Woodward Bob. Plan of Attack: The Definitive Account of the Decision to Invade Iraq
Подождите немного. Документ загружается.
in
The Washington Post,
which broke the story on Sunday, February 1. The reporters noted, “Bush’s shift
in position represents an effort to get out in front of a potentially dangerous issue that threatens to cloud his
reelection bid.”
On Monday, February 2, after a cabinet meeting, a reporter asked the president, “Do you think that the
country is owed an explanation about the Iraq intelligence failure before the election so that voters have this
information when they elect a new president?”
“First of all, I want to know all the facts,” Bush said, noting that they were not all in, and he did not
answer the question.
POWELL WAS SURPRISED
that Kay had not gone quietly. Tenet had told him that Kay was going to remain a
senior adviser to the CIA and that the agency would “keep him on the farm.” Well, Kay had bolted from the
blazing barn. Powell spent some time going through the transcript of Kay’s Armed Services Committee
testimony. It certainly showed that Saddam had the intent and the capability to produce WMD. But the absence
of actual stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons was a big problem, and could not be dismissed.
Perhaps it was his old military mind, but if the data on which he had made a decision changed, Powell
figured he had, at a minimum, to acknowledge that he would have rethought the decision if the new data had
been available. Now that Kay was saying with as much authority as anyone possessed that they had been
“terribly wrong” on the stock-piles, the administration had to face the new reality. There was an entirely
different set of facts regarding one of the key reasons for war.
After the cabinet meeting on February 2, Powell, carrying a fully annotated transcript of Kay’s statement,
met with a group of editors and reporters from
The Washington Post
for an interview. I did not attend.
Powell defended Bush’s war decision, saying “It was the right thing to do.”
If Tenet had said before the war started what Dr. Kay has now said about there being no actual stockpiles,
one questioner asked, would you still have recommended the invasion?
“I don’t know,” Powell replied, “because it was the stockpile that presented the final little piece that made
it more of a real and present danger and threat to the region and to the world.” He added, “The absence of a
stockpile changes the political calculus. It changes the answer you get.”
The secretary’s remarks were the lead story in the
Post
the next day: “Powell Says New Data May Have
Affected War Decision.”
Powell knew the White House held its breath any time he was out talking to the media and that Rice read
the newspapers very early in the morning. She would get excited over any news that did not conform with the
p
resident’s position. Rice had already discussed Powell’s comments with the president when she called him that
morning.
Both the president and she were “mad,” she told the secretary of state. Powell had “given the Democrats a
remarkable tool.” The president had taken the public position that the jury on WMD was still out, that he
wanted to know the facts. Now Powell was out with a new line. He had made stunning headlines throughout the
world once again.
Even when Rice was passing him a message from the president, Powell did not particularly enjoy being
dressed down by someone 17 years younger who held the job he had had 15 years earlier. “Look what else I
said,” he replied. “It was great.” But he just did not think when they were faced with an entirely different set of
facts re
g
ardin
g
one of the ke
y
issues in the decision to
g
o to war that he could den
y
he would at least reconsider.
Both Powell and Rice knew that Powell had never made an overall recommendation on war to the
p
resident since he had never been asked. That had not come up at the
Post
interview.
Rice’s message was clear: Get in line.
At 10:45 that morning as Powell was leaving the State Department for the White House to meet with the
p
resident and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, he was asked by reporters about his remarks to the
Post.
He did not repeat them. He stated that Saddam had had the intention and maintained the capability to
develop WMD. “The bottom line is this: The president made the right decision,” Powell said, and he added
three more times that the president’s decision was “right.” He made an extraordinary statement that even if they
had had “other information”—presumably something like Kay’s assessment—before the war, it would not have
changed the war decision. “It was something we all agreed to and would probably agree to it again under any
other set of circumstances.”
For Powell, several things were clear from the president’s demeanor, his style and all that Powell had
learned about Bush. The president was not going to toss anyone over the side, not Powell, not Tenet. The
p
resident also made it clear that no one was to jump ship. Kay’s precedent highlighted the dangers of that.
