Bush At War Read online

  Word of an "accident" came, and Mrs. Bush, Senator Kennedy and others left through a side door. When she learned some of the details, Mrs. Bush worked hard to control herself. Her face was soon quite ashen, her eyes tear-rimmed and her lips quivering.

  Then the Pentagon was hit, and Secret Service and police cloistered around her. They explained the need to get her to a safe place. The group soon broke into an anxious trot. By 9:50, Mrs. Bush was awaiting an escort. In the traffic jam from the Capitol, it took 45 minutes to get her to Secret Service headquarters where she was taken into the basement to the Wood Conference Room.

  Not until 10:51 A.M. did the Secret Service relocate Turquoise, the codename for Barbara Bush, a 19-year-old freshman at Yale, to their New Haven office. Twinkle, codename for the other Bush twin, Jenna, a freshman at the University of Texas in Austin, was relocated to the Driskill Hotel six minutes later.

  IT WAS 9:39 A.M. when American Airlines Flight 77, a Boeing 757, slammed into the Pentagon.

  Five minutes later, Bush reached his vice president, Dick Cheney, who had been whisked from his West Wing office by the Secret Service to the Presidential Emergency Operations Center, or PEOC, the emergency bunker beneath the White House grounds.

  "We're at war," Bush said, and told Cheney to give the congressional leadership a briefing. When the president hung up, he turned to some of his staff on Air Force One who had heard his comment to Cheney. "That's what we're paid for boys. We're going to take care of this. And when we find out who did this, they're not going to like me as president. Somebody is going to pay."

  Soon Cheney was on the phone again to the president urging that he authorize U.S. military aircraft to shoot down any additional commercial airliners that were controlled by hijackers. A hijacked airliner was a weapon. It would be a momentous decision, but Cheney, normally cautious, insisted that giving the American fighter pilots the authority to fire on commercial airliners, even if they were full of civilians, was the only practical answer.

  "You bet," Bush said. He gave the authority.

  At about 10:30 A.M. Cheney reached Bush again on Air Force One, which was still on its way to Washington. The White House had received a threat saying, "Angel is next." Since "Angel" was the codeword for Air Force One, it could mean that terrorists had inside information.

  "We're going to find out who did this," Bush said to Cheney, "and we're going to kick their asses."

  Card reported that First Lady Laura Bush was in a secure location with the Secret Service and that his daughters had been removed to safer locations.

  A few minutes later, Cheney was back on the phone urging that the president not return to Washington. "There's still a threat," he said.

  Signals intelligence and all kinds of reports were flooding in. Given what had happened - four hijackings - it wasn't prudent to come back. Cheney immediately clicked into the possibility that the terrorists might be trying to decapitate the government, to kill its leaders. He said they had a responsibility to preserve the government, its continuity of leadership. Bush recalled, "He was the man on the telephone who said, 'Do not come to Washington.'"

  The president agreed to divert to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana. Shortly after, those on the plane could feel it bank suddenly and sharply to the left in a westerly direction.

  At 10:52 A.M. Bush spoke with his wife.

  IT WAS A time of chaos and confusion that is reflected in the official documents of the day, some public, some classified. Various documents have Bush arriving in Louisiana at 11:48 A.M., 11:57 A.M., 12:05 P.M. and 12:16 P.M. - a range of 28 minutes. Somewhere around noon Air Force One landed at Barksdale under heavy security. At 12:36 - this time is precise - Bush issued another statement before the television cameras.

  It had been more than three hours since the president or any senior administration official had spoken publicly. The president's eyes were red-rimmed when he walked in. His performance was not reassuring. He spoke haltingly, mispronouncing several words as he looked down at his notes. He seemed to gain strength at the end of the 219-word statement, promising resolve. "But make no mistake," he said, "we will show the world that we will pass this test."

  He told Card, "I want to go back home ASAP. I don't want whoever did this holding me outside of Washington."

  But the Secret Service said it was too unsteady in Washington, and Cheney said it was not safe yet.

