500 Days (14 page)

Yeah, right.
“Senator, I understand your points. We just disagree.”

A pause. “I think you’re making a big mistake.”

With that, Specter hung up. Frustrated and angered, he returned to the floor. The clerk had been running down the roll for senators’ votes for several minutes and had just called for the decision of Olympia Snow, Republican from Maine. She said aye.

“Mr. Specter?” the clerk said.

A few seconds ticked by. Finally, Specter swallowed his worries and voted yes. The resolution passed unanimously.

Several Democratic senators had cast their votes with unease, including Biden. The best way to deal with those concerns, he decided, was to address the chamber and clearly state what he had just approved—and what he had not.

Biden walked to the lectern on the Democrats’ side of the chamber. The presiding senator recognized him to speak.

“My mom has an expression,” he began. “ ‘Out of every tragedy some good will come.’ ”

What the Senate had just done, he said, was something that would likely not occur in any other country in the world. They had followed the principles enshrined in the law, despite the anger and hatred spawned throughout the United States and inside the Senate chamber by the terrorist attacks.

“We didn’t pell-mell just say ‘Go, do anything, anytime, anyplace, Mr. President, you’ve got to just go.’ ”

Instead, Biden said, they had honored America’s founders by holding fast to the dictates of the Constitution.

“We said, ‘What does it call for here?’ And what it called for was for the United States Congress to meet its constitutional responsibility to say, ‘Mr. President, we authorize you, we authorize you in the name of the American people, to take action and we define the action in generic terms.’ ”

Biden turned toward Robert Byrd, the West Virginia Democrat who was the second-longest-serving senator in American history and who jealously guarded Congress’s authority. Byrd was nodding forcefully.

Gesticulating to emphasize his message, Biden faced front again. “We gave the president today, as we should have and as is our responsibility, all of the authority he needs to prosecute these individuals or countries, without yielding our constitutional right to retain the judgment in the future as to whether or not force could, would, or should be used.”

For Biden, the record was clear; Congress was not granting the president a blank check and was not ceding any of its inherent powers to the White House.

He glanced back at Byrd. The elderly senator pursed his lips as he proudly nodded again.

•  •  •  

Bush sat at his desk in the Oval Office speaking by phone to Tony Blair in London. The United States, Bush said, was nailing down its plans for attacking its terrorist enemies.

“We’re going to be using conventional forces to fight a guerrilla war,” he said. “We’re going to be matching that up with the full force of the U.S. military, with bombers coming from all directions.”

The first phase of the conflict, Bush said, was not going to be limited to combat in Afghanistan. “We’re cutting off money, we’re rounding up people, we’ve gotten people to go after them.”

Each step, Bush said, would set in motion events that would eat away at the entire terrorist infrastructure. “It’ll be like circles coming from a pebble dropped in the water.”

Blair listened with growing alarm about Bush’s words. There was no mention of a multinational response. Instead, there was an echo of the president’s apparent disdain for consulting the Group of Eight. America, Blair feared, might be turning inward, in its anger developing a go-it-alone mentality. Such an approach would only isolate the country. It would be a strategic blunder that could blunt or even derail America’s fight against terrorists.

Afghanistan was only the beginning, Bush continued. If the United States took out al-Qaeda and stopped there, the war would reach an inconclusive stalemate. Other terrorists would simply take al-Qaeda’s place. There had to be a strategy to starve, disrupt, and destroy all terrorist groups.

“The next step is to look at other countries, including Iraq,” Bush said. “I think there might be evidence that there might be a connection between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.”

Time to reel this in.
“The evidence would have to be very compelling indeed to justify taking any action against Iraq,” Blair said. “I would strongly advise dealing with Afghanistan very distinctively. To go after Iraq would be certain to lose Russia and France.”

Bush listened politely, and thanked Blair for his thoughts. But the United States would be following the terrorist threat wherever it went, and his administration had little doubt that the trail would lead to Iraq.

•  •  •  

Blair hung up the phone and glanced around the room at his aides. They could see that the prime minister was quite troubled.

