by Steve Coll
Leon Panetta might not know what a dead drop was, but he knew how to maneuver among Washington’s big dogs. He met with Kappes, D’Andrea, and other top agency career officers to assure them that he would have their backs. After two lengthy conversations, Panetta asked Kappes to stay on as the C.I.A.’s deputy director. When Kappes agreed, his endorsement influenced other career veterans.10
Panetta empowered the leadership he inherited at the C.I.A. He found D’Andrea’s Counterterrorism Center to be “a very effective, well-run, well-resourced, well-managed” unit, “an incredibly useful, effective weapon in the effort against Al Qaeda,” as a former senior intelligence official put it. For their part, the more sophisticated career officers at the agency recognized that Panetta could deliver on two of the Seventh Floor’s essential functions: protecting the C.I.A. at the White House and in Congress. Moreover, the new director was seventy years old. His wife Sylvia had remained at their California ranch and Panetta intended to commute home as often as possible, which meant that he regularly flew off from Washington for long weekends. He was not going to micromanage C.I.A. field operations.11
Panetta flew secretly to India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan on his first trip abroad. In India, he heard an earful from Research and Analysis Wing officers and police about I.S.I.’s role in Mumbai’s carnage the previous November. The R.A.W. officers urged Panetta to pressure I.S.I. to tear down Lashkar-e-Taiba and its branches.
In Islamabad, Panetta drove past the Marriott Hotel, bombed and burned the previous September, now reopened. John Bennett, the station chief, and other C.I.A. officers briefed him on the search for Fahid Mohammed Ally Msalam, who went by the nom de guerre Usama al-Kini. He was the suspected organizer of the hotel attack. The briefers inventoried the large number of American dead and wounded. Their message came through clearly: This is an American war.
Panetta dined with Pasha and Asif Zardari, Benazir Bhutto’s widow, who shared authority uneasily with the army. Zardari made jokes about I.S.I.’s pervasive surveillance of him—jokes that sounded paranoid but were grounded in fact.
“Ahmed knows everything I think and everything I say,” Zardari remarked of the I.S.I. chief sitting near him. “I walk into my office every morning and say, ‘Hello, Ahmed!’”
Zardari mentioned that once, his presidential plane wasn’t airworthy and he had an urgent trip to make. “The only person I could call was I.S.I. And I said, ‘Ahmed, I’m going to ask for your airplane, but only on one condition, which is that you have to fly with me.’”
Pasha laughed along but the scene was awkward. It seemed to the C.I.A. delegation that Zardari might employ a food taster. After Musharraf, the Bush administration had bet on democracy, but with Benazir Bhutto eliminated, they had ended up with a widower of erratic temperament who was seen by few of his countrymen as effective. Zardari did little to reduce his reputation for loose financial dealings when he gave American officials in Islamabad sophisticated advice about buying real estate on the luxurious Upper East Side of Manhattan. Don’t buy in Sutton Place, Zardari advised—too far from the action.
For his part, Pasha at least offered “a voice of moderation” that evening, as a participant put it. Throughout western Pakistan, the I.S.I. chief explained to Panetta, Taliban mullahs had replaced traditional tribal maliks “and a religiosity has taken hold.” Tens of thousands of madrassas had sprung up and young Pakistani men and women were not being properly educated.12
At the U.S. embassy, Panetta walked the third floor and addressed the C.I.A. station. He typically carried bottles of high-quality California wine as gifts, which made him seem more charming still.
But in a meeting in the secure conference room, Panetta and John Bennett blew up at each other. They were discussing drone operations. The details of their dispute remain unclear, but in essence, a participant recalled, Bennett objected to what he thought were restrictions or constraints being considered at Langley, and he was “being a little passive-aggressive.”
“John, fuck you,” Panetta said at one point. “Just get it done.”
