Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War 030794963X, 9780307949639

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Praise for Robert M. Gates's

Duty "A refreshingly honest memoir and a moving one." -The Wall Street Journal "Probably one of the best Washington memoirs ever....Histori­ ans and policy wonks will bask in the revelations Gates provides on major decisions from late 2006 to 2011, the span of his time at the Pentagon....Gates is doing far more than just scoring points in this revealing volume." -The New York Times Book Review "Touching, heartfelt ... fascinating.... Gates takes the reader inside the war-room deliberations of Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama and delivers unsentimental assess­ ments of each man's temperament, intellect and management style.... No civilian in Washington was closer to the wars in -The Washington Post Iraq and Afghanistan than Gates." "A breathtakingly comprehensive and ultimately unsparing exam­ ination of the modern ways of making politics, policy, and war.... Students of the nation's two early twenty-first-century wars will find the comprehensive account of Pentagon and White House deliberations riveting.General readers will be drawn to [ Gates's] meditations on power and on life at the center of great political decisions." -The Boston Globe

"If you read only one book by a Washington insider this year, make it this one. It should be savored by anyone who wishes to know more about the realities of decision-making in today's fed­ eral government." -Library Journal "Gates has offered ...an informed and ... earnest perspective, one that Americans ought to hear, reflect on and debate." -The Atlantic "Engaging and candid....Young people who want to understand and live up to the highest ideals of American statesmanship would do well to read this book carefully; Gates has much to teach about the practical idealism that represents the best kind of American leadership." -Foreign Affairs "Duty ...is an invaluable contribution to our understanding of what makesWashington tick." -Financial Times ''A compelling memoir and a serious history. . . .A fascinating, briskly honest account [of a] journey through the cutthroat cor­ ridors ofWashington and world politics, with shrewd, sometimes eye-popping observations along the way about the nature of war and the limits of power.... Gates was a truly historic secretary of defense ...precisely because he did get so much done." -Slate

Robert M. Gates

Duty Robert M. Gates served as secretary of defense from 2006 to 2011. He also served as an officer in the United States Air Force and worked for the Central Intelligence Agency before being appointed director of the agency by President George H. W. Bush. He was a member of the National Security Council staff in four administrations and served eight presidents of both political par­ ties. Additionally, Gates has a continuing distinguished record in the private sector and in academia, including currently serving as chancellor of the College of William and Mary. He holds a Ph.D. in Russian and Soviet history from Georgetown University.

ALSO BY ROBERT M. GATES

From the Slwdows: The Ultimate Insider's Story of Five Presidents and How Thly Won the Cold War

Duty

MEMOIRS OF A SECRETARY AT WAR

Robert M. Gates

VINTAGE BOOKS

A Division of Penguin Random House LLC New York

FIRST VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION, MAY 2015

Copyright© 2014 by Robert M. Gates All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and distributed in Canada by Random House of Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Ltd., Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, in 2014. Vintage and colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC. The Library of Congress has cataloged the Knopf edition as follows: Gates, Robert Michael. Duty: memoirs of a Secretary at war I by Robert M. Gates. pages cm Includes index 1. Gates, Robert Michael, 19432. United States. Department of Defense-Officials and employees-Biography. 3. Cabinet officers-United States-Biography. 4. Iraq War, 2003-2011-Personal narratives. 5. Afghan War, 2001-Personal narratives, American. 6. War on Terrorism, 2001-2009-Personal narratives, American. 7. United States-Military policy-Decision making. 8. Civil-military relations-United States-History-21st century. 9. United States-Politics and government-2001-2009. 10. United States-Politics and government-2009- J. Title. II. Title: Memoirs of a Secretary at war. E897.4P48B7 6 2012 355.6092-dc23 [BJ 2013026348 Vintage Books Trade Paperback ISBN: 978-0-307-94963-9 eBook ISBN: 978-0-307-95948- 5

Book design by Cassandra J. Pappas www.vintagebooks.com Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

This book is dedicated to the men and women of the United States Armed Forces.

