NEWSWEEK: With 19 months left, what do you want to leave to the next president and the next administration? Condoleezza Rice: This is going to be a long struggle against extremism and terrorism…. I think what’s happened is that it’s being converted. So you’re seeing them start to mobilize. I think you see an example of that right now with al Qaeda trying to find a foothold inside the Lebanese camps. … We’ve made a lot of progress in degrading the al Qaeda network itself, but it’s transforming itself into more decentralized individual cells, and that’s a different kind of challenge. But I would hope that when we would have left that people would be able to draw on an international network of intelligence, law enforcement and maybe even a stronger legal framework for dealing with this trouble, which is going to be there for a long time.
Secondly, [there needs to be] a foundation for addressing the places where they have tended to train and have their bases of operations. And that means strengthening relatively weak states or states that have relatively weak mechanisms for responding—and in that category,obviously, we have Afghanistan, and Iraq. But also states with which we have very strong relations, like Indonesia, Yemen and in states in the horn of Africa and East Africa, like Kenya. So if you think of it as creating a framework where eventually the United States and the international community is well placed to fight this long struggle, I think that’s first and foremost.
The classic legacy of a secretary of State’s tenure is the big breakthrough agreement, like Camp David. Will your legacy be more just institution-building? I’d be very happy with institution-building. And I think people underestimate the development side [of the administration’s policies], and disease prevention. Particularly in Africa … [like] the AIDS initiative, which I think has changed the international response to treating disease.I think that’s a whole category on its own that is not unlike, in my view, the Marshall Plan. And then finally the democracy agenda. I know that it hasn’t achieved, and probably by the time we leave it will not have achieved everything we would have liked it to, but the very fact that is has been at the heart of American foreign policy is also an institutional piece. … We’re laying the foundations for someone else to succeed in the future and I think that’s fine. But I wouldn’t rule out still that we would push very hard forward on Middle East issues, in particular the Israeli-Palestinian issue.
But you’re not as hopeful about the big breakthrough? Depends on what you mean by breakthrough. I think the very fact that everybody talks blithely now about the two-state solution [Palestine and Israel] as if we were all always wanting it … Of course we weren’t in 2001. And you now have a broad international consensus. That’s a conceptual breakthrough. It’s also a breakthrough in the psychology of what any Israeli or Palestinian leader will go for. The other major issue I think is on the nonproliferation front. You’re going to see we’ll continue make a push on Iran. But also there is in place an agreement on North Korea for denuclearization.
Many people in Washington say you have changed your views and approach more than any senior official from the first term. Do you see yourself that way? No. I think the times are different. And my role is different. But we had a lot of really hard work to do after 2001.The country wasn’t prepared for what happened on September 11. The world wasn’t prepared for what happened on September 11. We had to organize an international coalition. We had to fight the war in Afghanistan. I know there are some who disagree, but we believed we had to take care of the threat of Saddam Hussein … But I did believe that having done that work, there needed to be a kind of consolidation and a kind of bringing everybody together about the future.
Particularly on Iran, members of Vice President Cheney’s staff continue to take a different line than yours. How much of a problem has that been, and has it undermined your policy? There’s only one expression that matters, and that’s the president of the United States. And I represent in what I say and what I do what the president of the United States thinks and wants done. In that sense, we have been together a long time, the president and I, in any number of different incarnations, and when I am speaking, I’m speaking on his behalf … Look, there’s always noise in any large system. But I want to say something about the vice president. You know, if he doesn’t agree, the vice president talks about it, just as if [Defense Secretary] Bob Gates doesn’t agree, or I don’t agree, we sit down and talk about it. And then if necessary we talk about it with the president and he decides. … The vice president has never been somebody who tries to do that on the sidelines, behind the scenes. He really doesn’t.
Not even when Don Rumsfeld was around? [Laughs] You asked about when I have been secretary of State. As secretary of State I can tell you we have the most open relationship. In fact we have a kind of friendly banter about it, in which I’ll tease him [Cheney] about the image that he doesn’t like diplomacy. I know he does because I know the diplomat he was when he was secretary of Defense [in the first Bush administration], and I know what a good diplomat he’s been on behalf of us when he goes out to the Middle East, or whatever. This most recent trip he took—I was the one who said to the president, “You know this might be a good time for the vice president to go to solidify some things on Iraq [to the Saudis].” And I talked to the vice president about it, and he said yes.
