The Commanders Page 2

  Patience had paid off handsomely in the Cold War. Waiting out the Soviet Union for 40 years would be marked as one of the great victories of all time. Why can’t we think in the long term? he asked. A war in the Middle East—killing thousands of Arabs for whatever noble purpose—would set back the United States in the region for a long time. And that was to say nothing of the Americans who might die. War is messy and uncertain, he said.

  Powell neither agreed nor disagreed. He listened, nodded, and seemed to encourage Crowe to go on.

  As Crowe spoke, he sensed that Powell was trying to dope him out, to learn something that would give Powell an edge.

  Crowe wanted to ask some of his own questions. Where is Cheney on this? he asked. Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney was Powell’s immediate boss.

  “Beats me,” Powell replied.

  What does that mean? Crowe asked, lowering his voice.

  “He holds his cards pretty close, as you know,” Powell replied.

  Crowe knew that, indeed. His last six months as Chairman had coincided with Cheney’s first six as Secretary. He’d seen how unrevealing Cheney usually was.

  Cheney comes back from the White House and tells nothing, Powell said. As a member of the cabinet, Cheney had meetings with Bush apart from the formal National Security Council meetings that Powell attended.

  Imagine, Crowe reflected to himself, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff not knowing where the Secretary of Defense stands on the most important military-foreign-policy decision of the day, perhaps the last several decades.

  Where are you on the Gulf deployment? Crowe inquired.

  “I’ve been for a containment strategy,” Powell replied, “but it hasn’t been selling around here or over there.” He pointed out the window, north across the river.

  Crowe knew that gesture well. The orders and the political decisions that guided the life of the Chairman came from there. “Across the river” meant the White House.

  To a military man like Crowe, “containment” had a definite meaning—standing firm to resist further advances by an opponent. In this case, it would mean keeping the economic sanctions and the diplomatic pressure on Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, without attacking him, with the hope of eventually forcing him to withdraw from Kuwait. It was something very different from President Bush’s decision to double the forces to provide an offensive option.

  Powell said he had been trying to keep the administration tamped down, attempting to dampen any enthusiasm for war.

  Crowe grasped the problem. He didn’t have the nerve to ask whether Powell had made these arguments explicitly to the President. The Bush administration was presenting itself publicly as one happy team marching in unison. If Powell was being honest, he disagreed with Bush to some degree, and might have a genuine moral dilemma on his hands. The law designated the Chairman as the “principal military adviser” to the President, Secretary of Defense and National Security Council. It directed that when he advised them, the Chairman, “as he considers appropriate,” give “the range of military advice and opinion with respect to that matter.”

  As Crowe interpreted the law, the Chairman had an obligation, at least on the major questions, to honestly and fully give the President his views. Had Powell told Bush what he thought about containment? Would Bush tolerate a chairman who had a fundamental disagreement with administration policy? From his nine months in the Bush administration, Crowe knew its obsession with consensus, and with loyalty to the President and his positions. What was Powell’s concept of his duty and job as Chairman?

  Crowe believed that the Chairman had to give more than just military advice. For a presidential adviser—even the principal military adviser—to talk only about the military at White House meetings was a sterile exercise. Those who disagreed with him would tell the President: that’s just military advice, but when you factor in the political, diplomatic and economic recommendations, here’s what you ought to do.

  No, Powell had to give his overall policy advice. If it was rejected, he could choose to resign, or stay on and accept the decision. There was no way around giving advice direct and undiluted.

  In White House meetings during the Reagan and Bush administrations, Crowe had observed a common gimmick that some cabinet officers used as a halfway measure. They would say that a certain option ought to be discussed and examined, in the interest of a full debate. It was a way of putting an idea on the table without getting in trouble. In Crowe’s view, that was a cop-out. A presidential adviser had to be willing to place his personal prestige on the line and say, here’s my overall conclusion. Advice without a bottom line meant little. It was a lot to ask, but that’s what they were paid for, Crowe believed.

  He had no notion what Powell had done, and he felt it was neither his place nor the moment to ask him. But God, he wanted to believe that Powell had presented his thoughts fully. He had never felt more empathy for Powell, or put so much hope in him.

  “I’ve been thinking,” Crowe said, “it takes two things to be a great president and I ought to tell you because you may be President some day.”

  “No, no,” Powell said insistently, dismissing the reference to his political prospects—a subject of endless forecasting in the media.

  “Yes, you may and I want to tell you,” Crowe said. “First, to be a great president you have to have a war. All the great presidents have had their wars.”

  Laughing, Powell acknowledged the truth of the statement.

  “Two, you have to find a war where you are attacked.”

  Powell nodded in agreement.

  Crowe could see Powell understood him.

  When they finished their meal, Crowe thanked Powell for lunch and left. He realized that Powell had not even attempted to persuade him that the current policy of developing an offensive military option was correct. He hadn’t defended the administration position.

