The Secretary

by Kim Ghattas

  The embassy was a start-up mission. The United States had closed down the mission in 1979 after mobs attacked the building, the same week that the U.S. embassy had been torched in Pakistan, all in the aftermath of the siege of Mecca. Libya had started turning into an international pariah soon after Gaddafi came to power in 1969, as he waged war against Egypt, supported anti-Western militant groups around the world, and developed a stockpile of weapons of mass destruction. Gaddafi, or Brother Leader, as he called himself, was most infamous for ordering the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie in Scotland, in which 270 people died. In the late 1990s, Gaddafi had slowly begun his rehabilitation. In 2005, he announced he would give up his WMDs and then agreed to pay compensation for the Lockerbie victims. In 2008, the United States reopened its embassy in Tripoli after removing Libya from the list of state sponsors of terrorism. But unlike every other American embassy around the world, there were no marines standing guard. Gaddafi had refused to allow U.S. Marines into the country, and it was difficult to argue with an unpredictable leader prone to tantrums. Under the Bush administration, the State Department had conceded the point to Gaddafi, not an unreasonable decision in a police state where no one breathed without permission from the leader and where crime was nonexistent. The first sign that perhaps the concession was not so wise came after the WikiLeaks debacle. Gaddafi had been incensed after the leaks revealed that the newly arrived American ambassador, Gene Cretz, had speculated about Gaddafi’s health and mentioned his voluptuous nurse. Gaddafi’s security men started tailing Cretz around town, and out of concern for his safety the State Department ordered him to leave the country.

  Now, at the start of a revolution, with embassy buildings and staff spread out across the city and no reliable radio communications network, the mission was vulnerable and exposed—every diplomat’s worst nightmare. Cell phone coverage in Tripoli was already patchy, and the authorities were trying to cut off the country’s Internet connection. In a matter of days, Yael and her colleagues would have no e-mail, no working cell phones, and just one landline at the embassy that could still reach both the sixth floor of the Building in Washington and the operations center.

  * * *

  In my tiny cubicle in Washington, I waited for e-mails to appear in my in-box. Throughout the Egypt crisis, I had been in constant e-mail contact with American officials in the Building. Stuck in endless interagency meetings, they weren’t always free to talk on the phone, but no matter how busy they were, they always found the time to fire off a quick reply to my e-mail queries. E-mail was the communication method of choice in Washington, BlackBerries an extension of people’s hands. In short missives, officials engaged in a lively back and forth electronic conversation. They had shared fears about the unknown that was engulfing the region and their hopes about a better future for Egypt. And they often shared information beyond what was being said in front of the cameras by P. J. Crowley or White House spokesperson Robert Gibbs. They told me what they were telling Mubarak, what the generals saying were saying, how frustrated they were that Mubarak was always one step behind, how they were adjusting their statements to the clamor on Egypt’s streets.

  Now every morning, I sent e-mails asking about Libya: When were they going to tell Gaddafi he had to step down? What leverage did they have over him? When were they going to evacuate all embassy staff? I waited and waited. I called their offices, but they weren’t there or were too busy to take the call. Hours, days passed. Nothing. The daily press briefings too were frustrating. Even P. J., prone to making jokes and often getting out ahead of the policy talking points in his binder, much to the annoyance of the White House, was exceedingly careful during the briefing, and even in private, when we cornered him for a few minutes away from the cameras.

  On February 21, the State Department ordered families of diplomats out of the country. The situation was deteriorating quickly. The protests were spreading around the country and becoming more violent. More than one hundred Libyans had already been killed as Gaddafi unleashed his police forces and army on civilians. Washington still did not call for Gaddafi to step down nor order all Americans to leave the country. The praise for the demonstrators was lukewarm and general. I was baffled. In the briefing, Matt, from the AP, was poking P. J. with a hot stick.

  “Is there a reason why no one, none of the officials who have spoken to this yet, have actually used Gaddaffi’s name?”

  “Well, this—as I just said, we hold the Libyan government, including its leader, responsible for what is occurring in Libya.”