Contents

Author's Note ix CHAPTER 1 CHAPTER 2 CHAPTER

3

CHAPTER 4 CHAPTER

5

CHAPTER

6

7 CHAPTER 8 CHAPTER 9 CHAPTER

CHAPTER 10 CHAPTER 11 CHAPTER 12 CHAPTER

13

CHAPTER

14

CHAPTER

15

Summoned to Duty 3 Iraq, Iraq, and Iraq 25 Mending Fences, Finding Allies 80 Waging War on the Pentagon 115 Beyond Iraq: A Complicated World 149 Good War, Bad War 197 One Damn Thing After Another 239 Transition 258 New Team, New Agenda, Old Secretary 287 Afghanistan: A House Divided 335 Difficult Foes, Difficult Friends 387 Meanwhile, Back in Washington 432 War, War ... and Revolution 468 At War to the Last Day Reflections 566 Acknowledgments 597 Index 599

524

Author's Note

This is a book about my more than four and a half years at war. It is, of course, principally about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, where initial victories in both countries were squandered by mistakes, shortsighted­ ness, and conflict in the field as well as in Washington, leading to long, brutal campaigns to avert strategic defeat. It is about the war against al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, those responsible for our national tragedy on September 11, 2001. But this book is also about my political war with Congress every day I was in office and the dramatic contrast between my public respect, bipartisanship, and calm, and my private frustra­ tion, disgust, and anger. There were also political wars with the White House, often with the White House staff, occasionally with the presi­ dents themselves-more with President Obama than with President Bush. And finally, there was my bureaucratic war with the Department of Defense and the military services, aimed at transforming a depart­ ment organized to plan for war into one that could wage war, changing the military forces we had into the military forces we needed to succeed. George W. Bush and Barack Obama were, respectively, the seventh and eighth presidents I worked for. I knew neither man when I began working for them, and they did not know me. To my astonishment (and consternation), I became the only secretary of defense in history to be asked to remain in the position by a newly elected president, let alone one of a different party. I came to the job in mid-December 2006 with the sole purpose of doing what I could to salvage the mission in Iraq

x Author's Note

from disaster. I had no idea how to do it, nor any idea of the sweep­ ing changes I would need to make at the Pentagon to get it done. And I had no idea how dramatically and how far my mission over time would expand beyond Iraq. As I look back, there is a parallel theme to my four and a half years at war: love. By that I mean the love-there is no other word for it-I came to feel for the troops, and the overwhelming sense of personal respon­ sibility I developed for them. So much so that it would shape some of my most significant decisions and positions. Toward the end of my time in office, I could barely speak to them or about them without being overcome with emotion. Early in my fifth year, I came to believe my determination to protect them-in the wars we were in and from new wars-was clouding my judgment and diminishing my usefulness to the president, and thus it played a part in my decision to retire. I make no pretense that this book is a complete, much less definitive, history of the period from 2006 to 2011. It is simply my personal story about being secretary of defense during those turbulent, difficult years.

Duty

CHAPTER I

Summoned to Duty

I

had become president of Texas A&M University in August 2002, and by October 2006 I was well into my fifth year. I was very happy there, and many-but not all-Aggies believed I was making significant improvements in nearly all aspects of the univer­ sity (except football). I had originally committed to staying five years but agreed to extend that to seven years-summer 2009. Then my wife, Becky, and I would finally return to our home in the Pacific Northwest. The week of October 15, 2006, the week that would change my life, started out routinely with several meetings. Then I took to the road, end­ ing up in Des Moines, Iowa, where I was to give a speech on Friday, the twentieth. Just past one p.m. that day I received an e-mail from my secretary, Sandy Crawford, saying that President Bush's national security adviser, Steve Hadley, wanted to speak to me on the phone within an hour or two. Hadley's assistant was "quite insistent" that the message be passed to me. I told Sandy to inform the assistant I would return Steve's call on Saturday morning. I had no idea why Steve was calling, but I had spent nearly nine years at the White House on the National Security Council (NSC) staff under four presidents, and I knew that the West Wing often demanded instant responses that were rarely necessary. Hadley and I had first met on the NSC staff in the summer of 1974 and had remained friends, though we were in contact infrequently. In January 2005, Steve-who had succeeded Condoleezza Rice as George W.