One other point on this: on the Mideast peace issue, it was recently reported that Deputy National-Security Adviser Elliott Abrams made remarks at a meeting of an American Jewish group to the effect that you and the president are just going through the motions in dealing with the Palestinians, and that you won’t pressure Israel. Are there some in the administration who are trying to undermine what might be a more forward-leaning attempt by you to talk to Hamas and other Palestinians? First of all, I’m the one who hired Elliott Abrams initially. Secondly, he’s been a part of sitting around and discussing what we’re going to do. Very often [National Security Adviser] Steve Hadley, Elliott Abrams, [Assistant Secretary of State] David Welch and I will get together and talk through things … Elliott says he didn’t say such things, and a couple of people who were at that meeting told me independently that there was nothing in that meeting that would suggest there was split. … We have a terrific relationship.
There is a sense that in the first term, you had Cheney and Rumsfeld—close friends and allies—working together, and that was very difficult for someone like you in your position [as national-security adviser], whereas now the conventional wisdom is that Defense Secretary Gates and you are more or less on the same page on a lot of these issues. Has that made it a lot easier for you? The essential difference between the first term and the second term is that I was national security advisor in the first term. It really wasn’t for me to stake out a policy position and carry it out. I’m secretary of State. It’s my responsibility now to stake out a position and to get the president’s agreement and to carry it out. It’s much more linear than the national-security adviser. I tease Steve Hadley all the time. I tell him it’s much more fun being coordinated than coordinator. [laughs].… It’s the nature of the national-security adviser job that it’s by remote control. You’re not aligned. And I take very seriously, my responsibility as both instructor of and executor of American foreign policy. … By the way I have a terrific relationship with Bob Gates that goes back 20 years.
Gates made some remarks in Honolulu about the United States staying longer term in Iraq. Does that mean we’re close to signing a Status of Forces agreement with the Iraqi government? No. I think the point Bob was talking about was we have to start to think beyond the immediacy of the surge and the immediacy of trying to help the Iraqis deal with their short-term security problem, to how we’re going to exercise our responsibilities to make sure they’re fully trained.
Does this mean embracing the Baker-Hamilton commission conclusions? No, this is more how you think about a follow-on strategy. None of us has made yet a determination of how well we have done or are doing in terms of the near-term surge, but … we also have to start to think about how you’re going to exercise the obligations of longer-term responsibilities vis-à-vis the Iraqis.
title: “Excerpt The Price Of Condi S Loyalty To Bush” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-22” author: “Glen Coleman”
She’s not being glib: administration officials universally acknowledge that her views are dominant in Washington. But the rumbling has been getting louder. A NEWSWEEK investigation shows that Cheney’s national-security team has been actively challenging Rice’s Iran strategy in recent months. “We hear a completely different story coming out of Cheney’s office, even now, than what we hear from Rice on Iran,” says a Western diplomat whose embassy has close dealings with the White House. Officials from the veep’s office have been openly dismissive of the nuclear negotiations in think-tank meetings with Middle East analysts in Washington, according to a high-level administration official who asked for anonymity because of his position. Since Tehran has defied two U.N. resolutions calling for a suspension of its uranium-enrichment program, “there’s a certain amount of schadenfreude among the hard-liners,” says a European diplomat who’s involved in the talks but would not comment for the record. And NEWSWEEK has learned that the veep’s team seems eager to build a case that Iran is targeting Americans not just in Iraq but along the border of its other neighbor, Afghanistan.
In the last few weeks, Cheney’s staff have unexpectedly become more active participants in an interagency group that steers policy on Afghanistan, according to an official familiar with the internal deliberations. During weekly meetings of the committee, known as the Afghanistan Interagency Operating Group, Cheney staffers have been intensely interested in a single issue: recent intelligence reports alleging that Iran is supplying weapons to Afghanistan’s resurgent Islamist militia, the Taliban, according to two administration officials who asked for anonymity when discussing internal meetings.
Historically, Iran and the Taliban have been more often bitter enemies than allies; in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, cooperated with U.S. efforts to oust the Afghan regime that harbored Osama bin Laden. Tehran went so far as to round up Qaeda suspects transiting or residing in Iran for possible deportation to countries (like Saudi Arabia or Egypt) aligned more closely with Washington. In early April, however, British forces operating under NATO command in Afghanistan’s wild-west Helmand province stopped a convoy carrying what appeared to be ordnance of Iranian origin intended for delivery to the Taliban. The explosives bore suspected Iranian markings similar to those found on weapons confiscated from Shiite militias in Iraq—and the Brits intercepted another shipment a month later.