“Fuck you,” Bennett replied.13
Bennett put in his retirement papers and left the C.I.A. that summer. Later, when Panetta needed to find a new chief of the entire clandestine service, he recalled the exchange. Panetta saw himself as a leader who felt “an obligation” to tell the boss the truth, “no matter how uncomfortable.” He concluded that Bennett had done the same. He persuaded him to unretire and appointed him to lead C.I.A. espionage operations worldwide. It remained axiomatic that profane men should lead the agency.14
The essential question facing Panetta in Pakistan was how to assess I.S.I. He had tried to make sense of Pasha over dinner, but it wasn’t easy. Briefings from Bennett and other career officers emphasized both I.S.I.’s unreliability and its vital partnership in capturing Al Qaeda leaders like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the architect of September 11.
In Kabul, Panetta met Amrullah Saleh, who had reported to American interlocutors that spring that Saudi Arabia was paying the Pakistan Army directly, to supplement American aid and to win influence. Pasha was telling people that he “can be rogue,” Saleh said, and follow whatever path was best for Pakistan. He was protecting the Quetta Shura from C.I.A. Predator operations. The United States had to “find a way not to be a cash cow for Pakistan,” Saleh emphasized, and it had to “end the Pakistani veto” over the conduct of the war.
To strengthen the Afghan government’s position, Karzai should hang criminals and corrupt strongmen to show he was serious, he added. The Taliban were more corrupt than the Afghan government, he said, but they were accessible to the people and had rebuilt their credibility.15
C.I.A. leaders like Kappes in Langley nonetheless continued to feel that they could not afford to isolate the Pakistan Army when it was battling domestic insurgents and cooperating with drone strikes against Al Qaeda. Gradually, Panetta would come to think that I.S.I.’s new boss, Ahmed Pasha, was “as good a partner from Pakistan as he was going to find,” as a colleague put it.16
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On a Saturday morning that winter, Panetta arrived at the director’s conference room to receive Richard Holbrooke. At Hillary Clinton’s urging, Obama had appointed Holbrooke as special representative for Afghanistan or Pakistan, or “S-rap,” as the inevitable acronym was usually pronounced. Holbrooke had been Clinton’s leading foreign policy adviser during the often-bitter campaign against Obama. As a young Foreign Service officer, he had worked in the Mekong Delta and Saigon during the Vietnam War. During the Clinton administration, he led negotiations to end the Bosnian war and served as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. He was a man of legendary appetites and ambition, bold and restive, “a giant among Pygmies,” as Sherard Cowper-Coles, his British counterpart on Afghanistan, put it.17 His grandiosity both charmed and grated. He had hoped to become secretary of state if Hillary Clinton defeated Obama for president. Instead he had accepted what he described as the hardest task the Obama administration faced overseas, resolving or at least stabilizing the Afghan conflict. If he succeeded, he might yet become secretary.
That Saturday, he wanted the C.I.A. to brief him about the secrets that would shape his chances for success. Steve Kappes joined the meeting, as did analysts and aides. Holbrooke sought Kappes out. “I hear you are the go-to person on Pakistan over here,” he said.
Kappes chuckled. Flattery was a case officer’s tradecraft, and here was Holbrooke trying to practice it on him.
Holbrooke took a chair at the middle of the long table. Kappes and Panetta sat across from him. Teams of analysts rotated in to present to Holbrooke. One group briefed him on the status of David Rohde, a New York Times reporter who had been kidnapped by the Taliban. During the Balkans war, Bosnian Serbs had kidnapped Rohde while the reporter was investigating war crimes, and Holbrooke had negotiated for his freedom. He wanted to do it again.
Another C.I.A. team briefe
d him about the I.S.I., including what was known and unknown about Directorate S. A third group of analysts briefed him about the Afghan army and police. Unsustainably high desertion rates, corruption, and drug use plagued the police especially. Holbrooke asked question after question. Lunch arrived. Holbrooke kept going.