The president was stalwart that they absolutely had done the right thing in removing Saddam. The war
cabinet had all signed on. They were a team. The larger message was clear: Circle the wagons.
IT HAD TAKEN
a long time for Tenet to come to grips with the enormity of his problem. A month after major
combat had ended he was not worried that they had not found WMD. They would find it for sure, he thought,
though it might take months. By September 2003, after failing to turn up anything for nearly six months, his
p
osition was that it would take ten years. He felt their intelligence had been good and even if given the chance
he would not change their estimates. By November, Tenet was arguing that they might never get the answer on
WMD. The looting and document destruction inside Iraq had been so extensive that the Iraq of March 18, the
day before the war began, no longer existed.
The WMD issue pulsed in the background for 10 months until Kay’s resignation and declaration that they
had all been wrong. This put Tenet in a bind. He and the CIA took pride in their hard-nosed analysis and
conclusions. The bar was very high, and being wrong was not acceptable. Tenet had been privately very critical
of news stories that had been wrong or overreaching about a possible quagmire in the Afghanistan war in late
2001. “There’s never any price,” he had said, when the media is wrong. He said that if the CIA director had
given out equivalent bad information the president should “fire your ass.”
But no one at the CIA was paying a price or being held accountable for what seemed to be a mistake, and
Tenet was the one who had assured Bush that the case on WMD was “a slam dunk.”
The agency was now scrubbing all the intelligence, trying to figure out what had gone wrong, even using
reverse engineering techniques by taking the apparent reality of no WMD and attempting to determine how
each piece of intelligence could have been wrong or misunderstood.
Tenet agreed with his deputy, John McLaughlin, that they had to dare to be wrong in order to be clear. He
went further. He believed the CIA has what he calls “a duty to warn,” a responsibility to point out potential
danger. Perhaps a tendency to overstate the dangers had grown out of the investigations after 9/11 that had
p
ointed to the failure to connect the dots about al Qaeda. No one, Tenet especially, wanted to be caught
understating a potential threat.
“I’m not a fool,” Tenet told associates in one breath, and in the next said the failure to find WMD was
“weird.” He knew his head could
g
o on the cho
pp
in
g
block. The Senate and House intelli
g
ence committees
were investigating, and their leaders had said publicly they would issue highly critical reports.
Tenet decided to launch a defense. On February 5, 2004, the one-year anniversary of Powell’s WMD
p
resentation to the U.N., he made a rare public speech at Georgetown University.
“We are nowhere near 85 percent finished,” he said of the WMD search, directly disputing Kay’s public
statement. “Any call I make today is necessarily provisional. Why? Because we need more time and we need
more data.” He said that they had discovered that Iraq had research and development, intent and capability to
p
roduce chemical and biological weapons. Halfway through the speech he acknowledged they had not found
biological or chemical weapons.
The CIA was reviewing and examining everything in order to improve its performance, and had
discovered that one of their sources had “fabricated” information, Tenet said. He noted that the CIA’s human
spies had provided the information that had led to the capture of some top al Qaeda leaders, including Khalid
Sheik Muhammad, the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, and had played a key role in uncovering the secret
nuclear proliferation network of Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of the Pakistani nuclear program who had
helped Libya, Iran and North Korea with their nuclear programs. During the ongoing investigations and
reviews, they would have to be careful, he warned. “We cannot afford an environment to develop where
analysts are afraid to make a call, where judgments are held back because analysts fear they will be wrong.”
In a sense, Tenet was asking that there be little or no price to pay for being wrong. Given the aftermath of
9/11 and the ongoing al Qaeda threat, the CIA had adopted a mentality of warning-at-any-cost. For years the
p
roblem had been getting the attention of the policy makers and the public. Of course, it was one thing to be
wrong about warning of an attack on the United States. Tenet and all the senior officials in the CIA were certain
al Qaeda would attack again. Deputy Director for Operations James Pavitt told associates in early 2004, “We’ll
still get hit again. We’ll still get a massive hit of some kind. Absolutely. Absolutely.” But, he added, “If five
years passes, six years, seven years passes and we don’t have one, I will be perfectly satisfied and comfortable
having been wrong.” But being wrong about information that Saddam possessed biological and chemical
weapons—the basis for war—could hardly leave anyone satisfied and comfortable.