  “And that leader’s name is?

  “Colonel Gaddafi.”

  “Everybody looks at Washington, and they see a very tepid, if at all, enthusiasm for toppling Gaddafi, while they have shown more enthusiasm towards what happens elsewhere. Could you explain that to us?”

  “Well, as I suggested yesterday, who leads Libya is a matter between the government and the Libyan people. As we have said throughout this historic period, it is not for the United States or any outside power to dictate who should rule or not rule a particular country.”

  Outside of the United States, as usual, people paid close attention to every statement made by American officials. A few days earlier on Twitter, P. J. had criticized Congress for banning U.S. funding for a UN panel on climate change and cutting funding for the State Department’s special envoy for climate change. A Libyan Twitter user replied instantly: “Mr Crowley, we appreciate your environmental consciousness, but here in Tripoli we are getting killed.”

  When a reporter asked P. J. during the daily press briefing if the United States had heard from the Libyan foreign minister Musa Kusa, P. J. said the minister hadn’t picked up his phone for a few days. The next morning, Kusa called Jeff Feltman, the Building’s Middle East policy man: “Mr. Crowley says you’re having trouble reaching me?”

  Unbeknownst to many of us haranguing American officials in Washington, the regime in Tripoli had made clear that the American diplomatic staff was not to leave the country. Americans had been evacuated from Egypt and look what had resulted—a revolution had toppled Mubarak. Gaddafi wanted to keep the diplomats as leverage, an insurance policy to guarantee his continuing power: a hostage situation was developing. Gaddafi had been linked to bomb attacks in Europe in the past, and Washington as well as European countries worried that he still had operatives in the West he could activate. Yael and her colleagues pleaded with the administration not to publicly call on Gaddafi to step down until they were able to negotiate a way out of the country for everyone and had a secure exit route. In the Building and at the White House, the mood wavered between anguish and fury. The Americans were at the mercy of an erratic dictator who brought down planes, planted his tent in public parks in Europe, and demanded public apologies from American officials even if they sounded sarcastic when speaking about him.

  On February 23, Clinton gave a short press conference in the Treaty Room with the Brazilian foreign minister after their talks. A reporter asked the secretary of state what the United States was doing about the violence in Libya. She gave a long, circuitous answer involving pressure at the UN and the Human Rights Council in Geneva. Suddenly, toward the end, she slipped in a statement calling on all Americans to leave Libya immediately.

  “And we are encouraging Americans to leave Libya,” Clinton said. “We have taken the step of providing a chartered ferryboat today to take off not only all the Americans who could get to the ferryboat pier, but also other nationals from other countries who we have offered to similarly take out of Libya. We urge Americans to depart immediately.” Within hours, the State Department would issue its standard notice in such cases, widely e-mailed and posted on the website of the embassy in Tripoli.

  After days of pleading, Yael and her colleagues had finally secured permission for safe passage out of the country. A top Libyan official had somehow agreed to an evacuation. A ferryboat had arrived in Tripoli, but it would still take a few more days for everyone to get out. S
torms and choppy seas had delayed the ferry’s departure, and the four hundred Americans whose passports had been stamped for departure out of the country would have to spend two nights on a boat, with almost no supplies, docked in the port of a country slipping into chaos.

  They were close enough to freedom that later in the evening, President Obama made his first public statement about Libya. The suffering and bloodshed were outrageous, he said. The United States was looking at all the options. He was sending Clinton to Geneva to a special session at the UN Human Rights Council.

  During his seven-minute statement, Obama did not once mention Gaddafi by name.

  * * *

  On Sunday morning, February 27, SAM sat on the tarmac waiting for us. In the VIP lounge, we drank weak coffee, nibbled on some air force chocolate chip cookies, and had our little lottery. I got a window seat. Clinton’s black armored Cadillac came to a halt by the nose of the plane. Seven DS agents spilled out of two vans and sprinted up the steps and into the aircraft, while two others stayed on the tarmac to help unload luggage from the car, whose trunk was unusually empty: just a couple of bags for a thirty-six-hour-long mission to Geneva to stop a madman who was on a rampage against his own people. More than one thousand people had been killed by now. Gaddafi called the protestors “rats.” He threatened to hunt them down and execute them all. His problems were America’s fault, he said. He was already starting to lose territory: the eastern city of Benghazi had fallen to the opposition, soldiers were fast defecting, and rebels were organizing themselves in the east of the country.

