At The Center Of The Storm Part 18

After many months lost, months during which insurgents and dissidents gained a valuable foothold, we began the process of setting up an Iraqi intelligence service.

Gen. Mohammed Shawani, the hero of the Iran-Iraq war, was finally selected to head it up and build a service drawn from across the country's ethnic, religious, and tribal groupings. He spoke frankly to the Bush administration in the months after the liberation of Iraq, highlighting his concerns to the president and vice president about the developing insurgency. He was the first senior Iraqi official to identify and speak of Iran's hand in destabilizing his country. (He continued to serve as the director of Iraq's National Intelligence Service as of early 2007, although Iran and elements of the Iraqi s.h.i.+a groupings were working to have him removed because of his anti-Iranian stance.) It may be fair to say that our a.n.a.lysis before the war never precisely predicted the dire circ.u.mstances that would unfold on the ground in Iraq after the initiation of hostilities. What is absolutely clear, however, is that the intelligence generated by our officers on the ground after the war told the story, and the reasons for a deteriorating situation, with great clarity.

How does an insurgency grow in a place like Iraq? It happens when you are late securing your lines. Or when you create a vacuum to be filled by opportunists like al-Qa'ida. It occurs, in essence, when you disenfranchise many of those most able to help you. Also when you refuse to avail yourself of indigenous resources that could provide you with intelligence on insurgent activity. And, finally, when you blind yourself to the evidence that is steadily mounting in front of your eyes.

As the situation turned for the worse, the senior CIA officer on the scene would send in field appraisals. These cables are known internally as "Aardwolves." (The Agency has called such a.s.sessments this for many years-although the origin of the name is obscure. One theory is that in the early days of CIA, someone opened his dictionary to page one, looking for an apt code word, and "Aardwolf" just leapt out.) The common thread running through all the Aardwolves during this period was the threat of the rising insurgency.

On July 8, 2003, a report from CIA's senior officer in Baghdad noted that while normalcy seemed to be gradually returning for "average Iraqis," security for Coalition forces was crumbling. "Among the factors contributing to hostility toward allied forces is a general sense of disappointment at the slow progress in rebuilding Iraq and producing tangible evidence that life will be better...than it was under the former regime." The report went on to mention the demoralizing effect of widespread looting in the aftermath of Saddam's fall, the rise of opportunistic terrorist groups, and the lack of an "effective internal security service."

The report also stated, "In the current environment of confusion, uncertainty and dissatisfaction, the risk exists for violence to quickly become acceptable and justified in the minds of broader sectors of the population."

Six weeks later, on August 20, another Aardwolf noted that "the insurgency is the most pressing security issue the CPA faces in Iraq today.... Success against the insurgents and terrorists requires an immediate and enhanced effort on the part of the coalition. The liberation of Iraq has sparked a revolution among the s.h.i.+a community. This revolution...will only begin to gather momentum. We will face violence and instability in the s.h.i.+a heartland as soon as this sorts itself out."

To this a.s.sessment, Bremer added his own comment that read in part: "It is not clear to me that at its current level, or even if it picks up, this low intensity conflict could erase our gains. The insurgency could certainly challenge parts of the reconstruction program, and it has. But on balance, reconstruction has gone forward...even in the face of this low level conflict." Some journalists have written that we hesitated to pa.s.s our negative reports up the line for fear they would spark an unpleasant reaction. This is absolute nonsense. They all went straight to the top policy makers. We held nothing back. Reports from the field during my tenure were remarkably prescient, and some were leaked to the media at warp speed by various recipients.

The fact that these often gloomy a.s.sessments found their way to the press led some in the administration to believe that CIA was trying to undermine the administration's efforts in Iraq. That was not the case. Although Aardwolves were originally very closely held doc.u.ments, in recent years they have gotten a much wider dissemination. Typically, they are now read at senior levels in the departments of Defense and State, and at the NSC. I have no idea where the leaks came from, but I have no reason to believe that they originated within CIA.

Whoever leaked the Aardwolves could have been motivated by the notion that CIA's a.s.sessments were important and deserved public airing, but he or she could have been equally motivated by the sentiment, shared widely in some parts of the government, that these guys from CIA "don't quite get it and aren't with the program." Leaks, after all, are the improvised explosive devices of inside-the-Beltway warfare.

I remember hearing, after some of the first Aardwolves seeped out, that NSC officials were calling our senior officer in Iraq a "defeatist." That shoot-the-messenger theme came up time and again. He was, of course, being nothing more than a realist, and we did everything we could to see that he got heard on the home front. In addition to disseminating his written report, I brought the senior officer to the Oval Office, when he was back in Was.h.i.+ngton in November 2003, to give the president his frank a.s.sessment of the situation on the ground. Yet as late as April 2004, when it was plain to see that the situation had unraveled, Jerry Bremer was still complaining that one of our senior officer's reports was "over-the-top pessimistic." The newest report, Bremer wrote, "begins to smell like cla.s.sic CYA."

Our senior officer in Baghdad wasn't a lone voice in the wilderness. Bob Grenier sent me a report on Iraq on November 3, 2003, saying that "Security conditions in the center of the country are going from bad to worse." And that attacks on Coalition forces, if allowed to proceed unchecked, threatened the "de facto political dismemberment of the country." In another report to me, Grenier wrote, "It is important to stress that the Sunni Arab insurgency is primarily a political problem, rather than a military one.... We cannot find and kill all those who oppose us, particularly if their members' numbers can grow over time."

