Against All Enemies (8 page)

“Well, that's fuckin' great. Sounds like they're finally going to do everything we wanted. Where the hell were they for the last eight months?” Cressey asked.

“Debating the fine points of the ABM Treaty?” I answered, looking up at the sky for the fighter cover.

“They'll probably deploy the armed Predator now too,” Cressey said, referring to his project to kill bin Laden with an unmanned aircraft. CIA had been blocking the deployment, refusing to be involved in running an armed version of the unmanned aircraft, to hunt and kill bin Laden. Roger Cressey was still fuming at their refusal. “If they had deployed an armed Predator when it was ready, we could have killed bin Laden before this happened.”

“Yeah, well, this attack would have happened anyway, Rog. In fact, if we had killed bin Laden in June with the Predator and this still happened, our friends at CIA would have blamed us, said the attack on New York was retribution, talked again about the overly zealous White House counterterrorism guys.” I tried to think ahead, of what we could best do now. “From here on in it's a self-implementing policy, or as you guys from the Pentagon would say, a self-licking ice cream cone…but it's too late, way too late. The best thing you and I can do now is figure out how to block any follow-on attacks.”

We walked back in. The next task was securing the air transport system so flights could resume. U.S. aviation had long been insecure and the 1997 Commission on Aviation Safety and Security had avoided the tough decisions, like federalizing airport security. The FBI had even attempted to eliminate the Federal Air Marshal program in 1998, arguing that armed FAA agents on hijacked aircraft could be killed by FBI's commandos storming a hijacked aircraft. Now, we had thousands of aircraft scattered at airfields all over the United States and Canada, and probably a quarter of a million passengers sleeping on airport floors. We also had a continuing threat. Had all of the al Qaeda teams struck? We resumed our video conference and I put the question to FAA: how could we resume flight?

“We can't just put everybody back on the planes and go back to business as usual,” Mike Canavan was insistent. Canavan was an Army three-star general, a former commander of Delta Force, who had only recently retired and taken over the job of Director of Security at FAA. He had been in Puerto Rico doing a personnel shake-up of his San Juan operation when the attacks hit. Using his military contacts, he had grabbed a DOD aircraft to get back. Using his FAA contacts, he had been given F-16 escorts so that he would not be shot down by mistake.

“We need to search all the aircraft and airports for hidden weapons. I think some of the knives or box cutters they used had already been put on the aircraft for them.” Canavan had a report of box cutters found hidden away on one of the aircraft that had been grounded.

“Mineta told the President that the system would reopen at noon Wednesday. That would just give us about twelve hours, Mike.” I was looking for a reality check from FAA because my team did not see how the airports could reopen for days.

“Open tomorrow? That ain't gonna happen, Dick.” Canavan had already had this conversation with his boss, following Mineta's return from the White House. “We have been on to the airlines. They could not open at noon even if we wanted to. And we don't. I want FAMs on every flight.”

“Well that means thousands of Federal Air Marshals and last time I checked you had a few dozen,” I said, knowing where Canavan was going. The FAA had flown armed agents on only a few flights on overseas routes. I made Canavan a proposal I knew he would like. “After the bombing at the Atlanta Olympics we threw hundreds of federal agents into security in Atlanta, Border Patrol, Customs, Secret Service, U.S. Marshals. We can do that again, but it will take days to brief them and position them.”

Canavan agreed. “That's what I need for now, but we are going to have to have a dedicated and large FAM program quickly, and it's going to cost.”

“Mike, I told the President about the minimum-wage rent-a-cops doing screening of passengers and carry-on. He understands that will have to end.” We would have to screen every passenger closely before we resumed flights and then put in place a permanent system.

“FAA needs to take that over, too,” Canavan pushed, “but for this week we are going to have to supplement the rent-a-cops with the real thing, local police, National Guard, federal agents.”

