Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War (47 page)

Assuming they were to be advisers to him, I urged them not to go to the lowest common denominator in discussions with the president but to force debate. If all his advisers agreed, it would be harder for him to disagree. Use the NSC interagency process, I suggested, to strip away turf issues in order to get to the real issues and have a productive discussion. When Gration said the president wanted to revoke “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” Mullen said he had heard to the contrary. I said we would have to address it, but the president would be better off to deal with it when our forces were not under so much stress. On Guantánamo, I said straightforwardly that closure wasn’t as simple as they thought. At the end of the meeting, I told the group assembled that with regard to the presidentelect, “we will be totally engaged to make him successful.”

I received a copy of the transition team report on December 11. There was a two-and-a-half-page executive summary for the presidentelect and a seventy-one-page report for the secretary of defense. We had twenty-four hours to comment on the draft, and I decided not to offer any comments. Among other things, there were a number of pejorative statements in the report about the Bush administration—for example,
“Restore wise, responsible, and accountable presidential leadership on national security”—that I did not want to appear to endorse. Flournoy and White acknowledged that the report would have little value for me—except as a statement of Obama administration priorities—but would serve as a guide for incoming senior personnel. I thought to myself:
Well, actually
, I
will serve as the guide for incoming personnel
. I did find the issue summaries useful for insight into the Obama team’s views on defense matters.

An additional paper I received contrasted my public positions on specific issues with those of the president-elect. We were close on Iraq after the signing of the Status of Forces Agreement, and in sync on Afghanistan, more funding for the State Department, counterterrorism efforts, increasing the size of the Army and Marine Corps, use of the National Guard and Reserves, aiding wounded warriors, procurement, and even, to a large extent, the defense budget. We were characterized as being in disagreement on the need for a new nuclear warhead (indeed, I had given a speech in October 2008 at the Carnegie Institute of Peace on the need for nuclear weapons and modernizing our current weapons; one of my staff who lingered afterward overheard some of the Carnegie folks saying that I had just ensured I would not be asked to stay on by Obama), and clearly he was more skeptical of missile defense than I was.

The first meeting of the new national security team was at the transition team headquarters in Chicago on December 15. The meeting space was like any other high-rise office building—lots of cubicles and a modest conference room. When I walked in and saw coffee and doughnuts, I thought I would get along just fine with these folks. The traffic coming in from Midway Airport was awful, and Hillary Clinton was late. She had dispensed with a police escort complete with lights and sirens, clearly having an elected official’s sensitivity to ticking off everyone on the road. I did not have that sensitivity and was one of the first to arrive. In addition to those who had been present at the naming ceremony—Obama, Biden, Clinton, Holder, Napolitano, Jones, Rice, and me—we were joined by Mike Mullen, director of national intelligence Mike McConnell, Rahm Emanuel (White House chief of staff to be), Podesta, Tony Blinken (Joe Biden’s national security adviser), Greg Craig (White House counsel to be), Mona Sutphen (deputy chief of staff to be), Tom Donilon (Jones’s deputy to be), Jim Steinberg (deputy at State to be), and Mark Lippert and Denis McDonough (both to be at the NSC).

I thought carefully about how to approach this and subsequent meetings. I had observed enough presidential transitions to know that, for a holdover at any level, the worst thing to do in the early days is to talk too much and especially to voice skepticism about new ideas or initiatives. (
That won’t work—that’s been tried before and failed.
) An experienced “know-it-all” is truly a skunk at the garden party. So I spoke infrequently, usually only on questions of fact, and when asked. We sat at tables arranged in a hollow square, and Mullen and I sat together opposite the president-elect. All the men were in coats and ties.

Obama began by describing how he wanted the discussion to flow and his style of seeking information and opinion. Biden urged everyone to be willing to challenge assumptions. The transition team had prepared papers sent to us in advance on most of the issues to be discussed, providing a brief summary of each, campaign promises that had been made, and key issues. I thought the papers were of good quality, matter-of-fact, and devoid of campaign rhetoric. In retrospect, the one on Afghanistan was particularly interesting, observing that two lessons learned were the need for more military and civilian resources and the central role played there by Pakistan. The paper identified troop levels as a key early decision for the new president. In light of later developments, the last sentence of the transition’s Afghan paper was remarkable: “From the beginning of the new administration, the president and his top advisers will need to signal firmly that the United States is in this war to win and have the patience and determination to do so.”

Turning to the agenda, Jones gave a tutorial on the National Security Council and the interagency process, followed by an hour of discussion on Iraq. We then had an hour on Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India. Pakistan was described as the “biggest, most dangerous situation.” During lunch, we spent an hour on the Middle East. We concluded with a discussion of early action items, including foreign travel, initial meetings with foreign leaders, national security themes for the inaugural address, new executive orders and Guantánamo (the most extended discussion), special envoys and negotiators, and early budget issues. Obama wanted to move promptly to close Gitmo and sign executive orders on interrogations, rendition, and the like, to signal a sharp departure from the Bush administration. Greg Craig, soon to be White House counsel, described the need to be both thoughtful and careful with the executive orders, noting that more than a third of those signed in the early days of the Clinton
administration had had to be reissued because of mistakes. There was considerable discussion on whether to set a deadline for Guantánamo’s closure. I argued in favor of a one-year deadline because, as I had learned at Defense, a firm deadline was necessary to move the bureaucracy.

All in all, I thought it was a good first meeting. There had been minimal preening by new people trying to impress the president-elect (or one another), and the discussion was, for the most part, realistic and pragmatic. I would have to ignore the many jibes aimed at Bush and his team, which hardly diminished over time, and comments about the miserable shape U.S. national security and international relationships were in. I knew that in four or eight years, another new team would be saying the same things about these folks. I also knew from experience that, when all was said and done, there would be far more continuity than the new team realized in its first, heady days.

