Hillary
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That approach triggered rising indignation over Obama’s hesitation and a clamor for more forceful action. But Clinton knew that hanging back was also needed to allow Arab and other UN delegations to sign onto a resolution without being seen as taking orders from Washington. Appraising their reaction and enthusiasm in Paris, she found the British and French willing to take the next step, though the Germans remained undecided. Clinton left Paris convinced she had the backing for the cause. She also hoped that one of her few allies in the administration, Susan Rice, might be able to push a resolution through the United Nations not just supporting a no-fly zone, but authorizing “all necessary measures” to defend Libyan civilians. As everyone knew, that would be diplomatic code for approving a war to topple Qaddafi.
A UN resolution would need broader Arab backing than the Gulf Council offered, so Hillary’s next stop was Cairo, where Hosni Mubarak had finally resigned his presidency. There she met with Amr Moussa, head of the Arab League, and got him to promise that his members would not object to military action beyond a no-fly zone. That night, she called Washington on a secure line to brief Obama and the National Security Council on what she had achieved. From the UN, Rice said she was ready to draft the “all necessary measures” resolution. Gates and the Pentagon still opposed getting involved in Libya, but Obama told Rice to go ahead.
In the UN, the problem would be Russia. Moscow was prepared to back only a mild call for a cease-fire in Libya, and it could veto any stronger measure in the Security Council. Still in Cairo, Clinton called Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, with whom she had a cordial relationship. He had told her earlier that even a no-fly zone was out of the question. She argued Qaddafi, who had behaved outrageously for years, would only become more violent if he sensed world pressure on him was easing. That, she said, was reason enough Lavrov shouldn’t veto the UN resolution. As Time quoted her, catching the flavor of her breezy diplomatic style: “C’mon, Sergei, this is important. And the Arab League and the Arab countries are behind us.” What she wanted would be a mistake, he replied, but Russia wouldn’t use its veto. The resolution passed the Security Council by ten to zero, with Russia and Germany abstaining.
“Hillary’s war” was on. At various points, the Arab partners had to be persuaded to keep their word. Lavrov fumed, disingenuously, that he hadn’t meant to permit any such war and the whole situation proved that America couldn’t be trusted. The coalition met setbacks, and Washington wound up providing more money and weapons than Obama had intended. Seven bloody months passed before Tripoli fell. Qaddafi was caught by Libyan rebels and summarily executed.
In an unguarded moment, Clinton said, “We came, we saw, he died.” But, of course, it wasn’t that simple. Whatever Mahmoud Jibril’s intentions, it was all but impossible to make an effective government of his scattergun rebel forces. Resources were lacking, wasted, or stolen; infighting among factions persisted; chaos spread, and the Libyan people suffered. In the usual swirl of Middle East conspiracy theories, the United States was accused simultaneously of not fighting hard enough and of plotting the whole campaign to grab Libya’s oil.
Less than a month later, Secretary of State Clinton and Defense Secretary Gates clashed on another foreign policy question. This time, the breach was sharper and the outcome far more dramatic.
It began when Leon Panetta, then the CIA director, told Clinton he needed to talk to her. He had been her friend, ally, and occasional opponent ever since he was President Clinton’s chief of staff. Now he needed her help: The agency had located Osama bin Laden’s hideout in Abbottabad, Pakistan, and wanted to take him out. But no one could be 100 percent sure bin Laden was there, and many in the White House and Pentagon were urging caution.
Clinton was for acting. She had always been a hawk where bin Laden was concerned, and she was in complete agreement that the effort would be worth the risk. To be sure, there could be major repercussions. No one in Pakistan could safely be told that a raid was in the works, so it was a given that Pakistan’s sovereignty would be violated. The Pakistanis would be even more outraged if bin Laden weren’t captured or killed. Relations with Pakistan were already tense enough. Washington had just settled the delicate case of Raymond Davis, a CIA contractor who had shot two Pakistanis who seemed to be threatening him, by paying $2.3 million in restitution.
It was little wonder that major players in the National Security Council had misgivings about mounting any attack, especially given the lack of certainty that bin Laden was there at all. Vice President Biden thought that fact was a killing flaw. Gates, meanwhile, was thinking what might go wrong. He recalled the disastrous 1980 Operation Eagle Claw fiasco in trying to rescue American hostages in Iran. That meant that two of Obama’s top three Cabinet officers were against a raid. Panetta wanted to make sure Clinton wouldn’t make it three out of three.
