At War with Ourselves, page 4
I WALKED into the West Wing side entrance, up the stairs, and down the hallway to the office suite for the assistant to the president for national security affairs and the deputy assistant. There, I met Coast Guard captain John Reed, who had been serving as executive assistant to Michael Flynn. Deputy National Security Advisor Kathleen Troia “K.T.” McFarland walked out of her office at the back of the suite to greet me. It was K.T. who had held the team together under the strains of the transition between presidents and of Mike Flynn’s unexpected departure
John Rader and Navy lieutenant commander Sarah Flaherty emerged from an office not much larger than a walk-in closet. John was serving as my policy advisor, and Sarah as K.T.’s. Sarah had met K.T. through K.T.’s daughter, a fellow naval officer. K.T. and I had a few moments alone in the furnished but otherwise undecorated NSA office. She acknowledged the turbulence associated with the transition and the unexpected departure of Flynn, but said that important work was already under way. She explained that we had a talented team and that she had run deputies committee meetings to develop options for the president on North Korea—the problem that President Obama had told President Trump was most urgent.
I thanked K.T. for all she had done and told her that her understanding of the president and the Trump team would help me transition into the job. Aware that I had never been assigned in Washington, K.T., who had first served on the NSC staff under Henry Kissinger, warned me that the working environment of the White House would be “nothing like your experience in the military.”
In Washington, she noted, “friends stab you in the chest.”
Others had given me similar warnings. Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich told me that “when you find yourself in a snake pit, don’t be surprised when you have to handle snakes.”
As I entered the Situation Room, in the basement of the West Wing, I sensed trepidation among the NSC senior staff. Megan Badasch, the deputy executive secretary, recalled later that she was thinking, This is where we all get fired. K.T. had told me that many members of the staff shared Badasch’s anxiety.
I explained that I needed their help because “this was my first assignment in Washington.” I acknowledged Keith Kellogg’s service in Vietnam and noted how challenging it must have been to lead soldiers under a fundamentally flawed policy and strategy. I shared with them my view that the Obama administration policies and strategies to cope with threats from China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, and jihadist terrorist organizations had been, like U.S. strategy for the Vietnam War, based on fundamentally flawed assumptions. We would scrutinize assumptions, take time to understand the nature of the challenges and opportunities the United States was confronting, identify what was at stake, craft realistic objectives, and develop multiple policy options to accomplish those objectives at an acceptable cost and risk.
I asked the team for their thoughts on how I should prioritize my personal efforts to contribute to the mission. I thought I had allayed their concerns about their being fired, but I sensed reluctance among them to share criticisms and suggestions in such a large group.
Badasch asked me to visit the Eisenhower Executive Office Building (EEOB) to meet members of the Executive Secretariat, the body that coordinates the work of the NSC staff internally and communications between the NSC staff, the White House staff, and the departments and agencies. The team there had been working tirelessly since the transition and could use a morale boost.
As we walked across the EEOB parking lot and up the stairs to her office, I saw looks of surprise as I greeted members of the NSC and White House staff in the hallways. I learned later that most national security advisors rarely ventured out of the West Wing and into the EEOB. Over the next year, I would routinely visit directors in their offices. It gave me the opportunity to see members of the NSC staff more frequently, hear their perspectives, and benefit from their insights. Meeting people on their own turf often makes them feel more comfortable. It is also one of the many aspects of leadership that is common in the Army but unusual in the White House.
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LATER THAT first day, I met with my policy advisor, John Rader, and with John Eisenberg, the NSC legal advisor and deputy counsel to the president for national security. Eisenberg stressed that to fulfill his responsibility to the president, he must be present for consequential conversations. He explained that although his responsibility was to the president alone, he would help me avoid pitfalls and ensure that any NSC initiatives were legal and above reproach. For example, Eisenberg had lamented Mike Flynn’s decision to grant an interview with FBI investigators without a White House attorney present because it was detrimental to Flynn and could have compromised executive privilege—that is, the power of the president and other officials in the executive branch to withhold certain forms of confidential communication from the courts and the legislative branch. Rader caught me up on how the current NSC organization and process had developed during the transition. The elevation of homeland security advisor Tom Bossert to the equivalent of the national security advisor had blurred the lines of responsibility and also created bureaucratic problems: Bossert and I could both convene meetings with the secretary of defense, secretary of state, and other cabinet officials, which could cause redundancies and confusion.
But the most controversial aspect of the Trump National Security Council, as laid out in a January 28, 2017, National Security Presidential Memorandum (NSPM), was the designation of “regular attendees” of the principals committee (PC) of the National Security Council and the Homeland Security Council.1 Rader told me that, as the draft of the NSPM went through the clearance process, Priebus had used a red Sharpie to add Trump’s chief campaign strategist, Steve Bannon, to the roster of regular members of the principals committee. The document had not listed the director of national intelligence and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Joseph Dunford, as regular members of the PC. Senior policy advisor Stephen Miller had added these edits before Mike Flynn was aware of the change. This was a problem because those who had been removed were important for getting the president the best advice; also, Bannon’s membership on it would imply that Trump was allowing partisan politics to intrude on issues of national security.
