EXPERT PERSPECTIVE — About per week earlier than being interviewed by Richard Bruce Cheney about whether or not I’d be the suitable particular person to function his nationwide safety briefer, I broke a bone in my left foot. While bounding down the steps at dwelling in a rush to not be late to a gathering on the National Security Council, I missed a step. So, quite than spending the morning at The White House, I spent it at a health care provider’s workplace getting a giant, goofy, purple forged on my left leg. Fantastic. How higher to exude to the Vice President of the United States that I’d be competent as his President’s Daily Brief (PDB) briefer, than hobbling into the interview with a forged? Somehow, I obtained the job.
During the presidency of George W. Bush, the President and Vice President’s PDB briefers met and traveled with them six days per week, typically seven. We would awaken each morning round 1:00am to organize what is called the “Book” and accompanying materials. The Book was the President’s Daily Brief itself, a brutally concise, comparatively quick assortment of intelligence analyses produced at the moment, by simply the CIA; it went to a brief listing of designated policymakers. All who acquired it additionally obtained morning briefers to accompany and increase on the content material as wanted and to take taskings, however solely these for the President and Vice President routinely traveled with them. In addition to the PDB, there was “behind-the-tab” materials for all recipients besides the President. In Cheney’s case, I made a decision—with zero supervision or coordination—what he additionally wanted to see, per my judgement. Raw intel, press items, e book summaries, graphics, and anything that I believed could possibly be helpful.
I usually briefed the then-Vice President on the Naval Observatory, the official residence for U.S. vice presidents. But only a week into the job, I accompanied him on Marine Two to Camp David, the place he would attend some conferences. Thus started a fast, each day studying curve into who this man was – beginning with how he handled others.
“Others” fell usually into two classes with little grey space between—these he revered and people he didn’t. People in each classes often knew the place they stood, and Cheney didn’t manifest totally different orientations towards folks primarily based on their societal stations in life. This was a person whose default setting was to point out courtesy and respect towards others except they satisfied him in any other case. Every one in every of his ushers, central members of the residence workers, informed me individually – with zero nudging from me – that they favored the Cheneys far more than they favored their predecessors. Why, I requested. Because the Cheneys all the time confirmed respect to them, their time calls for, they informed me. As for these within the different class? Many of us recall Cheney telling Senator Patrick Leahy to “go f*** your self” on the Senate flooring in 2004. He additionally bluntly expressed his opinions on a variety of actors and even nations to me throughout our time collectively. Few if any fell into grey space.
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Cheney persistently hosted the longest of the PDB classes throughout all PDB recipients of that Administration, a mirrored image of his mental curiosity, the countless stacks of books and different issues he learn, his a few years of navigating the U.S. Government and geopolitics, and the truth that on most mornings, he went from his briefings with me to attending PDB classes along with his boss. I all the time had a minimum of half-hour with him, and on mornings when occasions or journey altered the President’s schedule, my classes might stretch past 90 minutes.
Something that was mirrored in his time dedication to these PDB classes was that, amongst being many issues, Dick Cheney was an overachiever of the world-class order. Whatever activity, obligation, mission, strategic pursuit that is perhaps in his cross hairs, he can be totally ready. This a part of him after all helped land his stint because the youngest White House Chief of Staff in historical past, below President Gerald Ford.
Much has been written about Cheney’s function and actions within the speedy wake of September 11; I got here after, in the course of the run as much as and penalties following America’s second invasion of Iraq. Because of once I briefed him and the job I took instantly afterward in July 2003 – Chief of CIA’s Iraq enterprise masking army, political, management, and financial evaluation – I draw from a novel mixture of views to supply context on the Iraq, Dick Cheney story. Some will likely be stunned by what I noticed together with throughout NSC conferences chaired by President Bush and attended by Cheney once I sat in because the ‘plus-one’ for the CIA Director or for the Director of National Intelligence.
On March 16, 2002, Dick Cheney mentioned on NBC’s Meet the Press, “I believe issues have gotten so dangerous inside Iraq, from the standpoint of the Iraqi folks, my perception is we’ll, in truth, be greeted as liberators . . . I believe it [the invasion] will go comparatively shortly . . . weeks quite than months.” As we now know, he – and different seniors within the Bush Administration – couldn’t have been extra fallacious.
