So many in the press corps took his bellicose deportment as disdain for the media. But upon his retirement, he set the record straight with this eloquent and spot-on reflection on the importance of maintaining a free press:
Believe it or not, I’ve enjoyed this little interlude. Got a lot of letters from people who really don’t understand the hurly-burly and give-and-take of a press briefing, and at no time were you ever impolite to me and at no time did I ever become offended. And as you know, I hold a lot of you in great respect … Having a free press has served the United States well for 215 years. It is a crucial element in our democracy. And if anybody needs a contrast, all they have to do is look at the country that didn’t have a free press and see what happened there.
When Bob Gates became the secretary of defense, he reminded us that “the press is not the enemy, and to treat it as such is self-defeating.”
Stan would soon be moving on to take over command of JSOC, and by the time that occurred, my workload was such that I was able to take over the spokesperson role myself. Even before he departed, there were instances when I’d throw myself into the fray and tackle the briefings.
My first briefing was on July 29, 2003—about a week after Uday and Qusay Hussein (Saddam’s sons) were killed following a three-hour firefight in the city of Mosul, Iraq. It wouldn’t be long before Larry DiRita would depart for Iraq to assist retired Army general Jay Garner in reconstruction and humanitarian affairs prior to the arrival of Ambassador Paul Bremer and the Coalition Provisional Authority, but on this, my maiden voyage, I was fortunate to have Larry at my “six.” Clad in a dark blazer with a gray striped necktie and squared-off white pocket kerchief, his rapid patter was a contrast to my rather measured, deliberate style of speech. He had no problem interrupting me in the interest of clarity, or whenever he felt I was about to insert my size elevens into my mouth.
Although the Pentagon press room does have a “green room” less than twenty feet from the stage, I don’t recall a single time that we used it. At the exact moment the briefing was scheduled to begin, Larry and I would stride into the room through a side door that opened directly into the E-ring corridor. As we approached the bright blue curtains that served as a backdrop, the murmur of the crowd would instantly fall as silent as if someone had just yanked out a speaker wire.
I stepped up onto the gray carpeted platform that extended beneath the rows of bright, hot TV lights mounted on the ceiling, placed my briefing notes onto the wooden lectern that bore the blue DoD seal, and with the U.S. flag behind one shoulder and the ubiquitous Pentagon logo behind the other did my best to honestly and concisely answer the questions that were often bellowed out simultaneously by representatives of all the top news-gathering outlets.
Standing directly to my left, Larry began by sating any curiosity there might have been as to the identity of this tall, lanky Air Force general standing beside him. I clasped my hands together as Larry began to speak, patiently awaiting my time to begin.
“We have with us today Lieutenant General Norty Schwartz. He’s the director of operations for the Joint Staff. I’m not sure that he’s had the great pleasure of being down here before. He’s the guy who makes General McChrystal look so good on a day-to-day basis when he’s down here. So I’ve asked General Schwartz to provide a little bit of context on the operations that have taken place since the major combat phase. And with that, I’ll ask General Schwartz to take it away.”
“Thank you, Mr. DiRita,” I said clearly and deliberately, just before I felt a tickle in my throat. I cleared it, and it seemed to go away. “As he indicated, I’m Norty Schwartz, the director of operations for the Joint Staff, and I am happy to be with you here today.” So far, so good.
I then went on to detail four effective operations, using graphics that had been prepared by the Joint Staff. Operation DESERT SCORPION—six raids and twenty-nine detainees. Operation SIDEWINDER—confiscation of small arms, heavy machine guns, RPGs, 60 mm mortar rounds, plus 282 detainees. Operation SODA MOUNTAIN—141 raids, 611 detainees, including sixty-two former regime leaders. More mortars, RPGs, plus various and sundry other weapons. Finally, IVY SERPENT, a sub-operation of SODA MOUNTAIN.
I continued for about another fifteen minutes, and I was already feeling a lot more comfortable up there. “We’ll now take your questions, ladies and gentlemen,” I offered, which prompted an immediate forest of hands to shoot up. “Yes, sir. Go ahead,” I instructed a gentleman off to my left, ready to give a thorough and complete response.
“Larry, I have a question about the termination of the Policy Analysis Market,” asked the man, looking right past me at DiRita, who answered the question with aplomb.
“I have a follow-up on that,” piped in a voice from the back. Then another, and another. At that point my mind started to drift. Four questions, not one for me. A familiar face in the front row was about to make up for that, and the question she would pose was a doozy. Wearing khaki slacks and a pink blazer with her hair cropped much shorter than she wears it today, it was CNN’s Barbara Starr. Alternating her glances between me and a small reporter’s notebook she had resting on her lap, I could tell by her demeanor that she knew we’d find her question somewhat “controversial.”
“General Schwartz, in the last hour we have noted that the New York Stock Exchange has taken a very significant swing, recovering from a ninety-eight-point deficit to bounce up eighty-five points in the last hour. And traders on the floor are very specifically saying that this swing … is due to rumors they are hearing on the floor of the stock exchange that the U.S. has captured Saddam Hussein. They are very specific on this.”