They had to do something. Bush was going in the wrong direction. “We have to think of a way of getting to the U.S. for a face-to-face meeting,” he said. “I need to see Bush in a room, and look in his eyes, not do all this in phone calls with fifteen people listening in.”

He summarized the conversation, then looked over at David Manning, a foreign policy advisor. “David,” Blair said, “I want you to stay in permanent contact with Condi, and make sure they do nothing too rash.”

The group spent a few minutes mulling over the military strategies that Bush had laid out. When Blair mentioned Bush’s plans for Iraq, Geoff Hoon, the defense secretary, spoke up.

“Rumsfeld has been looking for reasons to hit Iraq,” he said. “They definitely want regime change, and that has been the channel of advice Bush has been getting since the election.”

Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, broke in. “They would be mad to do Iraq without justification!” he said. “They’ll lose world opinion.”

Nodding, Blair took a deep breath. “My job,” he said, “is to steer them in a sensible path.”

•  •  •  

High atop the bucolic Catoctin Mountains in Maryland sits Camp David, a 180-acre compound ringed by three fences and obscured from public view.
Presidents and their families have often described the retreat as a rustic, wilderness getaway where ordinary Americans would feel at home. But in truth, it is far from modest; with its heated pool, skeet range, bowling alley, and movie theater, Camp David is a sumptuous spread more akin to a five-star resort than a backwoods campsite.

On the morning of September 15, a Saturday, Camp David was alive with activity as top administration officials—guarded by a beefed-up contingent of the elite Marine Security Company—plotted the final details for America’s retaliation to the terrorist attacks.

Bush, dressed in a blue shirt and a bomber jacket to ward off the chilly mountain air, left his Camp David residence early and walked to Laurel Lodge, a building in the compound. He made his way into a narrow, wood-paneled conference room and took a seat directly across from George Tenet, who was accompanied by his deputy, John McLaughlin, and Cofer Black.

After a brief presentation by Paul O’Neill, the treasury secretary, Tenet distributed copies of a briefing packet that had been compiled by the counterterrorism unit. The title projected its ambitions: “Destroying International Terrorism.”

The actions that the paper proposed were the same ones that the CIA had been advocating for more than a year. Elite agency paramilitary units would sneak into Afghanistan and link up with the Northern Alliance. Later this would be joined by Special Forces from the military.

The initial goal, Tenet said, was to close off Afghanistan from the outside world, which would require engaging its neighbors—Iran, Turkey, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Pakistan. At that point, Tenet said, America’s only strong relationship was with the Uzbeks; they had been secretly aiding the United States to conduct surveillance flights over Afghanistan by granting permission for the CIA to launch the Predator from their country.

First the Americans would demand that officials with Afghanistan’s Taliban government turn over bin Laden. If they refused, the CIA would demolish the regime. Agency operatives would step up their contacts with Pashtun leaders and Taliban commanders who they believed would turn on their leader, the inarticulate village cleric, Mullah Mohammed Omar.

The now-familiar elements of a full-frontal assault on al-Qaeda were part of the presentation—a covert attack on the terrorists’ finances, tracking down al-Qaeda cells in the United States, using mullahs on the agency payroll for propaganda efforts, employing the Predator to track down and kill bin Laden
or his top lieutenants. Agency operatives would need the authority to unilaterally detain the terrorists anywhere in the world. And the efforts would require a huge infusion of cash.

To accomplish this, the president would have to clear away bureaucratic hurdles by signing a Memorandum of Notification granting the agency the authority to conduct operations, including the use of deadly force, without having to return time and again for approval. Al-Qaeda operated out of ninety-two countries, Tenet said, but if the president signed off on the proposals, the CIA would be ready to go; already, the agency had allies in scores of countries, disrupting terrorist plots.

“That’s great!” Bush exclaimed.

Now it was the military’s turn. General Hugh Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, laid out three options. If the president wanted to move quickly, he could follow in Clinton’s footsteps by launching cruise missiles into Afghanistan and obliterating al-Qaeda camps—which, unfortunately, had emptied out just before the 9/11 attacks. Bush dismissed the idea. A more aggressive approach, Shelton said, would be to rain down destruction on military targets with sustained attacks, lasting about ten days, with both cruise missiles and bomber aircraft—B-1s, B-2s, and B-52s.

