Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War (46 page)

On November 12, when the Obama transition team leaders showed up at the Pentagon to get down to business, awkwardness set in. I was traveling overseas. No matter how well organized, well intentioned, and cordial a transition team is, its arrival in a cabinet department after an election always has the aura of a hostile takeover.
We’re in, you’re out. We’ll now fix everything you screwed up over the past four or eight years
. Often smug arrogance is plainly visible behind the smiles. Fortunately, the leaders of the Obama Defense transition team were Michèle Flournoy and John P. White, both of whom had served in the Defense Department during the Clinton administration and were at once knowledgeable and straight-shooters. What they did not know was that Obama had already asked me to stay, and so this transition would be like none other in the history of Defense. Rangel told them the Pentagon would support their efforts. He said our department wanted to focus on their needs and had dedicated staff and office space to support them, along with materials to help the new team in their first months in office. Rangel also told them that a number of appointees were prepared to remain in place while key Obama nominees went through the confirmation process, although that was completely up to the incoming administration. He suggested that they appoint a senior person to join our front office who could quickly get up to speed on issues and crises we were dealing with, observe the
decision-making process, and thus be able to understand better the situations around the world that Obama would inherit on January 20.

Upon my return, I met with Flournoy and White on November 20. Afterward Flournoy sent Rangel a list of questions regarding current operations and possible contingencies. They wanted an overview of current military operations globally; how we had been balancing risk between Iraq and Afghanistan and other challenges around the world; our strategy and operations for combating terrorism; future contingencies that Obama should know about before January 20; the cyber threat; options for dealing with Iran; options for dealing with Russia; and planned changes in U.S. global military posture. She asked that we proceed with staff discussions at the “secret” level, which would allow for informed discussion of most issues but nothing too sensitive. The challenge for me and my staff, at this point, was that we had no idea who from the transition team would end up in senior Defense positions; I had no intention of briefing sensitive military contingencies or operations to individuals who were in the building in November and December but might not be after January 20. Also, high-level security clearances would have to be obtained. Bush and Steve Hadley had been very specific about not opening the door to the transition team on current counterterrorism, intelligence, and Iran- and Pakistan-related operations.

I agreed to Flournoy’s request with several caveats: I did not want the transition team briefed on the reviews of Afghan policy and strategy still under way; we would ask the Joint Chiefs for a list of operations that could be discussed at the secret level; and we would identify key operational plans—without getting into the specifics—that should receive priority attention by the incoming team. I told Rangel to let Flournoy know that any discussion of Iran options “would be incomplete” at the secret level.

My most important communication during the transition, though, was a long e-mail I sent on November 23 to John Podesta, overall head of the Obama transition effort, on the practical transition challenges associated with my staying on. First I told him that once I was publicly named, the transition team should report to both him and me, so I would know what issues, options, and recommendations they were framing and have an opportunity to shape what they were doing—or add my own thoughts for the president-elect. I said I understood that this would be Obama’s Defense Department and that, apart from my personal front-office staff,
speechwriters, press spokesman, and the rest, the only senior appointee I wanted to try to persuade to stay on was Jim Clapper. I said my sole criterion for potential appointees was competence to do the job. I wanted to interview those being considered and then make recommendations to the president-elect for his decision. As I had told Obama in our firehouse meeting, “If I am to lead the department and hold people accountable, the senior-most officials need to know I recommended them … for their jobs.” I recommended, as I mentioned earlier, that I be authorized to ask incumbent appointees to remain in place until their successors were confirmed (which could take months). This was a rare if not unprecedented step. Virtually always, political appointees of the outgoing president are expected to leave by January 20.

