500 Days (11 page)

Hamdan thought of his house in Yemen. Like many of his countrymen, he
could afford to build only one floor at a time. That’s why the height of each Yemeni house reflects the owner’s wealth—a single floor meant he was just getting by, while three trumpeted success.

He had been proud when he built his bottom floor, had recently begun his second, and was already dreaming of his third. But the attacks changed everything. His hopes were dashed. His second floor would never be finished. His life, his house, had been torn apart. Hamdan’s anger rose. The attack had been reckless, worthless.

Bin Laden, he thought, had destroyed them all.

Deep beneath the Cabinet Office in Whitehall, Tony Blair stepped into a windowless, soundproof room where senior members of his government had already gathered. They were there as members of the national crisis council known as COBRA—a James Bondian acronym that stood for the far more mundane term
Conference Briefing Room A,
where the meeting was taking place.

It was the morning after the attack, September 12. This was only the fourth time that Blair had chaired a COBRA meeting, and the third had taken place the previous day. As he approached his seat, he glanced up at the bank of screens that filled one side of the room; they could be used for secure videoconferences with other members of his government, or simply as a means of watching the television news.

Sitting at the center of the table, Blair called the meeting to order. The committee first turned its attention to domestic issues. Quashing a dissenting voice, Blair declared that both City Airport and the flight path over London would stay closed. He reported that he had spoken with the governor of the Bank of England about strategies to maintain confidence in the financial system.

Blair was only now beginning to absorb the full magnitude and meaning of the terrorist operation. This, he told his aides, was a transformative moment in history, a turning point that would roil international relations in every corner of the globe. He ordered his team to gather every scrap of intelligence about the attacks and report back to him. He wanted to see the evidence that he had been told put the responsibility squarely on the shoulders of Osama bin Laden.

Next, international challenges. The most pressing diplomatic issue that COBRA had to address, of course, continued to be how to deal with the
Americans. Members of the crisis committee had watched Bush’s address to the nation—at about 2:00
A.M.
British time—and he had said pretty much what they had expected. True, he had appeared a little shaky and uncertain, but that could be forgiven. What government leader wouldn’t struggle when addressing his country about the deaths of thousands of its citizens?

There was a delicate point that the British must not forget, remarked Jack Straw, the foreign secretary.

“We have to be careful not to get ahead of the U.S. in terms of what we say,” he said. This was America’s tragedy, whatever the international repercussions might be.

The smart thing to do, the officials agreed, was for every nation to proceed with caution, waiting several weeks to see how things played out in America before taking action. Blair agreed, but still feared events might spin out of control.

“Things are likely to move much more quickly than that,” Blair said, particularly if the Americans became as convinced as British intelligence officials were that the attacks had been orchestrated by bin Laden.

There was one other piece of the puzzle to be considered: Russia. Blair had spoken to Russian president Vladimir Putin the day before and had been put off by his almost smug I-told-you-so attitude, given his warnings in the past about the danger of Islamic fundamentalists. The conversation worried Blair, he said. Putin could try to exploit this tragedy to justify Russia’s brutal assault on Chechnya and its largely Muslim population.

Blair needed to discuss all of these issues with Bush; he wanted a report, he told aides, spelling out the president’s options for action. “I have to get inside his mind, if I can,” he said.

A few hours later, a message arrived—Bush wanted to consult with Blair. The call was placed, and for the first time since the attacks, the British prime minister and the American president spoke. Blair expressed his deep condolences and the unwavering support of the British people for the Americans as they grappled with the horrors of the previous day. Bush thanked him; it was important for the two countries to collaborate closely in bringing the perpetrators to justice, he said.

“I would very much value staying in close touch,” Bush said.

“Of course,” Blair replied.

There would be no immediate response to the attacks by the United States, Bush said. “The American people are going to give me a bit of time.”

Perhaps, Blair suggested, Bush should solidify international support by
reaching out to the Group of Eight, an organization of allies that included both the British and the Americans and that dealt with issues of global significance. Bush thanked him, then brushed the topic aside.

That response worried Blair.
They’re looking inward, when they should be looking outward.
This was the time to seek cooperation from America’s friends and allies, to coax even the sometimes prickly French and obstreperous Russians into an alliance against a ruthless enemy that threatened them all. To let that opportunity slip away would be an epic miscalculation.

Blair spent a few minutes summarizing the points brought up at the COBRA meeting. Bush replied that he was grateful for the information and asked if it could be sent to him in writing.

“These people are going to have to come out of their holes sometime,” Bush said. “And we’ll be ready to hit them.”

The demands on a president at a time of such a national trauma were incalculable, Blair said, and his heart went out to the president.

“I know what I’ve got to do,” Bush replied. “I’m not a good mourner. I’m a weeper. I’ll weep for the country and then act, but I don’t want to just hit cruise missiles into the sand.”

•  •  •  

Shafts of sunlight streamed into the White House Cabinet Room, illuminating walls adorned with paintings of former presidents. Walking in from the Oval Office, Bush glanced through the French doors that lined the east side of the room. Fall flowers bloomed in the Rose Garden, an image of tranquillity that all but mocked the horror of the moment.

It was four o’clock on the afternoon of September 12, a few hours after Bush’s conversation with Blair. Members of the National Security Council and their aides stood as the president approached his usual seat at the center of the table.

“All right,” he said. “Let’s see what we’ve got.”