Braced and deeply concerned by the consistent, troubling messages I was getting from my team, I felt an obligation to make sure that policy makers got the clear, unvarnished truth as we saw it. We held a series of senior-level briefings in my conference room, where the recipients were removed from their phones, aides, and BlackBerrys. The first was for Condi Rice, Steve Hadley, and several of their key deputies on the NSC staff. We spent about three hours in briefings and discussion. Hadley, in particular, seemed to get our message-that unless we could rea.s.sure significant elements of the Sunni Arab community and bring them into a political process, the insurgency would continue to grow and ultimately split the country. He asked us to prepare an integrated plan for how all elements of U.S. power could be harnessed to arrest this slide. I asked Bob Grenier to prepare it, and he set about with several others to put it together.

An important message delivered was about the magnitude of the challenge we would face in Iraq. The a.n.a.lyst giving the briefing had covered jihads for over a decade. She noted that Iraq would represent roughly the nineteenth in a long series of jihads since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Many Iraqi factional leaders were primed for the greatest jihad yet, against Americans in the Arab heartland. She noted that al-Qa'ida had always been nothing more than an exploiter of jihads, and this one would come exactly at a time when the organization was on the ropes and would allow al-Qa'ida to keep itself alive and to make a comeback.

Apparently the word spread, because we quickly received a request from the vice president for a similar briefing. He, his chief of staff, Scooter Libby, and several of their close aides spent several hours with us, listening carefully and asking thoughtful questions.

The Sunni Arab insurgency that we began to clearly identify in the summer and fall of 2003 was primarily in our view a political problem rather than a military one. While military operations were important, they could be effective only as part of an Iraqi-driven political process, coupled with an economic program that recognized the obvious. Iraq's governates were racked with unemployment, making large numbers of unemployed young men susceptible to recruitment by insurgents. We worked with the military to reach out to Iraqi tribal leaders, moderate clerics, businessmen, and professionals, seeking to provide them with the financial basis to expand their influence and gain a constructive political following. From our perspective there were three critical enablers in reaching out to the Sunni community without which the chances of success would be remote-a s.h.i.+ft in de-Ba'athification, a restoration of at least part of the army, and economic a.s.sistance to quickly put money in the hands of Iraqis.

Our military units enjoyed considerable success with the modest reconstruction funds at their disposal. Yet the funds made available were insufficient and could not be sustained in a meaningful manner to allow us to get traction. The majority of the billions of dollars at U.S. disposal in Iraq were tied up in major long-term projects targeted at structural reform and long-term economic development, which, while valuable on paper, were divorced from the needs on the ground. And as a result, we ended up ceding much of the political s.p.a.ce to the insurgents.

The continued sense of isolation in the Sunni heartland, the complete dissolution of the Iraqi army, rigid de-Ba'athification, and the lack of economic opportunity or political direction provided fuel for the insurgency. In fairness, we cannot say whether some combination of these enablers would have made our efforts with the Sunnis more successful, but none of them was implemented.

CIA was not alone in sending out a dire message. On November 10, 2003, Colin Powell weighed in from the State Department with an a.s.sessment every bit as dark as the ones we were providing. "Given mounting popular discontent with occupation," he wrote, "we cannot sustain the current CPA arrangement long enough to allow completion of the complicated process of drafting a Const.i.tution and holding full-fledged elections.... A credible political process leading to an early transition of power is critical to subduing the growing insurgency that coalition forces face."

That same day, a new Aardwolf came in warning that growing numbers of Iraqis were becoming convinced that the U.S.-led Coalition could be driven from the country and were joining the insurgency. The combination of this Aardwolf and Colin's message sparked the White House to act: the next day, November 11, the president called a quick meeting in the White House Situation Room to hear from CIA what was now becoming a very polished brief. It was Veteran's Day, a federal holiday, and I had to track down some of our top Iraq a.n.a.lysts, who were enjoying a rare day off, and drag them in for the meeting.

Despite the short notice, the president had a.s.sembled quite a crowd. As I recall, he was joined by the vice president, the secretaries of state and defense, Condi Rice, Steve Hadley, Rich Armitage, Paul Wolfowitz, and, in a surprise to us, Jerry Bremer, who was back in town. I brought with me John McLaughlin; one of our most senior operations officers, Rob Richer; Grenier; and three of our a.n.a.lysts. The president said he wanted to find out what the current situation was in Iraq. Don Rumsfeld quickly deferred to CIA. Rich H., one of our lead Iraqi military a.n.a.lysts, started to give a briefing-influenced in large part by the Aardwolf that had come in just the day before. Early in the briefing he mentioned the ongoing "insurgency" in Iraq.

Rumsfeld immediately interrupted and pointedly asked, "Why do you call it an insurgency?"

"Sir," Rich said, "the Department of Defense's definition of insurgency is..." and then he proceeded to list the three necessary conditions that DOD required before the term "insurgency" could be used. All three conditions had obviously been met in Iraq.

The message out of the Oval Office that day was, "No one in this administration will make any reference to an insurgency." Apparently, that message did not filter down, because a few days later, much to the dismay of some at NSC, Gen. John Abizaid, by then head of the U.S. Central Command, described the current uprising-quite accurately-as an insurgency.