“What about everything else?” Paul Kurtz asked. “Are we letting everything resume flying this week? How do we check private planes? I look out my window every day and see private jets taking off from National flying right at the White House before they veer off.” Large passenger aircraft were only a piece of what had been grounded that day. Cargo aircraft, executive jets, personal aircraft, traffic helicopters, crop dusters, Goodyear blimps, and hot air balloons also filled America's skies on a normal day. Dealing with them would have to come later. I asked Kurtz to work with FAA to phase those other aircraft back in after we had a security plan for them. For weeks thereafter, I would catch snippets of Paul's conversations. “I don't care if there is no aerial camera shot of the game, no blimps over stadiums…” and “What do you mean
I
still have all the traffic helicopters grounded?”

Condi Rice joined us again in the Situation Room. The President now wanted to be sure we were all going to get some sleep. “I need you bright and fresh in the morning. Go home.” Rice made sure we understood it was an order. I worried about her security if she planned to go back to her apartment in the nearby Watergate. So had the President; she was going to spend the night in the Residence.

After 1:00 a.m., I agreed to go home briefly to shower and change. Lisa and Mike Fenzel would stay, supported by Margie Gilbert of the National Security Agency. Before I left, I called Pete McCauley to get a ride through the Secret Service positions around the building and to put us on a list to get out…and get back in. We drove through their barricades, down the empty streets. A Humvee with a .50 caliber machine gun was on the corner of 17th and Pennsylvania. We stopped on the Roosevelt Bridge over the Potomac and watched the smoke still rising from the Pentagon, lit by the floodlights that had been brought in. It gave me a chill. As we pulled up to my house in Arlington and shut off the car, we heard the drone of a heavy four-engine aircraft. AWACS circling.

An hour later, as I dressed to go back in, I wondered again how many al Qaeda sleeper cells there were in the United States. I had long believed they existed. So had John O'Neill, who was now dead under tons of steel. So had Dale Watson, who had tried to get the FBI to look for the sleepers. Were there still cells planning more attacks? Thousands had died; we in the West Wing had almost been among them. Now we had the full attention of the bureaucracies and the full support of the President. I had to get back to the White House and begin planning to prevent follow-on attacks. I found my Secret Service–issued .357 sidearm, thrust it in my belt, and went back out into the night, back to the West Wing.

I expected to go back to a round of meetings examining what the next attacks could be, what our vulnerabilities were, what we could do about them in the short term. Instead, I walked into a series of discussions about Iraq. At first I was incredulous that we were talking about something other than getting al Qaeda. Then I realized with almost a sharp physical pain that Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz were going to try to take advantage of this national tragedy to promote their agenda about Iraq. Since the beginning of the administration, indeed well before, they had been pressing for a war with Iraq. My friends in the Pentagon had been telling me that the word was we would be invading Iraq sometime in 2002.

On the morning of the 12th, DOD's focus was already beginning to shift from al Qaeda. CIA was explicit now that al Qaeda was guilty of the attacks, but Paul Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld's deputy, was not persuaded. It was too sophisticated and complicated an operation, he said, for a terrorist group to have pulled off by itself, without a state sponsor—Iraq must have been helping them.

I had a flashback to Wolfowitz saying the very same thing in April when the administration had finally held its first deputy secretary–level meeting on terrorism. When I had urged action on al Qaeda then, Wolfowitz had harked back to the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, saying al Qaeda could not have done that alone and must have had help from Iraq. The focus on al Qaeda was wrong, he had said in April, we must go after Iraqi-sponsored terrorism. He had rejected my assertion and CIA's that there had been no Iraqi-sponsored terrorism against the United States since 1993. Now this line of thinking was coming back.

By the afternoon on Wednesday, Secretary Rumsfeld was talking about broadening the objectives of our response and “getting Iraq.” Secretary Powell pushed back, urging a focus on al Qaeda. Relieved to have some support, I thanked Colin Powell and his deputy, Rich Armitage. “I thought I was missing something here,” I vented. “Having been attacked by al Qaeda, for us now to go bombing Iraq in response would be like our invading Mexico after the Japanese attacked us at Pearl Harbor.”

