Known and Unknown (42 page)

“The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies—civilians and military,” the fatwa stated, “is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it.” He had laid out al-Qaida's intentions to undermine America's financial and military power and to intimidate our friends and allies. These were not idle threats or the harmless rants of a madman. Al-Qaida had declared war. America had been on notice of that threat for at least three years.

During our work on the Ballistic Missile Threat Commission in the late 1990s, Wolfowitz and former Clinton CIA Director Jim Woolsey questioned CIA analysts about what the United States was doing about al-Qaida. They asked about bin Laden's bank accounts and whether his funds had been confiscated after the East African embassy bombings. The officials gave the standard nonresponse: They would look into the matter.

 

A
s the events of the day—a day that seemed like the longest in my life—drew to a close, I returned to the Pentagon from the White House. The sky was dark but klieg lights illuminated the crash site for the rescue workers who continued to fight the flames and to search for any remaining victims in the wreckage. I called some of my team together in my office to take stock of events. Torie Clarke, the assistant secretary of defense for public affairs and the Pentagon's spokeswoman, had a blunt manner that I appreciated. “Have you called Mrs. R.?” she asked me.

By then it was approaching 11:00 p.m., more than twelve hours since the morning's attack. “No, I haven't,” I answered.

Clarke bore in. “You mean you haven't talked to Joyce?”

When the Pentagon was hit, Joyce was at the Defense Intelligence Agency at Bolling Air Force Base for a briefing with the defense attachés and their spouses from around the world. I had been so engaged that day that I hadn't even thought of calling her. After almost forty-seven years of marriage, one takes some things—perhaps too many things—for granted. I had been told Joyce was taken from the meeting and that she had been informed that the Pentagon had been hit.

Clarke looked at me with the stare of a woman who was also a wife. “You son of a bitch,” she blurted out.

She had a point.

A
merica awoke the next day a nation at war. Above pictures of the burning World Trade Center, the
Washington Times
had a one-word front-page headline that read, in large, bold, capital letters: “infamy.”
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Across the United States, Americans expressed anger and sadness. They also voiced fear of further attacks. Many wondered if they were safe, how their lives might have to change, whether their family members and friends were in danger. Major landmarks considered likely targets were watched with anxiety. Each rumor of another attack set people on edge. Some feared for family members in the military. The financial world was in shock. The stock market suffered one of its biggest drops in history when it reopened six days after 9/11. Hundreds of billions of dollars—property damage, travel revenue, insurance claims, stock market capital—all lost in a single day because nineteen men with a fanatical willingness to die boarded four commercial airliners wielding box cutters.

Throughout the Pentagon, the environment had changed radically. Smoke and the smell of jet fuel lingered. Many of the Pentagon's seventeen miles of usually bustling corridors were quiet. Halls were sealed off with yellow police tape. Armed Air Force jets patrolled the skies overhead.

NATO unanimously invoked Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, which provides that “an armed attack against one…shall be considered an attack against them all.”
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The NATO nations sent five AWACS aircraft and crews to help patrol American airspace in the months after 9/11. It was a welcome sign of commitment and support from the alliance, for which I was and remain deeply grateful. NATO was born early in the Cold War, when it was thought that the United States might have to come to the defense of our allies in Western Europe. Despite my many years of association with the alliance, it had never crossed my mind that NATO might someday step up to help defend the United States.

At the Pentagon, I noticed a different look on people's faces as I passed them in the corridors. We had lost members of our Pentagon family and were determined to protect the country and prevent this from happening again. Calling for “a fundamental reassessment of intelligence and defense activities,” even the
New York Times
sounded almost unilateralist; they suggested America should be prepared to take the fight to the terrorists, with or without our allies. “When Washington has prepared to act in the past it has often been stymied by faint-hearted allies,” the paper's editorial board charged. “Some of America's closest friends have found it more useful to do business with countries that have either supported terrorists on their soil, been indifferent to them or been too afraid to go after them.”
³
Members of Congress were working together in ways that promised a truly united approach, with a spirit perhaps not seen since the attack on Pearl Harbor. On September 18, 2001, Congress passed a joint resolution amounting to a declaration of war. It was approved by stunning margins: 420-1 in the House and 98-0 in the Senate. The resolution gave the President the authority to use all “necessary and appropriate force” against those whom he determined “planned, authorized, committed, or aided” the 9/11 attacks and those who “harbored” the terrorists.
⁴

No longer were discussions in Washington or the White House focused on the issues that had divided Americans—stem cell research, the Social Security lockbox, or withdrawing from the ABM treaty. Defense of the American people was now the nation's number one priority.