At the same briefing, another CIA a.n.a.lyst described how Iraq was the latest in a long series of jihads for Islamic fundamentalists. "Iraq," she said, "came along at exactly the right time for al-Qa'ida." It allowed them to tap into deep wells of support and to inspire a permanent jihadist movement and lure Iraqis into the fight. They were being aided and abetted by experienced facilitators whom we had encountered previously-in Afghanistan, in Bosnia, in Chechnya, and elsewhere.

We ended the presidential briefing with a plea, again, for measures that would address the Sunnis' concerns, and set the conditions that would enable our people on the ground to organize an indigenous opposition to those who were attacking U.S. troops and Iraqi security personnel. We hadn't counted on having Jerry Bremer in the room to hear such a direct attack on the policies he had implemented, but as soon as we finished, the president abruptly turned his gaze on Jerry: "What do you say, Bremer?"

With an air of resignation, Bremer recounted how he, too, had attempted to identify responsible and capable Sunni Arab leaders. There were none, he said. The Iraqi army, moreover, had dissolved itself, and would not be coming back. And as for de-Ba'athification, as strongly as the Sunnis might feel about it, the s.h.i.+a leaders with whom he dealt were every bit as pa.s.sionate, and would never accept a rollback. The message: there's nothing to be done but to continue on the current line of march.

By mid-November 2003, it was clear in the minds of many that something was going to have to change in Iraq. Condi Rice asked Amba.s.sador Robert Blackwill of the NSC staff to go to Baghdad just before Thanksgiving. Blackwill asked Grenier to accompany him. On the way out, Grenier asked him, "What is your mandate?" Blackwill said that Rice had charged him with trying to bring about some changes and that he was going to have a "Socratic dialogue" with Bremer. n.o.body wanted to give Bremer specific marching orders. According to Blackwill, Rice felt she could not order order changes, but she wanted Blackwill to lead Bremer in the direction they thought they needed to go. A major component of that was to be an integrated program of Sunni outreach, including something on de-Ba'athification and a more effective reconstruction of the Iraqi army. In the process, Blackwill met with all the senior British and American officials in CPA, with a number of the provincial coordinators, and with senior U.S. military officials in the field. changes, but she wanted Blackwill to lead Bremer in the direction they thought they needed to go. A major component of that was to be an integrated program of Sunni outreach, including something on de-Ba'athification and a more effective reconstruction of the Iraqi army. In the process, Blackwill met with all the senior British and American officials in CPA, with a number of the provincial coordinators, and with senior U.S. military officials in the field.

On the way back, Blackwill and Grenier agreed that CPA was essentially hopeless; as currently const.i.tuted, it would be neither willing nor capable of doing what was necessary. Blackwill summed up his feelings to Grenier: "The only hope we have is you, CIA, and the deployed military. So it is over to you guys, to figure this thing out and do what you can." According to Grenier, Blackwill came back and wrote a trip report for Rice that was quite stark.

Equally futile, or so it seemed, were our efforts to form a credible and durable Iraqi governing body. In Afghanistan, we had started from the ground up, allowing the various political groups to legitimize themselves, then building toward a central, representational government. In Iraq, the process couldn't have been more different. We never had a conference comparable to the Afghan Loya Jirga that produced a leader, Hamid Karzai, around whom the country could coalesce. Rather, we essentially determined that we would legitimize the Iraqis. We had won the war; we had the guns, the tanks, the soldiers, and the air power. We were in charge, and by G.o.d, we knew what was best. Alas, what too many people in the U.S. government were convinced would be best was an Iraqi government headed up by Ahmed Chalabi.

At another meeting in May 2003, one of our officers said he thought it was unwise for the United States to try to anoint Chalabi or anyone as the new Iraqi leader. Condi Rice asked why. "Iraq has no water, no electricity; employment is in the pits," our officer said. "Anyone we try to install will be seen as responsible for all that and will fail." Steve Hadley reached over and patted the officer on the knee. "I once thought that, too," he said, "but I've come to know differently. It just doesn't work that way."

Sometimes Chalabi's name would be strangely absent from the discussion, although he was obviously on everyone's mind. We would sit around these White House meetings expressing the hope that a strong, unifying Iraqi leader would emerge, and while you could tell that one name was on the minds of many in the room, no one would utter it. You had the impression that some Office of the Vice President and DOD reps were writing Chalabi's name over and over again in their notes, like schoolgirls with their first crush. At other times, so persistent was the cheerleading for Chalabi, and so consistent was our own opposition to imposing him on Iraq, that I finally had to tell our people to lay off the subject. "They all know what we think about him," I can remember saying at one senior-level staff meeting. "He's now in Iraq. He's either going to succeed or not, but Iraqis are going to have to make the decision for themselves."

My view was that Chalabi was not going to fare very well, and I ended up being right. In the parliamentary elections, once they were finally held, his party got practically no votes, no seats. By then, though, we had gotten pretty much accustomed to political controversy in Iraq.

The Coalition struggled to get the new Iraqi government functioning, and CIA tried to help. In prewar discussions about postwar authorities, we sought permission to a.s.sist in identifying nascent Iraqi political figures who could create a new democratic government. Playing a role the Agency had played in many other countries over the years, we asked for authorities to work with Iraqi tribes, to get them to engage in the political process. This time, though, there was a reluctance to allow us to play that role. The reasons are not entirely clear to me, but some elements of the administration were obviously concerned that long-standing animus between the Agency and the INC would stand in the way of the political advancement of Chalabi.