An official familiar with the interagency group’s deliberations said that Cheney’s aides kept asking what sounded like leading questions, demanding to know whether there was any Iranian entity other than the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps—the state security force Washington accuses of arming Iraqi insurgents—that could be responsible for the arms shipments. Cheney’s aides, the official added, appeared less interested in other more mundane items on the Afghanistan policy committee’s agenda. British officials who asked for anonymity because of the nature of their work emphasize that they lack hard evidence linking the shipments to the Revolutionary Guards, and that the weapons could just as easily have been bought on the black market in Iran. But according to one official familiar with the intelligence on Iranian interference in Iraq, Cheney earlier this year began exhibiting particular interest in any evidence detailing Tehran’s aid to anti-American insurgents there. Asked about the vice president’s allegedly keen interest in Iran’s activities in Afghanistan, Cheney spokeswoman Megan McGinn said, “We do not discuss intelligence matters or internal deliberations.”
Rice has more directly clashed with Cheney’s office on issues like Mideast peace, where according to administration sources who declined to be named discussing internal deliberations, she’s found herself stymied in efforts to push for more engagement with Syria and the Palestinian radical group Hamas. A senior White House official concedes that even on what should be the simplest-to-achieve deal—a new relationship with Syria that would help stabilize Iraq—Cheney’s office is blocking Rice’s efforts to bring Bush around. The secretary has also fought with the veep’s office in seeking to soften detention policies at Guantánamo. In the interview, however, Rice insisted her relationship with Cheney himself is good. “The vice president has never been somebody who tries to [undermine others] on the sidelines, behind the scenes. He really doesn’t,” she said. “In fact we have a kind of friendly banter about it, in which I’ll tease him about the image that he doesn’t like diplomacy.”
Rice has reason to be confident. She maintains a tight relationship with Bush, with whom she talks twice a day. “We have been together a long time, the president and I, in any number of different incarnations, and when I’m speaking, I’m speaking on his behalf,” she says. Even one of Rice’s fiercest current critics, former U.N. ambassador John Bolton—a key Cheney ally who was her subordinate only a few months ago—says that her views are ascendant in the administration. “I think those who support [the policy of nuclear negotiations with Iran] … are riding high,” Bolton told NEWSWEEK, adding that he left the administration because he believed his hard-line views toward Iran and North Korea were being eclipsed by Rice’s State Department (there was also the small matter of the Democrat-controlled Congress refusing to confirm him).
Bolton admits that the hard-liners are not what they were in the first term, when Cheney’s office was accused of cherry-picking intel to make the case for war against Iraq. One by one, the Cheneyites have been losing significant supporters in the top ranks of the administration—most recently White House deputy national-security adviser J. D. Crouch, a conservative former Pentagon official and academic who left last week. To thwart the hard-liners once and for all, though, Rice knows that she must start to deliver. Even as Tehran has made technical strides in its enrichment program, negotiations have been stalled: on Thursday the chief Iranian and European negotiators announced they would meet again in two weeks.
In the end, the administration’s few remaining hard-liners may be the least of Rice’s problems. In her NEWSWEEK interview, she acknowledged how hard it would be to achieve the kind of “breakthrough” agreement that traditionally defines a successful secretary of State. “I wouldn’t rule it out,” she said. But, Rice added: “we’re laying the foundations for someone else to succeed in the future, and I think that’s fine.” As long as she can keep things under control.
title: “Excerpt The Price Of Condi S Loyalty To Bush” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-20” author: “Elizabeth Walker”
It wasn’t the first time Bush had asked Rice to do something she had decided not to do. During the 2000 campaign, she had planned to advise Bush informally; instead, Rice ended up leading his foreign policy team. “In a political sense, I think he kind of courted her,” said Carson. “He really went after her. He’s very charming.”
And Rice was drawn to Bush. “First of all, I thought he was wonderful to be around,” she recalled, sitting on the couch in her State Department office. “He was warm and funny and easy to be around. I thought he had just an incredibly inquisitive mind … You could barely finish an explanation before he was digging into it.”
Bush was also a bad boy. And Rice, according to friends and family, had a thing for bad boys. That was why, as a 20-year-old grad student, she preferred her second Fighting Irish football player boyfriend to her first, said Jane Robinett, Rice’s best Notre Dame friend: John “Dubie” Dubenetzky, cocky and handsome with wavy blond hair, was less deferential than Wayne Bullock, the sweet fullback who had moved Condi’s boxes into Lewis Hall.
Rice’s friends insisted the attraction to Bush was platonic, but Brenda Hamberry-Green, her Palo Alto hairdresser, who had spent years commiserating with Rice over how hard it was for successful black women to find a good man, noticed a change when Rice started working for Bush. “He fills that need,” Hamberry-Green decided. “Bush is her feed.”
