Exceptional (13 page)

A soil sample collected clandestinely at the plant showed high levels of a precursor for VX nerve gas known as EMPTA. Journalist
Stephen Hayes has reported that a senior intelligence official briefing reporters said at the time, “Iraq is the only
country we're aware of” that made VX using EMPTA. Intelligence also showed top Iraqi chemical weapons specialists had attended the plant's opening. In addition, the National Security Agency had intercepted phone calls between the plant's general manager and Iraqi
chemical weapons experts.

The cruise missile strikes ordered by President Clinton destroyed the pharmaceutical plant but had no discernible impact on al Qaeda operations. In subsequent years, debate arose in the intelligence community about the accuracy of the reports on the pharmaceutical plant. Reports that bin Laden himself might be in the Khost terrorist training camps turned out not to be true.

Once again, the Clinton administration turned to the legal system. In November 1998, the Justice Department indicted Osama bin Laden for the bombings of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and for conspiring to kill
Americans overseas. Less than two years later bin Laden struck again. On October 12, 2000, a small boat loaded with explosives rammed into the side of the USS
Cole
in the harbor of Aden, Yemen. Seventeen American sailors were killed. Although it was clear al Qaeda was responsible for the attack, President Clinton took no action in response.

Throughout the 1990s, the United States tended to treat attacks as law enforcement problems, with the result that neither the terrorists responsible for the attacks nor the countries that provided them sanctuary paid a price. Striking us appeared to be a way for the terrorists to achieve their objectives since the attacks were often followed by the withdrawal of U.S. forces, as in Beirut and Somalia.

Al Qaeda launched its most devastating attack on the morning of September 11, 2001, killing nearly 3,000 people. Two terrorist-hijacked planes flew into the World Trade Center in New York. Less
than an hour later, a third plane was flown into the Pentagon. Passengers on a fourth hijacked plane, United Airlines Flight 93, heard that other planes had been used as weapons and decided to take action. With tremendous courage, they stormed the cockpit and overwhelmed the hijackers. Flight 93 crashed in a field outside Shanksville, Pennsylvania, killing all those on board. Based on its flight path, it is clear Flight 93 was headed for Washington, likely with the intention of targeting either the U.S. Capitol or the White House. The actions of the brave passengers on board saved many others.

The attacks on that day changed everything. This was a clear act of war, deadlier than Pearl Harbor, targeting civilians in the economic and political centers of American power.

On the night of 9/11, our family was evacuated to an undisclosed location—Camp David—where we would spend many days and nights over the months to come. “I spent much of that night thinking about what needed to be done,” recalls Dick Cheney:

We had to go after those who attacked us and killed three thousand of our fellow citizens. We had to defeat any further attempts to launch mass casualty attacks against the United States, which meant, first and foremost, recognizing that we were at war and beginning to operate accordingly. Having just suffered the most devastating attack in our history, we had a duty to use all the means at our command to go after and destroy al Qaeda.

In an interview with Tim Russert the Sunday after the attacks, I said we would have to “work the dark side,” using intelligence to learn all we could about the enemy, who they were, how there were organized and financed, so we could disrupt any plans for future attacks. I was also convinced by the events of that day that we had to focus our efforts on those who sponsored terrorism and provided safe harbor to the terrorists.

Holding state sponsors of terror accountable was a key element of what would become known as the Bush Doctrine. Another important component was the principle of preemption. The United States could not wait for the terrorists to launch an attack and then respond. We had to disrupt and prevent attacks before they occurred. As President Bush explained in March 2003, “Terrorists and terror states do not reveal these threats with fair notice, in formal declarations—and responding only to such enemies after they have struck first is not self-defense, it's suicide.” This was particularly true because of the devastating possibility of a terrorist attack on the homeland involving chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons.

This possibility was a subject that one of the authors of this book, Dick Cheney, then vice president, discussed in an interview in April 2001:

I think we have to be more concerned than we ever have about so-called homeland defense, the vulnerability of our system to different kinds of attacks. Some . . . homegrown, like Oklahoma City. Some inspired by terrorists external to the United States—the World Trade Towers bombing, in New York. The threat of a terrorist attack against the U.S., eventually, potentially with weapons of mass destruction—bugs or gas, biological or chemical agents, potentially even,
someday, nuclear weapons.

To reduce the likelihood of one of these threats materializing, the United States needed a robust intelligence capability, one that enabled us to uncover the threats and thwart the terrorists' plans. Intelligence had to be our
first line of defense.

Nine days after the attacks of 9/11, in a speech to a joint session of Congress, President Bush delivered an ultimatum to the Taliban regime in Afghanistan that was harboring Osama bin Laden:

Deliver to the United States authorities all the leaders of al Qaeda who hide in your land. Release all foreign nationals, including American citizens you have unjustly imprisoned. Protect foreign journalists, diplomats, and aid workers in your country. Close immediately and permanently, every terrorist training camp in Afghanistan and hand over every terrorist, and every person in their support structure, to appropriate authorities. Give the United States full access to terrorist training camps, so we can make sure they are no longer operating. These demands are not open to negotiation or discussion. The Taliban must act, and act immediately. They will hand over the terrorists or they will
share their fate.

President Bush also explained to the American people the challenge of the war in which we were now engaged:

This will not be like the war against Iraq a decade ago, with a decisive liberation of territory and a swift conclusion. . . . Americans should not expect one battle, but a lengthy campaign, unlike any we have ever seen. It may include dramatic strikes, visible on TV, and covert operations,
secret even in success.

