Bush At War

by Bob Woodward

  Other countries that were helping or would be asked to help in the war could become skittish or refuse to assist, leaving the CIA and the Pentagon out in the cold.

  In the 10 days since the attacks on New York and Washington, the news media had thrown unprecedented resources at covering every angle of the story. Reporters, editors and producers were tapping old and new sources, pursuing back channels to land a scoop. The hunger for even a morsel of new information was made more acute by the pressures of the 24-hour news cycle - now punctuated by a nonstop news ticker crawling across the bottom of a half-dozen cable news channels. Intelligence or secret military plans or diplomatic moves made the best scoops.

  "I'm gonna read the riot act to our workforce," Tenet said.

  "We'll just have to put some of the most sensitive stuff not on paper," said Bush. History be damned. So what if the record was incomplete. He was not going to jeopardize the undertaking.

  The group turned to a discussion about the latest intelligence on the location of bin Laden. Though the administration was trying to play down his importance, Bush understood the symbolism of getting him. He wanted bin Laden badly.

  Once again the intelligence was thin gruel. Tenet really had nothing of consequence.

  The president told them they needed to find a way to show visible progress in the war on terror, on their terms. He wanted a "scorecard," a way to measure and demonstrate what they had and would accomplish. They were in the implementation phase, and though they weren't going to talk about plans and operations, he wanted to talk results. He wanted something up on the Scoreboard. "I want the people involved with the operations to know that I am going to be watching."

  No one doubted that.

  Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill was present at the meeting because of plans to disrupt terrorist finances worldwide.

  "We need to get operational on this," Bush said, turning his fire hose on the treasury secretary. "Disruption of financial networks needs to be a tool in our arsenal. It's important. We must use it."

  There were nods. He was assured in a chorus of "Soon, Mr. President, coming Mr. President" that a public announcement of plans would be ready in days.

  Rice raised an equally difficult subject. The CIA was circulating a TOP SECRET/CODEWORD Threat Matrix each day listing the freshest and most sensitive raw intelligence about dozens of threatened bombings, hijackings or other terrorist plans. It was chilling, at times containing 100 specific threats to U.S. facilities around the world or possible targets inside the country - embassies, shopping complexes, specific cities, places where thousands gather. Some were anonymous phone or e-mail threats that looked potentially serious; some were just nut cases. But many came from the most sensitive human sources and overseas communications intercepts.

  The deputies had been meeting each day specifically on homeland security. Rice had been closely watching their work and found that their progress was minuscule. This was because they were trying to do more, solve the big problems of security, truly harden America. Well, that was impossible, she realized.

  She summarized this conclusion for the NSC. "Make sure the best is not the enemy of the good," she said. "Do what you can right now to help reduce the risk to the United States." Steps that might be unsatisfactory in the long run had to be taken in the short run, now.

  The chance that the United States would be hit again in the near term was real. Rice recognized that as the shock of 9/11 subsided, the natural tendency would be to begin methodical, wholesale improvements to the systems and procedures that had been exploited by the terrorists, especially airport security. That could take months or years. The focus needed to be primarily on whatever short-term measures might prevent, disrupt or delay another attack.

  "Don't wait for the long studies. We'll have time enough to do studies," Rice continued. "Sixty to 70 percent of what you need to do, you know you need to do right now. Just go do it." She suggested that they simply employ brute force, beef up screening and security everywhere. Putting the National Guard in the airports lent an aura of heightened security. As many packages or containers as possible coming into American ports should be examined.

  The reality was that the country was open and vulnerable.

  Bush returned to the issue of terrorist financing. It was something that could be done immediately. They needed international cooperation to disrupt the networks of funding, he said. "Look, if countries are reluctant, let us know. Put it on my call list."

  As operations in the war on terror were commencing - or soon would - Bush wanted his advisers to feel they could call on him for help. He had offered his office, his phone, his influence, whatever they needed to move through their work lists. "Get us the top ten things you want us to do, and we'll do it," he directed.

