Against All Enemies (12 page)

C
HARLIE
A
LLEN HAD HIS HAIR ON FIRE.
That is the way that Steve Simon, then the head of the State Department politico-military analysis team, put it. “You better talk to him. He thinks Iraq is really going to do it.”

By 1990 I had become the Assistant Secretary of State for Politico-Military Affairs, greatly outraging many Foreign Service officers who thought that job and many other good jobs I filled with young civil service experts should have been preserved for their “union” members.

Charlie Allen was widely admired and disliked in CIA, and for the same reason: he was usually right. A legend, always involved in the most important programs, he had narrowly dodged dismissal because he had been dragged to Tehran by Bud McFarlane on the ill-fated secret trip with the cake and the Koran. Now as National Warning Officer, he was dissenting from CIA's corporate view that Iraq was only intimidating Kuwait to affect oil prices. CIA's official analysis given to the White House said that no one would go to war in temperatures hovering around 108 degrees Fahrenheit. It was, after all, late July 1990.

“What makes you think it's real, Charlie. After all it is 108 degrees out there,” I teased Charlie Allen on the secure phone, knowing my quoting the CIA analysis would set him off.

“Don't believe those guys. They wouldn't notice if an Iraqi T-72 drew up in the CIA parking lot next to them.” Allen's hair was on fire.

“Seriously, why do you think the Iraqis are up to something? Aren't they just trying to scare the Kuwaitis?”

“Emcon,” was all Charlie said back.

“They're operating under emcon? No radio transmissions from their units? Hiding their locations, their movements? You don't do that if you are just trying to scare someone.”

“You got it, boyo.” Allen knew he had made the sale.

“All right. I'll try to get a Deputies Committee, but no one is in town. Scowcroft and Bob Gates are out at NSC. Baker and Eagleburger are out at State. Who will chair it?” Although not 108 degrees in our nation's capital, Washington felt like it and most of the leadership had left town.

Under Secretary Bob Kimmitt chaired the late afternoon meeting. Only Kimmitt, NSC's Richard Haass, and I seemed concerned. CIA Deputy Director Dick Kerr said there was no chance of an Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Admiral Dave Jeremiah agreed and refused my suggestion to retain U.S. forces that were leaving the area after an exercise. State's own Middle East bureau had a report from our ambassador, April Glaspie, noting Saddam's reassurances to her. The meeting broke up without a sense of urgency. I went home.

Steve Simon met me at my house and we sat on the stoop and began to drain a bottle of Lagavulin. John Tritak, then a leading State Department analyst, joined us. I debriefed them on the meeting and we commiserated about the bureaucracy. As the second round was being poured, the telephone rang. John took it. “You have to go back in. The Deputies Committee is reconvening.”

“Why, so we can all agree not to do anything again?” I asked bitterly.

John shook his head and grinned: “No, actually, it seems like there really is an Iraqi T-72 in the parking lot…of the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait.”

The Principals returned to Washington. President Bush was hesitant about how America should respond. His foreign policy alter ego, Secretary of State Jim Baker, and his Defense Secretary, Dick Cheney, were reluctant to act. National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft, however, thought that Iraq had just changed the strategic equation in a way that could not be permitted to continue. So did British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. The two argued that nothing stood between the advance units of the Iraqi army in Kuwait and the immense Saudi oil fields. If we did nothing in response to Iraq's seizing Kuwait, Saddam Hussein would think that he could get away with seizing the Saudis' eastern oil fields. If that happened, Baghdad would control most of the world's readily available oil. They could dictate to America.

Reluctantly, Bush and his team decided that they needed to defend the Saudi oil fields, and do so quickly. They needed Saudi permission for the defensive deployment, but there were some in the Pentagon and White House who thought that U.S. forces needed to protect the Saudi oil with or without Saudi approval.

The mission to persuade the Saudi King to accept U.S. forces was given to Defense Secretary Dick Cheney. He assembled a small team, including Under Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Central Command head Norman Schwarzkopf, Sandy Charles of the NSC, and me, then the Assistant Secretary of State for Politico-Military Affairs.

