Obama had been fully briefed, and stayed in constant contact with his team over the weekend. We decided to put Janet Napolitano, the director of homeland security, at the top of several Sunday morning news shows to update the nation on the incident and the ensuing investigation. Gibbs would appear on several shows as well. He asked me if we should also put the president out on Saturday night, so Americans could hear from him directly. “No,” I said. “Napolitano is going to be out tomorrow. She can deliver the message. Let’s give the poor guy some time with his family.”
It was a huge mistake, and one we would never repeat. When big things happen, people expect to hear from their president. It doesn’t matter how many hours he had been working on the phone or in briefings. People want to see the president of the United States and know that he’s in charge. Obama didn’t face the cameras until the following Monday, prompting criticism that he had been disengaged. Napolitano’s Sunday show appearances only compounded the problem.
On Saturday night, we held a call to prepare Napolitano. On the call, I confronted her with Republican charges that the security apparatus had failed. Napolitano, a bit defensive, said something about the system “working.” We all jumped on the answer. John Brennan, the president’s Homeland Security adviser, said “human error” might have come into play. This much we knew: there’d been a terrorist with a bomb on a U.S.-bound plane, and the only thing that had prevented a catastrophe was the bomb’s malfunction. It was hard to argue that the system had “worked.”
The next morning, the usually sure-footed Napolitano took the interviewers’ bait. “Once the incident occurred, the system worked,” she said on one show, while using similar phrasing on others. “Everything happened that should have” after the plot was foiled, she said.
Once the incident occurred? But why had the incident occurred in the first place? And what could have been done to prevent it? Napolitano and the administration became piñatas for a bipartisan line of stick-carrying critics.
It wasn’t until Tuesday, when the president addressed the incident for the second time in as many days, that the administration publicly acknowledged a “systemic failure.” Obama ordered a comprehensive review of how the No-Fly List could be strengthened. He also wanted the establishment of a clear protocol for the interrogation of terrorism suspects for intelligence purposes before they were read their rights and charged. In this case, however, none of it mattered. Abdulmutallab provided valuable intelligence to his civilian interrogators, was tried and then convicted in the district court, and was sentenced to four lifetime sentences in a federal supermax prison.
Obama was determined to carry out his responsibilities to protect the American people against these ongoing threats. At the same time, he also was committed to reversing and reforming some of the controversial antiterrorism tactics the Bush administration employed after 9/11. Unwinding the country from this history would prove maddeningly difficult.
He pledged as a candidate to ban the use of torture, which he did almost immediately after taking office. He moved, over the objections of the intelligence community and after much internal debate, to release classified documents detailing acts of torture and other “advanced interrogation techniques,” and the legal rationale behind them, that had been employed by Americans against suspected terrorists. Yet to the chagrin of many of our supporters, other documents remained classified when he felt they would endanger American troops and personnel. The president also refused cries from the Left to prosecute Bush administration figures for their role in this dark past, choosing to spare the country what he felt would be a divisive, backward-looking trauma.
Few issues were more vexing than closing the prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. While the Bush administration had released several hundred detainees from Gitmo, more than two hundred detainees, scooped up overseas for suspected involvement in terrorism, were still being held there. Some had been there for years, foreign nationals languishing in “preventive detention,” unable to be tried because of a lack of legally admissible evidence, but deemed too dangerous to release.
Obama and the military wanted to clear these cases and close Gitmo, whose existence not only raised serious constitutional issues but had become an anti-American propaganda gold mine for Al Qaeda and its supporters.
So the president signed an executive order the day after his inauguration to begin an orderly shuttering of Guantánamo, to be completed within a year. But before long, congressional Republicans seized on the issue, stirring “not in my backyard” panic about the prospect of Gitmo detainees on American soil. That panic eventually consumed many Democrats as well. His efforts frustrated, the president turned to developing a sounder legal regimen for the indefinite detainees, but this didn’t satisfy a group of leading civil libertarians Obama invited to the White House in 2009. Some represented organizations such as the ACLU; others, clients at Guantánamo. All believed that this “preventive detention” was an affront to our constitutional principles, and looked to a president, rooted in their community, to do something about it.
“We didn’t choose the field we’re playing on, and we will continue to try to change it,” Obama told the group. “But, to be frank, I don’t think it helps when I’m equated to Bush in your press releases.
“We have different roles,” he explained. “You represent clients, and you are doing exactly what you should. I am the president of the United States, with the responsibility to protect the American people. Do we just release them and take the chance they blow you up? There’s only so much a democracy can bear.”
• • •
You come to expect the unexpected in the White House. It’s part of the daily regimen. Yet on October 9, I woke up to some truly startling news. “And word from Norway this morning that President Barack Obama has won the Nobel Peace Prize,” blared the newscaster from my clock radio. It had been a typical too-brief night’s sleep and I wondered if I was dreaming. I bolted up and grabbed my BlackBerry to confirm the news, which I greeted as more of a surreal challenge than a cause for celebration.