  They shifted to the economy, another worry. Stock prices had plunged all week since the market reopened Monday, sending all the major indexes to their lowest levels in more than two years. The Dow Jones Industrial Average had sunk below 8,400 points - dropping 13 percent in less than a week.

  They also touched on where the U.S. was headed with the United Nations General Assembly, which had been scheduled to meet in New York the next week, with President Bush delivering a welcome address. The U.N. had postponed the meeting indefinitely because security personnel in New York were already stretched to the max.

  Toward the close, Powell turned to one of his favorite subjects - the coalition of nations that were helping and would help. It was clear from the meeting that the war on all fronts - military, intelligence, financial and diplomatic - hinged on having partners. And he agreed the U.S. would not bend to adapt to what other nations wanted. "The coalition doesn't constrain our operations," he said, sounding one of Rumsfeld's themes.

  "The war is as I defined it last night," Bush replied. In his speech he had sounded more as if he would go it alone, if necessary. But the unilateralist in him seemed to be giving way. "It requires a coalition, it can't be done without one," he conceded.

  But he quickly turned to what was primarily on his mind, adding, 'And we've got to start showing results."

  He was pressuring them, he realized. The president said later that he was also trying to protect them. "I told our team, I said, 'Look, don't get pressured into making irrational decisions. And don't worry about me second-guessing what you do.' I said, 'Make the best decisions you can, and I'll protect our team as best as I can by explaining to the public that this is going to take a long time.' "

  OUT AT LANGLEY, Tenet called in the agency's top Afghanistan experts - operators and analysts - for a free-for-all in his conference room.

  How do we launch the covert action in Afghanistan? he asked.

  Tribalism is important, a dominant feature of Afghan life, someone said. Everyone agreed. The Afghan population is comprised of a half-dozen sizable ethnic groups and many smaller ones whose histories, claims on land and conflicts traced back centuries. Hostility among rival groups is often fierce. Ethnic Pashtuns, who make up two-fifths of the country's inhabitants, live mostly in the south. The ethnic Tajiks, the next largest group, and the ethnic Uzbeks are mostly in the north. Warring between the southern Pashtuns and the northern Tajiks and Uzbeks had kept the country mired in conflict since the end of the Soviet occupation in 1989.

  This was the vacuum that had allowed the Taliban and bin Laden to take over the country.

  Even within ethnic groups, tribal and religious differences had sparked internecine feuds. The two dominant tribes of Pashtuns had been fighting each other since the 16th century, with one tribe most recently supporting Mullah Omar's Taliban militia and the

  other backing the former Afghan monarch, King Mohammed Zahir Shah.

  Second, the CIA experts said it was important to make the war Afghan versus Arab, not some Westerners versus Afghans. It was critical to frame the war as one of liberation. Afghans remembered the 10-year failed effort of the Soviets who wanted authoritarian rule. The thousands of foreign-born Arabs who had come to A
fghanistan to train in al Qaeda camps were the outsiders, the invaders. The war was against them, not against native Afghan tribesmen. Tenet found near unanimity on this point also.

  How could they use tribalism to their advantage? The answer: Getting Afghans to fight, not just to talk.

  An Afghanistan operation furthermore had to be geared so it would not make things harder on Pakistani President Musharraf. The U.S. could accomplish that in several ways, they said, foremost by avoiding large refugee flows from Afghanistan into Pakistan and by showing the Pakistanis the benefits of cooperating. Already that week, there had been talk that in return for their assistance in the war on terror Pakistan could expect a lifting of economic sanctions imposed after their 1998 nuclear tests and a generous package of aid and debt relief. The undersecretary of state for political affairs, Marc Grossman, was on Capitol Hill that day to inform congressional leaders of the president's intention to waive the sanctions on Pakistan.

  Several said the United States had to emphasize public diplomacy, a nice term for a propaganda war. The key themes should be: 1) this was not a war against Islam, and 2) this was not a war against the Afghan people.