She placed her pen atop the pad and stared at me through her black-framed eyeglasses, then launched her question as if firing off a poison-tipped spear. “Would you want to take this opportunity to either calm or excite the stock market and tell us … ?”
Let me be clear that there was no way that I was going to provide an answer in such a way as to intentionally impact the stock market, but it does serve as an excellent example of the profound impact our words can have—in this case on our economy. Had I answered in either the affirmative or the negative, fortunes could have been made or lost. Either way, Larry interceded long before Barbara completed her question. “He absolutely would not like to take this opportunity to calm or excite the stock market!” he exclaimed, prompting the whole room to erupt in laughter.
Barbara pushed back. “Do you have Saddam Hussein?”
“The short answer is I have no information on that. None,” I emphatically stated.
“That’s not a very clear answer, with great respect, sir.” I felt like blurting out something like, What’s not clear about it? I just told you that I don’t have any information on that one way or another! But of course I would never do that. In this case, once again, DiRita didn’t give me a chance to make a faux pas.
“There’s just nothing more to report. We’re not trying to be evasive, we’re simply trying to state what we have at the moment, which is—”
Of course Starr wasn’t about to leave it at that and now she cut in. “You have no information on Saddam—if you—you have no information on whether the U.S. government has Saddam Hussein?” she pressed.
“At this moment in time, that is an absolutely correct statement. I have no such information,” I explained, thinking that one couldn’t be any clearer than that.
Then others decided to hop onto the bandwagon. “Before you walked in here, was there any information to indicate that the U.S. was close to getting Saddam Hussein?” asked another familiar-looking reporter whom I couldn’t place. “Is there any reason to believe at this point that the United States government—military—has Saddam Hussein in custody?”
“No, sir,” I emphatically replied.
“Can we try it a different way, General?” someone else asked, prompting yet another outburst of guffaws. WTF, I thought. Why are they not getting this?
This went on and on until they f
inally seemed to understand that they could ask me a hundred more times and the answer would still be the same. We were actively hunting the man down, but so far we had not found him.
A week later I was back in there for another round. In a way, it kind of reminded me of my boxing days back at the Academy. I suppose sparring is sparring whether it’s in the ring or in the press room. Instead of the status of Saddam, this time the issue was enemy casualties. “One of the things that’s been kind of conspicuously absent since May first is reporting on enemy casualties … Have there been any Iraqi casualties during the course of operations since May first?” asked the frustrated journalist. What he was trying to say was that it had been over three months since he’d heard about any enemies that we’d killed, when every day they were hearing more and more about Coalition deaths.
Even though it’s a pretty safe bet that you’ll never see “stand-up comic” on my curriculum vitae, I did attempt to inject a little humor. I cracked a slight smile and responded, “Well, there’s at least two, and that’s Uday and Qusay.” The room erupted as I had hoped they would.
Fortunately for me, I tend to be rather low-key, and, faithful to my pedigree in special operations—notwithstanding a few attempts at levity like the one I just mentioned—I did my best to be informative, believable, and accurate. I consider it an enormous privilege to have done my part to help our citizens to become engaged and gain a more thorough understanding of the sacrifices being made every day around the world, to protect our liberty.
LIBYAN NUCLEAR INTERCEPTION
It was an intricate plot worthy of the tightest Tom Clancy action thriller, but this was no fiction. Good intelligence allowed us to orchestrate the interception of a ship that contained components for the Libyan nuclear program—components that were sold on the black market by an international arms dealer who was the key scientist behind the development of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb. In conjunction with international partners, the intelligence community tracked the shipment from Malaysia through the Suez Canal, and ultimately enlisted German aid to assist in diverting the vessel to a remote Italian port where our team inspected the ship and confiscated the illegal cache. In the end, the operation provided President Bush with leverage to force Gaddafi’s hand to terminate his nuclear weapons program. Here’s how it played out:
Earlier I shared how we generally used weekly meetings to secure the secretary’s signature on deployments orders. In an ideal world, that’s how they were handled. But we had our share of time-sensitive ops that warranted immediate, out-of-cycle action. This was one of them, and there was no way that it could wait until the weekly meeting.
For months, American and British intelligence had been tracking a shipment of advanced centrifuge parts manufactured at a Malaysian facility linked to an international black market nuclear development network. Using multiple reconnaissance assets, including U.S. Navy surface vessels, they followed the shipment to Dubai (an interim transshipment point) and watched as the cargo was transferred to the BBC China, a German-owned freighter. It was time to take action, and that’s where we came in.
