My Father, My President
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“I invited Tony to come over because I wanted to know if the air force was ready to fight and if he was as confident as he was a few months before when he had briefed me at Camp David,” Dad said. “He assured me we were ready and that our technology would in fact be effective—that our stealth fighters could not be detected by enemy radar. I had a high regard for Tony and was greatly relieved by his upbeat report.”
As Dad prepared to announce the start of the war on TV, White House Communications Director David Demarest, who had helped Dad with close to 750 speeches and remarks by this point, found out Dad was writing his own remarks for what he would say to the nation. David later learned that Dad had also asked Dan McGroarty, who was one of David’s writers, to sit in the outer office outside of the Oval Office in case Dad needed to check a fact or to help with a line. David candidly confessed to me that he was hurt about that—as the head communications man, he understandably wanted to be sitting out there at this great moment in history.
“Late in the day I get a call, and the president wanted to see me,” David recalled. “So I went down to the little study outside his office and he said, ‘I’m working on this. What do you think about this line?’ I looked at the line and I thought it was fine, but it wasn’t anything particularly consequential. Right then David Valdez walked in to take a picture of me and the president working on this speech, and then David left. I went back to my office and I thought, he’s intuitive enough to know that I would have wanted to be a part of this day. That was extraordinary, particularly given the moment he was about to experience. That human quality of his always came through.”
On January 16, I went to the theater with Honey Skinner. As it turned out, the Simpsons were there, too. We had settled in to watch a play when Honey suddenly noticed a Secret Service agent scrunched down at the end of our row, waving at us. It could only mean one thing. “They’ve bombed Iraq,” I whispered to Senator Simpson as we all left the show.
Honey and I left immediately and went to the White House—up to the private quarters, where Dad and Mom and my brother George were gathered. “I remember the seriousness of it,” Honey reflected. “I felt personally that I shouldn’t be there because I wasn’t in your family, but immediately everyone said, ‘Are you kidding? Get in here.’”
Billy Graham was there, too, and we watched the beginning of the air war on television. Dad remembers, “I knew exactly what time the bombers were supposed to be over Baghdad and then we were getting a report from Bernie Shaw on CNN, ‘The skies are lit up and you can hear it.’ I called over to the Situation Room and said, ‘What’s going on? It’s early.’ It wasn’t supposed to start until later. They checked and said some of the planes had been detected early and they were shooting at them, using defensive antiaircraft artillery to get them.”
Dad continued, “I remember walking over to the Situation Room to get the reports from the battlefield, and the reports were good. We didn’t lose any planes. Nobody knew how fierce the battle would be, because Saddam had said it would be ‘the mother of all battles.’ We did very definitive targeting to avoid civilian damages as much as we could. I was worried about all these pilots and crew members going into harm’s way, and then out they came in good shape. It worked out pretty well, and it was a very exhilarating time. It was a Saturday. The next day we went to church.”
My friend Jodie Dwight and I went to Camp David the next weekend, right after the war started, along with Sam and Ellie. Friday night, Jodie and I went to the helicopter pad to meet Dad—he flew in very late for an intense weekend of telephone diplomacy. It was icy cold, and every star in the sky shone bright and brilliant. We were wearing the army-green parkas with fur-trimmed hoods that are provided in the cabins for the guests at Camp David. The second Dad’s foot hit the ground, the marines on duty hoisted the American flag. For some reason, the image of the raising of the flag is just as vivid to me today as the stars were that night.
Few in our family would argue that the six weeks of the air campaign, and the hundred-hour ground war that followed, was the most nerve-racking time of Dad’s presidency. Bernie Shaw, the CNN anchor who was holed up in a Baghdad hotel with reporter Peter Arnett, recalled that Marlin Fitzwater had issued a statement warning all American journalists to leave Baghdad before the bombing began, as there was no way for the U.S. military to protect them. Bernie told me:
I actually said during our coverage, “I want to thank the White House for the many warnings given us, but obviously we’re going to stay here.” I did that publicly for a reason—to say thank you, and that we were aware of their concerns, but we’re not budging because we thought the story should be covered. But it was awfully lonely as other journalists started bailing out and we were the only ones there.