As relayed to me, CPA meetings with Iraqi leaders tended to have an imperious and condescending tone, more in the manner of lectures than discussions. As the security situation continued to spin out of control, potential future leaders among the Iraqis were reluctant to come forward.

Efforts to rebuild an Iraqi army and security force were going badly, but CPA officials kept trying to put a smiley face on that, too, as if wis.h.i.+ng would make things so. At one point, when Armitage's boss, Colin Powell, came out to the region to receive briefings, our CIA senior rep pulled him aside and said that the information being presented about new Iraqi army equipment sets and deployable units was being exaggerated. "I can see that, son," Colin told him. "Believe me, I know a brigade when I see one."

CIA also tried to help out on the political front-and met opposition at almost every turn. We set up a program with some of the Sunni chieftains, exchanging humanitarian a.s.sistance for their cooperation, but Bremer refused to support it. "You are dancing with CIA's old pals," he told one person, referring to the tribal chieftans. On another occasion CIA set up a meeting in the Green Zone with a number of Sunni leaders to try to get them to buy into a new government. One of my officers later told me Bremer walked into the conference room where they were meeting, delivered a twenty-minute diatribe, and walked out again. The Sunnis were furious. We lost contact with half of them in the aftermath.

On yet another occasion, our senior officer on the ground arranged a meeting with fifty-seven former Iraqi generals. The intention was for them to open a dialogue with Lt. Gen. Rick Sanchez, commander of U.S. Army troops in Iraq. The meeting was supposed to be a possible first step toward an interim government, even if none of the ex-generals could serve in it. At the last minute, Bremer told Sanchez not to go. "We will not engage with the enemy," he said.

In May 2004, the CPA was trying to persuade Dr. Iyad Allawi, a prominent Iraqi neurosurgeon and head of the Iraqi National Accord, to agree to take on the position of defense minister in the new provisional government. A s.h.i.+a, Allawi had once been a Ba'ath Party member but had broken ranks with Saddam. In 1978, while living in London, he and his wife were attacked in their home by one of Saddam's a.s.sa.s.sins wielding an axe. Allawi was left for dead. In the mid-1990s, he had been active in the abortive efforts to overthrow Saddam.

I'd met Allawi a number of times before, in Was.h.i.+ngton and London. We didn't know each other well, but as DCI, I was a beneficiary of all the trust and goodwill that the CIA had built up over the years with him and the INA. For that reason, I was asked to go see Allawi and urge him to accept the offer to become defense minister.

We met in a hotel room in Amman, Jordan, just the two of us. My marching orders were to talk tough with him, to make him understand that he had to do this, but I knew Allawi better than that. I knew what he had suffered and what he had placed at risk, and I knew that I wasn't going to be able tell him what to do or how to do it. That's not the way to approach a meeting like this anyway. Instead, I went intent on letting him talk and listening as he voiced his frustrations; and that's what he did.

Allawi, it turned out, had little regard for the CPA. He had been approached to be defense minister, he said, but no one would tell him just what that meant. The bottom line was that he was very uncertain whether he wanted to partic.i.p.ate in anything like this, because he understood there was a high probability that the provisional government simply wouldn't work.

I waited until he was through venting before chiming in. "Iyad," I said, "I can't tell you that you must take this job, but I need to tell you that you must carefully consider it. If good men like you will not put themselves forward for important positions, there is no hope for Iraq."

"George," he responded, "I can't get anyone at CPA to tell me what the duties of this defense minister would be-what his authorities would be, what his limitations are. How can I accept a job that no one will describe?"

I promised that I would ask someone to provide him with details. When the meeting was over, I picked up the phone and called Steve Hadley back in Was.h.i.+ngton. "Steve," I said, "this is a proud man. No one has given him a clue about what is expected of him. You have to get people to reach out to him and explain the process-don't just try to tell him what to do. Consult with him. Ask him how we can get to where we need to go. Uncle Sam ordering guys like this around ain't going to work."

I must have gotten through, because when Allawi returned to Iraq, some of the information he was looking for about the CPA's vision started to flow to him. Very quickly, he was interested enough that he met with a number of other Iraqi leaders and debated next steps. And then, the next thing I knew, Allawi was sending word to Bremer that he was not interested in the defense minister post. However, he was was willing to accept the position of interim prime minister in the provisional government. Allawi, it turned out, had managed to a.s.semble a large number of other Iraqi leaders who fully supported him. willing to accept the position of interim prime minister in the provisional government. Allawi, it turned out, had managed to a.s.semble a large number of other Iraqi leaders who fully supported him.

My first reaction when I heard the news was: Great! Although I wasn't sure Allawi was the right man for the top job-whether a former Ba'athist, s.h.i.+a expatriate could effectively lead a coalition-the bigger point to me was that at last Iraqis were emerging on their own to legitimize their future government. But instead of looking on this as a G.o.dsend-finally, some home-brewed unity and leaders.h.i.+p!-many in Was.h.i.+ngton viewed Allawi's emergence as a CIA plot. Almost immediately, Bremer ordered our senior officer in Baghdad to stay away from Allawi, a man whom days earlier we had been asked to meet with and urge into greater involvement in the political process.

Iyad Allawi was and remains far too independent to be anyone's puppet. He knew his country, he knew the challenges, and he had perhaps the best chance of bringing order out of the chaos that had become Iraq. In the end he had to fight various sectarian opponents to achieve success. The fight proved too hard. To my mind, it was a loss. But that could be said about Iraq in general, too.