Kappes thought Holbrooke was sincere about wanting their insights and advice, but that he was also probing to determine if the C.I.A. would be on his side. The agency was not about to hand over highly compartmented details about which Afghan or Pakistani political and military figures were or had been on the C.I.A.’s payroll, and they were not going to be trapped into taking sides in policy arguments at the White House. Holbrooke understood the basic picture: In Afghanistan, the C.I.A. had installed men like Karzai, Sherzai, and the Panjshiris formerly loyal to Ahmad Shah Massoud in 2001 and had maintained ties with leading personalities ever since, for counterterrorism and political access.
Holbrooke argued that the C.I.A.’s web of strongmen in Afghanistan, including Ahmed Wali Karzai in Kandahar, was part of the problem in the war. They provided a mirage of security but governed as predators, exacerbating popular grievances. But Kappes rejected Holbrooke’s argument. The United States was at war with Al Qaeda, the C.I.A. was on the front lines in Afghanistan, and its assets among the country’s power brokers were vital. The security of the United States trumped any concerns about the moral qualities of its Afghan interlocutors. “Kappes fought tooth and nail,” Holbrooke told staff later.18
Kappes told C.I.A. colleagues that Holbrooke was there to drain the agency’s vaults of all its analysis about Afghanistan and Pakistan, dispute the C.I.A.’s conclusions, and find the agency’s weak points for future interagency policy debates. Holbrooke wanted to end the drone program and make counterterrorism operations against Al Qaeda more transparent, with a greater role for the military and the F.B.I., the C.I.A. leaders feared.
Holbrooke pressed the C.I.A. for help in bringing Pasha and Amrullah Saleh together in a new cooperative intelligence effort. This would be part of a wider push for cooperation between the Pakistani and Afghan governments, he said.
The discussions went on. One C.I.A. official looked at the clock: It was now 4:30 p.m.
Kappes’s instincts about Holbrooke were mostly right. Holbrooke aimed to shape Obama’s priorities through interagency decision making, and to outflank the C.I.A. and the Pentagon, even as he appeared to embrace them. The C.I.A. leadership’s view was that Holbrooke was Holbrooke. He was going to fly around the world and try to make something happen. “We didn’t know what it was,” as a C.I.A. official at the meeting put it. Holbrooke was going to talk to the Russians and talk to the Chinese about Afghanistan and Pakistan. Every other day he was talking to someone else. He was “irrepressible.”19
Holbrooke set up his operations in a suite of windowless offices on the ground floor of the State Department. The setting was unglamorous and crowded. There were about forty staff. Holbrooke’s approach was to replicate the interagency process at the National Security Council under his own leadership at State by bringing in liaisons and seconded officials from the Pentagon, Central Command, the F.B.I., the C.I.A., and even the Department of Agriculture, which he saw as key to reviving Afghanistan’s rural economy. He was building a mini–American government in his own office. Holbrooke’s construction of a shadow N.S.C. annoyed staff at the actual N.S.C. Yet it seemed wiser to get inside his tent than to stand outside. The C.I.A. sent over Frank Archibald, the former Kandahar case officer and Islamabad station chief. Archibald provided Holbrooke continuous access to Langley and also a way for Panetta and Kappes to keep track of what he was doing. Holbrooke also urged N.A.T.O. governments worldwide to appoint their own special representatives so that he could coordinate global action through them—his own mini–United Nations. British and Australian liaisons moved into his suite.
Holbrooke was a terrific subordinate and an exciting boss but a terrible colleague, a diplomat who worked with him once remarked. He compared diplomacy to jazz improvisation. He riffed at the frenetic tempo of a bebopper. He was often on his BlackBerry and thought nothing of getting up in the middle of a solemn meeting to take a personal call. His behavior struck some of the civil servants around him as arrogant and rude. But Holbrooke seemed to regard self-dramatization as essential to his art.20
When Holbrooke visited Cowper-Coles in London, the British representative arranged a briefing on Afghanistan and Pakistan for him at the Vauxhall Cross headquarters of MI6. Holbrooke agreed only reluctantly because he had theater tickets that evening with George Soros. He stayed for hours, asking questions. At the end, he pulled out several mobile phones, all turned on, in total violation of counterintelligence rules.21
Pasha flew in to Washington toward the end of winter. He met Holbrooke at the Pakistan embassy, off Connecticut Avenue, in the ambassador’s office. Holbrooke brought a map that he unfolded, to go over areas on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.