Bush flipped open a folder that had been placed in front of his chair. Inside was a short document—a draft of National Security Presidential Directive number nine—that was written after an NSC meeting earlier that day. Bush had told his aides that he wanted the wording to frame the overall strategy for America’s response to the previous day’s attacks.

Peering through his reading glasses, Bush considered the statement his team had composed, describing the goal of his single-minded campaign:
“Eliminate terrorism as a threat to our way of life,”
the draft said. That would entail destroying terrorist organizations, shutting down their networks, disrupting their
finances, and cutting off any potential access they might have to weapons of mass destruction.

Bush set the paper on the conference table. “It’s not just us,” he said. “This has to be a cause on behalf of all of our friends and allies around the world. How do we capture that?”

Perhaps, one cabinet officer suggested, the statement of principles should describe terrorists as being both threats to the American way of life as well as to the country’s global interests.

Bush shook his head. “That doesn’t quite get it.”

He paused. “How about ‘. . . and to all nations that love freedom.’ ”

No one questioned that phrase; it would be included in the final draft.

Tenet took the floor.

“There is no doubt in my mind this was al-Qaeda,” he said. Not only had there been the spike over the summer, but over the last thirty hours, the agency had listened in on al-Qaeda operatives taking credit for the attack as well as for the assassination of Massoud.

The United States would be able to move against al-Qaeda quickly, Tenet said. For years, the CIA had been working with tribal leaders in Afghanistan in their pursuit of bin Laden. These were battle-tested men, warriors and leaders from the Northern Alliance. They could serve as intelligence contacts and even fighting forces.

“We have people in place,” Tenet said. “I think we can handle this thing.”

Rumsfeld jumped in. “This needs to be a military operation,” he said decisively. And that meant it had to be run by the Pentagon, not by the CIA.

“I’m not even sure that Afghanistan is the right place to start,” he said. “What if Iraq is involved?

There were lots of pieces here, Bush said. “But let’s not make the target so broad that it misses the point and fails to draw support from normal Americans. What normal Americans feel is that we’re suffering from al-Qaeda.”

Once bin Laden was out of the way, Bush said, they could turn to Iraq and any other supporter of terrorism.

•  •  •  

The CIA team responsible for operating the Predator aerial surveillance drone wasn’t sure how to proceed. The technology had been developed to weaponize the bird, so that it could not only broadcast images of terrorists, but shoot missiles at them as well. Yet the White House had held off on granting the agency the authority to deploy the armed Predator; days before the terrorist attacks,
members of the Counterterrorist Center had been told to go ahead and ship the Predator into the field. Just don’t arm it or send missles with it.

Surely, that restriction would now be swept aside—wouldn’t it? A specialist on the Predator team went to see Bonk, the deputy director of the center, to find out. His team was ready to send out the advanced technology drones to where they could be used in Afghanistan, he said.

“But what do you want us to do in terms of missiles?” the specialist asked.

Bonk smiled. “Buy and load every one you can get your hands on,” he said. “By the time we get there and are set up to go, we’ll have the authorization.”

This wasn’t a time for wait-and-see. Bonk had no doubt the CIA was about to receive everything it had been seeking for the fight against terrorism. It wasn’t as if the White House was going to hold back the permission to use the armed Predator—or the money for whatever other operations the agency wanted to undertake.

•  •  •  

“Judge is back.”

Tim Flanigan looked up from his desk. Libby Camp, the executive assistant for Al Gonzales, was at the door, giving him the heads-up that their boss—a former judge on the Texas Supreme Court—had just returned from a meeting with the war cabinet.

Grabbing a notepad, Flanigan walked through the staff area and into Gonzales’s office. He sat on the couch as Gonzales flipped open his ever-present brown notepad portfolio.

Straight to work. “Timmy,” Gonzales said, “you need to focus on the congressional resolution.”

Already that morning, numerous assignments had been divvied up among the office’s lawyers to determine legal issues dealing with the airlines, the financial markets, the insurance companies. But the resolution was the most important. The administration wanted congressional authorization to use force in response to the terrorist attacks.

Flanigan knew what the White House needed in the resolution, so his discussion with Gonzales was brief. Then, after a staff meeting, he walked back to his office to prepare the document defining the scope of the president’s powers during a time of crisis.

At his computer, Flanigan called up the Web site for the Legal Information Institute at Cornell University Law School, a resource he often used to conduct research. From the site’s search engine, he found the joint resolution that
authorized deploying the military against Iraq in 1991. With a few keystrokes, he copied the document and pasted it onto a blank page for word processing.

He stared at the screen for a moment. It struck him that he might be a bit out of his depth—for the eight years before joining the administration, he had specialized in white-collar criminal and civil litigation, not laws governing the use of force. He picked up the phone; there was another lawyer in the administration, Flanigan knew, who was renowned for his dazzling intellect and a seemingly unmatched knowledge of national security law: David Addington, the vice president’s chief counsel, a man dubbed Cheney’s Cheney.

•  •  •  

It could be argued that Cheney’s relationship with Addington was born of scandal. In the mid-1980s, Cheney was a congressman from Wyoming and the ranking Republican on a House select committee investigating Iran-Contra, the affair that exposed how members of the Reagan administration had been secretly selling weapons to forces in Iran and funneling the profits to the anti-Sandinista fighters in Nicaragua.