I received a response from Podesta within a few hours. He saw no problem with the joint reporting arrangement for the transition team and, on personnel, thought the process I had proposed was fine. He promised a decision on Clapper within a few days. He said they might want to deal with incumbents on a case-by-case basis and would probably prefer to name some people as “acting” officials. The one place he pushed back a bit was on the press spokesman. He said he would need to get back to me because, when it came to dealing with the press, “the Obama team tend to be control freaks.” I e-mailed him back that Morrell was nonpolitical and “I feel very strongly about keeping him.” “I think I’ve been very flexible in terms of personnel,” I wrote, “but I trust this guy to do and say what I want, and I want him to stay.” Podesta quickly came back, “I’ll smooth the way.” I wanted Morrell to stay not only because of his competence in his job and his remarkable network of journalist friends and others around Washington, who were willing to tell him confidential tidbits they were hearing from their colleagues and government officials, but because he was one of the handful of people I could count on to criticize me to my face, to tell me when I had given a poor answer to a question, to question my patience (or impatience) with others in the Pentagon, and to question a decision. He was also one of the very few around whom I could let down my hair and be myself, vent without worry of a leak, and just relax. He could make me laugh as well. Frankly, I could not imagine continuing in my job without Rangel, Henry, and him.

At the firehouse meeting, Obama had told me that he intended to name his economic team first but hoped to name the national security
team before Thanksgiving. As it turned out, the announcement was set for Monday morning, December 1, in Chicago. Becky and I spent Thanksgiving at home in the Northwest and flew to Chicago on Sunday. The next morning we drove to the Chicago Hilton and met the new team for the first time: Hillary Clinton, secretary of state–designate; General Jim Jones, national security adviser–designate; Janet Napolitano, secretary of homeland security–designate; Eric Holder, attorney generaldesignate; and Susan Rice, ambassador to the United Nations–designate. Jones was the only one I knew.

The president led off, and then each of us was given a minute to speak. I was the only one to clock in under a minute and my message reflected my innermost feelings:

I am deeply honored that the president-elect has asked me to continue as secretary of defense.

Mindful that we are engaged in two wars and face other serious challenges at home and around the world, and with a profound sense of personal responsibility to and for our men and women in uniform and their families, I must do my duty—as they do theirs. How could I do otherwise?

Serving in this position for nearly two years—and especially the opportunity to lead our brave and dedicated soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, and defense civilians—has been the most gratifying experience of my life. I am honored to continue to serve them and our country, and I will be honored to serve president-elect Obama.

I left Chicago immediately after the press conference and flew to Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota, home to Minuteman ICBMs and B-52 bombers, to deliver a previously planned message to airmen on the importance of their work. Minot had been part of the problem that led to my firing the secretary and chief of staff of the Air Force. I wanted to give the airmen there a pep talk. The visit was a tonic for me. Seeing our men and women in uniform immediately after the press conference was a vivid reminder for me of why I had agreed to stay on.

I gave my own press conference the next day to make clear I had no intention of being a “caretaker secretary.” Lita Baldor of the Associated Press asked me a question I had never been asked publicly: Are you a registered Republican? I realized immediately that if I said I was an independent,
I’d make two presidents angry—the one who first appointed me assuming I was a Republican, and the new one who wanted a Republican on his national security team and believed it would be me. I said I was not registered as a Republican but had always considered myself to be one. She also asked if I was resetting my countdown clock, and I said I’d thrown the damn thing away because it was obviously useless. I said the president-elect and I had left open the question of how long I would serve. Another reporter wanted to know how effective I could be working with a new civilian team who were all strangers to me. I reminded him that I had come to the Pentagon in December 2006 to work with a bunch of strangers, and that had seemed to work out okay. I said I was impressed by the president-elect reaching out to talk to Mike Mullen and also by Michelle Obama’s desire to work with military families.

Much of the rest of that week, I huddled with my core staff working on what Gates 2.0 at Defense should look like, and what my priorities should be for the next eighteen months or so (I was thinking in those terms by then). I said I didn’t want to make Jimmy Carter’s mistake of having too many priorities: MRAPs could be taken off my plate now, but not ISR and certainly not the effort to better serve wounded warriors, which I thought was still a mess.