Our aging aircraft landed on the Azores in the mid-Atlantic to refuel. While the refueling went on, we drove to a hilltop to look down on the small island at night. I chatted with Schwarzkopf, who was a little known figure in Washington. His Central Command in Tampa was generally regarded as a backwater, the least important of the major military commands. Nonetheless, I had spent some time with him in Tampa earlier in the year and gotten to like the big bear of a general. As he asked me how I thought the trip would go we looked down on the lights of the Azores. Suddenly, a power failure plunged the island into darkness. “Well, hopefully the trip will go better than it's starting,” Cheney replied.

It was night when we landed in a steamy Jeddah and went to the King's palace. The Saudi princes sat on the opposite side of the wide room; the King was at the head of the U-shaped audience chamber. For a late-night meeting in Jeddah in August, there was a large turnout of the royal family.

As we had agreed on the flight, Cheney began by saying that we thought the Kingdom might be in danger. Iraqi forces might continue south from Kuwait and seize the Saudi oil fields too. There was nothing to stop them. He then turned it over to Schwarzkopf, who erected a stand and placed satellite photography and maps on it. During our rehearsal on the aircraft I had been afraid that the briefing was not persuasive. I thought that again when I heard it now; we had no evidence that Iraq was intending to keep going, even though I believed it possible either now or in the future.

Cheney concluded the presentation, promising that U.S. forces would come only to defend the Kingdom. President Bush wanted the King to know that he had the President's word that the U.S. forces would leave as soon as the threat was over, or whenever ordered to do so by the King.

The King turned to his brothers and solicited their views. Despite our presence, a debate erupted over the very idea of having U.S. troops in the Kingdom. “They will never leave,” one prince said in Arabic. Our interpreter whispered a translation. “It violates Koranic principles,” said another. The argument seemed to be going against us. What we then learned was that the King had just received a report that a Saudi National Guard unit had stumbled upon an Iraqi army force near or slightly over the poorly marked Saudi border. Maybe they were going to keep going. Cheney's staff began asking if we should be staying the night there.

Sitting next to the King translating our English for him was his ambassador to the U.S. and nephew, Prince Bandar. Bandar had flown out hours ahead of us in his own aircraft. A favorite of the King and a darling of the Washington social set, Bandar agreed with the need to deploy U.S. forces and had tried to persuade the King before the meeting. The tension in the room, both among the Americans on one side of the hall and the Saudi princes forty feet across the room, was almost electric. Neither group knew what the King would say next, but we all knew that what he decided would have huge implications for years to come.

Physically turning to his right, the King literally turned his back on his brothers and looked directly at Cheney. “I trust President Bush. Tell him to have his Army come, come with all they have, come quickly. I have his word that they will leave when this is over.” He then launched into a lengthy monologue about what he and his family had built in the desert Kingdom, turning a backward collection of nomadic tribes into a modern nation. He was not about to let Saddam Hussein steal it.

As we prepared to leave the palace, Cheney called a huddle. The Americans formed a tight circle in the foyer. “Poker faces leaving here. All the cameras out there are going to be looking at your faces to see the King's decision. Don't let Saddam know. If he thinks we're coming in, he may jump off and seize the oil fields before we can get there.” When the doors to the palace opened, however, the humidity was so intense that our glasses instantly fogged. Rather than having poker faces, the American team stumbled toward its cars, rubbing its glasses, looking confused.

The Saudi princes left by another door. Some of them had thought of an alternative to the Americans. Unknown to the Americans at the time, the intelligence chief, Prince Turki, had been approached by the Saudi who had recruited Arabs to fight in the Afghan War against the Soviets, Usama bin Laden.