  Hillary emerged from the car, sunglasses on. She always wore sunglasses outside, even on gray, melancholy days like this. She made her way into her cabin on the plane. On the table, by the secure phone with which she could call president Obama or other foreign leaders while above the clouds, was the usual sheet of paper with the weather forecast for our destination, mostly cloudy with a chance of rain or snow—high: 45° F, low: 35° F. Clinton had traveled to seventy-nine countries by now and covered almost five hundred thousand miles. But no trip, no crisis, had tested her and her country’s role as a superpower like the eruption of anger that brought millions of Arabs onto the streets demanding to be rid of the leaders who had deprived them of hope and freedom.

  She never wore makeup on our morning flights out of Andrews Air Force Base. Her freckles showed, and she looked fresh and much younger without the layers of foundation and powder that television required. She always smiled when she came to the back of the plane to chat with us before takeoff. By then, she would be wearing her rectangular Giorgio Armani glasses, and in her booming voice, a twinkle in her eye, she would exclaim, “Hi, guys!”

  But that day, she looked tired and tense, worn out by two months of an Arab upheaval that was only gathering momentum. Jake, in his trademark blue fleece, clutching his notebook, stood behind her, looking more gaunt than ever, the black circles around his blue eyes even bigger than usual. Only now were people in Washington starting to grasp the full extent of what was happening. The revolt was engulfing the whole region, American allies and foes alike. Arabs were rising up against their leaders, brutal and delusional old men who still dyed their hair jet-black, who gave three-hour-long speeches because no one had ever dared tell them to shut up, who thought the Botox injected into their faces served as a facelift for their country. They presided over a people bored into submission, swindled into poverty, beaten into obedience, tortured to death. No one knew yet who or what would replace them, but America’s global leadership and even its economic recovery hung in the balance.

  Some also saw an opportunity within the crisis, a chance for America to bring its stated values and principles into line with its policies, a better way to protect its national interests in the long term. Oil prices were rising steadily. Oil companies in Libya had shut down production and evacuated staff, taking Libya’s daily production of 1.6 million barrels a day off the market. What better way to maintain access to oil resources and trade routes than to have all the Arab people on your side, not just their autocratic leaders? Equally, it could turn into another episode of world history over which the United States had no control but that could deal another blow to the slow recovery of America’s power and standing in the world.

  Doug, the flight attendant, handed out mimosas in plastic cups. We’d never had those on SAM before, but perhaps a Sunday morning departure in the midst of a huge crisis warranted a nod to brunch. We were all tired enough to be immensely grateful. I sipped my drink and took one last look at my Twitter feed before takeoff. I had been staying in touch with Libyans in Tripoli and Benghazi thanks to this twenty-first-century personal telegram, with minute-by-minute updates about the latest outburst of shooting, which room of the house someone was sheltering in, what the noise around them told them about the weapons unleashed against them.

  I could read the fear in their tweets just as I could hear it in the voice of the woman who two days earlier had called in to CNN imploring from Tripoli, in very basic English and a halting voice, “Please help us, Mr. Obama, please help us.” Gaddafi was threatening to hunt down his opponents alley by alley. His army was shelling neighborhoods indiscriminately, dragging people out of their houses and shooting them on the street. A UN resolution had imposed sanctions on the country; an arms embargo was in place. Now pundits and politicians were talking about the need for more. Maybe a no-fly zone to protect civilians? This was like a demilitarized zone but in the sky, a swath of territory over which Gaddafi’s military aircraft would not be able to fly and bomb civilians on the ground. But someone had to enforce the zone by patrolling it with fighter jets. No one liked Gaddafi, but military action was a whole different ball game. And Gaddafi wasn’t really deploying his airpower anyway. He was mostly sending in mercenaries and tanks to shoot and crush people to death.