President Bush called CNN president Tom Johnson to lean on him heavily, saying, “Get your people out of there.” He said, “Well, Mr. President, we’ve got to do our job.”
Tom stood his ground and said to your father, “We’re going to stay.” And the president said, “My friend Bernie Shaw is in there. I’m concerned about him.”
When Tom Johnson was editor of the Los Angeles Times, he lost two journalists on his watch, so he was very sensitive to journalists being killed. Tom Johnson responded, “We’re concerned about his safety and everyone else’s safety.” And that was [the end of] that conversation.
Then do you know what Tom did? He picked up the phone and called Colin Powell at his office at the Pentagon. Tom asked the general point-blank, “Is the hotel a target?” And Colin Powell exploded, saying, “You’re calling me on an unsecured line asking me about classified information.” I think Tom said he hadn’t heard that kind of cursing since LBJ talked to him.
Tom used to be a right-hand aide to President Johnson, and he and General Powell had first met when they were White House Fellows together. They were friends. And then Colin Powell said, “Bernie Shaw’s my friend, too.”
It was a difficult time for everybody. Ellen Tolten, who was one of the military nurses staffing the White House Medical Office during that time, recalled, “When Desert Storm started, I remember him saying how he worried about all the soldiers. He wondered what their parents were thinking, and he was up late with a lot of desk work.”
Being members of the military themselves, the nurses could all relate. They knew what it was like to be separated from family.
During the war, Dad rarely left the White House except to go to Camp David or Kennebunkport. In fact, he went for sixty-four or sixty-five days without formal travel because of the war. On February 1, however, he visited troops and military families at the Cherry Point Marine Corps Air Station in North Carolina.
“The morale at Cherry Point was sky-high, but the emotions ran deep as I visited with families whose loved ones were halfway around the world,” Dad said. “The families were supportive of our objectives, yet all of us were worried about the safety of their husbands, sons, and dads—their wives and daughters and moms.”
“One of the things that struck me from my perspective as secretary of defense was the extent to which he had a connection with the troops up and down the chain of command,” Vice President Cheney said recently. “On the one hand, he knew what he was asking of them because of his own experience in World War II, because he had been shot down. That degree of understanding and empathy that he displayed for them was very important. They understood what they were being asked to do, and why. They also had great confidence in him that their sacrifice was worthwhile—and that he would not in any way, shape, or form ever treat that obligation lightly.”
My husband Bobby Koch and I first met in 1990, soon after Iraq invaded Kuwait. I was working at the National Rehabilitation Hospital, and my friend and officemate Heidi Hicks invited me to lunch with Bobby and another friend who was looking for a job on the Hill. Bobby Koch worked for Dick Gephardt at the time, who was the majority leader in the House from Missouri. The lunch was really intended for the friend, but Heidi invited me a
long.
My first impression of Bobby, to be candid, was that he was good-looking and funny. I had reservations because he worked for one of Dad’s political opponents, Dick Gephardt. Heaven only knows what he thought of me.
Time went by, however, and I suddenly began to think that Bobby might not be so bad. I began to talk to Heidi and Tom Nides, Bobby’s great friend, about how I might be able to see him again—and we came up with what we thought was a brilliant plan. Since it was Christmas, I would invite Bobby to the White House to see the Christmas decorations. Tom suggested he and his girlfriend Virginia come along—that way it would not be so awkward.
The problem with the plan was that Bobby was nowhere to be found, so I ended up showing Tom and Virginia the decorations without him. It was the first of several foiled plans to get together, until one evening Bobby invited me to dinner. As soon as I accepted, though, the phone rang and it was Dad. He was calling to ask if I would go to the funeral of Peter McKernan, the only son of Governor Jock McKernan from Maine. Peter, who was twenty years old, tragically collapsed during baseball practice at Dartmouth and died nine days later. I admire Governor McKernan and was heartbroken for him, so of course I wanted to attend the funeral.
The only problem was, it was the same night as the much-anticipated date with Bobby. So I called Bobby and asked him if we could meet at 9:30 p.m., which I’m sure he thought was odd. Following the very sad funeral in Maine, I raced back for our date at Tout Va Bien in Georgetown. The only thing I remember saying was that I loved Italian food, and he very kindly pointed out that we were at a French restaurant. But I do remember thinking he was someone special.