With the Afghan War over, bin Laden had returned triumphantly to Saudi Arabia in 1989. Prince Turki had reportedly asked him to organize a fundamentalist religion–based resistance to the Communist-styled regime in South Yemen. (The contacts that bin Laden made then in Yemen proved valuable to al Qaeda later.) Bin Laden had also kept some of the Afghan Arab fighters organized. When Kuwait was invaded, he offered to make them available to the King to defend Saudi Arabia, to drive Saddam out of Kuwait. After we left the palace, perhaps bin Laden was told of the King's decision.

His help would not be required. He could not believe it; letting nonbelievers into the Kingdom of the Two Holy Mosques was against the beliefs of the Wahhabist branch of Islam. Large numbers of American military in the Kingdom would violate Islam, the construction magnate's son thought. They would never leave. He feared the King had made a fatal mistake, but he did not break with the regime. He continued his work transforming his front organization, the Afghanistan Services Bureau, into a network that linked returning Afghan war veterans in Algeria, Chechnya, Bosnia, Egypt, and the Philippines.

Returning to the guest palace, Cheney sought to debrief the President. His staff had trouble installing a secure telephone, then found out that it was incompatible with the unit in the Oval Office. When the call did go through, Cheney's Military Assistant was told by someone that the President was in a meeting. Incredulous at the delays, Cheney's implacable facade cracked and he finally erupted, “Well, pull him out of the meeting. We may be going to war.”

Schwarzkopf was having better luck with his phone. Talking to Tampa, he ordered, “Stand by to lift the 82nd Airborne in and the tactical fighters.” Apparently asked how many fighters, he answered, “What's ever in the plan.” The plan, which coincidentally CENTCOM had just exercised in a tabletop war game, called for hundreds of aircraft. It was imprecise as to where they would be based, how they would all fit.

The Saudis were eager for us to involve other Arab nations. Cheney flew on to Cairo to persuade Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak to send troops to the Kingdom. Wolfowitz and I flew on to Bahrain, Abu Dhabi, and Salalah to gain approvals for American aircraft to land at air bases in the smaller Gulf countries. In the United Arab Emirates, we were greeted by the unusual sight of all of the emirs of the seven federal states sitting together led by President Zayed. They had expected us to ask to land forty-eight fighter aircraft. When we asked to base two hundred, there was an audible gasp. Zayed, however, had been trying to warn America for weeks that Saddam would invade Kuwait. A week earlier he had asked for U.S. tanker aircraft to help his aircraft defend UAE oil fields from Iraq. He now knew that the Americans were serious this time and ordered construction of more fighter aircraft support areas immediately.

In Bahrain, the emir was equally stunned by the size of our proposed aircraft deployment. “Of course you may come, but there is not enough room at the airport and my fighter base is still being built.” We offered to finish it.

We found the sultan of Oman in a fifteenth-century fortress by the sea in Salalah, glued to CNN. When he turned to us, it was clear that he knew from our previous stops that we would be asking for permission to land a major air force. “Of course they may all come,” he said with a smile. A graduate of the British military academy, he was a strategic thinker. He also loved aircraft. “Will you bring the Stealth? May I ride in it?”

As we received approvals for U.S. aircraft to bed down in the Gulf countries, we quickly relayed that information to Schwarzkopf's command. The aircraft had already left the U.S. Now, as we flew over Dhahran, on the way out of the Gulf, we could see U.S. heavy-lift transports landing with the lead units of the Airborne. They were equipped with rifles and had only the bullets they carried on them. Schwarzkopf called them “speed bumps” if Iraq kept going.

Listening on the headsets, we heard the U.S. AWACS aircraft circling over Saudi Arabia being called by incoming squadrons of fighters, “Sentinel, this is Tango Foxtrot 841 with twelve birds, exactly where are we supposed to land, in what country?”

All along our return route, across the Mediterranean and then the Atlantic, we heard the chatter of hundreds of U.S. military aircraft that formed a bridge reaching out from their American bases to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the states of the Gulf. The access agreements and pre-positioning that we had achieved to stop the Soviet Union were now being utilized for the first time—but to stop Iraq.