The third alternative was the most ambitious of all: an assault using every offensive force at the military’s disposal. Missiles, bombers, Special Forces commando units, perhaps army soldiers and marines, could all be part of the mix. This, he said, was being called the “boots on the ground” option. It would take time to get the first forces there—perhaps as long as twelve days—but after that point they would be ready to go.

As Bush listened to Shelton expound the military plans, he felt a rising sense of disappointment. None of this seemed imaginative—it was as unimpressive as the CIA strategy had been electrifying. He was in a hurry for a strategy, and it was growing increasingly clear that the military couldn’t put a viable one together quickly.

The discussions became free-floating, almost unmoored. Officials brought up old ideas and new challenges—a report by the United States Agency for International Development was raised, showing that the northern part of Afghanistan was on the cusp of a drought-induced famine. Unless specific attention was given to that threat, any war effort could lead to mass starvation.

As the talks wore on throughout the day, the core strategic elements of the
war against terrorism crystallized. The path ahead was clear. But before the meeting ended, Cheney raised a question.

“Suppose this doesn’t work?” he asked. “Then what do we do?”

•  •  •  

Just past 4:30 on the next afternoon, Donald Henderson, called “D.A.” by everyone who knew him, was sitting in an easy chair in the den of his Baltimore home. It was a lazy Sunday afternoon, and Henderson was taking in the calming view of his nearby Japanese garden.

A renowned epidemiologist, Henderson in the 1960s had led an international team of scientists in what eventually proved to be a successful effort to eradicate smallpox. Following thirteen years as dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, Henderson had served as a senior government advisor with expertise in communicable disease. While he had returned to academia in 1995, he was still seen by senior government officials as one of the country’s best minds on the use of microbes to create biological weapons. Now, at seventy-three years old, Henderson was planning to retire, to slow down, to travel, and to enjoy life with his wife, Nana.

As Henderson lounged in his upholstered chair, his home telephone rang. On the line was an aide to Tommy Thompson, the secretary of health and human services with the Bush administration.

“Can you come to a meeting in Washington?” the aide asked.

“When?”

“Tonight at seven. We’re asking ‘What’s next?’ We’d like you to be there.”

Henderson understood. Administration officials weren’t just wrestling over how to deal with the September 11 attacks, but were preparing for future strikes, including those that might involve bioterrorism.

After telling his wife about the call, Henderson climbed into his silver Volvo and drove off for Washington.

•  •  •  

Inside the Roosevelt Room at the White House, the topic was smallpox.

Bush, Cheney, and the war cabinet were sitting at the conference table as Michael Brown, the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, briefed them on the horrendous power of biological weapons. The meeting had been called at the vice president’s request and a number of the country’s top epidemiological experts had been invited to attend. As the secretary of defense during the Persian Gulf War in 1991, the vice president knew about the stores
of anthrax, botulism toxins, and VX nerve agents that Saddam Hussein had stockpiled. Deadly in even small quantities, any of these substances could be transported across national borders with little risk of detection; at this very moment one of them might be in the hands of terrorists somewhere.

Bush and Cheney both fervently believed another wave of attacks was imminent—most likely involving a biological weapon, with anthrax or smallpox the prime candidates. The Secret Service had already begun monitoring the air inside and outside the White House for contaminants, and Cheney had taken to traveling with a full biohazard suit at the ready. As for Bush, he still could not shake what he had learned in his first intelligence briefing almost a year before, when Ben Bonk of the CIA had sneaked a functional biological bomb into a meeting; anyone in the country, the president understood, was in danger of being killed by such a weapon. Al-Qaeda, Saddam, any terrorist group could launch an attack with viruses and bacteria. The smallpox virus made an almost perfect weapon, Bush and his aides were told. The incubation period for the illness was long—about twelve days, enough time for the pathogen to spread widely before anyone showed symptoms. Smallpox attacks skin cells, causing lesions to erupt on the faces and bodies of the infected. In its most malignant form, it can trigger severe bleeding in the skin, mucous membranes, and stomach, leading to an agonizing death for one of every three victims.