After that, I invited him to the state dinner for Queen Margrethe II of Denmark on February 20. Bobby called his friend Tom and asked why I was inviting him to a “steak” dinner, at which point Tom, known for colorful language, set him straight.
“It’s a state dinner, you idiot,” Tom delicately corrected him.
The state dinner was beautiful. My dad had nearly thirty state dinners during his tenure at the White House and saw the importance of receiving heads of states in this way. Bobby came as my date, and it raised some eyebrows among a few people—one of them being Marilyn Quayle, who knew Bobby from the Hill. She came right over to him and said, “What are you doing here?”
Mom heard the exchange and marched over and said, “Bobby is our guest, and we’re glad he’s here,” which ended the conversation.
“When the president told me that Bobby and you [Doro] were coming up to Kennebunkport for the first time, he mentioned that Bobby was a Democrat,” John Magaw remembered. “We were in the old house up there where the office was, talking about what he was going to do that day. But then he said, ‘Listen, none of that matters. All that matters is my daughter’s happiness.’ ”
When Bobby first met the Secret Service agents who were protecting the children and me, the agent said to him, “No horseshit tonight, got that?” What Bobby didn’t know was that one time, while I was on a date with someone else, my date thought it would be fun to try and ditch the Secret Service. That night, while Bobby was driving me with the agents following in the car behind us, he made a wrong turn. Worried, he turned to me and said, “Do you think this is what the agent meant by ‘no horseshit’?”
I am not a military historian, and will leave it to others to analyze the Gulf War and its aftermath. What I remember most, quite simply, is the immense feeling of relief we had when we heard the end of the war could be in sight. The conflict to that point had been as one-sided as it could be; things could hardly be going better; and the national mood was nearing elation. It was a hopeful time.
“My feeling was, we had told our allies and the world that our mission was to end the occupation of Kuwait,” Dad recalled. “When forming the coalition, we told our partners we will end the aggression—at which point our mission will be complete and all of us can bring our troops home. This we did. One’s word is important in life, especially when it comes to war and peace.”
Prime Minister Major agrees that the war ended when it should have: “If we had gone against the U.N. mandate, the coalition would have broken up; we would have gone to war to uphold international law, only to end it by breaking international law; and it would thus have been very many years before the word of an American president or a British prime minister was trusted again in international circles. In essence, we would have won the war but lost the peace. I have never doubted that the president’s decision to cease hostilities when he did was entirely right.”
“I recall talk of a ‘turkey shoot’ among the troops,” Major added. “Saddam Hussein had withdrawn his professional soldiers from the front lines so that they might encircle Baghdad. In their place, he put little more than young boys with guns in their hands. Neither the president nor myself, nor any of the military commanders, had any stomach for the bloodshed that would be entailed in the entry into Baghdad.”
“It was a sense of honor,” General Powell said. “We did what we said we were going to do. Maybe we can kill some more people and destroy some more forces, but we did what we said we were going to do, so let’s stop. And he was absolutely right. Nobody disagreed with him at the time. There was a lot of second-guessing after the war about how he should have gone to Baghdad—done this, that, and the other—but he was right.”
Dad wanted to end Desert Storm with a period, not a question mark, and he got his wish on March 3, when coalition generals from Saudi Arabia, Britain, France, Kuwait, Egypt, Syria, and other nations observed Iraqi generals accepting all of the coalition’s conditions for a permanent cease-fire at the Safwan Air Base. General Schwarzkopf accepted the documents offering Iraq’s formal capitulation.
At the time of the cease-fire, more than 110,000 coalition air strikes had been flown; 148 U.S. service members had been killed in action, and 467 had been wounded. We mourned those who made the ultimate sacrifice wearing our nation’s uniform, yet we also rejoiced that the casualties had not been nearly as high as even the most conservative estimates predicted.