  Afterwards, Crowe brooded about Powell’s possible dilemma. He recalled that he himself had been Chairman for a year before he had unraveled the secret of the job. When he was convinced he was right, the Chairman had to stand up to the President. Crowe’s chance had come after the 1986 Reagan-Gorbachev summit in Reykjavik, Iceland, when Reagan had proposed the elimination of all ballistic missiles. Crowe had been under intense pressure to endorse the plan, but he had gone to a National Security Council meeting and said that he could not go along because the Reagan proposal “would pose high risks to the security of the nation.” Afterwards, the Reagan inner circle had listened to him more. He’d won respect.

  The simple truth was that the Chairman could not be a player unless he disagreed at times and fought the White House. It was risky, but sometimes the best choices were the most dangerous. In 1987 he had made an alliance with his Soviet counterpart, Marshal Sergei Akhromeyev, the chief of the Soviet General Staff. Although they were the leaders of the world’s two great military adversaries, Crowe and Akhromeyev had hit it off personally. Both believed it was too easy for politicians to let a misunderstanding throw the superpowers over the brink to nuclear war. That would be suicide, they agreed, and they had to do everything they could to avoid it. They had set up a secret, private communications channel, with the understanding that each was to contact the other if he saw any hostile, dangerous or confusing action by the other side that might lead to war.

  Crowe knew it was a dicey move for the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs to enter into such an agreement without clearing it through the administration. But it had been worth the risk. Two years later the two militaries had signed an agreement that effectively legitimized military communications to avoid war.

  • • •

  After the lunch, Powell concluded that the Bush administration was probably in for a mild blast from Crowe’s testimony the next day. He generally found Crowe’s musings thoughtful, but often somewhat abstract. Crowe had taken an intellectual’s approach to the chairmanship. He had bequeathed Powell a Joint Staff that operated as a think tank—hesitant, inclined to de
bate and to churning out papers endlessly. Powell had remade it in his own image, transforming it into an action staff that got things done.

  As far as the Gulf operation was concerned, Powell had given up pushing the containment strategy. He had his orders. He wasn’t giving the slightest thought to containment now. The President had decided, unequivocally, to build the offensive option. The Chairman had thrown himself into preparing as effective an offensive force as possible.

  Powell recalled vividly the efforts he had made to present all the options in the Persian Gulf—including containment of Iraq—to the President, to make sure the full range of possibilities had been considered. It had been hard.

  The previous month, he had written down some notes for himself that laid out the arguments for containment. Several times he had used the term “strangulation,” a more active word than “containment.” It referred to the tight U.N.-mandated blockade of Iraq and all the other allied measures that were putting the squeeze on Saddam. He’d taken these notes and the argument to Cheney—twice. Then to the national security adviser, Brent Scowcroft, and to Secretary of State James A. Baker III.

  One Friday afternoon in early October, Cheney finally had said to Powell, “Why don’t you come over with me and we’ll see what the man thinks about your idea.” Cheney had a private Oval Office meeting scheduled that day with the President. This was time reserved for the key cabinet members—“the big guys,” as Powell called them. Normally he was not included.

  Cheney and Powell had gone to the Oval Office to see Bush and Scowcroft. The sun was streaming in. For some reason the atmosphere wasn’t right. There were interruptions; it was the President’s office, the wrong place for this kind of discussion, Powell felt. He preferred the formality of the Situation Room, where Bush could stay focused. The mood in the Oval Office was too relaxed, too convivial—the boys sitting around shooting the shit before the weekend.

  It was a general problem with these kinds of meetings, Powell felt. Often they had no beginning, middle or end. They would kick the ball around. Feet would be up on the table, cowboy boots gleaming. Powell was being given his chance, but he felt his presentation was not going as well as it had in his individual talks with Cheney, Baker and Scowcroft. Still, he plunged ahead.

  To achieve the policy of forcing Saddam out of Kuwait, Powell told the President, there are two courses of action. One, build up the forces for an offensive option. Two, containment, which would take longer. But either way, the policy success could be achieved.

  “There is a case here for the containment or strangulation policy,” he told the President. “If you do not want to make more military investment, here is the alternative.” The force level associated with containment, the Chairman said, was what they would reach by December 1, about 230,000 troops. Saddam would be fully boxed in. Containment would grind him down.

  “This is an option that has merit,” he said. “It will work some day. It may take a year, it may take two years, but it will work some day.” He tried to speak as an advocate, adopt the tone of an advocate, support it with his body language. He sat on the edge of his seat, his hands were in the air emphasizing his points, he spoke with conviction. But he did not go so far as to say to the President that containment was his personal recommendation.

  In military terms, Powell said he could live with either containment or an offensive option.

  The others, Cheney and Scowcroft, had a few questions. No one, including the President, embraced containment. If only one of them had, Powell was prepared to say that he favored it. But no one tried to pin him down. No one asked him for his overall opinion. Not faced with the question, Powell was not sure what his answer would have been if he had to give it without support from one of the others.

  “Where do you want to go, Mr. President?” Powell finally asked. “As each week goes by, I am doing more. There are more and more troops going in.”

  “I don’t think there’s time politically for that strategy,” Bush said, referring to containment.