Upon receiving the intel, we used the full resources of the Joint Staff to expedite the formal authorization in the name of the secretary, including a range of options depending on how things went down, what forces would be required, rules of engagement, and so on. It was an extremely significant mission, and one that had the full attention (and direction) of the White House. We put it together faster than any other that I can recall. We were the tasking agency in the name of the SECDEF, and immediately upon his signing off on it, we used a secure electronic means to transmit it to Jim Jones (USMC general, then commander of European Command) so his teams could kick into gear and execute the mission in the Mediterranean, in close cooperation with the intelligence community. As the ship passed through the Suez Canal, the U.S. government officials contacted their German counterparts and requested that they contact the ship’s owners and secure their cooperation in diverting the ship to the nearby Italian port of Taranto, where our agents were awaiting its arrival. When the vessel docked, the team made swift entry and located five forty-foot shipping containers bearing the logo “SCOPE”—the name of the Malaysian manufacturer that was suspected in the operation. The ship’s manifest had had the crates documented as “used machine parts.” Our team removed the questionable cargo and transported it to a nearby warehouse where it could be inspected. When they opened the crates, what they found was a far cry from the “used parts” listed on the manifest. Instead, they found thousands of aluminum components for assembling centrifuges—the equipment that enriches uranium and the enabler of Libya’s nuclear weapon program—and the actual centrifuges that can be used to develop weapons-grade uranium for use in nuclear weapons. All told, the hardware was valued in the tens of millions of dollars.
All the while, U.S. and British officials had been attempting to get Libya to end its WMD programs, but it wasn’t until they were confronted with the evidence gleaned from this operation that they agreed to do so.
The following February, President Bush put it all in context during a speech at the National Defense University (NDU), filling in the backstory on the black market network, and driving home how key a part this operation played in the cessation of Libya’s nuclear proliferation program. Here’s part of what he had to say:
A. Q. Khan is known throughout the world as the father of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program. What was not publicly known until recently is that he also led an extensive international network for the proliferation of nuclear technology and know-how. For decades, Mr. Khan remained on the Pakistani government payroll, earning a modest salary. Yet he and his associates financed lavish lifestyles through the sale of nuclear technologies and equipment to outlaw regimes stretching from North Africa to the Korean Peninsula. A. Q. Khan himself operated mostly out of Pakistan. He served as director of the network, making frequent trips to consult with his clients and to sell his expertise. He sold the blueprints for centrifuges to enrich uranium, as well as a nuclear design stolen from the Pakistani government. The network sold uranium hexafluoride, the gas that the centrifuge process can transform into enriched uranium for nuclear bombs. Khan and his associates provided Iran and Libya and North Korea with designs, components, and in some cases with complete centrifuges.
To increase their profits, Khan and his associates used a factory in Malaysia to manufacture key parts for centrifuges. Other necessary parts were purchased through network operatives based in Europe and the Middle East and Africa. These procurement agents saw the trade in nuclear technologies as a shortcut to personal wealth, and they set up front companies to deceive legitimate firms into selling them tightly controlled materials.
Khan’s deputy, B. S. A. Tahir, ran a computer business in Dubai as a front for the proliferation activities of the A. Q. Khan network, and for his money-laundering operations. He used this company as cover for the movement of centrifuge parts to various clients. In this case—and others—Tahir directed the Malaysia facility to produce these parts based on Pakistani designs, and then ordered the facility to ship the components to Dubai.
For years, American and British intelligence operatives followed the network’s transactions, shadowed members of the network (including Khan) around the world, and recorded their conversations—and doing so in very high-risk operations. [It was the work of these operations that led to the interdiction of the BBC China.] About two months ago Libya’s leader voluntarily agreed to end his nuclear and chemical weapons programs, not to pursue biological weapons, and to permit thorough inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.
On February 4, 2004, Khan appeared on Pakistan Television (PTV) and confessed to running the proliferation ring, and transferring technology to Iran, Libya, and to North Korea.
When I first raised my right hand and swore to support and defend the Constitution of the United States as a cadet in the United
States Air Force Academy, Richard Nixon had recently been sworn in as our thirty-seventh president. As my journey wound down and I departed the Pentagon my final time as Chief of Staff, it was Barack Obama who wished me Godspeed. In the forty-three years in between, I faithfully served eight presidents—five of whom were Republicans, and three Democrats. I served each with equal intensity and dedication. There have been times when I’ve found a president’s words to be so on point and so stirring that I found find myself stepping back and reflecting on how thankful I am to have chosen to dedicate my life’s work to serving the greatest country on earth. That’s how I felt upon hearing George Bush’s stirring conclusion to his NDU speech:
We will proceed as if the lives of our citizens depend on our vigilance because they do. Terrorists and terror states are in a race for weapons of mass murder, a race they must lose. Terrorists are resourceful. We’re more resourceful. They’re determined. We must be more determined. We will never lose focus or resolve. We’ll be unrelenting in the defense of free nations and rise to the hard demands of dangerous times.
Gas centrifuges for uranium enrichment recovered from the BBC China in Italy, en route to Libya, in 2003. They were later taken to the Y-12 Department of Energy National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where this picture was taken (with a Y-12 guard also in the picture). U.S. Department of Energy photo.
HAITI
2004 was a leap year. I know this for sure because it was well after midnight on the morning of Sunday, February 29, 2004, that the blast of the red switch phone’s ringer alerted me to another crisis in need of attention.
A few hours earlier, Suzie and I had enjoyed a rare Saturday night out together—taco salads at a favorite local restaurant. It had been an eventful week, at home and abroad:
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