Obama had been in office for less than a year. He had banned the use of torture, worked (if unsuccessfully) to close Guantánamo, and pushed for new limits on nuclear weapons—but what, exactly, was he getting the award for? Whatever the rationale, my guess was that Obama was being honored for his galvanic, groundbreaking election, which had inspired so many around the world. Still, I anticipated a deluge of questions about the president’s deservedness from a cynical media and what would certainly be an incredulous opposition.
When Gibbs woke him up with the news, the honoree was also nonplussed. “Gibbs, what the hell are you talking about?” the president demanded.
“You won the Nobel Peace Prize,” he said.
“Are you kidding me?”
“I promise you, sir, that I wouldn’t wake you up to play a joke,” Gibbs replied. “You’ve won the Nobel Peace Prize.”
“Gee,” Obama said, absorbing the unlikely news. “All I want to do is pass health care.”
Later that day, he told us about Malia and Sasha’s disarming reaction. “They came in this morning and Malia said, ‘Good news, Daddy. You won the Nobel Prize and it’s Bo’s birthday,’” she said, in reference to the family dog. And Sasha said, “Plus this is a three-day weekend!” At our urging, Obama shared his daughters’ comments with reporters, as he acknowledged the surprise honor with the proper mix of gratitude, humility, and more than a touch of bewilderment.
What made this unsolicited award even more complicated was that it came in the midst of the president’s deliberations about what to do in Afghanistan. He knew the final decision on a troop increase would come shortly before the Nobel ceremony in December. The president of the United States might be stepping out of his war council to accept the Peace Prize. “I want to stress my role as commander in chief,” he told us, thinking ahead. “I don’t want to give our friends on the o
ther side a chance to run this One World stuff against us.”
Occupied with his decision on Afghanistan and the critical speech at West Point announcing the surge of thirty thousand more troops, which would take place just nine days before the Nobel ceremony, the president wouldn’t focus on his Nobel address until after the West Point speech was delivered. Having just been consumed by the debate over the need for war, the president understood the case he wanted to make. A few hours after we arrived, Obama delivered an elegant, well-reasoned speech that, like the man himself, blended genuinely high ideals with cold-eyed realism.
“As someone who stands here as a direct consequence of Dr. King’s life work, I am living testimony to the moral force of non-violence,” he said. “But as a head of state sworn to protect and defend my nation, I cannot be guided by [those] examples alone. I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people. For make no mistake: Evil does exist in the world. A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler’s armies. Negotiations cannot convince Al Qaeda’s leaders to lay down their arms. To say that force may sometimes be necessary is not a call to cynicism—it is a recognition of history, the imperfections of man and the limits of reason.”
That night, at a warm and intimate Nobel dinner, I was seated next to Gro Brundtland, a physician and public health crusader who, in 1981, became the first woman to serve as Norway’s prime minister. Brundtland was a warm and witty dinner companion who shared the lessons she had learned through three stints at Norway’s helm. “If you’re going to lead, you have to make decisions, some of them hard, and you can’t look back,” she said. “And you have to make them with the long term in mind. If you’re just worrying about the politics of the moment, you’ll never get much done.” Glancing at Obama, she added, “He seems to understand that.”
He certainly did. Few of the decisions he had made would satisfy the politics of the moment. But at home and abroad, Obama was playing a longer game.
TWENTY-SEVEN
THE STUBBORN WORLD
THE ENTIRE WORLD STOOD with America after the 9/11 attacks, but the war in Iraq and the bellicose, go-it-alone Bush-Cheney foreign policy had squandered much of that goodwill, straining our relationships even with long-standing allies.
That’s why, as powerful as the scenes were in Grant Park and across America the night Obama was elected, I was moved to tears as I watched the footage of the joyous, spontaneous celebrations that broke out in other countries. As Obama predicted back in 2006 when we discussed whether he should run, it would speak volumes to the world if a relatively young African American, who came from little, could be elected president of the United States. His election also spawned the hope that a president whose father was from Africa and who had spent part of his childhood in Indonesia would have a richer sense of the world and its interconnectedness. So while he worked to shore up the economy and end two wars, Obama was also focused on mending old partnerships and building new ones to address common problems, from terrorism to nuclear proliferation to climate change. To that end, he would visit twenty-five countries on four continents during the two years I was there.
Some of the early trips were consumed by the economic crisis—G20 and G8 meetings, at which Obama argued for coordinated action among the world’s leading economies to stem what had become a global recession. Others were NATO meetings, where he shared his strategy for winding down the war in Iraq and refocusing the war in Afghanistan. Everywhere he went, he lobbied relentlessly, leader to leader, for America and its allies to coordinate punitive economic sanctions in order to curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions—sanctions that ultimately gave us the leverage to force Iran to the negotiating table.
One of the extraordinary benefits of my job was a ringside seat on many of these journeys. I watched a president eager to change the equation on the world’s knottiest problems only to confront obstacles, such as age-old tribalism and parochial politics every bit as intractable as those he faced at home.