Administrations frequently end up being judged by an event they had not anticipated—the Cuban missile crisis for John F. Kennedy; the invasion of Kuwait for George H. W. Bush; and the terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center for George W. Bush. After the attack, Bush won plaudits for his leadership even from opponents. Critics who had considered him to be an accidental president out of his depth were, for the moment, silenced.

Later controversies tended to obscure Bush's sound stewardship of the country after the 9/11 attacks. But in those critical moments for the country, he was somber, purposeful, and determined to act. He was deeply saddened by the loss of so many lives but not distracted by his sorrow. With his advisers, he probed, questioned, and provided well-considered guidance. In fact, he did better than that. He was both courageous and strategic.

The war against the terrorists would require all of the cabinet departments and agencies to take on new roles. The attorney general would be charged with new legal challenges and developing a new mission in counterterrorism for the FBI. Beginning in the 1970s, civil liberty considerations had resulted in the erection of an information barrier that prevented the FBI and domestic law enforcement agencies from sharing information freely with the CIA and the intelligence community. After 9/11, this theoretical wall was widely considered a dangerous and unnecessary barrier to effective counterterrorism work. The Department of Justice and the CIA had to negotiate a delicate balance, devising new ways to cooperate and exchange intelligence while protecting our civil liberties.

The Treasury Department would be tasked with helping to track terrorist financing. The Department of Energy would have to ensure the safety of American nuclear power plants and work with our allies to make sure their nuclear programs and materials were secure. And still other elements of the government would need to join the effort. The President believed—and over the years that followed frequently underscored—that it would not be enough for the Defense Department and the CIA to be the only departments at war. All elements of our national power would need to step up.

On the morning of September 12, President Bush visited the Pentagon to inspect the damage and thank the rescue workers. He met those who were still pulling body parts from the wreckage. It was impossible for me to get out of my mind the image of the passengers on that doomed plane during their frightful descent. The thought of men and women working quietly in their Pentagon offices and then hearing the deafening roar of the engines or seeing through their windows an unfamiliar shadow about to consume them was equally haunting.

Perhaps noticing my distraction, the President put his arm on my shoulder. “You're carrying a heavy load,” Bush said, “and I appreciate it.” I was grateful for his thoughtfulness, but I knew his load was even heavier, and that the members of our armed forces and their families would in the end bear the heaviest burdens of all.

Two days later President Bush asked me to open the first cabinet meeting after 9/11 with a prayer. I had never been one to wear my faith on my sleeve, but I valued prayer and the connection to the Almighty. I believed those of us in positions of authority needed to keep in mind that all human beings are prone to error. I felt the need to seek the Lord's guidance as we charted our way forward. I began,

L
ooking back on the weeks following 9/11, some accounts suggest an administration that seemed to have a preordained response to the attacks. From my vantage point, however, quite the opposite was the case. It was a time of discovery—of seeking elusive, imperfect solutions for new problems that would not be solved quickly. There was no guidebook or road map for us to follow.

We had discussions at our roundtable meetings in the Pentagon and in the Situation Room at the White House about the best way to characterize the threats our country faced and the nature of the conflict ahead. Early on, President Bush labeled the effort the “war on terror.” In one sense, calling the new conflict a war was helpful. It signaled that he believed treating terrorism as a law enforcement matter and terrorists as common criminals would not be adequate. Bush rightly rejected the longstanding practice of treating jihadist terrorist attacks as simple matters of domestic crime. The term also helped drive home the point that our primary goal was not to punish or retaliate, but rather to prevent additional attacks against America and our interests.