  The general rule was to study what the Soviets had done and do the opposite.

  AT 5:30 P.M. the principals convened via secure video teleconference without the president. Condi Rice and Andy Card were at Camp David, where they would be spending the weekend with the president. The others were gathered in the White House Situation Room.

  Running through a checklist of countries, they reported on where the U.S. stood with the basing, access and overflight rights that were necessary before military operations could begin. The more they examined Afghanistan the more difficult it looked. Iran was to the west, three former Soviet republics and China to the north, Pakistan to the east and south. The nearest accessible body of water was the Indian Ocean, 300 miles away. They had no strong allies in the immediate region; they didn't have diplomatic relations with Iran. So they turned to the small Persian Gulf nations of Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Oman, hoping they would provide territory from which bombing sorties or other offensive military action could be launched.

  Oman was the best prospect. About the size of Kansas and strategically located on the east end of the Arabian Peninsula, Oman has 1,000 miles of shoreline on the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea - within striking distance of Afghanistan, some 700 miles away. Omani leader Sultan Qaboos bin Said, who had gone to Britain's Sandhurst military academy, had seized power in 1970 from his father. In 1980 he had made the country available as a staging area for the unsuccessful 1980 Desert One hostage rescue mission into Iran. In 1998 he allowed U.S. bombers to strike Iraq from his country.

  The initial report on Oman, however, was inconclusive - it was still unclear whether they would allow combat operations to be staged from its strategically located island of Masira in the Arabian Sea.

  It was clear Russia would play a central role. The principals split up responsibility on working the Russians over basing issues in Central Asia. The strategy was "Everybody plays." They would all reach out to their Russian counterparts. Powell was to deal with foreign minister Igor Ivanov; Rumsfeld with the defense minister, Sergei Ivanov; Rice with Kremlin security adviser Vladimir Rushailo.

  It was tricky Rice realized. Some of the Central Asian states, former Soviet republics, would be offended that the United States was going through Russia. Uzbekistan was alienated from Russia. On the other hand, Tajikistan was thoroughly in the Russian camp and wouldn't move without its approval.

  Rice reminded them of the president's desire to also play. "If you need the president to call Putin, you do that."

  ON SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, the president asked what the score-card was showing.

  Mueller reported that the FBI had conducted interviews with 417 persons as part of its terrorist sweep and that they had a staggering 331 people on their watch list.

  Three hundred and thirty-one. The number weighed on their minds. Mueller was saying that as many as 15 times the number of terrorists who carried out the September 11 attacks could be in the United States? They had to assume some were capable of carrying out deadly plots.

  A big number, Rice thought. Her heart almost sank. Before September 11, they had been warned about al Qaeda abroad. But no equivalent warning or detail about terrorists in the U.S. had been provided by the FBI, which had responsibility for domestic counterterrorism.

  "I was floored," Bush later recalled. "It was a lot. I remember that. It's an incredible number."

  He said he kept trying to get numbers on the size of their army - in Afghanistan, the rest of the world and in the United States.

  Though he was dropping numbers in public all the time to report progress, the president decided the 331 number was one scorecard figure that was going to stay secret. He said later, "That is a number which says to the American people that have just come off a traumatic moment in our history, and there's still a lot of trauma in our society, there really was. People - you know it as well as I know it. And the idea of saying, there's 331 al Qaeda-type killers lurking, to the point where they made a list, would have been a - just wasn't necessary.

  "On the other hand, what was necessary was for our FBI to realize that all throughout the system, their mind-set had to change," Bush said, recalling his concern. "This enemy is elusive, very sophisticated. These aren't a bunch of poor people that are desperate in their attempt. These are cold, calculating killers."

  Powell reported on the status of basing negotiations. Uzbekistan was still holding out. "Our charge will see Karimov at 11 this morning. If we don't get a yes from him, I will call." He asked the president to call the Russian president and ask him to call the Uzbeks to encourage them to allow the U.S. in.