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Bush's national security adviser for the second Bush term-had asked me to consider becoming the first director of national intelligence (DNI), a job created by legislation the previous year, legislation-and a job-that I had vigorously opposed as unworkable. The president and his senior advisers wanted me to make it work. I met with Hadley and White House chief of staff Andy Card in Washington on Monday of inauguration week. We had very detailed conversations about authori­ ties and presidential empowerment of the DNI, and by the weekend they and I both thought I would agree to take the jo_b. I was to call Card at Camp David with my final answer the follow­ ing Monday. Over the weekend I wrestled with the decision. On Satur­ day night, lying awake in bed, I told Becky she could make this decision really easy for me; I knew how much she loved being at Texas A&M, and all she had to say was that she didn't want to return to Washington, D.C. Instead, she said, "We have to do what you have to do." I said, "Thanks a lot." Late Sunday night I walked around the campus smoking a cigar. As I walked past familiar landmarks and buildings, I decided I could not leave Texas A&M; there was still too much I wanted to accomplish there. And I really, really did not want to go back into government. I called Andy the next morning and told him to tell the president I would not take the job. He seemed stunned. He must have felt that I had led them on, which I regretted, but it really had been a last-minute decision. There was one consolation. I told Becky, "We are safe now-the Bush adminis­ tration will never ask me to do another thing." I was wrong. At nine a.m. on Saturday-now nearly two years later-I returned Steve's call as promised. He wasted no time in posing a simple, direct question: "If the president asked you to become secretary of defense, would you accept?" Stunned, I gave him an equally simple, direct answer without hesitation: "We have kids dying in two wars. If the president thinks I can help, I have no choice but to say yes. It's my duty." The troops out there were doing their duty-how could I not do mine? That said, I sat at my desk frozen. My God, what have I done? I kept thinking to myself. I knew that after nearly forty years of marriage, Becky would support my decision and all that it meant for our two children as well, but I was still terrified to tell her. Josh Bolten, a former director of the Office of Management and Bud-· get, who had replaced Card as White House chief of staff earlier that year,

Summoned to Duty

5

called a few days later to reassure himself of my intentions. He asked if I had any ethical issues that could be a problem, like hiring illegal immi­ grants as nannies or housekeepers. I decided to have some fun at his expense and told him we had a noncitizen housekeeper. Before he began to hyperventilate, I told him she had a green card and was well along the path to citizenship. I don't think he appreciated my sense of humor. Bolten then said a private interview had to be arranged for me with the president. I told him I thought I could slip into Washington for din­ ner on Sunday, November 12, without attracting attention. The president wanted to move faster. Josh e-mailed me on October 31 to see if I could drive to the Bush ranch near Crawford, Texas, for an early morning meeting on Sunday, November 5. The arrangements set up by deputy White House chief of staff Joe Hagin were very precise. He e-mailed me that I should meet him at eight-thirty a.m. in McGregor, Texas, about twenty minutes from the ranch. I would find him in the parking lot at the Brookshire Brothers grocery store, sitting in a white Dodge Durango parked to the right of the entrance. Dress would be "ranch casual"-sport shirt and khakis or jeans. I look back with amusement that my job interviews with both President Bush and President-elect Obama involved more cloak-and­ dagger clandestinity than most of my decades-long career in the CIA. I did not tell anyone other than Becky what was going on except for the president's father, former president George H. W. Bush (the forty­ first president, Bush 41), with whom I wanted to consult. He was the reason I had come to Texas A&M in the first place, in 1999, to be the interim dean of the George H. W. Bush School of Government and Pub­ lic Service. What was supposed to be a nine-month stint of a few days a month became two years and led directly to my becoming president of Texas A&M. Bush was sorry I would be leaving the university, but he knew the country had to come first. I also think he was happy that his son had reached out to me. I left my house just before five a.m. to head for my interview with the president. Call me old-fashioned, but I thought a blazer and slacks more appropriate for a meeting with the president than a sport shirt and jeans. Starbucks wasn't open that early, so I was pretty bleary-eyed for the first part of the two-and-a-half-hour drive. I was thinking the entire way about questions to ask and answers to give, the magnitude of the challenge, how life for both my wife and me would change, and how to

