Bush At War Page 4

  He had a final question for General Myers. "Where are those plans?"

  AT OFFUTT AIR Force Base in Nebraska, President Bush convened the first meeting of the National Security Council for the terrorist crisis at 3:30"P.M.

  Tenet reported with near certainty that bin Laden was behind the attacks. Passenger manifests showed three known al Qaeda operatives had been on American Airlines Flight 77, which had plowed into the Pentagon. One of them, Khalid Al-Midhar, had come to the CIA's attention the previous year in Malaysia. A paid CIA spy had placed him at an al Qaeda meeting. They had informed the FBI, who put him on a domestic watch list, but he had slipped into the United States over the summer and avoided detection by the bureau.

  Al Qaeda was the only terrorist organization capable of such spectacular, well-coordinated attacks, Tenet said. Intelligence monitoring had overheard a number of known bin Laden operatives congratulating each other after the attacks. Information collected days earlier but only now being translated indicated that various known operatives around the world anticipated a big event. None specified the day, time, place or method of attack.

  It was pretty obvious there had been some kind of screwup, and it didn't sound to the president like the FBI and CIA were communicating. "George, get your ears up," the president told Tenet, meaning listen in on everything.

  Tenet said since all the attacks had taken place before 10 A.M. that morning, chances were that there would be no more that day, but there was no way to be sure.

  FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III, who had only been in the job for a week, said they didn't know how the hijackers had taken over the planes. As a precaution, all air traffic over the U.S. had been grounded indefinitely.

  The president said he wanted to get the airlines flying again.

  "We need to understand the penetration of airport security before the planes take off," Tenet cautioned. It was a reasonable suggestion, but it seemed to shift the problem to airport security and away from intelligence lapses that may have allowed the hijackers to enter and live in the U.S. for months before their missions.

  "I'll announce more security measures," the president said, "but we won't be held hostage," and he added impulsively, "We'll fly at noon tomorrow."

  It would take three days before commercial airline flights resumed at a reduced schedule.

  "The terrorists can always attack," Rumsfeld said defiantly. "The Pentagon's going back to work tomorrow."

  Secret Service Director Brian L. Stafford addressed the president. "Our position is stay where you are," the director said. "It's not safe." Stafford thought he was making the obvious case. Bush knew the Secret Service could not guarantee perfect security - there was no 100 percent - but if the president followed their recommendations, they could provide him with the best security possible. If he ignored their recommendations, all bets were off.

  "I'm coming back," Bush said.

  Stafford was surprised.

  About 4:30 P.M. the president reached his wife on the phone.

  "I'm coming home," he said. "See you at the White House. Love you, go on home."

  AT CIA HEADQUARTERS, James L. Pavitt, the deputy director for operations (DDO) who headed the agency's clandestine service and covert operations, wanted to send a personal message to his troops. Pavitt, 55, a roly-poly, gregarious career spy, seemed an unlikely chief of the most secretive, subterranean latticework of undercover case officers, paid agents and secret-stealers in the world.

  Pavitt's message was labeled a DOSB - a secret message for all Directorate of Operations Stations and Bases.

  "The United States has been attacked again by resolute and committed foes readily willing to accept self-destruction in order to fulfill their mission of terror.

  "I expect each station and each officer to redouble efforts of collecting intelligence on this tragedy. The Counterterrorism Center is the focal point for all information on this subject, and we anticipate that a good percentage of the most valuable information concerning the attacks and their perpetrators will come within the next 48 hours." They had to get information before the trail grew cold. He said they should be careful and protect their families. "I also ask all of you to join me in a silent prayer for the thousands who perished today and for their loved ones now so terribly alone."

  BUSH WANTED TO give a speech that night to the nation on television, and his chief speechwriter, Michael Gerson, had come up with a draft. It included the sentences, "This is not just an act of terrorism. This is an act of war." This reflected what Bush had been saying all day to the NSC and his staff.

  Take it out, Bush instructed Karen Hughes. "Our mission is reassurance." He wanted to calm already jumpy nerves.

  "I did not want to add to the angst of the American people yet," Bush said later. He wanted to go on television and be tough, show some resolve but also find some balance - be comforting, demonstrate that the government was functioning and show the nation that their president had made it through. There had been some doubt as he had hopscotched most of the day from Air Force base to Air Force base.

  About 6:30 P.M., the president was finally back at the White House dealing with the speech draft in the small study off the Oval Office. Drawing on a presidential campaign speech in 1999 at The Citadel military academy, Gerson had written that, in responding to terrorism, the United States would make no distinction between those who planned the acts and those who tolerated or encouraged the terrorists.

  "That's way too vague," Bush complained, proposing the word "harbor." In final form, what would later be called the Bush Doctrine said, "We will make no distinction between those who planned these acts and those who harbor them." It was an incredibly broad commitment to go after terrorists and those who sponsor and protect terrorists, rather than just a proposal for a targeted retaliatory strike. The decision was made without consulting Cheney, Powell or Rumsfeld.