Powell shook his head. “It's not over yet.”

Indeed, it was not. Later in the day, Secretary Rumsfeld complained that there were no decent targets for bombing in Afghanistan and that we should consider bombing Iraq, which, he said, had better targets. At first I thought Rumsfeld was joking. But he was serious and the President did not reject out of hand the idea of attacking Iraq. Instead, he noted that what we needed to do with Iraq was to change the government, not just hit it with more cruise missiles, as Rumsfeld had implied.

Joint Chiefs Chairman Hugh Shelton's reaction to the idea of changing the Iraqi government was guarded. He noted that could only be done with an invasion by a large force, one that would take months to assemble.

On the 12th and 13th the discussions wandered: what was our objective, who was the enemy, was our reaction to be a war on terrorism in general or al Qaeda in specific? If it was all terrorism we would fight, did we have to attack the anti-government forces in Colombia's jungles too? Gradually, the obvious prevailed: we would go to war with al Qaeda and the Taliban. The compromise consensus, however, was that the struggle against al Qaeda and the Taliban would be the first stage in a broader war on terrorism. It was also clear that there would be a second stage.

Most Americans had never heard of al Qaeda. Indeed, most senior officials in the administration did not know the term when we briefed them in January 2001. I found a moment without meetings and sat at my computer and began: “Who did this? Why do they hate us? How will we respond? What can you as an American do to help?” It all came out, in a stream of pages. I wrote of al Qaeda's hatred of freedom, of its perversion of a beautiful religion, of the need to avoid religious or ethnic prejudice. Thinking it might be helpful, I sent it to John Gibson in Speech Writing.

Meanwhile, Roger Cressey and I dusted off the draft National Security Presidential Directive on al Qaeda, authorizing aid to the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan. Joined by Lisa Gordon-Hagerty, we also began to list the major domestic vulnerabilities to further terrorist attacks and to task the departments to start plugging the holes. Trains with HAZMAT—hazardous materials—were diverted from major cities. Crop dusters were grounded until they could be tracked and we could be sure terrorists were not filling them with biological agents. Special security teams were sent to protect telecommunications hubs, chemical plants, and nuclear reactors.

George Tenet and Cofer Black (the counterterrorism chief at CIA) were off and running now, demanding action from friendly intelligence services and preparing at last to send CIA officers into Afghanistan. Colin Powell and Rich Armitage were turning Pakistan around, from halfhearted support of the U.S. campaign against al Qaeda to full cooperation.

Later, on the evening of the 12th, I left the Video Conferencing Center and there, wandering alone around the Situation Room, was the President. He looked like he wanted something to do. He grabbed a few of us and closed the door to the conference room. “Look,” he told us, “I know you have a lot to do and all…but I want you, as soon as you can, to go back over everything, everything. See if Saddam did this. See if he's linked in any way…”

I was once again taken aback, incredulous, and it showed. “But, Mr. President, al Qaeda did this.”

“I know, I know, but…see if Saddam was involved. Just look. I want to know any shred…”

“Absolutely, we will look…again.” I was trying to be more respectful, more responsive. “But, you know, we have looked several times for state sponsorship of al Qaeda and not found any real linkages to Iraq. Iran plays a little, as does Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia, Yemen.”

“Look into Iraq, Saddam,” the President said testily and left us. Lisa Gordon-Hagerty stared after him with her mouth hanging open.

Paul Kurtz walked in, passing the President on the way out. Seeing our expressions, he asked, “Geez, what just happened here?”

“Wolfowitz got to him,” Lisa said, shaking her head.

“No,” I said. “Look, he's the President. He has not spent years on terrorism. He has every right to ask us to look again, and we will, Paul.”

Paul was the most open-minded person on the staff, so I asked him to lead the special project to get the departments and agencies to once again look for a bin Laden link to Saddam Hussein. He chaired a meeting the next day to develop an official position on the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda. All agencies and departments agreed, there was no cooperation between the two. A memorandum to that effect was sent up to the President, but there was never any indication that it reached him.