  "The right thing is to let the dust settle," Card said.

  Bush reluctantly acquiesced and reboarded Air Force One, which shortly after 1:30 P.M. zoomed into the western sky, this time for Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska. Offutt is home to the Strategic Command, which controls the United States's nuclear weapons, and the base has a facility to protect the president. He could also meet with his National Security Council over a secure video link.

  From the plane, Bush reached his secretary of defense, Donald H. Rumsfeld.

  "Wow, it was an American airliner that hit the Pentagon," the president said in some wonderment. "It's a day of national tragedy, and we'll clean up the mess and then the ball will be in your court and Dick Myers's court."

  Air Force General Richard B. Myers, the tall, gentlemanly vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was slated to move up to become chairman, the top U.S. military position, in three weeks.

  Rumsfeld, a small-framed, almost boyish, former Navy fighter pilot who did not look his 69 years, had been expecting, even counting on, the order from the president putting the ball squarely in his court.

  Earlier in the year, when Rumsfeld was in discussions about becoming Bush's secretary of defense, he had had a talk with the president-elect, a little test of sorts. He told Bush that during the eight years of Clinton, the natural pattern when challenged or attacked had been a "reflexive pullback" - caution, safety plays, even squeamishness. The Clinton weapon of choice was the standoff cruise missile. Rumsfeld left no doubt in Bush's mind that when that moment came, as it surely would, that the United States was threatened, he, as secretary of defense, would be coming to the president to unleash the military. The president could expect a forward-leaning action plan.

  Bush had replied, unambiguously in Rumsfeld's estimation, that that was precisely what he wanted. Rumsfeld believed they had a clear, common understanding.

  RUMSFELD HAD BEEN one of the brightest Republican stars in the 1960s and 1970s - a JFK from the GOP - handsome, intense, well educated with an intellectual bent, witty with an infectious smile. Many in the party, including Rumsfeld himself, thought he might be headed for the presidency. But he never gained traction as a popular or national political figure, in part because of the brusque way he often treated people, especially subordinates. In addition, he made a political enemy of one of the party's rising stars, George H.W. Bush, who did make it to the presidency.

  Rumsfeld's ascent to the inner circle of power is a story of intrigue, drive and luck. In 1962, at the age of 30, Rumsfeld was elected to his first of four terms in Congress representing the district of Chicago's North Shore suburbs where he had grown up. He resigned from Congress in 1969 to become director of the Office of Economic Opportunity, the anti-poverty organization that was a cabinet level post in the Nixon administration but not a flashy, high-visibility position.

  By 1973-74 he was in Brussels, serving as U.S. ambassador to NATO, dodging the Watergate bullet. According to Nixon's memoirs, in July 1974, "Don Rumsfeld called from Brussels, offering to resign as Ambassador to NATO and return to help work against impeachment among his former colleagues." Nixon resigned the next month and Rumsfeld was asked to chair the presidential transition team of his former House colleague Gerald Ford.

  Ford asked Rumsfeld to become White House chief of staff, but Rumsfeld wanted to stay at NATO. Rumsfeld agreed when Ford promised to streamline the staff and give Rumsfeld full authority.

  After a year in the White House, Ford told him he planned to fire Defense Secretary James Schlesinger. Rumsfeld would move to Defense. CIA Director William Colby w
as going to be replaced by George Bush senior, then the U.S. representative in China. Rumsfeld privately called the China post "a crappy, irrelevant job." He was opposed to the new assignments for both Bush and himself. He told Ford that moving the two would put them on ice for Ford's upcoming presidential campaign. They were, he said, the only two who could give effective political speeches in the coming election year, 1976. But Rumsfeld saluted and took Defense.

  Bush senior was convinced that Rumsfeld-was secretly pushing him out to the CIA to end his political career. It seemed inconceivable at the time that the head of spying and dirty tricks abroad could ever become president.