  The president did consult with his national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice. She wondered if that kind of far-reaching declaration and policy pronouncement belonged in a speech that was meant to console the shaken nation. "You can say it now or you'll have other opportunities to say it," Rice advised him. It was her style not to commit herself unless the president pressed. But in the end she favored including it that night, because, she thought, first words matter more than almost anything else.

  "We've got to get it out there now," Bush said. It had been a policy he had been inching toward. Might as well say it.

  In the West Wing, there was debate about whether the president needed to make a firm declaration of the obvious - that this was war. White House communications director Dan Bartlett, 30, was deputized to suggest that to the president.

  "What?" Bush barked. "No more changes."

  Bartlett showed him a proposed change about being at war.

  "I've already said no to that," the president replied.

  Bartlett went back to his West Wing colleagues. "Thanks, you can take the message next time."

  PRESIDENT BUSH SPOKE to the nation for seven minutes from the Oval Office. He declared his policy - go after terrorists and those who harbor them.

  "None of us will forget this day," he said. "Yet we go forward to defend freedom and all that is good and just in the world."

  After the speech, Bush chaired an expanded NSC meeting that turned out to be unwieldy. So at 9:30 P.M. he gathered his most senior principal national security advisers in the White House bunker. It was at the end of one of the longest and most chaotic days in each of their lives.

  "This is the time for self-defense," the president said, making the somewhat obvious point. There was a sense it was not over, and they were meeting in the bunker not because it was comfortable - it wasn't - but because it was still dangerous. They had neither a handle on what had happened nor what might be next nor how to respond. "We have made the decision to punish whoever harbors terrorists, not just the perpetrators," he told them.

  The president, Rice, Hughes and the speechwriters had made o
ne of the most significant foreign policy decisions in years, and the secretary of state had not been involved. Powell had just made it back from Peru. And now, he said, "We have to make it clear to Pakistan and Afghanistan, this is showtime."

  Afghanistan's ruling Taliban regime, an extreme Islamic fundamentalist militia group which came to power in 1996, was harboring al Qaeda terrorists in exchange for substantial bankrolling by bin Laden. Neighboring Pakistan's powerful intelligence service, the ISI, had had a giant role in creating the Taliban and keeping them in power. The hard-line regime, whose strict interpretation of Islamic law and draconian rule led to the oppression of women, mass hunger and the flight of nearly one million refugees, earned international condemnation for destroying the giant centuries-old Buddha statues at Bamiyan.

  "This is a great opportunity," Bush said, somewhat locating the pony in the pile of manure. It was a chance to improve relations especially with big powers such as Russia and China. "We have to think of this as an opportunity."

  The members of the war cabinet had lots of questions, none more than Rumsfeld. On his single sheet of paper, he had the questions he thought the president and the rest of them needed to address and eventually answer: Who are the targets? How much evidence do we need before going after al Qaeda? How soon do we act?

  The sooner they acted, Rumsfeld said, the more public support they would have if there's collateral damage. He was being careful. Since the military had no plan and no forces in the immediate area, he wanted to keep expectations low. He dropped a bomb, telling them that some major strikes could take up to 60 days to put together.

  The notion of waiting 60 days for something major - until November 11 perhaps - just hung in the room.

  Rumsfeld had more questions. Powell thought they were a clever disguise, a way to argue rhetorically and avoid taking a position. Rumsfeld wanted others to answer his queries. It was a remarkable technique, Powell thought.

  Still, the questions were good, and Rumsfeld went on. Are there targets that are off-limits? Do we include the American allies in any military strikes? Last, the secretary of defense said, we have to set declaratory policy, announce to the world what we're doing.

  Cheney noted that Afghanistan would present a real challenge. A primitive country 7,000 miles away with a population of 26 million, it was the size of Bush's home state of Texas but had few roads and little infrastructure. Finding anything to hit would be hard.

  The president returned to the problem of the al Qaeda terrorists and their sanctuary in Afghanistan. Since bin Laden relocated there from Sudan in May 1996, the Taliban had allowed al Qaeda to establish their headquarters and training camps in the country.

  We have to deny al Qaeda sanctuary, Tenet said. Tell the Taliban we're finished with them. The Taliban and al Qaeda were really the same.

  Rumsfeld said that they should employ every tool of national power, not just the military but legal, financial, diplomatic and the CIA.

  Tenet said that al Qaeda, though headquartered in Afghanistan, operated worldwide, on all continents. We have a 60-country problem, he said.

  "Let's pick them off one at a time," the president said.

  Rumsfeld, not to be outdone in identifying difficulties, said the problem was not just bin Laden and al Qaeda, but other countries that supported terrorism.

  "We have to force countries to choose," Bush said.

  The meeting was adjourned. The president, untested and untrained in national security, was about to start on the complicated and prolonged road to war without much of a map.

  CONDOLEEZZA RICE WENT to the national security adviser's office in the corner of the West Wing after the meeting. A former Stanford political science professor and then provost, she had worked on the NSC staff as a Russian expert during the presidency of Bush senior. Rice, 46, was perhaps the person in the upper reaches of Bush's national security team who was most alone. Her mother was dead and her father had died a year ago. Following the attacks that morning she called the only family she had, her aunt and uncle in Birmingham, Alabama, to tell them she was all right, then went back to work.