• • •
The fifty-kilometer stretch of road from Riyadh to Jenadriyah was how I had always pictured Saudi Arabia, parched and brown, a difficult climate in which to make things grow—that is, until we arrived at the sprawling horse farm of Abdullah ibn Abdilaziz, the king of Saudi Arabia. As we approached, the terrain suddenly changed from brown to green, the result of the elaborate irrigation system used to keep grass growing for the enjoyment of his majesty, his guests, and, perhaps most important, his thoroughbred treasures. Abdullah, then eighty-four, was the country’s sixth king since his father founded the modern Saudi Arabia, a country beneath which sits nearly one-fifth of the world’s oil. That bounty, coupled with the monarchy’s shrewd, iron-fisted rule had made the House of Saud a regional and global power.
So many of the world’s troubles emanated from this region. Osama bin Laden was a Saudi national, as were fifteen of the nineteen hijackers who struck America that September day in the name of Islam. The president’s mission on this journey was to reach out to the mainstream Islamic world, and in doing so, to isolate the extremists. So it made sense to begin in Saudi Arabia, home of Mecca, birthplace of the Prophet Muhammad. On this journey, Obama also hoped to breathe life into the stalled efforts to forge peace between Israel and the Palestinians, a conflict that had defied the entreaties of generations of American presidents and was a continuing source of tension in the region.
We were greeted with a welcoming luncheon for U.S. and Saudi officials dining in what the Saudi royals told us was a “tent.” That would be like Americans calling the Grand Canyon the “Little Hole in the Ground.” We weren’t exactly squatting under canvas or eating food cooked at a campfire. The “tent” was, in the parlance of less exalted worlds, a huge and elegant banquet hall. The president chatted amiably with the king at the head of a long square table. I was seated next to one of the king’s many sons. Like most of the men in the family, he had significant governmental responsibilities.
“I liked President Bush,” the son said, speaking of Obama’s predecessor. “He was a good man. We would smoke cigars together. But my father told him on Saddam Hussein, ‘He can be the ring on the American finger.’ But President Bush said, ‘He’s a liar. I don’t trust him.’ My father told him, ‘Don’t stay in Iraq for long. That will lead to trouble. And don’t dissolve the army. They will come back to attack you.’ But he didn’t listen.
“We have great hopes for this president,” my seatmate continued. “He is here in the first year in the Middle East! He speaks with understanding.”
It was more than just Obama’s words that convinced him of that. Though Obama was a Christian, his ethnicity and his familiarity with Islam, while a source of dark, disgraceful inferences for our political opponents back home, was, for these people, a sign of hope. As we were leaving a brief ceremonial meeting with the king following lunch, the president spotted Abdullah’s chief of staff holding his son, an adorable, dark-skinned child with kinky, flowing hair. “I used to have a haircut just like yours,” Obama told the wide-eyed little boy, delighting his father and everyone within earshot.
There was power in such gestures, gentle signs that this was a new era and a different kind of American president. Still, as he would quickly learn, the intractable realities of the Middle East, defined by ancient rivalries between Sunni and Shia, Arab and Jew, would not yield easily to his charm, gestures, or persistence. The president met with Abdullah for three hours, leaving without the sought-after commitment for a renewed peace initiative between Israel and the Palestinians. Even kings have to be mindful of domestic politics.
After all the meals and meetings ended that evening, guests were escorted to elegant cottages, where large gift-wrapped packages awaited us on our beds. We might not be leaving the Middle East with peace, but the king didn’t want us to go home empty-handed. I ripped open the wrapping on mine to find a green alligator-skin briefcase stuffed with an assortment of jewels, ne
cklaces, earrings, and watches. They had to be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars and would have had me all set for birthdays, anniversaries, and even Valentine’s Days for several lifetimes. It was considered bad form to refuse such gifts, but the next morning, the State Department protocol police scooped up the jewel-filled attaché cases to be inventoried and stored back home. “Aww, can’t we keep a few?” Valerie joked with a smile as she surrendered her loot.
The centerpiece of the trip was scheduled for the next day, in Cairo, where Obama would deliver a much-anticipated speech directed at the Islamic world. Determined to start a new dialogue and to repair the rift created by the war in Iraq, Obama had contemplated such an address from almost the moment he took office. He and Ben Rhodes had traded multiple drafts, and the president had spent much of the thirteen-hour overnight flight from Washington to Riyadh honing his words. Before delivering it, though, he would visit another of the region’s longtime rulers, Hosni Mubarak.
Obama was a college student when the former military commander became president of Egypt in 1981, following the assassination of Anwar el-Sadat. Mubarak had maintained tight control of his country ever since, while mostly upholding Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel, and maintaining a vital alliance with America.
While Obama was meeting privately with Mubarak, our delegation waited in a reception hall of Al Qubba Palace. The secretary of state was chatting up a tall young man. “That’s Mubarak’s son Gamal,” Hillary explained a few minutes later. “Everyone assumes that he’ll be taking over at some point.”
Soon we were ushered into a large bilateral meeting between the presidents and their respective delegations. Obama touched on a variety of issues, including the need to support a durable bulwark against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, and to present a united front against Iran’s nuclear ambitions, an easy sell, given Egypt’s hostile relations with the Shia regime in Tehran. The president’s strongest appeal, though, was for a concerted push for peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
Believer: My Forty Years in Politics Page 50