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approach the job of secretary of defense. I do not recall feeling any self­ doubt on the drive to the ranch that morning, perhaps a reflection of just how little I understood the direness of the situation. I knew, however, that I had one thing going for me: most people had low expectations about what could be done to turn around the war in Iraq and change the climate in Washington. During the drive I also thought about how strange it would be to join this administration. I had never had a conversation with the presi­ dent. I had played no role in the 2000 camp�ign and was never asked to do so. I had virtually no contact with anyone in the administration during Bush's first term and was dismayed when my closest friend and mentor, Brent Scowcroft, wound up in a public dispute with the admin­ istration over his opposition to going to war in Iraq. While I had known Rice, Hadley, Dick Cheney, and others for years, I was joining a group of people who had been through 9/11 together, who had been fighting two wars, and who had six years of being on the same team. I would be the outsider. I made my clandestine rendezvous in McGregor with no problem. As we approached the ranch, I could see the difference in security as a result of 9/11. I had visited other presidential residences, and they were always heavily guarded, but nothing like this. I was dropped off at the presi­ dent's office, a spacious but simply decorated one-story building some distance from the main house. It has a large office and sitting room for the president, and a kitchen and a couple of offices with computers for staff. I arrived before the president (always good protocol), got a cup of coffee (finally), and looked around the place until the president arrived a few minutes later, promptly at nine. (He was always exceptionally punc­ tual.) He had excused himself from a large group of friends and family celebrating his wife Laura's sixtieth birthday. We exchanged pleasantries, and he got down to business. He talked first about the importance of success in Iraq, saying that the current strategy wasn't working and that a new one was needed. He told me he was thinking seriously about a significant surge in U.S. forces to restore security in Baghdad. He asked me about my experience on the Iraq Study Group (more later) and what I thought about such a surge. He said he thought we needed new military leadership in Iraq and was taking a close look at Lieutenant General David Petraeus. Iraq was obviously upper=-

Summoned to Duty

7

most on his mind, but he also talked about his concerns in Afghanistan; a number of other national security challenges, including Iran; the cli­ mate in Washington; and his way of doing business, including an insis­ tence on candor from his senior advisers. When he said specifically that his father did not know about our meeting, I felt a bit uncomfortable, but I did not disabuse him. It was clear he had not consulted his father about this possible appointment and that, contrary to later speculation, Bush 41 had no role in it. He asked me if I had any questions or issues. I said there were five subjects on my mind. First, on Iraq, based on what I had learned on the Iraq Study Group, I told him I thought a surge was necessary but that its duration should be closely linked to particular actions by the Iraqi government-especially passage of key legislative proposals strength­ ening sectarian reconciliation and national unity. Second, I expressed my deep concern about Afghanistan and my feeling that it was being neglected, and that there was too much focus on trying to build a capable central government in a country that essentially had never had one, and too little focus on the provinces, districts, and tribes. Third, I felt that neither the Army nor the Marine Corps was big enough to do all that was being asked of them, and they needed to grow. Fourth, I suggested we had pulled a bait and switch on the National Guard and Reserves-most men and women had joined the Guard in particular expecting to go to monthly training sessions and summer training camp, and to be called up for natural disasters or a national crisis; instead, they had become an operational force, deploying for a year or more to join an active and dangerous fight and potentially deploying more than once. I told the president that I thought all these things had negative implications for their families and their employers that needed to be addressed. He did not disagree with any of my points about the Guard. Finally I told him that while I was no expert and not fully informed, what I had heard and read led me to believe the Pentagon was buying too many weapons more suited to the Cold War than to the twenty-first century. After about an hour together, the president leaned forward and asked if I had any more questions. I said no. He then sort of smiled and said, "Cheney?" W hen I sort of smiled back, he went on to say, "He is a voice, an important voice, but only one voice." I told him I had had a good relationship with Cheney when he was secretary of defense and thought

