The Operators: The Wild and Terrifying Inside Story of America’s War in Afghanistan (41 page)

Two minutes out, Irving raised the ground troops on the radio. They told him that they’d dismounted from their MRAPs and had pinned down a group of insurgents in an orchard. They were still taking heavy
fire. Irving was focused. The adrenaline was racing. He was thinking: Where are all the friendlies? Where is the enemy and what are his capabilities? How can I take them out or suppress them—or, as he would put it, “maximize ballistic effect on the enemy”?

I was thinking tactically, too: Shit, if this is a real shoot-out, then that means I have my story, I have my scene. I can get the fuck out of Kandahar.

The Blackhawks pulled up in the air to give us a view of the battle. Taylor pointed to a puff of red smoke that was rising up.

“Five to eight insurgents, small arms and RPG,” Taylor said.

The soldiers on the ground had tossed a can of smoke to mark the position of the insurgents.

Another pop of smoke—this is yellow.

“My position is the yellow smoke,” the ground element called up over the radio.

The two Kiowas dove down for a final look over their target. Price picked out where the insurgents were believed to be hiding—the orchard. Irving grabbed the control stick. He moved the yellow button over to the right, switching from rockets to his fifty caliber machine gun.

“Friendlies one o’clock low. Tally friendlies. Turning left. Enemy in sight. Roger in sight. Roger. Clear to engage…” Irving said over the radio.

Irving pressed the yellow firing switch, the trigger. The recoil was deafening. The helicopter shook, as did Irving’s jaw, as he would later describe the moment to me.

For about five more minutes, the Kiowas stuck around, making sure the American patrol could continue.

“Two insurgents confirmed KIA,” Taylor told me, by aircraft fire. “Scout weapons team two engaged, disrupted the enemy.”

We returned to base. Two insurgents confirmed killed. That was good enough for me. Two faceless dead guys, the enemy, with all the Americans coming home. A perfect story.

I was wide awake now. Now I could leave Kandahar without feeling guilty.

Back at the base, one of the pilots told me a public affairs officer was looking for me.

I found the public affairs officer. We talked. We agreed it was best if I left Kandahar. I’d become a distraction and I was distracted. More important, I had gotten my story. We agreed on that, too.

It was usually difficult to get on a flight leaving Kandahar. The public affairs officer told me not to worry. There was a seat waiting for me on the next plane out.

I checked my e-mail at the media affairs center. Eric at
Rolling Stone
asked me to write up a blog post. McChrystal had arrived in Washington and they wanted to put something up on the web before he met with Obama.

I typed out a blog post on e-mail.

Right when I was about to hit send, I heard two loud booms.

“Rockets!” someone yelled.

Everyone in the media center dove to the floor. I was flat on my face under a desk.

The all-clear alarm sounded a few minutes later. I went back to my e-mail. The computer screen was dark. The power had gone out. I lost my blog post.

I needed to get to a computer where I could use e-mail. A young public affairs officer told me there wasn’t time to waste. I was going to miss my flight. I said okay. I grabbed my gear and they drove me down the road to the passenger terminal. It was another nondescript building, two floors. It was a weird imitation of a normal airport terminal; they even had a security check to scan the bags, despite the fact that the majority of the passengers would be armed with assault rifles.

After I got through security, I asked if I could use a computer to send off my blog post. The public affairs officer showed me a back room where the two Air Force personnel who ran the terminal were sitting in an office.

Both were looking at their computer screens when I came in. They were reading a story called “The Runaway General.”

The Air Force woman minimized her copy and let me sit down.

“Have you seen this story?” she asked me.

“Yeah, I wrote it,” I said.

“No shit.”

She thought it was pretty hilarious. She was a fan of
The Rachel Maddow Show
, which I had been on the night before over the phone. Coincidentally, I had a brand-new Rachel Maddow baseball cap with me, which I gave her.

I finished typing up my blog post and sent it to Eric. By that time, a few other soldiers had printed out copies of the
Rolling Stone
story and asked me to sign it. I joked that it wasn’t going to add to any eBay value, feeling less nervous.

I waited on the second floor of the terminal for the flight to arrive. Thirty minutes later, another air force sergeant called out that there was a C-130 flight to Kabul boarding now. Everyone heading to Kabul lined up in a row, slinging their rucksacks on their backs and putting on their body armor and helmets. We walked in single file across an airstrip, the sun just beginning to go down. I carried my computer bag over my shoulder and a Kelty backpack on my back. I walked up the ramp of the C-130 and took a seat near the front of the cabin, strapping myself in with the metal clasps, sitting on the sagging red canvas jump seats.

I looked around the cabin of the plane. Three other soldiers were reading printout copies of the
Rolling Stone
story.

The plane was delayed.

“Why are we waiting?” a soldier asked.

“We’re waiting for a one-star,” the soldier next to him responded.

“Shit, he might be running this thing soon enough,” a third soldier said.

I tilted my helmet down over my head. I’d never seen a story take off so quickly around an American military base overseas. The soldiers
seemed to be reacting pretty positively to the story, too. The general sense that the war was totally fucked was so widespread, not many disagreed with the thesis. (A poll would later find that one out of three veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan would say the wars weren’t worth fighting.) But I had the feeling that inside the cabin wasn’t the best time for me to identify myself. I fell asleep. The flight to Kabul took forty-five minutes. My security guard picked me up and took me back to the CNN bureau.

E-mail was working. My phones were working.

The news broke.

President Barack Obama had accepted Stanley McChrystal’s resignation.

He’d been fired.

Obama named General David Petraeus as his replacement.

There were thirty-eight missed calls on my phone.