I had deep concerns about the acquisition of equipment, which I believed was a “tar pit.” We had a shipbuilding strategy that seemed to change whenever the Navy secretary or chief of naval operations changed. A joint service acquisition process had to be created to avoid competing budget priorities or duplication. We needed to balance the development of advanced technologies with the ability to buy larger numbers of ships, planes, and other equipment. We had to get on top of the acquisition process, I warned, because if we didn’t, “the Congress will fuck it up.” We didn’t need more studies on how to acquire more effectively—we had rooms full of those, and they hadn’t done any good. What we needed, I said, was to focus on decision making, execution, and negotiating skills. I said we needed to show the new administration a path forward on closing Guantánamo, because in my view they were underestimating “the legal and political complexity of bringing detainees to specific states.” This would require legislation; also, “pure law enforcement is not the way to go.”

On the transition itself, I needed help on relationships with a totally different set of players in the national security arena. What was their
thinking on issues such as Gitmo, acquisition, the budget? My staff and I laughed—sort of—about how I would deal with all the big issues I had punted to myself. I wanted the transition team to work for me as well as the president-elect, and I wanted to make sure my fingerprints were all over their final report to him, rather than have a paragraph tacked on at the end. I appointed Ryan McCarthy from my office to join the transition team to make sure that happened.

On Friday night, December 5, over martinis, steak, and red wine, a proven formula for deep thinking, my core team and I agreed that I would minimize my overseas travel for the first ninety days of the administration so I could get to know and establish strong relationships with the new national security team and focus on the 2010 budget.

I said that former deputy defense secretary John Hamre had heard from Paul Volcker that Obama would keep defense spending at a pretty high level for the first two years and then the ax would come down (a very prescient forecast, as it turned out). I intended to spend more time on the budget process and to be more involved on program decisions. I wanted the final say on big issues like the F-22 fighter and C-17 cargo plane production. And I wanted the service secretaries to wear two hats—to serve in their traditional role as advocate for their service, but also to remember that they worked for me and for the president and had to support what was best for the department as a whole and for the country. I said I thought our goals in Afghanistan were “too ambitious for us to achieve.” I suggested we focus on creating an Afghan government that could prevent al Qaeda and others from once again attacking us from a safe haven in Afghanistan and leave more ambitious governance and development goals for the long term. We needed to concentrate on the south and east in Afghanistan, areas where the Taliban were strongest. I think all of us assembled agreed I had to continue to press forward on wounded warrior care and, more broadly, on medical care for all wounded, military families, and veterans. Finally, we discussed the need to accelerate planning for the closure of Guantánamo.

The next day the schizophrenic nature of my life during those weeks was highlighted when I attended the Army-Navy football game in Philadelphia. The preceding Monday I had shared a stage with president-elect Obama. On Saturday, I was walking around a football field side by side with George W. Bush as he waved to tens of thousands of cheering fans, troops, and families. During this period, a journalist asked me if it was
difficult working for two commanders in chief. I responded that there is only one commander in chief at a time, but being at the beck and call of current and prospective presidents did involve some awkwardness in terms of getting to meetings each scheduled.

The following week Mike Mullen and I went to school on Barack Obama. I wanted to know how he approached decision making, how he dealt with advisers, and how he looked at the world. We spent time with several people who at least claimed to have some insights into the new president. We called the sessions “Obama 101,” and our professors were Scott Gration (the retired Air Force general who had been an Obama campaign assistant), Richard Danzig (secretary of the Navy under Clinton), Robert Soule (also in the department under Clinton), and Flournoy. They said that Obama “pushes the envelope” in terms of the broader context in foreign policy: How does all this fit together? What does this achieve? What does this cost me? He was oriented toward diverse views, they told us. All of them urged us to read his book
Dreams of My Father
. They said he was a good listener and placed great emphasis on accountability. He was, they said, skeptical on missile defense and “way ahead of you” on Gitmo. Danzig referred to Obama’s power to win over foreign constituencies and asked whether he should speak to the Islamic world.