The Secretary (34 page)

Italy’s foreign minister Franco Frattini had emphatically declared that the leak was
the 9/11 of diplomacy. There was indeed less openness in conversations with American
diplomats perhaps for a while, and dissidents in repressive countries shied away from
contacting American officials, but overall, Secretary Gates laconically summed up
why diplomacy wouldn’t change all that much: the United States was too big to ignore.

“The fact is governments deal with the United States because it’s in their interest,
not because they like us, not because they trust us, and not because they believe
we can keep secrets.” The cables showed the web of connections, ties, alliances, and
partnerships that the United States had had around the world for decades. Over the
last two years, almost imperceptibly but very methodically, the Obama administration
and Clinton in particular had been working to strengthen and build on that foundation
to make sure the United States remained the indispensable partner of the twenty-first
century.

For the months to come, every time the administration made a statement or staked a
position, everybody would rush to compare that to what American officials had said
about the issue in their classified documents, to see how big or small the gap was
between public and private statements. The WikiLeaks cables became part of the furniture.
New cables kept being published, and Hillary continued to make calls well into the
following spring, a spring that brought its own share of momentous events.

PART III

The genius of you Americans is that you never make clear-cut stupid moves, only complicated
stupid moves which make the rest of us wonder at the possibility that we might be
missing something.

—Gamal Abdel Nasser, 1957

12

I WANT TO BREAK THROUGH

I wanted to ignore the tweet, but something about it grabbed my attention. I had spent
Christmas of 2010 with my family in Beirut, and life by the Mediterranean was a slow,
languorous affair of lunches, dinners, and socializing over coffee in between. I was
having a hard time stepping back into the fast-paced, BlackBerry-driven world of Washington
politics. Just four days into the new year, the news was already speeding ahead: the
Ivory Coast was slowly imploding, the Chinese foreign minister Yang Jiechi was in
town, and Clinton had just issued a statement condemning the assassination of Punjab
governor Salman Taseer, shot dead by his bodyguard in Lahore. Hillary also called
his wife, Aamna, to extend condolences to her and her children. They talked about
the time they’d all met in Lahore in October 2009, and Hillary relayed how much she’d
admired Taseer’s work to promote tolerance. Taseer was a staunch liberal and had spoken
out forcefully against a law that punished blasphemy with death. His positions had
cost him his life; the bodyguard would later say he had shot the governor because
he was an “apostate.” Pakistan’s unending problems remained a headache for Washington.
As usual, my editors in London wanted to know Washington’s reaction to everything.

I wanted to ignore it, but the tweeter was persistent: Why was the White House not
saying anything about Tunisia? I was puzzled. Tunisia? The small North African country
hadn’t been on my radar recently, and I was intrigued by this tweeter reaching out
to America the only way he knew how. I did a quick search on the news from Tunisia.
Protests had been spreading slowly since December 19, when a twenty-six-year-old man,
Mohamed Bouazizi, set himself on fire in the southern town of Sidi Bouzid. Bouazizi
had been the provider for his mother and six younger siblings and he struggled to
make enough money as a fruit and vegetable vendor. Humiliated repeatedly by the police,
who pushed him around and confiscated his cart, he had preferred self-immolation to
a life with no hope. It was an iconic, powerful gesture for anyone, but especially
for a Muslim whose religion forbade suicide. Few people were paying attention. Bouazizi’s
gesture had barely received any mention in the media. I had been 1,500 miles away
on the same seashore just a few days ago, and no one had mentioned Tunisia. Protests
in the Arab world erupted occasionally, then fizzled out with no further impact but
never before in Tunisia, a tightly policed country that had had only two presidents
since gaining its independence from France in 1956. The current ruler Zin el-Abidine
Ben Ali had been in power for twenty years, oblivious to his people’s misery.

Bouazizi had just died in the hospital from his wounds, and I asked @ferjani9arwi
why he wanted the White House to say anything. “US must stand up for people’s rights”
came the reply “US silence
=
more people killed and imprisoned.” But would it really matter if Washington spoke?
Another tweeter from Tunisia, @samieleuch, said, “For religious people, nothing happens
without the will of God. For secular people, nothing happens without the will of the
US.”