Perhaps the greatest disappointment of postwar Iraq was trying to create an Iraqi army. By the time Allawi took over as prime minister of the interim Iraqi government in June 2004, it was clear that the training effort was going badly. Although battalion-strength units were being turned out, their discipline was poor, and they would often dissolve in battle. Senior U.S. military officers began to mutter darkly that the problem was not U.S. training but Iraqi leaders.h.i.+p. This came as no surprise to some. For months, General Shawani had been complaining loudly, including to senior White House officials, that the U.S. training effort was deeply flawed. Armies, he said, are built from the top down. You've got to begin with a respected general who can put together a competent divisional staff. The brigade and battalion staffs and their subordinate units can then be built out in turn. The traditional Iraqi army had always been based on those highly personal ties of loyalty and trust. The United States, Shawani said, was not building an army; it was training a series of militias, with no indigenous logistics or support, no respected leaders.h.i.+p above the battalion level, and no Iraqi command and control. As an antidote, Shawani proposed that a number of respected senior Iraqi generals, whom he and others could identify and vet, be called back to reconst.i.tute the five traditional "territorial" divisions of the Iraqi army. They would be allowed to form their own staffs, and then incorporate U.S.-trained units into a coherent division-level command structure. In this way, a provisional Iraqi government could rebuild a unifying national inst.i.tution in service of a unified state.

Word was that this was what Prime Minister Allawi intended to do. Immediately after his accession, however, a DOD delegation led by Paul Wolfowitz traveled to Baghdad to meet with Allawi. When he explained his plan to them, they listened politely and then inquired how he intended to pay for it. It was clear that DOD would not; they would continue to train battalions completely dependent upon American support.

There were many bizarre twists to the Iraq story, none more so than the continuing theatrics of Ahmed Chalabi. During President Bush's State of the Union speech on January 20, 2004, Chalabi was given a seat of honor in the gallery near the First Lady. Just a few weeks later, he was quoted in the British newspaper the Daily Telegraph Daily Telegraph saying that he and his INC were "heroes in error" and that he had no qualms about information he had pa.s.sed to the U.S. government, since his organization had been "entirely successful" in achieving what they wanted, the removal of Saddam Hussein. In March he appeared on CBS's saying that he and his INC were "heroes in error" and that he had no qualms about information he had pa.s.sed to the U.S. government, since his organization had been "entirely successful" in achieving what they wanted, the removal of Saddam Hussein. In March he appeared on CBS's 60 Minutes 60 Minutes blaming U.S. intelligence for not doing a good enough job checking out the flawed information blaming U.S. intelligence for not doing a good enough job checking out the flawed information his organization his organization was peddling. was peddling.

"What the h.e.l.l is going on with Chalabi?" the president asked me at a White House meeting that spring. "Is he working for you?" Rob Richer, who was with me at the meeting, piped up, "No sir, I believe he is working for DOD." All eyes s.h.i.+fted to Don Rumsfeld. "I'll have to check what his status is," Rumsfeld said. His undersecretary for intelligence, Steve Cambone, sat there mute. "I don't think he ought to be working for us," the president dryly observed.

A few weeks later the president again raised the issue. "What's up with Chalabi?" he asked. Paul Wolfowitz said, "Chalabi has a relations.h.i.+p with DIA and is providing information that is saving American lives. CIA can confirm that." The president turned to us. "I know of no such information, Mr. President," Richer said. The president looked to Condi Rice and said, "I want Chalabi off the payroll."

At a subsequent meeting, chaired by Condi Rice, DIA confirmed that they were paying the INC $350,000 a month for its services in Baghdad. We knew that the INC's armed militia had seized tens of thousands of Saddam regime doc.u.ments and was slowly doling them out to the U.S. government. Beyond that it was unclear to me what the Pentagon was getting for its money. Somehow the president's direction to pull the plug on the arrangement continued to be ignored.

It was about this time that we received reliable information that Chalabi was pa.s.sing highly sensitive cla.s.sified information to the Iranians. This should have been the final straw-but nothing is ever final with Chalabi. The CPA ordered a raid on his offices. Chalabi later claimed that CIA was behind a plot to undermine him. In truth we didn't even know about the raid until after it had taken place. Finally, in May 2004, the INC's services contract with DIA was terminated. While Chalabi was accused of all manner of malfeasance, nothing ever came of the charges. In the December 2005 elections, Chalabi's party garnered about 0.5 percent of the vote and won not a single seat in Parliament.

The true tragedy of Iraq is that it didn't have to be this way. I can't begin to say with absolute clarity how things might have worked out, but I have to believe that if we had been more adept at not alienating entire sectors of the Iraqi population and elites; if we had been smarter at the front end; if we had thought about reconstruction from the perspective of how much money we could put in people's hands so that they would know they had a steady stream of income; if we had figured out a way to let Iraqis know that they actually did have a role in their future that went beyond words, a role they could see being implemented in practice on the ground-we would be far better off today.

To be certain, we were never going to return to the Iraq of old. Sunnis would never occupy the privileged positions they once enjoyed. We backed an increase in s.h.i.+a power and we did not allow any sort of equivalent Sunni alternative to form.