Not lengthy after we invaded Iraq in March of 2003, violence there started to swell up, and shortly thereafter the CIA enterprise I headed gave President Bush and Cheney – their first and extremely unwelcome dose of the “I” phrase: insurgency. Early on, Bush and different Administration seniors defined the sources of the violence as “criminals, regime dead-enders, or trouble-makers” pushed into the nation by Iraq and Syria as operatives. But in the summertime of 2003, we put a PDB into the Oval Office arguing that an organized and indigenous insurgency was shortly creating. Feedback from Bush’s PDB briefer that morning was “The President was so indignant he got here off his chair. He needs a memo tomorrow morning recounting once we warned him this was coming.” Lots folks labored in a single day to supply that 4.5-page piece, which delivered what was requested.
At some level between that preliminary shock and late summer season, fall of 2003, Cheney – whom we had briefed in additional element on the insurgency, informed us “The President wants to listen to this.” Consider that one of many Administration’s most vocal and influential advocates of invading Iraq, who had been on report saying the trouble can be simple and quick, had now turned to persuading Bush and his total NSC that we confronted an insurgency in Iraq. Cheney knew that this data, as soon as it entered the general public enviornment, would seemingly get himself in addition to President Bush eviscerated by the media and by critics. But that appeared to matter little to him; the United States was underestimating what it was now going through in Iraq, and Cheney’s focus grew to become aligning coverage with actuality.
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A number of days earlier than Veterans Day in 2003, somebody within the CIA Director’s workplace informed me there can be a briefing that day for Bush’s NSC on Iraq that I’d lead. Cheney had facilitated this. I additionally was informed I might take one analyst of my alternative, however I knew some on the NSC would push again onerous and would anticipate “within the weeds” particulars of our evaluation, so I subbed myself out and despatched two senior analysts who knew the weeds – a superlative army skilled and a political-analyst counterpart.
It was a PhD and former Marine CIA army analyst in my Iraq enterprise who compelled then Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld and others to just accept that an insurgency was rising in Iraq. The analyst’s most persuasive second got here when Rumsfeld argued forcefully that there have been a number of and differing definitions of insurgency, making use of the phrase complicated at greatest and inaccurate at worst. That army analyst calmly however firmly summarized the 2 most generally accepted definitions and illustrated that the CIA’s conclusion was primarily based on the one noticed by Rumsfeld’s Department of Defense. The analyst additionally laid out premises wanted to justify that definition, all of which all within the room had been seeing. Bush declared acceptance, famous that NSC members needed to be sq. with this actuality amongst themselves, and requested all to keep away from the phrase insurgency in public.
Let me shut with an perception that sheds gentle on Cheney’s close to obsession with going into Iraq to search out WMD after which displaying a stage of consolation with enhanced interrogation strategies that many discover appalling.
One morning after a PDB briefing with me, Cheney sat again and recounted some historical past following the Gulf War, throughout which he was Secretary of Defense. He jogged my memory with some power that in interrogations of Saddam Hussein’s son-in-law Hussein Kamel, who defected briefly, we realized that Iraq’s nuclear-weapons program was additional alongside than we had assessed. Rather than a type of scolding for off-the-mark CIA evaluation again then, this attitude he was sharing signaled an acknowledgement that I knew the load of his function in persuading Bush ’43 to invade Iraq—and in his thoughts, he had good cause. If we had been underestimating Saddam’s WMD program once more and Osama bin Laden gained entry to any a part of it, the results for Americans can be catastrophic.
The Economist Magazine lately summarized the unwavering sense of obligation to nation felt by Cheney. In the closing phrases of its obituary in reference to criticism about his posture towards countering terrorism, and on being fallacious about WMD in Iraq, The Economist wrote: “He was unmoved . . . He was, as all the time, simply doing his job. Trying to guard America.”
All statements of reality, opinion, or evaluation expressed are these of the writer and don’t replicate the official positions or views of the US Government. Nothing within the contents ought to be construed as asserting or implying US Government authentication of knowledge or endorsement of the writer’s views.
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