Bush At War

by Bob Woodward

  "How are we coming on Pakistan?" Bush asked.

  Hadley reported on a large aid package for Pakistan.

  Cheney was less concerned with humanitarian or Pakistani aid than he was with weapons of mass destruction. "We need to be targeting WMD and drug labs in our initial strikes," the vice president said.

  Toward the end Rumsfeld said, "We need to get a list of requests of what we want to ask from each country and break it up into individual pieces."

  THE SURPRISE FOR Rice was when the president raised the issue of humanitarian aid. It had not really been discussed among the principals, the deputies or sub-deputies. What was this? Where was it coming from?

  For Bush, it was fundamental to what he sees as the moral mission of the United States. I explored the issue with him at length in a later interview. "I was sensitive to this [accusation] that this was a religious war, and that somehow the United States would be the conqueror. And I wanted us to be viewed as the liberator," the president said. The idea of feeding the poor Afghan people appealed to him. He said he didn't believe the people supported the Taliban, and were at best pawns. "The idea of bombing a people into submission, therefore causing the government to fall, was not a relevant thought in this war." Bombing the people might make the Taliban stronger. That was the practical consideration. The moral one, he said, was, "We've got to deal with suffering."

  Bush had seen satellite pictures of starvation, torture and prison camp brutality on a massive scale in North Korea. He also knew of forced starvation in Iraq. "There is a human condition that we must worry about in times of war. There is a value system that cannot be compromised - God-given values. These aren't United States-created values. There are values of freedom and the human condition and mothers loving their children. What's very important as we articulate foreign policy through our diplomacy and military action, is that it never look like we are creating - we are the author of these values.

  "It leads to a larger question of your view about God." And the lesson, he said, was, "We're all God's children." He wanted war with both practical and moral dimensions.

  After he had proposed that the first bombs be food, the president remembered, everyone got it. "Rumsfeld grasped it, Mr. Hard Guy, who is not a hard guy. He's a very softhearted man in many ways. He understood it immediately." The military might have been bemused at first, he said, but they understood.

  The principals met without the president later that afternoon via video teleconference. After routine reports from Ashcroft and Powell, Rice raised the issue of state sponsorship of terrorism. "What is our strategy with respect to countries that support terrorism like Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Sudan? How do we define the hurdles they have to jump over to get on the right side of the war on terrorism?" The United States needed some benchmarks by which to evaluate states' terrorist leanings.

  "We need a small group, deputies and principals, to look at the next phase in the war on terror," she said.

  "TRYING TO ANTICIPATE the Next Attack" was the title of the highly classified three-page paper that arrived in the president's inbox the morning of Tuesday, September 25. It was the report that Bush had requested several days earlier. It was distributed to him and a limited number of his key advisers with the President's Daily Brief (PDB), the most restricted document in Washington.

  The report was put together by a "Red Cell" team that Tenet and McLaughlin had set up. The team of experienced CIA analysts and operatives saw all incoming intelligence on bin Laden, al Qaeda and other relevant international terrorism. Their job was to think like bin Laden and his lieutenants and say what the other side - what Bush and Tenet called "the Bad Guys" - might be thinking or doing.

  A notation on the paper said that since Red Cell had been directed to think "unconventional" and "out of the box," their thoughts should not be taken as conclusive. The Red Cell had been tasked to consider the "limitless" number of possible terrorist targets, and then to attempt to narrow that down to the most likely future domestic targets given the past practices of al Qaeda. In other words, to place their bets.

  The Red Cell had come up with nine categories:

  1. Political centers - Washington, D.C., or federal offices anywhere

  2. Infrastructure facilities - airports, roads, harbors, railroads, dams, tunnels, bridges

  3. Economic systems - Wall Street, Chicago trading centers

  4. Energy infrastructure - refineries, oil platforms

  5. Military targets - areas of large troop concentrations, Army, Navy, Air Force or Marine bases, weapons storage sites

  6. Global telecommunications - electronic communications transit points, Internet computer routing centers, banking nodes

  7. Educational centers - Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the Boston area

  8. Cultural centers - Hollywood, sports stadiums

  9. Monuments and other symbols of national identity

  "UBL tends to go back after targets they considered or previously attacked," the paper said, noting that some possible targets have "multiple values."

  The White House had such multiple value as both a political center and a symbol of national identity. Bush was living and working at a designated Ground Zero.

  THE NATIONAL SECURITY Council met again on Tuesday, September 25, at the White House. The president spoke first. "We can't define the success or failure in terms of capturing UBL."

  Tenet reported on the Northern Alliance. "The people are ready to go. They are not Pashtuns, but they are anti-Taliban. We won't be able to hold them back. They will hit both al Qaeda and Taliban targets, because they are all intermixed." A CIA team was about to go in. "We will encourage them to go to the targets. They've got communications gear to give us intelligence. We'll give them money. We will have to decide whether to pay for the Soviet weapons we're going to be provided."

  The Northern Alliance controlled a part of the northeast quadrant of the country. "It is a potential base of operations," Tenet said. "We want to push as much pressure from the north and from the south. We'll have meetings with district leaders. We want to seal the borders and make sure the Arabs don't flee."