Whenever you decide to take the country to war, you have to know not only that you can defeat the enemy militarily but that you have a very clear game plan that will allow you to keep the peace. There was never any doubt that we would defeat the Iraqi military. What we did not have was an integrated and open process in Was.h.i.+ngton that was organized to keep the peace, nor did we have unity of purpose and resources on the ground. Quite simply, the NSC did not do its job.

As early as the fall of 2003, it was becoming clear that our political and economic strategy was not working. The data were available, the trends were clear. Those in charge of U.S. policy operated within a closed loop. Bad news was ignored. Our own subsequent reporting-reporting that eventually would prove spot-on in its predictions of what came to pa.s.s on the ground-was dismissed. Yet little was done to make the adjustments necessary to avoid being overwhelmed by a growing domestic insurgency. Too big a burden was placed on the military to deal with problems that at their root could not be solved simply by using more force. We could never subdue an entire country, because we were not meant to stay.

Despite the consequences of decisions regarding de-Ba'athification or disbanding of the army, and the inability to use the billions of dollars at our disposal to implement a political strategy that might have succeeded, not much was done to change course. In the way of Was.h.i.+ngton, it is too easy to blame Jerry Bremer, who gave up a year of his life to serve in difficult circ.u.mstances, and who worked in a chain of command. In many ways, he was set up for failure.

The president was not served well, because the NSC became too deferential to a postwar strategy that was not working. This was no time for a subtle "Socratic dialogue" with Jerry Bremer. The National Security Council was created in 1947 to force important policy decisions to be fully discussed, developed, and decided on. In this case, however, the NSC did not fulfill its role. The NSC avoided slamming on the brakes to force the discussions with the Pentagon and everyone else that was required in the face of a deteriorating situation. By sending Bob Blackwill out to chat with Bremer, NSC subst.i.tuted a time-tested process for one almost guaranteed to fail.

The critical missing element was an Iraqi government that could have helped us. We decided instead to have Americans administer Iraq. It may have worked in World War II, after the entire world fought against n.a.z.i Germany for many years. But in the context of the Middle East, it was not going to work any more than the French occupation of Algeria. To Arabs it looked as though this was all about occupation as opposed to liberation. We were dismissive about the capacity of Iraqis to control their own future. We have struggled ever since.

CHAPTER 24

Sixteen Words

Condi, we have a problem."

The national security advisor hated it when I would tell her that, but not as much as I hated saying it. Unfortunately, my job sometimes required that I use those words.

Now, in mid-June of 2003, I was obliged to use them again. I had called to tell her that it was time-past time, actually-that we all admit that some language in the president's State of the Union speech six months prior should not have been there. The words at issue were: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quant.i.ties of uranium from Africa." Those words would later create a firestorm, but at the time of the State of the Union speech, they were barely noticed.

This story begins on Sat.u.r.day, October 5, 2002. I was at work in my office when several members of my staff came to say they were having trouble getting the White House to remove some language from a speech the president was preparing to deliver in Cincinnati. The sixth-draft speech a.s.serted that Saddam's regime had "been caught attempting to purchase up to 500 metric tons of uranium oxide from sources in Africa-an essential ingredient in the enrichment process." a.n.a.lytically, the staff said, we could not support such a statement. Having testified to Congress only the day before on the matter, I was well familiar with the controversy. I picked up the phone and called Steve Hadley. Our conversation was short and direct. "Steve, take it out," I said, telling him that he did not want the president to be a "fact witness" on this issue. The facts, I told him, were too much in doubt.

My executive a.s.sistant followed up with a memo to the speechwriter and Hadley to confirm our concerns. It said in part: "Remove the sentence [regarding Saddam's attempt to purchase uranium oxide] because the amount is in dispute and it is debatable whether [uranium oxide] can be acquired from the source. We told Congress that the Brits have exaggerated this issue. Finally, the Iraqis already have 550 metric tons of uranium oxide in their inventory."

The White House removed the language, but the next day, Sunday, one of our senior a.n.a.lysts sent yet another memo to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, further driving home the reasons why CIA thought the offending words should not be uttered by the president. That memo said in part:

More on why we recommend removing the sentence about [Saddam's] procuring uranium oxide from Africa: Three points (1) The evidence is weak. One of the two mines cited by the source as the location of the uranium oxide is flooded. The other mine cited by the source is under the control of French authorities. (2) The procurement is not particularly significant to Iraq's nuclear ambitions because the Iraqis already have a large stock of uranium oxide in their inventory. And (3) we have shared points one and two with Congress, telling them that the Africa story is overblown and telling them this was one of two issues where we differed with the British.

The memo has a handwritten note on the bottom from Mike Morell: "This has been sent to the White House (Rice, Hadley, Gerson)." (Mike Gerson was then the White House chief speechwriter.) Despite all that, the African yellowcake story would unhappily reemerge three months later, in the president's 2003 State of the Union address.

Thanks to some stories in the press, the ill-advised inclusion of those words in the State of the Union had become a flap. I picked up the handset on my "MLP"-a bulky white "secure" telephone over which one can discuss highly cla.s.sified information without fear of the call being intercepted. If I pressed one b.u.t.ton, I could call the president; if I pressed another, I would have the secretary of defense on the line, the secretary of state, or, as I did this day, the national security advisor.

I was calling from my office on the seventh floor of CIA's headquarters. Except for the addition of technological advances like the MLP, the office hadn't changed much in the forty years since the building opened: wood paneled on three sides, with a long expanse of floor-to-ceiling windows looking out over trees along the Potomac and toward Maryland and the District of Columbia.