“Don’t think this part of the world is like Serbia,” the I.S.I. chief advised. “Don’t come here with an idea that what you did in the Balkans will work in Pakistan or Afghanistan. They’re just not the same kind of places.”22
The Pakistani state looked to be more fragile that winter than at any time since September 11. Pakistani Taliban insurgents bolstered by hardened Uzbek volunteers swept out of Swat and took the district of Buner to its east, just over one hundred miles from Islamabad. They enforced harsh Sharia law. This was the challenge Ashfaq Kayani feared—if the war became about Islamic legitimacy, it might split the country and the army, evolving from insurgency to civil war.
By spring, the American and Saudi governments were in full panic about the possible entry of the Taliban into Islamabad. Kayani told Anne Patterson he was “desperate” for helicopters and had only five airworthy Mi-17s to fly. Holbrooke flew secretly to Abu Dhabi to meet Zardari, under cover of a visit to the ruler of the United Arab Emirates, to discuss how the United States might do more. Adel Al-Jubeir, the American-accented foreign policy adviser to Saudi king Abdullah, told Holbrooke that the kingdom, too, was trying to shore up the Pakistan Army. The “greatest issue is the collapse of the Pakistani state,” Jubeir warned.23
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On March 27, 2009, in Room 450 of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building beside the White House, President Obama announced to the public “a comprehensive, new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan.” General David Petraeus, among other advisers, sat before the president in full uniform. “The situation is increasingly perilous,” Obama said. He continued:
Many people in the United States—and many in partner countries that have sacrificed so much—have a simple question: What is our purpose in Afghanistan? After so many years, they ask, why do our men and women still fight and die there? And they deserve a straightforward answer. So let me be clear: Al Qaeda and its allies—the terrorists who planned and supported the 9/11 attacks—are in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Multiple intelligence estimates have warned that al Qaeda is actively planning attacks on the United States homeland from its safe haven in Pakistan. And if the Afghan government falls to the Taliban—or allows al Qaeda to go unchallenged—that country will again be a base for terrorists who want to kill as many of our people as they possibly can.
The future of Afghanistan is inextricably linked to the future of its neighbor, Pakistan.24
A few hours later, one floor below, in a high-ceilinged conference room with parquet floors, Richard Holbrooke joined a private meeting about how President Obama’s goals might be achieved. Beside him at a hollow square table sat General Doug Lute, who had led the Bush administration’s last war strategy review and had stayed on as the National Security Council senior director for the region. Also at the table sat Bruce Riedel, a former C.I.A. officer who had worked at the agency for almost three decades and had also served as a National Security Council staffer during the Clinton administration. Obama’s spee
ch that morning had endorsed the findings of what had become known as the “Riedel review,” a fifteen- to twenty-page top secret paper defining the new administration’s strategy. The paper had a classified annex with sensitive analysis of terrorism in Pakistan, drone strikes, and Pakistan’s nuclear weapons.
Holbrooke could not sit still. He slumped in his chair and announced that he had to leave early to get home to his wife, the journalist and author Kati Marton. He took several cell phone calls. He mentioned that he had received a call earlier from Hamid Karzai, who was effusive about Obama’s speech. Of course, the Afghan president’s flattery might just be designed to curry political favor, Holbrooke acknowledged, but Karzai had to be forgiven—under Obama, he had lost his lifeline to the White House, the videoconferences he had held with his “former best friend,” George W. Bush.
“How often did they do those?” Holbrooke asked Lute.
“Often,” Lute mumbled. He thought the conferences were valuable; he had seen Bush get a lot done in them over the previous eighteen months, but he could tell that the Obama team wanted to send a different message to Karzai.