  "Do we want to pay the Russians for Soviet weapons?" Powell asked.

  "Does it help advance the mission?" asked Bush.

  "Yes," Tenet said.

  Bush wanted it done.

  "There is little change from the chief of station approach," Rice said, referring to the ideas suggested in the cable from Islamabad. "Do we need to change the target list?"

  "Well, we are going to hit the SAM and air defense up front," said Tenet, referring to the surface-to-air missile sites. The CIA director was directly involving himself in military discussions because it was his men who were ready to go in on the ground while the Pentagon was lagging. "Are there any other Taliban targets we want to strike in the north?"

  It remained an open question. Once the U.S. exhausted the target set of Taliban air defenses, operations would be hamstrung without men on the ground to scout out targets and relay precise coordinates. There was enough space in southern Afghanistan to begin inserting ground forces, though the situation was not optimal. In the north, however, they would have to explore alternative approaches since Uzbekistan had not yet committed on basing rights.

  "Can we base in the Northern Alliance areas?" asked Cheney. Another possibility was to launch from Tajikistan, which had agreed to support the U.S. But the flight path from there into northern Afghanistan was treacherous and involved climbing over a tall mountain range.

  "We have a deadline on Uzbekistan as 4 P.M.," said Franks. "If we can't get it, we'll have to drop the north, do it later, and do the south now. In the south, we'll have to operate off carriers" in the Indian Ocean, Franks said, what they called a "lily pad" strategy, using the carriers as oceangoing stepping-stones.

  They reviewed comments that some Islamic scholars had made about the Pentagon's name for the operation. "Operation Infinite Justice" had been quickly criticized
for its insensitivity to the Muslim faith, which holds that only Allah can mete out infinite justice. The name was shelved. Rumsfeld said he had decided on "Enduring Freedom."

  But the Pentagon's image problem was a minor worry for Rumsfeld compared to the major overhaul of the armed services he had begun, and was now executing while trying to conduct a war. Skeptics were saying that he could not transform the military and fight a war. But Rumsfeld's thinking was, If you're fighting a different kind of war, the war transforms the military.

  We're changing our Special Operations Forces so they have a global role, he said. They won't be tied to individual geographic areas under the CINCs any longer, that is, not limited to certain operational theaters.

  Tenet saw the transformation as not limited to the Pentagon; the CIA was thinking anew as well. "And we're working between the military and our covert people side by side," he added, "with transparency between them, deconflicting and viewing both in a global context." Deconflicting meant keeping their forces from shooting each other.

  They discussed whether to issue a white paper, designed to prove that bin Laden and al Qaeda were behind the September 11 attacks.

  Did they want or need a white paper? Rumsfeld asked. It could set an awful precedent. Suppose they wanted to launch a preemptive military attack on terrorists or some state sponsor? They could create an expectation that some white paper would follow. That might not be possible. National security decisions about military action often had to be made on the best available evidence and that might fall far short of courtroom proof. They could be setting themselves up.

  While American and allied intelligence services were beginning to unravel the trail of the September 11 attacks, the evidence was circumstantial and somewhat fragmentary, though there were some hard nuggets. The danger of issuing a white paper that presented evidence was that it could condition people to view the war on terror as a law enforcement operation, within the model of the judicial system with its evidentiary standards, burden of proof on the government and proof beyond a reasonable doubt - things that could not possibly be met.

  Powell wanted some kind of white paper if possible. He had to deal with European and Arab states where the leaders wanted evidence and proof.

  Turning to the outline of the war, Rumsfeld said, "We ought to have a broad beginning and an ending. It ought to focus on al Qaeda - it shouldn't focus on UBL. . . . It's not over if we get his head on a platter. And the failure to get his head on a platter is not failure."

  The president asked about international participation in the first phase of the operation.

  "Look, we're not able to define a special operations role for our own forces," Rumsfeld replied. "Until we can do that, how can we talk about including others?"

  "We need to plan as if things won't go well," Bush said. What was the scenario if there was no split in the Taliban? "We need to war-game it out, figure out how to keep the pressure on them and effect change, even if things don't go the way we want."

  When he commented later in an interview about why he, the perennial optimist, wanted to examine bad scenarios, Bush said, "I think my job is to stay ahead of the moment. A president, I guess, can get so bogged down in the moment that you're unable to be the strategic thinker that you're supposed to be, or at least provide strategic thought. And I'm the kind of person that wants to make sure that all risk is assessed. There is no question what the reward is in this case. But a president is constantly analyzing, making decisions based upon risk, particularly in war, risk taken relative to the - what can be achieved." He had advisers "who have seen war, who have been in situations where the plan didn't happen the way it was planned."

  Whether it was trying to stay ahead of the moment, assessing risk or reaching a consensus, he said, "I just think it's instinctive. I'm not a textbook player. I'm a gut player."

  He and the others were increasingly discovering there was no textbook for this war.

  At the meeting, Rumsfeld said, "Look, as part of the war on terrorism, should we be getting something going in another area, other than Afghanistan, so that success or failure and progress isn't measured just by Afghanistan?"