I made a note to talk with the president about this.
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I LEFT the White House that day at around 8 p.m. and jumped into the back right seat of one of the two Suburbans that would be my principal means of conveyance for the next year. It was a short drive across the Potomac River to Fort Myer. My bags were already in the two-room apartment at Wainwright Hall, military lodging named for Gen. Jonathan Wainwright, who, after the evacuation of Gen. Douglas MacArthur from the Philippines in 1941, was forced to surrender to the Japanese Army and endured three years of brutal captivity. Wainwright and I had both commanded the Third Cavalry Regiment. He was the regiment’s twenty-seventh colonel, serving from 1935 to 1938, seventy years before I assumed command of that storied unit as its seventy-first colonel. It was a reminder that the Army is a living historical community. The travails of soldiers like Wainwright put into context the relatively trivial concerns that many in Washington regard as crises.
The refrigerator in the apartment was stocked. I found a welcome note from Shannon George, the wife of Maj. Gen. John George, with whom I had served at Fort Eustis. The Army and Army friends would remain a source of support in my new job.
The next day, Wednesday, February 22, my first full day on the job, started early for me. I departed Wainwright Hall just after 7 a.m. I intended to use my first hour in the office each day for reading and thinking. Dr. Seth Center, the NSC director for national security strategy and history, had gathered together the Obama administration’s most significant policy documents for me. They were disappointing. I should not have been surprised, as for many years prior, I had been on the receiving end of inane policy papers such as those about Iraq and Afghanistan. Reading the papers in my office affirmed my belief that, in the post–Cold War period, U.S. strategic competence had atrophied.
At 8:30, I met my intel briefer, with whom I would spend a lot of time over the course of the year. I read through the President’s Daily Brief (PDB), the “book of secrets” the intelligence community produces each morning for the president and a select group of cabinet-level officials, as my briefer hit the highlights. The PDB’s analytical essays have no byline, but briefers know who the author of each one is and will provide feedback to that person based on discussions. I complimented one well-written and well-argued assessment of how jihadist terrorist organizations were evolving. My briefer smiled and said, “It does not surprise me that you like the paper. You know the author very well.” PDB papers are scheduled well in advance. In what was a remarkable coincidence, the assessment had been written by my daughter Katharine, who was serving at the National Counterterrorism Center.
What were the chances that Katharine’s essay would be in my first PDB or that I would read it and compliment the anonymous author? I was even prouder of her service. It was an auspicious sign, I thought.
Mike Pompeo stopped by just prior to what would be my first PDB session with him and the president. He reminded me to give Trump quick, essential information and, if appropriate, to tell a story that illuminated the key dimensions of the given subject. He warned that I would hear what one might consider outlandish ideas during conversations with the president, because Trump was determined to do what he had been elected to do—shake things up. Moreover, he told me, Trump was not of the world of politics and policy, and he tended to think out loud.
Before we walked down the hall to the Oval Office, Pompeo highlighted two aspects of Trump’s worldview that were problematic: he undervalued alliances, and he tended toward moral equivalency when discussing threats from authoritarian hostile powers. I would come to appreciate this quick psychological snapshot of the president and how adept Pompeo was at his job and interacting with Trump.
In the small waiting area outside the Oval Office, Pompeo introduced me to the president’s briefer. Priebus, Bannon, McFarland, and Kellogg were there, too. Apparently, no one wanted to miss the PDB show. When the president was ready, we all walked into the Oval Office together. The briefer, Pompeo, Priebus, and I sat in chairs across from the president in front of the Resolute desk given to President Rutherford Hayes in 1880 by Queen Victoria. The desk was made of oak wood from the HMS Resolute, which had gotten stuck in ice and was abandoned in the 1850s.
The president pointed to a stack of newspapers on the right side of his desk. “General, I have never seen anyone get such good press. Mike, even you didn’t get such good press.” Trump looked at me. “Did you know that Mike graduated number one in his class at West Point?”
I responded, “No, I did not. That is impressive. You should know that I, too, graduated near the top of my class, but in a different category—demerits.”
While cracking the West Point joke, I was also counting heads. I could not imagine that having so many people in the Oval Office for an intel briefing would be effective—and it was not. With a large audience, the president seemed to revert to his role as host of The Apprentice, the reality-TV show in which Trump was the center of attention as candidates vied for the privilege of serving as his apprentice.