However, I became increasingly uncomfortable with labeling the campaign against Islamist extremists a “war on terrorism” or a “war on terror.” To me, the word “war” focused people's attention on military action, overemphasizing, in my view, the role of the armed forces. Intelligence, law enforcement, public diplomacy, the private sector, finance, and other instruments of national power were all critically important—not just the military. Fighting the extremists ideologically, I believed, would be a crucial element of our country's campaign against them. The word “war” left the impression that there would be combat waged with bullets and artillery and then a clean end to the conflict with a surrender—a winner and a loser, and closure—such as the signing ceremony on the battleship USS
Missouri
to end World War II. It also led many to believe that the conflict could be won by bullets alone. I knew that would not be the case.

I was also concerned about the other word in the phrases: terrorism, or terror. Terror was not the enemy, but rather a feeling. Terrorism was also not the enemy but a tactic our enemies were using successfully against us. Saying we were in a war on terrorism was like saying we were in a war against bombers or we were waging a war on tanks, as opposed to a war against the people using those weapons.

Striving for appropriate nomenclature is part of sound strategic thinking.
⁶
If we did not clearly define who exactly we were at war against, it was harder to define the parameters of victory. As I developed these thoughts over the weeks and months following 9/11, I periodically raised them in the Department, with the President, and with the members of the National Security Council. I urged that we find ways to avoid the phrase war on terror and consider other alternatives.
⁷

The phenomenon we were up against was not easily delineated in a few words. Sometime later, I tried out the phrase “struggle against violent extremists” in place of war on terror. A struggle suggested that military action alone would not be sufficient. Violent extremists seemed to be more accurate than terror or terrorism, but it was not quite right either, in that it stopped short of noting the central fact that our enemies were Islamists. My attempts to calibrate our administration's terminology eventually gave rise to a minor brouhaha in the press.
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Ultimately, President Bush settled the issue and decided against my suggestions by reaffirming that we were fighting a global war on terror. I was not able to come up with a perfect alternative.

From the beginning, members of the administration worked gingerly around the obvious truth that our main enemies were Islamic extremists. I didn't think we could fight the crucial ideological aspect of the war if we were too wedded to political correctness to acknowledge the facts honestly. While we certainly were not at war against Islam, we did intend to fight and defeat those distorting their religious beliefs—their Islamic religious beliefs—to murder innocent people. I thought the best term was
Islamist
extremists, which made clear we were not including all Muslims. Islamism is not a religion but a totalitarian political ideology that seeks the destruction of all liberal democratic governments, of our individual rights, and of Western civilization. The ideology not only excuses but commands violence against the United States, our allies, and other free people. It exalts death and martyrdom. And it is rooted in a radical, minority interpretation of Islam.

The war declared on us was not about any particular policy dispute. Though bin Laden and others referenced their opposition to the U.S. forces based in Saudi Arabia or our policies with respect to the Arab-Israeli conflict, those were more excuses to rally support, recruits, and financing. The intractable Arab-Israeli dispute in particular was a frequently referenced source of irritation to Arab leaders and was used as an excuse for nearly every setback in the region. But in fact the extremists sought a return to an ancient caliphate that would require blurring boundaries in the Middle East and North Africa and part of Spain, putting the territory all under the rule of one pan-Islamic state, much like the Taliban's rule in Afghanistan.

One of the more complex strategic challenges we faced was how to fight an enemy that was present in numerous countries with which we were not at war. Unlike conventional conflicts, where the enemies were nations and the United States could attack the enemy wherever our forces could find him, we knew that our current enemies, the terrorists, were not just in Afghanistan but could also be in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and a number of other countries. These were sovereign countries—and in some cases friends and partners—and there were delicate legal and diplomatic issues involved in sending intelligence operatives or special operations forces, even if we discovered that al-Qaida or another terrorist group might have a cell there. If we asked permission, there was a risk that a country would say no or that the information might leak. If they offered to go after them, we knew they did not have the same capabilities as our forces. Senior Bush administration officials understood that to meet the terrorist challenge, we generally would have to reach an understanding with these countries on the nature of the threat—and on the actions that we could take in response.

Eleven days after 9/11, I sent a note to the President suggesting a way to think about working with our friends and allies in response to the attack. “The mission must determine the coalition,” I wrote. “The coalition ought not determine the mission.”
⁹
The memo stemmed from a conversation I had in my office the day before with israel's resolute former prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. He cautioned against building any permanent alliance that would restrict our flexibility in the future.