But few couples better illustrated the old adage in the black community that a black woman had to be “twice as good to get half as far” than Rice and Bush. Condoleezza was the product of two lines of African American strivers who saw themselves as “aristocratic” but were not. She attended segregated schools until the tenth grade. From the age of three she had been a study in discipline.
Bush—the grandson of a U.S. senator, scion of a Connecticut Yankee family and a product of Andover, Yale, and Harvard Business School—was a gadabout until his fortieth birthday, when he decided it was time to stop drinking. Bush hadn’t known who he was until he was 45, according to Rice’s mentor, Brent Scowcroft, national security adviser to Bush Sr.
By the time Rice met Bush, he had become a Christian teetotaler and a devoted family man. The two shared a strong religious faith, a belief in American power, similar senses of humor, and a conviction that sports was a metaphor for life. He admired her brains. She valued his instincts. Politically, she liked his “compassionate conservatism”—the philosophy that those who wanted to lift themselves from poverty and ignorance should be given the opportunity. That had been a leitmotif for generations of minister-teachers in the Rice family. Most important, they saw themselves as outsiders: Rice as a function of her race and gender, Bush because he had never fit in as a Texas boy with the Northeastern elitists he came to see as snobs.
“There was this connective stuff—that was really fully under way by the summer of 1999,” said Rice’s friend Coit “Chip” Blacker. “There’s a funny kind of transfer of energy and ideas that’s almost—not random, but unstructured. It’s as though they’re Siamese twins joined at the frontal lobe.”
The mind meld grew stronger in Washington, especially after 9/11. But as much as it reassured Bush to have the woman he called his “sister” by his side, their closeness also became one of the administration’s liabilities in the run-up to the war in Iraq. To Scowcroft, for whom Rice had worked in the Bush Sr. White House directing Soviet policy at the end of the cold war, the major task of the national security adviser was to be the skeptic-in-chief: “My approach to almost every question is to view it with informed skepticism … If it doesn’t work, what happens?” (Scowcroft said that in 1987.) But Rice tended to enable the president’s missteps rather than check them. The basis of the relationship had been formed in the campaign: she molded his instincts, she didn’t challenge them. So as the administration marched toward war in Iraq, she didn’t push back. She didn’t question troop levels or the Defense Department’s rosy post-Saddam scenarios. She didn’t demand the administration devise a single, unified plan for after Saddam’s statue fell.
Some administration officials say Rice as national security adviser concentrated too heavily on advising the president, rather than managing the national security “process.” They point to her remark at a Washington dinner party in 2004, when she said, “As I was telling my husb—” before abruptly correcting herself, “As I was telling President Bush … " (Rice told me she doesn’t think she ever made the comment; “I swear I don’t remember any such slip … I don’t think it happened.” And neither do a number of other guests at the dinner, though some swear they heard her say “husband.”) Even Rice’s friends, most of whom happen to be Democrats, say her affection for Bush blinded her to his failings. “She thought he could do no wrong,” said one.
In addition, Rice’s own overconfidence—the same self-assuredness that allowed her to stand in front of the White House as a little girl from segregated Birmingham, and say, “some day, I’ll be in that house”—facilitated many of the pre-war mistakes. Condoleezza Rice had an absolute absence of self-doubt.
That certainty and resolve is still visible in Rice’s defense of the war today. While she admits the administration made mistakes, she says they had nothing to do with “dysfunction” in the interagency process she ran. She even disputes, astonishingly, Colin Powell’s claim that he held less sway with Bush than Rumsfeld did. “I’ve heard that, and I’d really like to know what he means. Colin Powell had as much access as anyone,” Rice insists. “I’d like to know three examples, four examples, five examples … Colin used to come have dinner with the president. I don’t think Don ever did that.”
As secretary of State, Rice has persuaded Bush to shift his stance on some key issues: offering direct U.S.-Iran talks for the first time since the 1979 hostage crisis if Tehran would end its nuclear enrichment program (Iran demurred) and making a deal with North Korea to halt its nuclear buildup (it hasn’t stopped yet). But the reason Rice stayed on for the second term, she told me, visibly humbled, perhaps schooled by the mistakes of the previous six years, was “I thought there was more we could do. Over the first three years we’d basically broken down a lot of the old system. And,” she sighed, “and I’ve been very cognizant of the need to put it back together in a different configuration, one that lays a foundation. And so I thought, ‘Well, I’ll try to do that.’ "
Speaking with uncharacteristic pauses, Rice said the last words gently. Crossing and uncrossing her legs, tugging at the bottom of her cherry skirt, she looked weary for the first time, an image that belied the aura of Alabama steel that surrounded her public persona.
Of course, her friends and her stepmother Clara Rice offered a simpler explanation for why she stayed: “she just can’t say no to that man.”