The second meeting of the national security team took place on the afternoon of January 9, 2009, in Washington. Among other things, we turned to the Middle East, Iran, and Russia. The format was the same as in Chicago, with McConnell and Mullen providing ten-minute briefings followed by discussion. Particularly on Iran and Russia, there was a lot of discussion of the shortcomings of the Bush administration’s policies and the need for a new approach to both countries.

Biden asked to meet with me privately after the meeting. We met in a small conference room, and he asked me for my thoughts on how he should define his role in the national security arena. I said there were two very different models—George H. W. Bush and Dick Cheney. Bush’s staff had attended all interagency national security meetings, including the Principals Committee, thereby keeping him well informed, but almost always he shared his views only with the president. Cheney, by contrast, not only had his staff attend all lower-level interagency meetings, he routinely attended Principals Committee meetings and meetings of principals with the national security adviser. He was open about his views and argued them forcefully. His staff did likewise at other meetings. I told Biden I would recommend the Bush model because it more befitted the dignity of the vice president as the second-highest elected official in the country; and more practically in Washington, if no one knew what he was advising the president, no one could ever know whether he was winning or losing arguments. If he were to participate in all meetings below those chaired by the president, then he was just another player whose
scorecard was public knowledge. He listened closely, thanked me, and then did precisely the opposite of what I recommended, following the Cheney model to a T.

On December 19, Hillary Clinton joined me for lunch in my office at the Pentagon. I thought it important that we get better acquainted, and she readily agreed. We ate at the small round table that had belonged to Jefferson Davis. I told her about the sordid history of relationships between secretaries of state and defense and the negative impact that had had on the government and on presidents. I told her that Condi Rice and I had developed a strong partnership, and it radiated not only down through our two departments but across the entire national security arena. I said I wouldn’t try to compete, as had a number of my predecessors, as principal spokesman on U.S. foreign policy, and that as in the Bush administration, I would continue to press for more resources for the State Department. I hoped we could have the same kind of partnership I had had with Condi. Hillary had been around long enough, both in the White House and in the Senate, to understand exactly what I was talking about, and she readily agreed on the importance of us working together. Indeed, we would develop a very strong partnership, in part because it turned out we agreed on almost every important issue.

In mid-December and early January, I received guidance on who among the Bush appointees needed to go on January 20, who would be asked to stay until successors were confirmed, and who would be asked to stay on as Obama appointees. The transition team wanted Gordon England out on the twentieth. The president-elect and I both tried hard to persuade John Hamre to take the deputy secretary job, including, on my part, trying to lay a serious guilt trip on him for not saying yes, but he had commitments that he said he simply could not break. Bill Lynn, an executive with Raytheon and senior Defense official in the Clinton administration, was selected to take England’s place. Edelman had already indicated he would be leaving, and Flournoy was chosen to be his successor as undersecretary for policy. Bob Hale was picked as the comptroller (the money manager), and Jeh Johnson as general counsel. I quickly developed very high respect for Flournoy, Hale, and Johnson, and we would work together very closely. Johnson, a successful New York attorney, proved to be the finest lawyer I ever worked with in government—a straightforward, plain-speaking man of great integrity, with common sense to burn and a good sense of humor. Flournoy would
prove to be every bit as clear-thinking and strong as Edelman, a high bar in my view. Lynn and I would have a cordial relationship, but there was something missing in the chemistry between us. Bill’s earlier experience in Defense, I thought, had made him very leery of bold initiatives, and I never had the feeling he supported, or believed in, much of my agenda for changing the way the department did business.

Except for those positions, I was given the go-ahead to ask most Bush appointees to remain in place until their successors were confirmed. I could not remember anything like that happening before. It was proof, in my view, that the new administration didn’t want discontinuities that could prove dangerous when we were engaged in two wars. Three Bush appointees were asked to remain indefinitely: Clapper as undersecretary for intelligence, Mike Donley as Air Force secretary, and Mike Vickers as assistant secretary for special operations and low-intensity conflict.

On January 19, Bush’s last full day in office, the core national security teams for both presidents gathered in the Situation Room so that the old team could brief the new one on the most sensitive programs of the American government in dealing with terrorism, North Korea, Iran, and other actual or potential adversaries. After some banter about which side of the table I should sit on, the remainder of the meeting was quite somber. I believe that, in broad terms, there weren’t many surprises for the Obama team, although some of the details were eye-opening. I had not heard of such a conversation between administrations in past transitions—although presidents-elect received such briefings—and it was, I thought, a mark of Bush’s determination to have a smooth transition and of the receptivity of the new president to such a meeting. Such cordiality was uncommon.

In the run-up to the inaugural, I became a real thorn in the side of those planning the great event. The Secret Service had overall responsibility for security, coordinating the efforts of the Washington, D.C., metropolitan police, the U.S. Park Service police, and the National Guard. As the inauguration neared, and speculation grew that upward of four million people could end up on the Mall, it seemed to me that the number of police and national guardsmen being assembled—as I recall, about 15,000 in total—would be woefully short if anything went wrong. Any number of events apart from a terrorist attack could spark a panic, and with only two or three bridges across the Potomac River, there could be a disaster. If there was trouble, the bridges would be jammed with people
trying to escape, making it impossible for military reinforcements to get into the city. I kept pushing to have a significantly larger number of the National Guard called up and on standby at local military facilities. Those responsible kept telling me they could have large reinforcements called up within hours at more distant locations; I kept telling them that if something went wrong, they needed people fifteen to thirty minutes away. The organizers did agree in the end to increase the number of Guardsmen nearby. Fortunately, of course, nothing bad happened.