  Powell took this to mean that the President hadn’t made up his mind completely. He felt that the President had not yet fully shot down containment.

  Afterwards, Powell said his conscience was clear. He had presented the military implications of each choice. There was only so much he could do.

  PART ONE

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  1

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  WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 1988. Powell, then a three-star general and the national security adviser to President Reagan, stepped briskly along one of the narrow, carpeted hallways in the West Wing of the White House. He was heading toward his spacious corner office, perhaps the second-most prestigious in the White House, and a nerve center formerly inhabited by the likes of Henry Kissinger.

  It was about 4 p.m. Vice President George Bush was in the hall outside his own small West Wing office. The day before, Bush had been elected President. A Rose Garden ceremony welcoming him back to the White House as President-elect had just ended and he was in the corridors saying hello and shaking hands, all jittery enthusiasm. He spotted Powell.

  “Come on in here,” Bush said. “I want to talk. Let’s talk.”

  Powell said Bush must be busy.

  “Tell me what’s going on,” Bush insisted, drawing Powell into the vice presidential office. By both title and temperament, Powell was information central on world events, often the first within the upper ranks of the White House to know the latest, whether it was a developing crisis or the freshest high-grade foreign affairs gossip.

  Congratulating Bush, Powell flashed a broad, confident smile.

  The Bush administration-to-be was already taking shape. That morning in Houston, Bush had announced his first cabinet appointment, naming his campaign manager and old Texas friend Jim Baker Secretary of State. Baker was seen as the Bush insider to watch.

  Bush asked about Powell. What were his plans? Where might he fit?

  “Mr. Vice President,” Powell said, “you have got a lot more on your hands and on your mind than me.”

  Bush had three specific suggestions. Would Powell like to stay on as national security adviser for, say, six months, while he figured out what he wanted to do next? Or would he like a different, permanent position in the Bush administration? Bush suggested Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, an assignment he himself had had at about Powell’s age. Or how about becoming Baker’s number two at the State Department, a key post in foreign affairs? Either of those jobs could be his. Exciting and important times are coming, Bush said.

  Powell noted that the Army was his chosen career and that he had the opportunity to stay in. Also, he was considering some offers to leave government to make some money. He was flattered by Bush’s offers and would consider them along with everything else. As Bush would understand, he was at an important crossroads. His service as national security adviser gave him many options.

  Bush, who had changed jobs more than most, indicated he understood completely.

  There was a lot to consider, Powell said, and he would get back to him. Congratulations again.

  • • •

  One thing was clear to Powell. The offer to stay on in his current post for a few months was merely a courtesy. It meant: I don’t want you to be my permanent national security adviser.

  Realizing he had to make a serious analysis of his prospects, Powell later took out a piece of paper and listed the reasons to stay in government and the reasons to get out.

  The only argument favoring departure from public service was money. Money didn’t interest him particularly, and the resumes he had been quietly circulating in the business world had drawn only a mild response in any case.

  The offers to head the CIA and to be number two at State had to be weighed. It would be a demotion to go from the security adviser’s post, coordinating all foreign and defense policy issues, to the number-two slot at State, responsible for managing the bureaucracy. And in most respects, the security adviser was more powerf
ul than the CIA director.

  Powell had another problem. He felt uneasy about the man who was about to become President.

  Unlike Powell himself, who had been the consummate administration insider, Bush was a stepchild in the Reagan White House. Though more in the loop than most vice presidents, he was nevertheless not a player. Bush and Powell had built no bond of loyalty, and as Powell knew, personal alliances were everything with Bush.

  Powell was also troubled by the way the Bush presidential campaign had been run. The race-baiting Willie Horton television commercial especially bothered him. Horton, a black first-degree murderer, had been given a weekend pass from a Massachusetts prison when Bush’s Democratic opponent, Michael Dukakis, was governor. While on the furlough, Horton stabbed a white man and raped a white woman in Maryland. Did the people around Bush believe that stuff belonged in the campaign?

  Powell sought out his good friend Richard L. Armitage, the outgoing assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs. Armitage, a burly, intense 1967 Naval Academy graduate, was known for the aggressive way he did his job as the head of the Pentagon’s own little state department.

  From 1983 to 1986, Armitage and Powell, who was then military assistant to Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, had managed much of the department’s business.

  Armitage knew that Powell’s charm and offhandedness hid his competitiveness and ambition. He agreed that the half-offer to stay on in the national security post was about politeness. Don’t go to the State Department as number two, Armitage advised. You should be the Secretary. The CIA is not your image, he also told Powell. It is demoralized and rundown.

  Let things shake out, Armitage recommended.

  Powell had taken care to ensure that he could return to the Army. Before the election, he’d gone to see his friend General Carl Vuono, the Army chief of staff. Vuono, who controlled Army promotions and assignments, was a 1957 West Point graduate who had entered the Army just a year before Powell. A meaty, happy-go-lucky officer with dark Mediterranean eyes, Vuono had known Powell since they’d worked together as junior officers in the Pentagon 17 years earlier. Powell considered Vuono one of his mentors.