  * * *

  In Geneva, foreign ministers from around the world were attending the session at the UN Human Rights Council, the perfect occasion for Clinton to gauge which way the international winds blew. On Monday morning, on the ground floor of the Intercontinental Hotel, a ballet of trays with glasses of juice and cookies mirrored the comings and goings of foreign ministers who had all come to the hotel to meet her. In one conference room, she sat down with the Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov. He was adamant: no no-fly zone, absolutely not. Clinton was still unconvinced herself about the way forward. A no-fly zone was fraught with dangers and didn’t protect civilians from ground fire. But she wanted to keep all options on the table. She pressed Lavrov, saying that they all had to think about it seriously.

  She stepped out into the foyer and into the conference room next door, where she sat down with the Germans, Italians, and French. More trays, more juice. The Europeans made their way out. Clinton crossed the hall and walked into a third conference room. A large table had been set up with little name tags with mini American flags on one side of the table and a red flag with a white crescent and star on the other. Davutoğlu stood waiting for Clinton, and the two friends shook hands, greeting each other warmly. Hillary knew this would be another tough conversation. The Turks were still talking about their zero-problem policy in the region, especially ironic now that the Arab world’s problems were multiplying by the day. Erdoğan had emphatically accused the international community of acting on Libya out of self-interest, motivated more by the country’s oil riches than concern for its people. Turkey in fact already had a blossoming relationship with the North African country: $2.4 billion in yearly trade and $15 billion invested in construction projects. A war now would slaughter the cash cow.

  After listening to all her counterparts, Clinton returned to Washington to brief Obama. She had a sound sense of where each country stood, but she was the clearest on where they diverged—there was no consensus about military action, let alone consensus about a no-fly zone, unlikely to protect civilians from artillery shelling anyway. The French and British were the most gung ho about reining in Gaddafi. More importantly, t
he Arabs were still far behind the rest of the world. They had suspended Libya from the Arab League but had done little else.

  This American administration was not about to embark on a war with a paltry and hastily assembled coalition to remove a dictator who for now posed no or little strategic threat to the United States, only to be left with the broken pottery. For two years, the Obama administration had worked to embed the United States in multilateral organizations around the world, to make the United States a partner in decision making everywhere. Obama had invested far too much in not being a bully—at least not on issues that were of no immediate strategic value to the United States—to undo that work by stampeding into a war without a UN resolution. The United States also didn’t have the money or the appetite for another war, but mostly, it didn’t want to do everyone else’s expensive, dirty work. People were dying, and the United States would do all it could to bring pressure on Gaddafi, but the calculations that propelled American power were changing; the world itself was changing. It was time for other countries, other regions, to take ownership of their problems. For decades, the first reaction of people around the world had been to ask what America was planning. Now America wanted first to know what the rest of the world had in mind, and second, what they were willing to contribute to that plan.

  The French and the British had made their own gaffes on Tunisia and Egypt, and had been even further behind the United States in catching up with the popular mood on the Arab street. Nicolas Sarkozy’s government had shipped tear gas to Tunisian police just two days before Ben Ali had boarded a plane into exile. The French foreign minister Michèle Alliot-Marie had vacationed in Tunisia during the crackdown, flying on the private plane of a regime crony. Sarkozy sacked her within weeks. While people demanded freedom and respect on Tahrir Square, the British foreign minister William Hague had warned that the unrest was detrimental to Middle East peace efforts—no matter that the peace process was dead. In an attempt to undo some of that damage, the British prime minister David Cameron rushed to Cairo to be the first world leader to visit postrevolution Egypt, just ten days after Mubarak resigned. Now France and Britain seemed to be trying to make up further for the damage to their images by calling on Gaddafi to step down. They started to talk about the need to intervene in Libya and protect civilians. A flood of Libyan refugees was sailing across the Mediterranean and landing on European soil. Europe didn’t want more immigrants. It had enough problems.