As Tenet went over the intelligence again and again, he acknowledged to associates that the CIA and he
should have stated up front in the NIE and in other intelligence that the evidence was not ironclad, that it did not
include a smoking gun.
“
HOLY SHIT
!” Powell said to himself as he read a copy of Tenet’s speech. Here was the CIA director saying that
the aluminum tubes they had previously been so confident were for use as centrifuges for enriching uranium
were possibly for regular artillery shells. Powell remembered that he had challenged them on this before his
U.N. presentation a year ago. John McLaughlin had gone into a long recitation about the thickness of the walls
of the tubes and the spinning rates, arguing they had to be for centrifuges. Now Tenet was saying, “We have
additional data to collect and more sources to question,” and his agency “may have overestimated” the progress
Saddam was making on development of nuclear weapons. Powell felt let down.
Tenet was also backing away from previous assertions of certainty on the alleged mobile biological labs.
The CIA had earlier said it had five human sources for the claim, Powell remembered. Now Tenet was saying
there was no consensus: “And I must tell you that we are finding discrepancies in some claims made by human
sources about mobile biological weapons production before the war.”
Powell let out another holy shit! He knew very well that Tenet had told the president “in brash New York
language,” as Powell once put it, that the case on WMD was a “slam dunk.”
The president was the most visible manifestation of someone who had bought in. Powell was the second
most visible, and he realized he was ex
p
endable. He knew that Tenet felt bad, and that as director he was
looking out for the CIA. But this was a real mess. Powell found himself now asking the most intense and
p
enetrating questions about anything the CIA said or told him.
Powell did not share Armitage’s concern that the two of them had been enablers for the Cheney-Rumsfeld
hard-line policies. When he sorted out all the issues Powell felt that the State Department had done a good job
and did not get sufficient credit for some of its successes such as improved relationships with China and Russia.
Whenever anyone suggested that Powell should have pangs of conscience on the war, Powell said he had
done everything in his power. In August 2002 he had nearly broken his spear, laying before the president all the
difficulties of a war—the potential consequences and downsides. It was at a time when he thought the president
was not getting the whole picture. He had warned the president. It was the president’s decision, not his. Now the
United States owned Iraq. Bush owned it. But Powell felt he had done his job.
AFTER TENET
’
S SPEECH
, the president had one message for his intelligence chief. “You did a great job,” Bush
told Tenet in a phone call.
For Rice, the process of going to war had been hard, and, she thought, it should be hard. The aftermath
was troubling, particularly the failure to find WMD.
She knew that intelligence is not fact. From all her years dealing with intelligence, going back to her time
watching Russia on Bush senior’s NSC staff, she was keenly aware that they relied on intelligence when they
didn’t know something. Though the CIA’s intelligence on Iraq WMD was among the most categorical she had
ever seen, intelligence has limitations as the basis for policy. It is more suggestive, reflecting possibilities and
shadows rather than certainties. She had personally quizzed the agency’s national intelligence officer on the
conclusions about the Iraq WMD, asking at one point if the assertions were a fact or a judgment.
“It is a judgment,” the officer had said.
As national security adviser, Rice did not dare try to influence the CIA’s National Intelligence Estimate,
but given her closeness and status with Bush, if anyone could have warned the president to moderate his own
categorical statements about WMD, it was Rice.
But Cheney had effectively preempted that issue on August 26, 2002, when he declared that there was “no
doubt” Iraq had WMD. And the president had soon followed with his own statements of certainty even before
the CIA’s October NIE was issued.