  It was becoming clearer and clearer that the defense secretary didn't want success to hinge on Afghanistan. The targets were meager. What could they actually accomplish?

  But Bush's focus remained Afghanistan, he recalled. "Obviously, there were some who discussed Iraq. That's out of the question at this point. I mean, I didn't need any briefings." Rumsfeld wanted to show that the war on terror was global, the president said. "Rumsfeld wanted to make sure that the military was active in other regions. My point was that the degree of difficulty had to be relatively small in order to make sure that we continued to succeed in the first battle."

  Cheney's biggest concern was still the possibility that bin Laden or other terrorists would acquire and use weapons of mass destruction. Nothing had suggested that al Qaeda possessed any nuclear devices, but there was a concern about biological and chemical weapons.

  "Can we do a good enough job of identifying targets in Afghanistan that relate to BW/CW?" Cheney asked. "It should be a top priority.

  "We need to have a deliberate strategy but also we need to hit him before he hits us. Give additional targets."

  "We need to ratchet down my trip to the Far East," Bush said. The president was scheduled to travel to Shanghai for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit later in October and then visit Beijing, Tokyo and Seoul. They should cancel the latter three cities. "I need to be here."

  Later that morning Bush welcomed Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi to the White House. In a private meeting, he told Koizumi the problem of terrorism was theirs together. "In this new war," Bush said, "cutting off funding is just as important as dropping a bomb. Aid to Pakistan is just as important as landing troops." He was going to be deliberate, patient, because the consequences would be great. "We're angry, but we're not stupid."

  ABOUT 4 A.M. Washington time the next morning, Wednesday, September 26, a husky 59-year-old man with a round, cheerful face and glasses was huddled in the back of a Russian-made, CIA-owned Mi-17 helicopter that was going to have to strain to climb 15,000 feet to clear the Anjoman Pass into the Panjshir Valley of northeastern Afghanistan. It was 12:30 P.M. there.

  Gary was leading the first critical wave of President George W. Bush's war against terrorism. With him was a team of CIA covert paramilitary officers with communications gear that would allow them to set up direct classified links with headquarters. Between his legs was a large strapped metal suitcase that contained $3 million in United States currency, nonsequential $100 bills. He always laughed when he saw a television show or movie where someone passed $1 million in a small attache case. It just wouldn't fit.

  Several times in his career, Gary had stuffed $1 million into his backpack so he could move around and pass it to people on other operations. He had signed for the $3 million as usual. What was different this time was that he could dole it out pretty much at his own discretion.

  Gary had been an officer in the Directorate of Operations of the CIA for 32 years, the type of CIA clandestine operative that many thought no longer existed. In the 1970s, he had been an undercover case officer in Tehran and then Islamabad. He had recruited, developed, paid and run agents who reported from within the host governments. In the 1980s, he served as chief of the CIA base in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and later as chief of station for Kabul. The American Embassy in Kabul was closed due to the Soviet invasion, so he operated out of Islamabad. In the 1990s, he served as deputy chief of station in Saudi Arabia, then chief of a secret overseas station that operated against Iran. From 1996 to 1999, he had been chief of station in Islamabad, and then deputy chief of the CIA's Near East and South Asia operations division at Langley.

  On September 11, Gary had been almost out the door, weeks away from retirement and in the agency's 90-day retirement transition program. Another officer had taken over as deputy division c
hief. His wife was delighted.

  Gary had been pulled back inside the door on the Saturday that President Bush had the day-long meeting with his war cabinet at Camp David, September 15. That day, he had received a call from Cofer Black, the head of the agency's counterterrorism center, asking him to come into headquarters.

  Black told him, "I know you're ready to retire. But we want to send a team in right away. You're the logical person to go in." Not only did Gary have the experience, he spoke Pashto and Dari, Afghanistan's two main languages.

  The team would be a small group of CIA operatives and paramilitary officers working out of the super-secret Special Activities Division of the Directorate of Operations.

  "Yeah, I'll go," Gary said. When he was Islamabad station chief he had made several covert trips into Afghanistan, meeting with the Northern Alliance leaders, bringing in cash, normally $200,000 - a bag of money on the table. He had known Ahmed Shah Massoud. Massoud had held the rival warlords together, and his assassination was surely designed to rid the opposition Northern Alliance of that glue and leadership.

  Go in, Black told Gary, convince the Northern Alliance to work with us, which shouldn't be too hard given the situation and the fact that Massoud was just assassinated by the same people who attacked New York and the Pentagon. Prepare the ground in Afghanistan to receive U.S. forces, to give them a place to come in and stage operations.

  The post-Massoud situation among the Northern Alliance was unclear. Gary's team would be the first in. No backup. Minimal available search and rescue teams to get them out if something went wrong.

  Four days later, on September 19, Black called Gary back to his office. The team, formally called the Northern Afghanistan Liaison Team (NALT), was given the codeword "Jawbreaker." They were to deploy the next day, proceed to Europe and then into the region and into Afghanistan as fast as possible.

  Jawbreaker had another assignment. The president had signed a new intelligence order, the gloves were off.