At 2:45
P.M.
on September 26, 2001, the first team of CIA officers
arrived in Afghanistan. They flew into the Panjshir Valley through a 14,500-foot pass in the Hindu Kush mountains, on a Russian military helicopter the CIA had
purchased and upgraded. They made contact with the Northern Alliance, a tribal group whose leader, Ahmed Shah Massoud, had been assassinated by al Qaeda two days before the 9/11 attacks, and they began coordinating efforts to take down the Taliban.

A few weeks later, the first twelve-man special operations team went in near Mazar-e-Sharif in northern Afghanistan and another team seized the compound belonging to Mullah Omar, leader of the
Afghan Taliban. Two hundred Army Rangers seized an airfield near Kandahar. Linked up with the Northern Alliance by the CIA team, the special operators began fighting side by side with them, sometimes on horseback, calling in air strikes on Taliban positions.

Mazar-e-Sharif fell on November 9, 2001. Herat fell to the Northern Alliance on November 11, Kabul on November 13, and Jalalabad on November 14. Kandahar, the last Taliban stronghold, fell on December 7.

Hamid Karzai, a Pashtun, was selected as Afghanistan's interim leader at a United Nations conference in December 2001, and inaugurated as chairman of the Afghan Interim Authority on December 22, 2001. In a little over three months, the United States, working with our Afghan allies, had overthrown the Taliban, liberated 25 million people, and begun the difficult work of denying al Qaeda the bases from which to train and plan attacks against us.

In Afghanistan the United States has continued to face a deadly and determined enemy, one who is fighting to this day to take back territory and reestablish sanctuaries for our enemies. Our security depends upon ensuring that terrorists can never again establish bases in Afghanistan from which to launch attacks against America.

The lessons of America's involvement in Afghanistan should by now be clear. We turned our backs on the country once before, to devastating effect, after the Soviets left in the 1980s. Walking away again would be the height of recklessness.

WHILE THE UNITED STATES was undertaking military operations in Afghanistan, work was also under way to strengthen our defenses and our intelligence capabilities. General Mike Hayden, director of the National Security Agency, explained that the NSA could do more if they could get additional authorizations from the president.

President Bush readily agreed but imposed tight conditions to ensure that these new and necessary security programs did not violate the civil liberties or constitutional rights of citizens. One of the new conditions was that the president would personally reauthorize the program every thirty to forty-five days. His reauthorization would be based on assessments by the director of the CIA, the secretary of defense, and the U.S. attorney general that each extension was necessary, based on the most current intelligence. The president also instructed that the existence of the program be very close-hold, and he wanted to personally sign off on granting access to the program to anyone outside the NSA. It was one of the most highly sensitive and effective intelligence efforts in the history of the National Security Agency.

The purpose of this program was to collect information on phone calls from suspicious numbers outside the United States to numbers inside the U.S. The data collected focused on the fact of a call, not the content. If a suspicious call were intercepted, there were procedures for referring the calls to the FBI and or to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court for the necessary approval to collect the content of the call.

In 2004, despite the fact that Attorney General John Ashcroft had approved the program at least twenty-three times, his new deputy attorney general, James Comey, raised concerns. Even after General Hayden and lawyers from the NSA explained the national security importance of the program and the safeguards in place to protect civil liberties, Comey refused to authorize the twenty-fourth extension.

When these new concerns arose, Vice President Cheney and General Hayden convened a meeting in the Situation Room in the basement of the West Wing of the White House to brief an expanded group of members of Congress and to consult with them about whether, in light of the new concerns, the administration should seek
additional congressional authorization for the program. The Republican and Democratic leadership from the House and Senate were in attendance, along with the Republican and Democratic leaders of the House and Senate intelligence committees.

General Hayden briefed the lawmakers on the program and its results. Cheney then asked the leaders if they thought the program should continue. There was unanimous agreement that it should. Cheney then asked if the congressional leaders believed the administration should seek additional legislative authority for the program. Again they were unanimous. They advised that the administration not seek additional authorization, out of concern that the details and existence of this sensitive and highly effective program would be exposed.

In 2005, the
New York Times
published leaked details about the program. President Bush had asked the publisher and editor of the paper not to print the information because it would damage our security, aid our enemies, and make it more difficult to prevent future attacks. The
Times
published it anyway.

The next day, the president spoke about the importance of the program in his weekly radio address. He reminded the American people that the 9/11 hijackers had been in the United States communicating with terrorists overseas prior to the attacks. “Two of the terrorist hijackers who flew a jet into the Pentagon, Nawaf al Hamzi and Khalid al Mihdhar, communicated while they were in the United States to other members of al Qaeda who were overseas,” the president explained. “But we didn't know they were here,
until it was too late.”

As we write this today, Congress has diminished the authorities of the NSA to track terrorist phone calls. Some members have launched campaigns to end the program entirely. Military historian Max Boot has suggested that those who advocate shutting down the NSA program
would do well to tour the 9/11 Memorial & Museum at the site of the World Trade Center. It is a powerful reminder of the enemy we face and of the importance of doing all we can
to stop them. The NSA program is a crucial tool in that effort. “Had this program been in effect prior to 9/11,” General Hayden has explained, “it is my professional judgment that we would have detected some of the 9/11 al Qaeda operatives in the United States and we would have
identified them as such.”

Those who oppose this program will be accountable for explaining to the American people why they fought to make it more difficult for the United States government to effectively track the communications—and therefore the plans—of terrorists inside the United States.

THE NEED FOR A policy concerning the detention of terrorists—and a place to detain them—became clear early in the war in Afghanistan. As the United States captured enemy combatants, it was essential to ensure they did not return to the field of battle to kill more Americans. To meet this need, the Department of Defense established a detention facility at the U.S. naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.