  President Ford then elevated Rumsfeld's deputy, Dick Cheney, to be White House chief of staff. At the time, over concerns about politicizing the CIA, the Senate was refusing to confirm Bush senior as director unless Ford pledged not to select him as his vice presidential running mate for the coming election. Rumsfeld told Ford and Cheney that the president should not cave in to the Senate. When Ford and Bush eventually made the pledge to the Senate anyway, Rumsfeld blamed Cheney in part, telling him in so many words, You've screwed up on the first thing you've done.

  Over the next year, 1976, there emerged a subtle rivalry between Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and CIA Director In their years in the House, Rumsfeld had found Bush to be a lightweight who was interested in friendships, public relations and public opinion polls more than substantive policy. In his view, Bush senior avoided controversy and sweat, except in the House gym. He went so far as to tell some that Bush had some of what Rumsfeld called the "Rockefeller syndrome" - available, wanting to serve, but not having clear goals. In Rumsfeld's world, having no larger purpose was almost a high crime.

  Rumsfeld believed that Bush was a weak CIA director who seriously underestimated the Soviet Union's military advances and was manipulated by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

  Rumsfeld went on to hold government appointments in the Reagan administration as Middle East envoy and in the Clinton administration as head of a commission to assess the ballistic missile threat to the U.S., but none in the administration of Bush senior.

  Instead of being on a track to run for the presidency, Rumsfeld was now the secretary of defense for a second time, serving his longtime rival's son. In some respects, Rumsfeld was a walking example of what the novelist Wallace Stegner calls "resilience under disappointment," the persistence of drive, hard work and even stubbornness when ambition has not been fully realized.

  In his first eight months back in the Pentagon, Rumsfeld struck two major themes. First, the military was hidebound and outdated, still equipped, trained and organized to fight old enemies, mainly the Soviet Union. He undertook what he called "transformation," to remake the force, and as he said somewhat presciently at his confirmation hearings, to "develop capabilities to defend against missiles, terrorism and new threats against our space assets and information systems."

  Rumsfeld's second theme was surprise. He routinely handed out or recommended a book called Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision by Roberta Wohlstetter. Rumsfeld particularly recommended the foreword, written by Thomas Schelling, who argued that Pearl Harbor was an ordinary blunder, the type government specializes in.

  "There is a tendency in our planning to confuse the unfamiliar with the improbable.. .. The danger is in a poverty of expectations, a routine obsession with a few dangers that may be familiar rather than likely."

  Rumsfeld's transformation plans met with something just short of organized resistance bordering on insubordination among a significant part of the senior uniformed officers. One four-star officer who worked with him said Rumsfeld was "an egomaniac cleverly disguised... a hip shooter who gives the impression he is not." Another said if anyone disagreed with Rumsfeld it was risky because the result might be an "ass chewing from him." The officer said, "I'd go up there [to Rumsfeld's office on the third floor] and when I disagreed with him I'd tell him I disagreed. Sometimes he was nice about it, sometimes he wasn't nice about it."

  On occasion Rumsfeld bounced ranking generals out of his office, telling one, "Come back and brief when you know what you're talking about." Woe to the briefer who presented only a proposed solution. "Wait, let's back up," Rumsfeld would often say. I can read the answer. What I want to know is how you got there - the premise, the starting point, the full reasoning.

  This baffled the senior military. It was humbling and off-putting too at times. Rumsfeld confronted them with tough questions that seemed excessive. What is it you know about this subject? What don't you know? What do you think about it? What do you think I ought to ask you about it? That's the only way I'm going to learn anything, he explained, adding, And for sure it's the only way that you are going to learn anything!

  He seemed too confident in himself and too distrustful of his subordinates in the military. Working with a close-knit group, mostly civilians, he was a mystery to many in the building, especially the members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the uniformed heads of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps.

  Rumsfeld didn't like muddling along. He didn't like imprecision. He redid or had suggestions on most memos. He hated loose language. One memo had an obvious typographic error - "not" coming out as "ton" - and he asked, What does this "ton" mean? Why is "ton" in this sentence? What does it mean?

