainty.
We appeared before the House Armed Services Committee, chaired by Representative Ike Skelton, the next day. While this hearing was mainly on the budget, there was considerable discussion of repeal of DADT, which Skelton opposed. When a couple of members began arguing with each other about the review, I jumped in. I said I had led three large institutions—CIA, Texas A&M University, and Defense—and I had managed change before. I had done it smart, and I had done it stupid. I had done it stupid, early in my career at CIA, by trying to impose significant change by edict from the top. This review was doing it smart—getting the troops and their families involved and sharing their views.
Reactions to our testimony in both houses were, unfortunately, fairly predictable. Advocates of repeal welcomed the change in views at the top of the Pentagon but expressed concern that we would proceed to drag our heels and delay implementation for years. Opponents, such as John McCain, acidly expressed “deep disappointment” in what we had said, adding that the prospective review would be “clearly biased” because it presumed the law should be changed. Sadly, the issue of repeal, like everything else in Congress, was going to be largely a partisan one, although there were a few outliers in each party. But within a few days after our testimony, I was confident we would have the time to do the review right. Democrats in the Senate clearly did not have the sixty votes necessary to break a Republican filibuster, and even House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she might hold off a vote until after the midterm elections in November.
Despite my support for the initiative, I shared the concern of the service chiefs about the impact of making the change while we were fighting two wars, with all the stress already on the military. I was especially concerned about the impact on the combat and direct support formations of the Army, Marine Corps, and Special Forces, a relatively small portion of the overall military but the portion that had borne the brunt of the post-9/11 conflicts and where small-unit cohesion and camaraderie were crucial to success and survival. I knew the principal burden of making the new policy work would fall mainly on the same company grade officers and NCOs who were under the most stress. I wanted the troops down-range (in Iraq and Afghanistan) involved in the review as little as possible; I wanted instead to focus on recently returned units. Personally, I hoped we could get past the midterm elections before a vote, though I was quite aware of the hot breath of the courts on my neck. To be honest, I was skeptical Congress would pass repeal. While I wanted the review completed expeditiously, I wanted to avoid roiling the military over a change that I thought might well not happen. Of course, if it did, I would do my very best to lead and implement the change without incident.
Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War Page 56