As the WMD controversy grew in 2004, the president expressed his concerns to Rice. To air all of the
CIA’s problems could have two negatives that he wanted to avoid. First, the controversy would lead to
congressional investigations like the Church and Pike Committees in 1975–76 that revealed CIA spying on U.S.
citizens, drug testing and assassination plots on foreign leaders. He did not want a new witch hunt, mindful of
the history of investigations that he believed had demoralized the workforce and made the CIA risk-averse for a
long time. Second, Bush did not want a future president hampered if there was a need to take preemptive action
against another threat.
At 1:30
P.M.
Friday, February 6, the president appeared in the press briefing room to announce what was
now old news. He said he would appoint a nine-member commission to look at American intelligence
capabilities and the intelligence about WMD worldwide. It was to determine why some prewar intelligence
about Iraq’s alleged WMD had not been confirmed on the ground. Bush praised the people who work for the
intelligence agencies as “dedicated professionals engaged in difficult and complex work. America’s enemies are
secretive. They are ruthless and they are resourceful. And in tracking and disrupting their activities our nation
must brin
g
to bear ever
y
tool and advanta
g
e at our command.”
Then the president added, “Members of the commission will issue their report by March 31st, 2005.”
ONE THEME
that emerged repeatedly in all the hours I spent interviewing the president and the hundreds of hours
I spent interviewing others close to him or involved in the Iraq War decisions is Bush’s conviction that he made
the right decision.
In the second interview with him, December 11, 2003, the president said he had once told Rice, “ ‘I am
p
repared to risk my presidency to do what I think is right.’ I was going to act. And if it could cost the
p
residency, I fully realized that. But I felt so strongly that it was the right thing to do that I was prepared to do
so.”
I asked if, as I had heard, he had said at one of the meetings in the run-up to war: “I would like to be a
two-term president, but if I am a one-term president, so be it.”
“That’s right,” the president replied. “That is my attitude. Absolutely right.” He noted that things could
have gone wrong on the ground, in the run-up, or they could have become trapped with endless U.N. weapons
inspections.
“And if this decision costs you the election?” I asked.
“The presidency—that’s just the way it is,” Bush said. “Fully prepared to live with it.”
That day, after two hours, we stood in the Oval Office and started to walk out. Darkness was beginning to
settle in outside. The upcoming presidential election would perhaps be the most immediate judgment on the
war, but certainly not the last. How would history judge his Iraq War? I asked.
It would be impossible to get the meaning right in the short run, the president said, adding he thought it
would take about ten years to understand the impact and the true significance of the war.
There will probably be cycles, I said. As Karl Rove believes, I reminded him, all history gets measured by
outcomes.
Bush smiled. “History,” he said, shrugging, taking his hands out of his pockets, extending his arms out
and su
gg
estin
g
with his bod
y
lan
g
ua
g
e that it was so far off. “We won’t know. We’ll all be dead.”
Acknowledgments
Simon & Schuster and
The Washington Post
once again have supported me completely by giving me the time
and an unusual amount of independence to pursue this book.
Alice Mayhew, who has been my editor at Simon & Schuster for the past 32 years through 12 books, once
again devoted her usual focus and unmatched skill to the project, ensuring we published as fast as possible once
we had the story. On deadline, Alice is a force of nature full of ideas, questions and edits both small and large.
Leonard Downie Jr.,
The Washington Post
’s executive editor, and Steve Coll, the
Post
’s managing editor,
p
rovide both the backing and flexibility for in-depth, book-length projects. Don Graham, the
Post
’s chief
executive officer, and Bo Jones, the publisher, are first among media executives who understand journalism and
the importance of trying to get to the bottom of a story.
Bill Hamilton, the
Post
’s assistant managing editor for enterprise (meaning everything) and one of the best
p
eople in the newspaper business, devoted several weeks helping with the editing and excerpting the book for
the
Post.
Special thanks for his thoughtful guidance.
A book has the advantage of using all that has gone before. This book is based on my own reporting,
though I am certain that I have used material that sources have told me about or information reflected in records
that has appeared earlier in some form in another publication or news account. I owe an immense debt to
everyone who has written about or reported on the lead-up to the Iraq War, its conduct and its aftermath. They
have by and large done a great job. The hundreds of reporters who were embedded with military units in the
region during the war warrant special mention. More than a dozen lost their lives, including Michael Kelly and
David Bloom.