  "Cambone!" was a familiar refrain when Rumsfeld wanted information or action. A 6-foot-3 defense intellectual who had worked on the space and missile defense commissions that Rumsfeld had headed, Steve Cambone was the dark, nonsunny, nonoptimistic side of Rumsfeld who had forebodings about something bad happening. He was civilian special assistant to the secretary, and he largely defined the relationships between Rumsfeld and the rest of the Pentagon. Cambone was the means by which, at least initially, Rumsfeld had extended his grasp around the throats of the military brass.

  Army General Henry B. "Hugh" Shelton, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff since October 1997, grew despondent at times under the new civilian leadership, reporting to colleagues a real rupture with Rumsfeld. At one point Rumsfeld suggested that Shelton ought to give his military advice to the president through him. Shelton had to point out that the law made him the "principal military adviser" to the president, and he believed his advice should be given directly.

  If Rumsfeld rubbed the chiefs and the brass raw at times, many had respect for his intelligence. One senior general said, "I admire the man greatly even though I don't necessarily like him.... He's got a weakness in wanting to have his hands around everything. Okay?"

  AWARE OF THE attacks on the World Trade Center, Rumsfeld had been proceeding with his daily intelligence briefing in his office when the third hijacked plane struck the western face of the Pentagon. He felt the building shudder and darted to the window, but from his vantage it was unclear what had happened. He went outside and followed the rising cloud of smoke to the crash site, helping with the rescue effort before a security agent urged him to get out of the area.

  "I'm going inside," Rumsfeld said, and hurried to the National Military Command Center, the large, heavily staffed Pentagon war room. It was filled with smoke, so he and his team went up to an isolated communications network room called "Cables" where the air was better.

  General Myers urged Rumsfeld to leave. "The smoke is getting pretty bad," he said. "We've got a lot of support people here. It's actually worse for them than it is for us right here." The others would not leave as long as Rumsfeld was there. "We ought to think about moving."

  Okay, Rumsfeld said, but kept on working.

  The military, which seemed to have contingency plans for the most inconceivable scenarios, had no plans for Afghanistan, the sanctuary of bin Laden and his network. There was nothing on the shelf that could be pulled down to provide at least an outline. This was not a surprise for the secretary of defense. Now he turned to Myers with a message: When I've asked to see various plans, I've not been happy with what I've seen. They are neither imaginative nor creative. Clearly t
he plans are old and have been on the shelf for too long. I've just not been happy. We've got a long way to go. You need to know that.

  "I understand, sir," Myers replied.

  RUMSFELD FINALLY LEFT the war room and went to his office suite and set himself to working the problem.

  "This is the defining moment," he told his top aides - Cam-bone, his military assistant, his general counsel and his spokesperson. The president is going to come back into town, he said, and I need to be ready to talk to him when he arrives. What are the things the president needs to think about? Rumsfeld asked. What does the president need to address?

  He started jotting down ideas. He wanted thoughts from everyone, short concepts, statements of the problems. Get this old paper, this report, this memo, he said. Speak up. What did they have before them?

  For Cambone, it was distill, distill, distill - digest, digest, digest.

  Victoria A. "Torie" Clarke, assistant secretary of defense for public affairs, thought Rumsfeld was like a Vegas blackjack dealer, sitting in his massive office sorting through the paper, almost by instinct, setting out three stacks of memos, papers and notes: 1. This is what we know. 2. This is what we're dealing with right now. 3. This is what we've got to deal with next - tomorrow and into the long-term future.

  How do we crystallize the problem for the president? Rumsfeld asked. He deemed it part of his responsibility to think on the president's behalf. We have to have the right thoughts, complete thoughts. Because, he said, the first full meeting of the National Security Council was going to be terribly important in setting the stage for how they moved forward. Paper kept flying from stack to stack, and the piles got smaller and smaller. He threw some of these notes and paper in the Burn Bag for classified trash. Clarke fished some out to recirculate.

  After several hours, Rumsfeld had it all down on a single sheet of paper - nice, neat, no misspellings, no loose language - to take that night for a meeting at the White House with the president.