Saddam and his search for African uranium had been based on questionable intelligence. In truth, the case suggesting that Saddam was reconst.i.tuting his nuclear weapons program was much weaker than the evidence suggesting that he was working on chemical and biological weapons. But the vision of a despot like Saddam getting his hands on nuclear weapons was galvanizing. The notion provided an irresistible image for speechwriters, spokesmen, and politicians to seize on.

Our NIE had said that Saddam was unlikely to have a nuclear weapon before the end of the decade. But it had also said that if someone gave him fissile material, he could have a weapon much sooner. If Saddam were smuggling uranium, it would mean he was going to the trouble to enrich his own.

The issue was not trivial-even if this bit of intelligence, his supposed attempts to obtain uranium suitable for enriching, known as "yellowcake," was far from solid information. The allegation was worthy of investigation. Based on what we found, however, it was not worthy of inclusion in a presidential speech.

When President Bush addressed the Joint Session of Congress on January 28, 2003, the handful of words toward the end of the lengthy address received very little attention from most people. But at that moment, they got absolutely no attention from me. I was at home, in bed, asleep. You won't find many Was.h.i.+ngton officials who will admit to not watching the most important political speech of the year, but I was exhausted from fifteen months of nonstop work and worry since the tragedy of 9/11. Frankly, too, I was relieved that, unlike in the Clinton administration, where my job had Cabinet status, I no longer was obliged to attend ritual events like the State of the Union.

In addition to dealing with the usual array of difficult Counterterrorism decisions over the previous few weeks, I had also been handling some political infighting over the planned Terrorist Threat Integration Center (TTIC), whose creation the president planned to announce in his speech. TTIC, which later evolved into the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), was very controversial within the intelligence community. The president's plan called for CIA, FBI, and the Department of Homeland Security to have parts of their organizations stripped away to create this new ent.i.ty. It wasn't clear who would be in charge of TTIC, who would select its leaders.h.i.+p, or what functions the various agencies might lose. (If you want to stir up a hornet's nest in Was.h.i.+ngton, try taking responsibility away from proud agencies.) The planning for the move was being held in strict secrecy, so that the announcement in the State of the Union speech would make news. The underlying secrecy made the bureaucratic players even more paranoid. I had to calm jangled nerves of several of my senior deputies, who feared that the loss of people to TTIC would render their own organizations ineffective.

Six weeks later there was a brief flurry of interest when the International Atomic Energy Administration (IAEA) determined that some doc.u.ments they had been given by the United States relating to charges of Iraqi interest in Niger's uranium were forgeries. But the report came out just days before the start of the Iraq war, and the issue was lost in the noise. By that time, the die was already cast, and there was not much debate going on about bits and pieces of the underlying intelligence.

A second minor squall blew up in May when New York Times New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote that a U.S. envoy had been sent to Niger and reported back to the CIA and State Department, debunking the Niger uranium story. But again the story did not have, at least in Was.h.i.+ngton, what they call "legs." The column appeared just days after the president declared an end to major combat in Iraq while standing beneath a banner that read, "Mission Accomplished." columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote that a U.S. envoy had been sent to Niger and reported back to the CIA and State Department, debunking the Niger uranium story. But again the story did not have, at least in Was.h.i.+ngton, what they call "legs." The column appeared just days after the president declared an end to major combat in Iraq while standing beneath a banner that read, "Mission Accomplished."

The story came back to life again in June when Walter Pincus, a veteran intelligence reporter for the Was.h.i.+ngton Post Was.h.i.+ngton Post, started asking questions around town about a former U.S. amba.s.sador who, he said, had been dispatched by CIA in response to questions from the vice president about the Niger uranium allegations. When Pincus first called us, the press office needed a day or two just to figure out what he was talking about. The amba.s.sador's trip sixteen months earlier had been authorized at a low level within CPD, the Counterproliferation Division of the Directorate of Operations at CIA, and had produced such inconclusive results that the press office had trouble finding people who remembered the details of the trip. Eventually, our spokesman was able to figure out the story behind Pincus's inquiry. Yes, they told Pincus, there was such a trip but, no, the mission had not been undertaken at the vice president's behest, and the vice president was never briefed on the trip's less-than-compelling results.

What they didn't know at the time, of course, was that Pincus had learned about the Niger mission from Amba.s.sador Joseph Wilson, the man CPD had asked to undertake the trip.

How did the trip happen? Several of our briefers had received questions not only from the vice president but also from the State Department and DOD about a February 2002 Defense Intelligence Agency report that first raised the possibility of Iraq having sought uranium from Niger. "What more do you know about this?" they were asked. "Hardly anything," was the answer. Midlevel officials in CPD decided on their own initiative to see if they could learn more. Someone had the idea that Joe Wilson might be a good candidate to look into the matter. He'd helped them on a project once before, and he'd be easy to contact because his wife worked in CPD. Wilson agreed and undertook the a.s.signment without compensation. Only his expenses were reimbursed.

Critics have subsequently suggested that our selecting Wilson demonstrated that the Agency had it in for the administration. After all, wasn't he a supporter of the Democrats? I would argue that his selection ill.u.s.trates that Agency officers often don't give a second thought to U.S. domestic politics. The report that Saddam might be getting yellowcake from Niger was not an issue of left or right-it was either right or wrong.