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DUTY

I could make the relationship work. T he president then said he knew how much I loved Texas A&M but that the country needed me more. He asked me if I would be willing to take on the secretary's job. I said yes. He had been very candid with me about many things, including his vice president, and he encouraged comparable candor on my part. I left confident that if I became secretary, he would expect and want me to tell him exactly what I thought, and I knew I would have no trouble doing that. I was in a daze on the drive back to the upiversity. For two weeks, becoming secretary of defense had been a possibility, one I continued to half-hope would not become a reality. After the interview, while the president had not told me to pack my bags, I knew what lay in front of me. About half past five that afternoon, I received an e-mail from Bush 41: "How did it go?" I responded, "I may be off-base, but I think it went exceptionally well.I was certainly satisfied on all the issues I raised (including the ones you and I talked about) .... Unless I miss my guess, this thing is going to go forward." I went on, "Mr. President, I feel sad about possibly leaving A&M but I also feel pretty good about going back to help out at a critical time. You know, other than a handshake when he was governor of Texas, I really had never spent any time with your son.Today we spent over an hour together alone, and I liked what I saw. Maybe I can help him." I asked him to be circumspect about how much he knew, and he quickly replied, "I do NOT leak! Lips sealed says this. very happy, very proud friend of yours." Literally minutes later Bolten called to tell me the president had decided to move forward.A one p.m. press announcement was planned for Wednesday, November 8, followed by a televised three-thirty presi­ dential appearance with Secretary Rumsfeld and me in the Oval Office. Cheney, as he wrote in his memoir, had opposed the president's deci­ sion to replace Rumsfeld, who was an old friend, colleague, and mentor. I suspected as much at the time and was relieved when Bolten passed along to me that Secretary of State Rice had been enthusiastic about my nomination and that the vice president had said I was "a good man." As Bolten said, coming from Cheney, that was high praise. I kept Becky informed of all this-I didn't dare do otherwise-and expressed only one misgiving to her as that Sunday ended. The Bush'

Summoned to Duty

9

administration by then was held in pretty low esteem across the nation. I told her, "I have to do this, but I just hope I can get out of this adminis­ tration with my reputation intact." THE ANNOUNCEMENT

On Monday, the ponderous wheels of a major confirmation process began to move, still in secret. My first contact was with the White House counsel, Harriet Miers, to begin going through all the ethics questions associated with my membership on corporate boards of directors, my investments, and all the rest. The political side of confirmation began on Tuesday, when I was asked to provide lists of members of Congress I thought would be positive in their reactions, as well as former officials, journalists, and others who could be expected to comment favorably on my selection. I was asked to be at the White House at midmorning on the eighth. I was flown to Washington in an unmarked Air Force Gulfstream jet that landed at Andrews Air Force Base, just outside Washington, where it taxied to a remote part of the airfield. I was picked up (again) by Joe Hagin. A few minutes later I arrived at the White House and was shown to a small office in the West Wing basement, where I would begin mak­ ing courtesy phone calls to congressional leaders, key members of Con­ gress, and other notables in and out of Washington. I was introduced to David Broome, a young White House legislative assistant who would be my "handler" and shepherd me through the confirmation process. I had some experience on the Hill myself, of course, but David was a very smart, practical, and astute observer of Capitol Hill, as well as a U.S. Marine Corps reserve officer. I felt very comfortable with him. I made a number of calls, and the reactions to my impending nom­ ination were overwhelmingly positive. I learned that even the Repub­ licans were very nervous about Iraq and eager for a change from the current approach-especially given that many of them attributed their party's loss of control of Congress in the election the day before mostly to the public's growing opposition to the war. Not knowing where I would come down on Iraq, they still welcomed me. The Democrats were even more enthusiastic, believing my appointment would somehow hasten

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the end of the war. If I had any doubt before the calls that nearly every­ one in Washington believed I would have a one-item agenda as secretary, it was dispelled in those calls. At about twelve-thirty p.m. Texas time, about a half hour into the president's press conference announcing the change at Defense, an e-mail I had prepared was sent to some 65,000 students, faculty, and staff at Texas A&M with a personal message. The hardest part for me to write went as follows: "I must tell you that while I chose Texas A&M over returning to government almost two years ago,.much has happened b