Rich Miller, a Vietnam veteran who at the time was the number two agent on Dad’s detail, recalled how Dad started to acknowledge the service of Vietnam veterans in his remarks. “Of course, he saluted the Gulf War vets, which they certainly deserved, but near the end he usually mentioned the Vietnam vets—and I think that was exceptional. He did it several times after that, within about two or three weeks. Finally, I said to him, ‘You’re always mentioning the Vietnam vets in these speeches, and I want you to know they really do appreciate it.’ He replied, ‘It’s about time someone said something good about you guys and what you did over there.’ You talk about leadership and obtaining loyalty from people. Those types of things you just can’t describe.”
Dad was concerned with ending what he called the Vietnam syndrome. As a congressman in the late 1960s, he saw firsthand the ugly way in which some of the returning soldiers were treated. As president, he was glad to see how our nation had united behind our troops, and he mentioned our Vietnam veterans as much as possible in speeches—often to loud applause.
“It was magnificent for those of us who had been in Vietnam,” General Schwarzkopf concurred. “I served two tours in Vietnam, was wounded over there, and was separated from my new wife for a year. But nobody ever said thank you.”
That, too, would change.
On June 8, Schwarzkopf and eight thousand troops found themselves marching down Constitution Avenue before 200,000 of their countrymen, leading the Gulf War victory parade along the National Mall. The two-hour march featured bands and a display of weaponry, from the “Scud-busting” Patriot missile to the M–1 tank. An assortment of aircraft that participated in the war effort, including the Stealth F–117, flew overhead. I remember Sam and his cousin Jebby loved the parade, as we all brought the children to watch it from the presidential reviewing stand outside the White House. The boys were especially excited at all the soldiers and military gear on display.
One person not basking in the afterglow of Desert Storm was Senator Alan Simpson. During the conflict, he had taken to the airwaves and roundly criticized CNN’s Peter Arnett for his reporting from Iraq throughout the war. Arnett was a seasoned international reporter, and CNN’s broadcasting from Iraq was undeniably historic. Even Dad and General Scowcroft tuned in with the battle plans in their lap, following along as if they were watching a TV movie unfold according to the script. Yet, while CNN’s Bernie Shaw and John Holliman had left Baghdad early into the air campaign, Arnett stayed behind, and as a result, he had attained celebrity status among his fellow members of the press corps.
Many others, including Senator Simpson and Dad, had a different take on Arnett’s performances. In fact, they were outraged by his accommodating attitude toward the Iraqi regime. In report after report, details implicating wrongdoing by the Iraqis were routinely omitted by CNN and Arnett, while even the thinnest evidence hinting at any perceived transgression by the coalition forces was hyped and beamed out to the waiting world. In short, Saddam seemed to get the benefit of every doubt, while the coalition was frequently treated as “guilty until proven innocent.”
So Senator Simpson went after Arnett, and a controversy erupted.
“The media tore me to bits for attacking someone they referred to as a hero,” Senator Simpson recalled. “I said, ‘Hero my butt! He’s being put to bed every night by the Iraqi government. He’s on television twice a day. He’s the only organ of propaganda that Saddam Hussein has, if you can’t figure that out. All the others have left—ABC, CBS.’ Anyway, I was about as low as whale crap on the bottom of the ocean. I get a call from George, saying, ‘How’d you like to go to Camp David this weekend? Come down to the White House about 10:00 a.m., and we’ll take the chopper.’ I said, ‘George, you’re at the top of your game, and I’m at the bottom of mine.’ He said, ‘I’ll see you at the White House.’ So we’re sitting there and he’s signing letters, and Barbara is needlepointing. I said, ‘George, I am fully aware of what you are doing here.’ We went out on the lawn and there are all these signs—‘93 Percent, We love George’—people all over, the media. He put his arm around me and said, ‘There are all your friends over there’—and he pointed to this big pile of media people. He got me on the helicopter and off we went. The next day, he gets up, reads every paper, watches every television channel, gets all worked up. I said, ‘Why don’t you quit watching television. You just bitch about it.’ He said, ‘Why don’t you just knock it off? I’m looking for something.’ Sure enough, he found the front page of the New York Times that said, ‘President and Mrs. Bush with Senator Alan Simpson and his wife Ann,’ with a picture of him with his arm around me.”