Not surprisingly, local officials in Niger denied illegally selling uranium to Iraq. Wilson didn't even write up a report; he gave an oral briefing to two CIA a.n.a.lysts at his home one evening over Chinese takeout food. Their summary of his remarks said that the officials denied selling yellowcake to Iraq but that one official admitted Iraq had been seeking expanded trade relations with Niger. The presumption was that the only thing Niger had worth trading was yellowcake.

This unremarkable report was disseminated, but because it produced no solid answers, there wasn't any urgency to brief its results to senior officials such as the vice president. Had the vice president been in Was.h.i.+ngton at the time, his personal PDB briefer might have mentioned it, but as it happened, Cheney was on a ten-day overseas trip when the report came out. By the time he returned to Was.h.i.+ngton, there were undoubtedly more pressing things to brief him on. As far as we could tell, the Wilson summary was never delivered to Cheney. In fact, I have no recollection myself of hearing about Wilson's trip at the time.

Pincus's story, which ran in the Was.h.i.+ngton Post Was.h.i.+ngton Post on June 12, revived interest in the State of the Union address and yellowcake, and for several days thereafter the rest of the news media chased the issue, trying to sort out who had said what to whom-and how those sixteen words had gotten into the speech. Several follow-on stories by Pincus cited sources close to the vice president complaining that CIA had "failed" to keep them informed. It was pretty clear that some anonymous staffers in the vice president's office were trying to make sure that if there were any fallout over the issue, CIA would solely be held at fault. This became a familiar theme for us. on June 12, revived interest in the State of the Union address and yellowcake, and for several days thereafter the rest of the news media chased the issue, trying to sort out who had said what to whom-and how those sixteen words had gotten into the speech. Several follow-on stories by Pincus cited sources close to the vice president complaining that CIA had "failed" to keep them informed. It was pretty clear that some anonymous staffers in the vice president's office were trying to make sure that if there were any fallout over the issue, CIA would solely be held at fault. This became a familiar theme for us.

Then the issue seemed to have died again. And for me, the matter was nowhere near the top of my list of things to worry about that spring. Yes, the temperature was rising, but at any given time dozens of such issues are bubbling in Was.h.i.+ngton. Try as you might, you never know which mini-crises will subside and which will boil over. When I called Condi that June to express my concern over the matter, I was troubled by the weak intelligence that underlay the phrase, not with Joe Wilson. I have to admit, I did not see trouble looming when I first learned that Wilson's wife, Valerie, was a CIA employee. I did not view that as a big deal or a political vulnerability, or much of anything, for that matter. Condi called several days after my call to say the White House would not be issuing any statements saying that the Niger material should not have been used. Condi made it clear to me that this was not her decision.

Sunday morning, July 6, dawned a typical Was.h.i.+ngton summer's day. I tried not to go into work on Sundays so I could spend as much time as possible with my family. But work always came to me. My ever-present security detail delivered a stack of overnight cable traffic, intelligence a.n.a.lysis on critical issues, and a thick package of clippings from the morning's newspapers, called the Media Highlights, with stories relating to intelligence. Prominently displayed in the Media Highlights was a column written by Amba.s.sador Wilson that appeared in the morning's New York Times New York Times. Apparently, he had decided that feeding anonymous stories to Kristof and Pincus had not achieved his goals, so this time he outed himself in an Op-Ed piece t.i.tled "What I Didn't Find in Africa."

While the earlier Kristof and Pincus articles had touched off brush fires, the Wilson Op-Ed and subsequent TV appearances ignited a firestorm. I'd been around Was.h.i.+ngton long enough to know that when you attach a name to an allegation, the story has much greater traction. If there were any doubt, it was removed when I tuned in to NBC's Meet the Press Meet the Press that morning and saw the guest host, Andrea Mitch.e.l.l, interview Joe Wilson on his allegations that the administration had ignored his findings and hyped the Niger information even though, in his estimation, they "knew" the claim not to be true. that morning and saw the guest host, Andrea Mitch.e.l.l, interview Joe Wilson on his allegations that the administration had ignored his findings and hyped the Niger information even though, in his estimation, they "knew" the claim not to be true.

By Monday morning virtually every major news organization was chasing the story. Ari Fleisher, the soon-to-depart White House spokesman, was swamped with questions at his early morning press "gaggle," an on-the-record but off-camera media briefing. Ari told reporters that there was "zero, nada, nothing" new in the weekend's coverage other than the fact that Wilson's name was now attached to the allegations. He was pressed on whether the White House still stood by the words in the "SOTU"-Was.h.i.+ngton-speak for the State of the Union address.

Fleisher danced around that, but later that day-after the president, the White House staff, and the traveling press corps departed on a trip to Africa-Ari's staff finally released a brief statement acknowledging that the uranium language should not have been included in the speech. The White House had finally gotten around to saying the obvious-saying, indeed, what I had said to Condi Rice a few weeks before. I know of no meeting that was convened to come to this decision. The White House staff simply read the tea leaves after Joe Wilson's weekend media appearances and decided to commit truth.

That should have ended the matter. The White House essentially admitted that "mistakes were made," "we're sorry," and "let's move on." Each day brought fresh stories quoting anonymous officials pointing fingers at each other's organizations. Pundits began opining that the White House had deliberately misled the American people. The word "lied" was bandied about by administration critics.