At the State Department briefing on that January 4, I raised my hand to ask a question.

“On Tunisia, there’s continued, sort of, civil unrest there, and I was just wondering…”

“What country?”

“Tunisia. Tunisia. And I was wondering what you made of the situation there.”

P. J. rifled through his binder. Nothing.

“Actually, I didn’t get updated on Tunisia today. So we’ll save that question.”

Matt from AP chimed in, laughing.

“When was the last time you did get updated on Tunisia?”

The following day, we asked again. P. J. had an update. He told us the United States
was concerned about economic inequality in the country, and the embassy warden had
issued a message to American citizens in the country warning them about the unrest.
By January 6, the State Department had summoned the Tunisian ambassador, and Jeff
Feltman protested the use of force against the demonstrators. The Tunisian authorities
were also hacking into their citizens’ Facebook and Twitter accounts, for which they
were harshly criticized by the State Department. In Europe, there was a very different
reaction. The French foreign minister Michèle Alliot-Marie offered to send French
riot police to help quell the unrest in France’s old colonial backyard. Tunisia continued
to simmer, but no one quite knew what to make of the protestors—and they were competing
for headlines in the news. On January 8 in Tucson, Arizona, Congresswoman Gabrielle
Giffords was shot in the head by a lone gunman whose bullets killed six others. The
world was also watching the birth of a new country as South Sudan got ready to secede
from Sudan. SAM was waiting for us again.

*   *   *

We landed in Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates, at eleven at night on Sunday,
January 9. This time the hotels had been booked in advance, and Bernadette was with
us on the plane as part of the line officer plane team, rather than scrambling to
assemble a motorcade.

Our hotel, the Emirates Palace, appeared like a glittering mirage at the end of a
long monotonous road. A gigantic brown building with dozens of domes, it was a cross
between an Indian palace and a mosque with a two-mile-long private beach. My room
key looked like a gold coin. Ten pounds of gold were used every year to sprinkle flakes
into glasses of champagne and on caviar and other delicacies. Gold, it was thought,
was a powerful aphrodisiac. The hotel offered $1 million custom-made holidays. This
was the Arab-world version of the “1 percent.” The other 99 percent were like Bouazizi,
desperate and ready to kill themselves for a job and some dignity.

By Monday morning, the fire had started slowly spreading across the region. There
were three dead in food riots in Algeria, and 250 university graduates had staged
a protest in Riyadh—and it was all in the United Arab Emirates’ English-language newspaper
the
National
with the front-page headline “The Frustrated Generation.” The United Arab Emirates
was small and rich, and though under its modern facade there were human-rights abuses
and censorship, it didn’t have to worry about frustrated youth. Emirate newspapers
could afford to write in English about unrest elsewhere with an editorial reminding
rich Gulf countries of their duty to help poor North Africa by boosting trade ties.
Other Arab newspapers, most of them controlled by the state, ignored the protestors,
fearful of stoking the anger and inciting their own population. They were seemingly
unaware of the futility of their efforts. Privately owned satellite television stations
like al Jazeera and al Arabiyya were already showing extensive footage of the protests.

On page 2, the
National
ran a picture of Clinton meeting the minister of foreign affairs Sheikh Abdullah
bin Zayed in Washington in April 2009. She was the same woman who had traveled from
Washington with us on the plane, and yet in that old photo she looked different. Her
hair had grown from her sharp presidential campaign cut into a softer style, blond
locks framing her face a shade lighter than in years past. Chelsea had asked her mother
to grow her hair for the wedding, and Hillary had liked the result. The one-tone pantsuits
still made guest appearances, but her wardrobe now included more fashionable, sleeker
styles.