My colleagues at the
Post
provided much assistance, not only in their excellent daily coverage but
informally with many suggestions and ideas. Those reporters include Walter Pincus, Dana Priest, Thomas E.
Ricks, Karen DeYoung, Mike Allen, Dana Milbank, Vernon Loeb, Bradley Graham, Glenn Kessler, Peter
Slevin and Barton Gellman. Liz Spayd and Michael Abramowitz, who run the national staff, were as always
gracious and helpful.
Much significant background and understanding was also provided by
The Washington Post
foreign staff.
This group of remarkable reporters, so ably led by Phil Bennett and David Hoffman, includes Anthony Shadid,
Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Rick Atkinson and countless others.
Olwen Price transcribed many interviews, often under extreme time pressure, and she has our sincere
thanks.
Joe Elbert and his photo staff at the
Post,
still the best, provided many of the pictures in this book. Special
thanks also to Michael Keegan and Laris Karklis for the map.
At Simon & Schuster, Carolyn K. Reidy, the president, and David Rosenthal, the publisher, made sure the
p
eople and systems were in place to get this book on the bookstore shelves as fast as 21st-century publishing
p
ermits. Thanks to Roger Labrie for many assists. I also thank Jack Romanos, the president and chief executive
officer; Elisa Rivlin, the general counsel; Victoria Meyer, the executive director of publicity; Aileen Boyle, the
director of publicity; Jackie Seow, art director and jacket designer; Linda Dingler, director of design; and Mara
Lurie, the production editor who so skillfully managed a fast-track schedule.
A special thanks to John Wahler, the production manager, for his care and expertise with all details—
small, medium and large.
Mark Malseed and I give special thanks to Fred Chase, who assisted us and copyedited
Bush at War
in
2002, for coming again from Texas to copyedit this manuscript and give us a clear-eyed read and innumerable
important suggestions.
The core of this book comes from more than 75 sources. Most agreed to provide information as long as
their identities were not revealed. To all those unnamed and named I offer my thanks and gratitude. Many spent
hours, some a dozen or more, with me engaging the subject.
I was also helped immeasurably by the reporting and analysis in
The New York Times, The Wall Street
J
ournal, Newsweek, Time, U.S. News & World Report,
the
Los Angeles Times, The New Yorker, National
J
ournal,
the Associated Press and many other news organizations. The Web site of the nonprofit group
GlobalSecurity.org is an invaluable resource on military, intelligence and national security matters.
Robert B. Barnett, my agent and attorney, again provided steady and wise advice as counselor and good
friend. Because he represents prominent Democrats such as former President Bill Clinton and Senator Hillary
Rodham Clinton and prominent Republicans such as Karen Hughes and former Senator Bob Dole, he did not
see the book until it was printed.
Thanks again to Rosa Criollo, Norma Gianelloni and Jackie Crowe.
My two daughters, Tali, who is a reporter for
The San Francisco Bay Guardian,
and Diana, who is in first
grade, graciously endured the process of reporting and writing this book.
Elsa Walsh, my wife and my best friend, once again provided support, advice and wisdom on this, the
ninth of my books during our 15 years of marriage. The intensity of writing books about subjects in the news
that are unfolding and changing almost daily places an unusual strain on family life. Elsa adjusts with
astonishing grace, only half joking that for the past year life has been “All Iraq all the time.” For this, much else
and the
g
ood life she has created for our famil
y
, this book is dedicated to her.
About the Author
Bob Woodward, a reporter and editor at
The Washington Post
for 33 years, has authored or coauthored nine No.
1 national nonfiction bestsellers. The first,
All the President’s Men
(1974), with Carl Bernstein, was on
Watergate, and the latest,
Bush at War
(2002), is Woodward’s account of America’s response to the September
11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the war in Afghanistan.
Woodward has two daughters, Tali and Diana. He lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife, Elsa Walsh, a
writer fo
r
The New Yorker.