I came to regard the PDB and other meetings in the early days of the Trump White House as exercises in competitive sycophancy. Some advisors tried to outdo one another with obsequious compliments to the president and attestations to his wisdom. Commiseration about the president’s persecution by the media (such as the false claims of collusion with Russia) provided an easy path to an advisor’s ingratiation with him. Phrases often heard included “Your instincts are always right” and “You are the only one who can . . .” and “No one has ever been treated so badly by the press.” In the PDB show, the presence of an “audience” encouraged the president to stray from the topic at hand or to say something outlandish—like “Why don’t we just bomb the drugs?” (in Mexico) or “Why don’t we take out the whole North Korean Army during one of their parades?” But I soon learned that Trump asked such questions and made other outlandish statements only to entertain or shock those assembled. The briefer handled the near-constant disruptions brilliantly, with a calm, professional demeanor, waiting patiently for the conversation to return to him so he could summarize succinctly the most important elements of the PDB.
As that first PDB meeting broke up, I made a note to follow up with Pompeo and Priebus on how to make the session more useful for the president. Later, I would pare down the roster for the meeting, only to have Keith Kellogg go directly to the president to be reinstated. About a month later, I told the president I did not need Keith in the meeting and he would no longer attend. My concerns were about security as well as the meeting’s dynamic. I also reduced the number of people who would receive the PDB. In a White House that was leaking like a sieve, it was important that the briefing go only to those who had a need to know.
The first full day and every day that followed would be unique, and the fast pace and the intervention of unanticipated events ensured that no day was boring. During the two hours that followed that first PDB meeting, I met with reporters, called a newspaper editor to ask him to remove elements of a story that could undermine national security, had lunch with the president and a follow-on meeting in the Oval Office to discuss the forthcoming budget submission to Congress, and called Iraqi ambassador Fareed Yasseen (whom I knew from my service in Iraq) to hear his concern that a revised executive order known as the travel ban would include Iraq.
I also met with Dina Powell, whom Ivanka Trump had offered to transfer from her staff to mine. Ivanka and Jared knew I would need help navigating the dynamics of the West Wing. Their idea was that Dina would serve as my political “consigliere.” But after I learned about Dina’s experience on Capitol Hill, in finance, in the White House under George W. Bush, and in the Middle East, I crafted a more substantial position for her. She would serve as deputy national security advisor for strategy, a position critical to shifting the NSC’s focus away from short-term tactics and toward the development of long-term integrated strategies. I could use her help. Dina accepted the offer.
Megan Badasch, the deputy executive secretary—who, I was starting to realize, was the de facto executive secretary, despite Kellogg’s holding the title—began to discuss the flow of paper associated with the policymaking and decision-making process. She then began to summarize the safeguards she had put into place after leaks of two memorandums of telephone conversations summarizing President Trump’s calls, during his first week in office, with Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto and Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull. Kellogg waved his hand in front of her face to cut her off.
“Keith, you cannot do that,” I said. “Let Megan say what she has to say.” I was already sensing a counterproductive dynamic between Kellogg and other members of the team.
But, overall, it was a good first day. After dinner in the Residence with the president, Priebus, Kushner, Bannon, Mattis, Pompeo, and General Dunford, I walked across Lafayette Square to the Hay-Adams hotel. The Off the Record is one of Washington’s great bars, a well-known gathering place in the hotel’s basement. It was my good fortune that Dr. Marin Strmecki and Dr. Nadia Schadlow, both executives at the Smith Richardson Foundation, were in town. Because Nadia and Marin have an in with the hotel’s staff, we sat at the most discreet table, tucked behind the bar. Over dry martinis, we sketched out what the NSC staff does for the president—“Coordinate and integrate across the departments and agencies to provide options” was the headliner. Marin suggested a focus on developing what he called “game plans” to compete more effectively against rivals, adversaries, and enemies. He, Nadia, and I had often lamented the absence of strategies to overcome challenges and take advantage of opportunities. U.S. foreign policy was often reactive, as the NSC focused on discrete tactical decisions without what Winston Churchill described as “an all-embracing view.” Thanks to Marin and Nadia, I left Off the Record with notes for the next day’s all-hands meeting with the NSC staff.
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THE NEXT morning, I met with Vice President Mike Pence. He thanked me for serving in the military and shared with me that his son, Michael, was a Marine Corps officer who would soon deploy to Afghanistan. Michael had recently graduated from Purdue University and was training to become a pilot.2 The former governor and congressman told me that his previous career as a talk radio host had taught him listening skills and noted that “too many politicians have stopped listening.”
Pence shared his intention to resurrect the National Space Council to drive innovation in what had become a contested domain. I offered to mobilize the NSC staff in support of that effort. He told me never to hesitate to ask him for advice or assistance. I would take him up on that offer several times.
I would see Pence’s character tested in the coming months. Although he was tactful and reserved in demeanor, he never hesitated to tell Trump when the president’s “instincts” were leading him to self-defeating rhetoric or behavior on topics like NATO or the alliance with South Korea. Pence did not falter on those occasions nor would he during the January 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol.
After the day’s PDB meeting in the Oval Office and a short conversation with the president about an upcoming phone call with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada, it was time for the all-hands NSC meeting. I walked out of the West Wing and across the parking lot to the South Court Auditorium, in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. The tiered seats were full of NSC staff.