The politician burned so often by the media in the past had relaxed; released from
the acrimony and gutter fighting of American domestic politics, she was coming into
her own, allowing the world to see the real Hillary more often than at any time in
the past. Democrats and Republicans praised her performance on the world stage, and
world leaders, even those who resented U.S. influence, always seemed eager to welcome
her. People did ask what it was that she had actually achieved so far as secretary
of state. After all, there was still no peace in the Middle East, Iran was still enriching
uranium, and Pakistan was still a mess. Few of her predecessors had managed tangible
successes either and Hillary believed her success would be more intangible but longer
lasting. Her public diplomacy efforts were often scorned by foreign policy wonks,
but she believed it was an essential part of maintaining American leadership.

Before leaving, officials had told us that the whole trip had been organized around
the idea of engaging with civil society. If in the past it was an element that was
tacked onto every stop, Clinton had wanted this trip designed around it. Even in the
United Arab Emirates, where dry diplomatic talk with the foreign minister always centered
on Iran and Iraq, Hillary was to sit down for a town hall with women and would meet
with students at a green-energy research center. Civil society was a buzz word on
every part of the trip, including on our surprise stop.

As usual, it wasn’t on our printed schedule to keep it under wraps, but everybody
was excited about going to Sana’a, Yemen. It was one country on a shrinking list of
places that Clinton had not been to yet, and over dinner in Dubai the day before our
visit, the secretary asked who had visited and what their impressions had been of
the country. She was always keen to get the opinions of people outside her circle
of advisors and listened intently to the stories of photographer Stephanie Sinclair,
who had spent some time in the country photographing child brides to draw attention
to their plight.

Walking down the steps onto the tarmac in Sana’a, we were greeted by the sight of
a plane with a red tail adorned with a white crescent. The Turks were here as well!
It wasn’t Davuto
ğ
lu, but his president, Abdullah Gul. Our motorcade of armored vehicles sped through
wide, empty roads into the center of the city, banners welcoming President Gul fluttering
above our heads. There were none for Clinton since no one was supposed to know she
was coming. But Gul had just spent two days here and was leaving the palace of President
Ali Abdullah Saleh just as we were arriving. The Turkish president had signed dozens
of agreements, encouraging trade between the two countries and abolishing the need
for visas between them, and he had fought back a few tears as Yemeni students sang
a eulogy to Ottoman soldiers who fell in Yemen during World War I. Turkey’s policy
for a neighborhood with zero problems was clearly expanding beyond its immediate borders.

In the front passenger seat of Clinton’s SUV, Fred was tense but satisfied with the
security measures he saw in place. He had worked in Yemen in the aftermath of the
bombing of the USS
Cole
in 2000, but having a mental image of the country did little in this case to abate
his concerns about security. Yemen was worse than Pakistan. No matter how upset the
Pakistanis were with America, the last thing the government wanted was an attack against
the American secretary of state, and they had enough control and power to ensure it
didn’t happen. In Yemen, however, it didn’t matter how happy Saleh was that Clinton
was gracing his country with a visit—he was not fully in control of his own territory.
Tribes kidnapped Western tourists, al-Qaeda targeted the American embassy, and political
opponents used guns to express their anger. This was where the Christmas Day underwear
bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, had been trained and sent on his mission aboard
a plane to Chicago in 2009.

On quick day visits with no hotel rooms to set up a mobile office on a secure floor,
the plane team of line officers often went for a tour of the city they were in, with
some help from the U.S. embassy, while the secretary went about her official business.
But here, Fred forbade anyone from leaving the airport. Securing Evergreen’s package
was enough of a challenge and required all the resources at hand. Bernadette stayed
on the plane with a handful of others, including Lew and his metal case full of passports.
The Ravens stood guard at the bottom of the steps, in the sun, awaiting our return
several hours later.

Yemen was one of the poorest countries in the world, so despite the corruption that
goes with power in the region, Saleh’s palace was modest compared to the opulence
that his oil-rich neighbors displayed. But it had as much, or as little, style. Beyond
the tall, elaborately carved wooden doors was a dark, carpeted, windowless foyer.
The walls were lined with aging wood-and-glass display cases for the various gifts
he’d received from visiting foreign dignitaries, mostly guns, including some from
American generals. There was also a gold-plated MP5 9 mm submachine gun: a gift from
Iran in 1986. Clinton had brought him a silver tray, perhaps a symbol of what the
United States had to offer him if only he listened to them more.