  Beginning in the presidential campaign when she was Bush's chief foreign policy adviser, Rice had developed a very close relationship with Bush. Tall, with near perfect posture, a graceful walk and a beaming smile, she had become a permanent fixture in the presidential inner circle. The president and first lady had in a sense become her family.

  That night, she acknowledged to herself that she was in a fog. She tried to focus on what had to be done the next day.

  If it was bin Laden and al Qaeda - it almost surely was - there was another complication. The questions would sooner or later arise about what the Bush administration knew about the bin Laden threat, when they knew it and what they had done about it.

  ABOUT A WEEK before Bush's inauguration, Rice attended a meeting at Blair House, across from the White House, with President elect Bush and Vice President-elect Cheney. This was the secrets briefing given by Tenet and Pavitt.

  For two and one half hours, Tenet and Pavitt had run through the good, the bad and the ugly about the CIA to a fascinated president-elect. They told him that bin Laden and his network were a "tremendous threat" which was "immediate." There was no doubt that bin Laden was coming after the United States again, they said, but it was not clear when, where or how. Bin Laden and the network were a difficult, elusive target. President Clinton had approved five separate intelligence orders, called Memoranda of Notification (MON), authorizing covert action to attempt to destroy bin Laden and his network, disrupt and preempt their terrorist operations. No authority had been granted outright to kill or assassinate bin Laden.

  Tenet and Pavitt presented bin Laden as one of the three top threats facing the United States. The other two were the increasing availability of weapons of mass destruction - chemical, biological and nuclear, including weapons proliferation concerns - and the rise of Chinese power, military and other.

  In April, the National Security Council deputies' committee, made up of the No. 2's in each major department and agency, recommended that President Bush adopt a policy that would include a serious effort to arm the Northern Alliance, the loose confederation of various warlords and tribes in Afghanistan that opposed the Taliban regime that harbored bin Laden.

  The CIA estimated that the Northern Alliance forces were outnumbered about 2 to 1, with some 20,000 fighters to the Taliban's roughly 45,000 military troops and volunteers.

  A CIA covert program of maintenance for the rebel forces of several million dollars a year was already in place. But worries about the Northern Alliance abounded. First, it was not really an alliance, because the various warlords could probably with some ease be bought off by the Taliban. The warlords flourished in a culture of survival - meaning they would do anything necessary. Several were just thugs, serial human rights abusers and drug dealers. In addition, the Russians and Iranians - who both supported the Alliance with substantial amounts of money - had strong influence with some of the warlords.

  In the Clinton administration, the State Department had flatly opposed arming the Alliance because of these real concerns. It was Richard Armitage, Powell's deputy, who had agreed to lift State's objections that spring. Armitage had checked with Powell, who had agreed that bin Laden was a sufficient threat to justify arming the Northern Alliance on a large scale.

  During July, the deputies' committee recommended a comprehensive plan, not just to roll back al Qaeda but to eliminate it. It was a plan to go on the offensive and destabilize the Taliban. During August, many of the principals were away. It was not until September 4 that they approved and recommended a plan that would give the CIA $125 million to $200 million a year to arm the Alliance.

  Rice had a National Security Presidential Directive (NSPD) ready to go to the president on September 10. The door had been opened and they were ready to walk through it. The NSPD was numbered 9 - meaning eight other matters had been formally assessed, vetted, agreed upon and signed
off on as policy by the president before al Qaeda.

  The question that would always linger was whether they had moved fast enough on a threat that had been identified by the CIA as one of the top three facing the country, whether September 11 was as much a failure of policy as it was of intelligence.

  AT 11:08 P.M., September 11, the Secret Service awakened the Bushes and hurriedly escorted them to the bunker. An unidentified plane seemed to be heading for the White House. The president was in his running shorts and a T-shirt. Mrs. Bush was in her robe and without her contact lenses. Their dogs, Spot and Barney, scampered along. In the long tunnel leading to the bunker, they met Card, Rice and Stephen J. Hadley, the deputy national security adviser, who were racing along.

  The errant plane was soon identified, but the Secret Service still wanted the president to spend the night in the bunker. Bush looked at the small bed and announced he was going back to the residence.

  Rice had a Secret Service detail assigned to her, and an agent said they didn't want her to go home that night to her Watergate apartment. Maybe you ought to stay here, the agent said, so Rice agreed to sleep in the bunker.

  "No," the president said, "you come stay in the residence."

  Like his father during his White House years, the president tried to keep a daily diary of some thoughts and observations. He dictated that night:

  "The Pearl Harbor of the 21st century took place today."

  Bush would recall that he had two thoughts, "This was a war in which people were going to have to die. Secondly, I was not a military tactician. I recognize that. I was going to have to rely on the advice and counsel of Rumsfeld, Shelton, Myers and Tenet."

  He was now a wartime president. Soldiers and citizens, the entire world, would pick up instantly on his level of engagement, energy and conviction. The widely held view that he was a lightweight, unconcerned with details, removed, aloof and possibly even ignorant would have to be dispelled. He had much work to do.