JUNE 22–23, 2010, KABUL AND WASHINGTON, DC

At two thirty
A.M.
on June 22, 2010, a close aide to General Stanley McChrystal walks up the stairs to the general’s hooch above the situational awareness room. It’s Spartan quarters, a single cot with a few wooden bookshelves and industrial-strength green carpets with a treadmill outside to work out on. The staffer knocks on the door and wakes up the general. The
Rolling Stone
story is out, the staffer tells him. “It’s very, very bad,” the aide says, according to an account in
The Washington Post.

The A.P. is already running with the story, the aide explains—quoting him saying that the Eikenberry memo left him feeling “betrayed.”

That’s just the beginning of it. Biden—“bite me.” Making fun of the French, making fun of Ambassador Holbrooke. And then the troops: The scene down south with the soldiers looks like they are in near mutiny. It doesn’t look good. The night in Paris—“totally shit-faced.”

He did have that fucking tape recorder running all the time. Can we attack him? It’s going to be hard to deny the Paris night. Duncan had been telling the story to everyone who would listen.

McChrystal gets on the phone. He calls Bob Gates. He apologizes. What’s the best way to handle it?

Preempt it. This too shall pass.

Holbrooke’s phone rings. He’s staying at the U.S. embassy across town in Kabul. He’s half-asleep. He’s had a brutal twenty-four hours; his helicopter had been fired upon while he was flying across Helmand. He’s pissed that he’s been woken up, not really understanding why. McChrystal tells him there’s a
Rolling Stone
story coming out, and that he’s said some embarrassing things in it. McChrystal apologizes to him.

“Stan, don’t worry about it,” Holbrooke tells him.

“I’ve submitted my resignation to Bob Gates.”

“What?”

Holbrooke is wide awake now. He hangs up the phone. He dials Hillary.

“Stan McChrystal has submitted his resignation to Bob Gates.”

“What?” Hillary says.

McChrystal continues to make phone calls. He gets through to Vice President Biden. Biden is on Air Force Two. It’s around five thirty
P.M.
in the United States.

“Sir, I failed the mission,” he tells Biden.

It’s a quick call. Biden doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Hell, Biden has said a few things in his time to reporters that caused him trouble.

Biden asks his aide to get him a copy of the story. Biden reads the story. Biden is furious.

At the White House, Tommy Vietor, Obama’s press aide, gets a copy forwarded to him from another government official. The PDF of the story is bouncing around the Internet on e-mail—it’s not posted publicly yet. Vietor e-mails it around to others in the press and national security team. They can’t read it on their BlackBerrys, so he prints out copies for the national security staff to read. He gives a copy to Robert Gibbs, the president’s press secretary, with passages highlighted, as recounted in
Politico.
The president has already gone to the second floor of the residence, working from his office in the Treaty Room. Gibbs walks a copy in.

“Joe Biden called me,” Obama would later tell
Rolling Stone.
“He was the first one to hear about it.” Obama spends five minutes on the phone calming him down. Obama reads the story. Stan McChrystal has to go. It’s not certain yet, but the national security team, which stays at work until around ten thirty that night, is thinking the same thing. Okay, there are the stupid things they said—there’s the “bite me,” and the “clown,” and slamming Holbrooke. All that is bad—it’s bad, too, that they think we’re wimps, a White House insider will tell me. But what’s most troubling to a few of the members of the national security team, according to White House officials, is an aspect that doesn’t get much attention in the press: The scene where the troops are in near revolt against McChrystal.

It’s morning in Kabul now. McChrystal’s staff gathers in the planning room.

Dave Silverman wants to kill that fucking guy. I’d just called him, a week before, left a funny voicemail on his answering machine. I can’t believe he did this. Dave Silverman wants to
fucking kill that guy
. Dave Silverman expresses this out loud. A military official who works with Admiral Mullen tells him to shut the fuck up: You’ve done enough damage.

Another U.S. State Department official asks the Flynns: What were the ground rules when he interviewed you? They say they don’t know what the ground rules were. The official is horrified—this is basic press handling 101. You protect the principal.

McChrystal spends the morning working on his apology. Holbrooke’s staff helps him draft it. He gets called back to Washington for a meeting. He asks that the meeting be held over VTC. The White House tells him: Get your ass back to Washington.

McChrystal releases an apology. The apology reads:

“I extend my sincerest apology for this profile. It was a mistake reflecting poor judgment and should never have happened. Throughout my
career, I have lived by the principles of personal honor and professional integrity. What is reflected in this article falls far short of that standard. I have enormous respect and admiration for President Obama and his national security team, and for the civilian leaders and troops fighting this war, and I remain committed to ensuring its successful outcome.”

Apologize, repent, move on. He’s done it before. Gates has got his back. And Gates has the president’s ear, right?

Holbrooke has dinner with Eikenberry that night at the embassy, with a host of Afghan and UN officials. Eikenberry had just gotten back from a meeting with Karzai. Karzai wants McChrystal to stay—both Karzai and his half brother Ahmed Wali Karzai, like McChrystal and think he’s good for Afghanistan. They convey this message to Obama.

At dinner, Eikenberry is relaxed, he’s chatting away, very charming. Holbrooke is tense, jet-lagged, tired. He looks withdrawn and pale, birdlike. He’s worried his job might be on the line. Hillary wants to keep Stan. Mullen wants to keep Stan. Gates wants to keep Stan. That wouldn’t be good for him—if he stays, it means the four-star got away with dissing him with no consequence. That doesn’t look good in the Beltway. How is this going to play out?

Holbrooke’s phone rings—he excuses himself from the table. It’s his wife. His phone rings again—it’s the White House. There’s going to be a meeting on Wednesday, and he’s asked to be in it over the video teleconference.