  Rice' thought that might have the opposite effect, but a call to Putin on related matters could be useful.

  Bush was eager for the public announcement of an executive order freezing terrorist finances. He was told it was essentially finished. Rice was going to work on it that afternoon.

  BUSH CALLED PUTIN that weekend.

  "We are going to support you in the war on terror," Putin said. Using translators, the two spoke for 42 minutes.

  Putin said that Russia would grant the U.S. overflight clearance, but for humanitarian purposes only. "We can't put any Russian troops on the ground in Afghanistan," he said, according to the White House translation. "That makes no sense for you or for us." He didn't need to mention the disaster of Soviet intervention. "But we are prepared to provide search and rescue if you have downed pilots in northern Afghanistan. We are prepared to do that."

  Bush asked if the Russian president would use his influence with the Central Asian states to help the U.S. obtain basing rights in the region.

  "I am prepared to tell the heads of governments of the Central Asian states that we have good relations with that we have no objection to a U.S. role in Central Asia as long as it has the object of fighting the war on terror and is temporary and is not permanent. If it is that, then we will have no objection and that is what I will tell people." He said that Russia would be doing more for the U.S. than its traditional allies.

  Rice was surprised. It was a significant concession. She had expected that Putin would tell Bush, Be careful, this was a region of Russian interest. Normally, the Russians would suspect hidden motives behind any U.S. presence there.

  The big downside was that Russia did not have good relations with Uzbekistan, the key Central Asian state.

  Rice thought Putin saw an opportunity to change relations between the U.S. and Russia. The Cold War was over and national security was no longer a zero-sum game. It seemed that Putin wanted not just to move from being enemies to neutral, but all the way to embracing a sense of common security. Putin seemed to see the anti-terror war as a strategic opportunity to break through to the U.S. president instantly. If Bush was looking to solidify a friendship by asking a favor, Putin was doing so by granting it. "I'm her
e to help" was the message being sent. You've got a friend in this time of enormous personal challenge. Rice thought it was smart on Putin's part.

  THE PRESIDENT SAW the Putin relationship in deeply personal terms. In an interview, he described his first meeting with Putin on June 16, 2001, in Ljubljana, Slovenia:

  "And in comes Putin, and he sits down, and it's just me, Condi, Putin, whatever that guy - Rashilov, and the interpreter from both sides. And he wants to get started. And I said, 'Let me say something about what caught my attention, Mr. President, was that your mother gave you a cross which you had blessed in Israel, the Holy Land.' And he said, 'It's true.' I said that amazed me, that here you were a Communist, KGB operative, and yet you were willing to wear a cross. 'That speaks volumes to me, Mr. President. May I call, you Vladimir?' " So it became Vladimir and George after that, he said.

  "And he said, 'The rest of the story is, is that I was wearing my cross. I hung it on a dacha. The dacha burned down, and the only thing I wanted recovered was the cross.' And he said, 'I remember the workman's hand opening, and there was the cross that my mother had given me, as if it was meant to be.' And I think I told him then, I said, 'Well, that's the story of the cross as far as I'm concerned. Things are meant to be.'

  "He then immediately went to Soviet debt, how unfair it was that Russia is saddled with Soviet Union debt, and can we help. I was more interested in, who is this person I'm dealing with. I wanted to make sure that the story of the cross was a true story." It was Reagan's old motto, "Trust, but verify," but under an entirely new set of circumstances.

  Putin showed the cross to Bush a month later at a meeting in Genoa, Italy.

  "We had a very successful meeting. And I had convinced him that I no longer viewed Russia as an enemy, and I viewed him, on a personal level, as somebody with whom we could deal."

  The phone call that weekend in September was important. "What he is saying is, 'Go get them, we want you to be successful.' However, in his tone it was clear that he needed reassurance that this was not a play to establish a long-term military presence in what was his former territory" - an assurance Bush said he readily gave.