She sided with Panetta. But it took at least five National Security Council meetings, from mid-March to April 28, to thrash out agreement on a plan. They considered but rejected the idea of an air strike, either by bomb or drone, on the grounds that it might never be fully certain that bin Laden was dead. Admiral Bill McRaven, the commander of the Navy SEALs, argued that his men had made many similar raids in recent years and knew the drill. The last meeting broke up without a definite decision by Obama, but the next day Gates called Tom Donilon, by now the national security adviser, to tell him he had been persuaded that the raid was strategically sound. Fine, said Donilon, but the president has already given the order.
As it happened, the night of the raid was also the night of the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner, a black-tie event at which journalists, Washington dignitaries, and celebrities gather for heavy-handed jokes and revelry. The president gave a well-received speech, full of the customary jokes at his own expense. The next morning, the principal planners gathered in the small White House situation room to watch as much of the thirty-eight-minute raid as could be seen. The SEALs landed in the courtyard of the Abbottabad compound, crashing a helicopter but shooting down bin Laden and bringing his body back with them. “Those were thirty-eight of the most intense moments,” Clinton said later. “I’m sitting, holding my breath.” But in the end, her bet – and Obama’s – paid off.
Hillary Clinton had always meant to leave the State Department after Obama was reelected. On February 1, 2013, she walked out of the big glass atrium to applause even warmer than what had greeted her four years earlier. By nearly any reckoning, she had been a success as secretary of state. She and Obama had managed to restore America’s place in the world, if not to the peak of its post-World War II standing, at least to a position of general trust. The State Department too had regained turf and morale.
Her successor, Secretary of State John Kerry, inherited, among other unfinished business, negotiations with Iran. By then, the fiery Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was replaced by the moderate Hassan Rouhani and negotiations actually produced an interim deal: The sanctions would be eased, Iran would dilute some nuclear stockpiles it had already enriched beyond power-generating capacity, and a comprehensive nuclear agreement would be reached in six months. In return, some of the sanctions on Iran would be lifted, at least temporarily, with more to follow if the long-term deal were reached. After three months, however, the jury remained out on whether Iran had been a real success. Little progress had been reported on the nuclear deal, and Western investors had been slow to resume dealings with a country that could well be closed again if the deal were to fall through.
Even if she had been in charge of the negotiations, Hillary Clinton couldn’t have controlled all the changing circumstances. As she often reminds audiences, the business of any secretary of state is never finished: Today’s triumph may become tomorrow’s disaster, and events go on unfolding forever. It’s a relay race, she told The New York Times: “I mean, you run the best race you can run, you hand off the baton.”
Clinton, after twelve unbroken years of nonstop work as first lady, s
enator, and chief diplomat, was ready for a rest. “I won’t lie to you,” she told Kim Ghattas, the BBC reporter who had written a book on her 956,733 miles of diplomatic traveling, “I’m tired.”
It’s unlikely that the last page of Hillary's career has been written. How much of her legacy will be devoted to the actions of her husband is unclear. But, certainly, the two are inextricably bound. From the beginning, she wanted it that way. In the handsome, confident Bill Clinton, she saw a partnership. Theirs was a love founded on shared goals and a mutual passion for politics and power. Hillary Rodham, by her husband’s own estimation the smarter and more confident of the two, never quite fit in his shadow. Though she poured her own ambitions into him, to much of the American political machine, and the nation, she was at least his equal.
From her mother’s hardscrabble example, Hillary adopted an impatience and intolerance for bullies. From childhood, she defied those intent on putting her in her place. Her gamble on Bill Clinton as the standarhd-bearer of their future paid out in prominence, but also political and personal pain. Through it all, Hillary Clinton remained firm, focused, and resilient, and emerged from scandal after scandal more resolved to assert her role in history.
The Clintons campaign in Texas in 1992
Hillary Clinton addresses the 2000 Democratic National Convention
Tipper Gore and Hillary Clinton, 1992
The Clintons at the opening of the Clinton Library in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 2004
Senator Clinton speaks to an Arkansas lunch in 2004
A 2007 rally for Hillary Clinton at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa
Hillary Clinton campaigns for president in 2007
Secretary of State Clinton attends meets with world leaders in Paris to discuss the uprising in Libya
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Published by New Word City LLC, 2014
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© Sara Marshall
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ISBN 978-1-612307-87-9
Table of Contents
1: NOT AFRAID TO BE SMART
2: FORCE OF NATURE
3: THE STATEHOUSE YEARS
4: WHITEWATER ROUGH WATER
5: FIRST LADY
6: THE HEALTHCARE FIASCO
7: PLAGUE OF “GATES”
8: A WHITE HOUSE EDUCATION
9: VAST RIGHT-WING CONSPIRACY
10: BETRAYAL AND IMPEACHMENT
11: SENATOR CLINTON
12: MADAME SECRETARY
GALLERY
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