Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War (43 page)

On top of all this, Senator Levin had been conducting an in-depth investigation of the treatment of detainees (which I thought had Rumsfeld as its target) and expressed concern about abuse of detainees in Afghanistan by troops under McChrystal’s command. Levin let me know there had been forty-five allegations of misconduct in his command and that he, Levin, intended to bring McChrystal in for a hearing. I had looked into McChrystal’s actions in the Tillman case and the allegations of detainee abuse and, after extensive discussions with Mullen and others, determined to move forward with his advancement.

McChrystal had been rumored to be a candidate for several four-star positions, including commander of Special Operations Command, replacing Petraeus in Iraq, and commander of Central Command. However,
I believed that I first needed to get McChrystal confirmed by the Senate for an unobtrusive, noncontroversial staff job, a confirmation that, in effect, would give him a clean slate. Then, my thinking went, when I pushed him for a higher-visibility job and a fourth star, it would be hard for the Senate to oppose him without suggesting they had done an inadequate job of vetting him previously. And so I enthusiastically supported Mullen’s recommendation that Stan be nominated as director of the Joint Staff, an important position but one that operated under the Washington radar. It is a position from which most incumbents go on to a fourth star.

In February 2008, we moved on this plan. Senator McCain initially opposed McChrystal because of the Tillman case and Levin was opposed because of the detainee issue. The Senate Armed Services Committee intended to fight McChrystal’s nomination. I told the president, “McChrystal is one of the heroic figures of these wars, and if we won’t stand and fight for him, then who?” And so we fought. A nasty confirmation fight can get even a brave man down, and so I called Stan in early June to let him know that, based on personal experience, this was all about politics and that every senior officer who had fought in Iraq and Afghanistan was likely to face the same kind of challenge—a disgraceful reality. I told him that the president and I were prepared to fight for him. In a very rare Armed Services Committee hearing for a nominee to a three-star position, McChrystal did well in responding to the senators’ questions. In August, he became the director of the Joint Staff. The path was clear for more senior command and a fourth star, which would follow in less than a year.

Of the estimated forty million men and women who have served in the armed forces since the Civil War, fewer than 3,500 have received the Medal of Honor, the highest honor the United States can bestow, some 60 percent posthumously. Too few have been awarded in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, in which there have been so many heroic, selfless deeds. President Bush was, I think, always disappointed that he was unable to present the Medal of Honor to a single living recipient. I once asked Chiarelli why so few had been recommended. He said because medals had been passed out so freely in Vietnam, succeeding officers were determined to raise the bar. They had raised it too high, he thought.

It was a big deal when a recommendation for the Medal of Honor came to my office. Everyone on the staff would read the file and be in awe.
Whether the recommended recipient was living or dead, the documentation was massive, with multiple eyewitness accounts, maps, photos, and the results of multiple investigations and reviews. The standard for a recipient is extraordinarily high: “There must be no margin of doubt or possibility of error in awarding this honor.” There are many layers of approval. By the time a recommendation came to my desk, almost without exception, any questions had been resolved and any doubts put aside.

One such exception landed on my desk in mid-2008, with the recommendation that U.S. Marine Corps Sergeant Rafael Peralta receive the Medal of Honor for his heroism and self-sacrifice in the second battle of Fallujah on November 15, 2004. Peralta had volunteered for a house-clearing mission and, when entering the fourth house, had opened a door and was hit several times with AK-47 fire. As two other Marines entered behind him, an insurgent threw a grenade that surely would have killed them except that, according to eyewitnesses, Peralta pulled the grenade under his body, absorbing the blast. He was killed; the other Marines survived. The medal recommendation had been endorsed by the proper chain of approval, including the secretary of the Navy and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. However, the documentation also included dissenting views from the medical forensic community and the undersecretary for personnel and readiness. As a result, I personally interviewed several senior officers in Peralta’s chain of command, and in light of the unanimous support of the entire unformed leadership involved, I approved the recommendation. I was satisfied that Sergeant Peralta met all the criteria and deserved the Medal of Honor.

After I signed the recommendation to the president, I was informed that a complaint had been made to the department’s inspector general that Peralta could not have consciously taken the action credited with saving the two other Marines’ lives and therefore did not meet the criteria for the award. The inspector general intended to carry out an investigation unless I took some action to deal with the complaint. After consulting with a number of senior leaders, including Mike Mullen, I decided that the only way to clear the air quietly was to ask a special panel to look into the allegation. Chaired by a retired former Multinational Corps–Iraq commanding general, the panel included a retired Medal of Honor recipient, a neurosurgeon, and two forensic pathologists. The panel was given access to all available information, including detailed medical reports; interviewed numerous subject matter experts; conducted a recreation
of the event; and inspected the available evidence. The panel concluded unanimously that, with his wounds, Peralta could not have consciously pulled the grenade under him. I had no choice but to withdraw my approval. Perhaps someday, should additional evidence and analysis come to light, the criteria for the award will be deemed to have been met, and Sergeant Peralta will receive the Medal of Honor. Regardless, there is no doubt he was a hero.

Every day, for four and a half years, issues like these came to me for decision, adjudication, or resolution. Nearly all, one way or another, affected the lives and careers of men and women who had rendered significant service to our country. Some decisions brought pain, others pleasure—for those affected and for me. In the evenings, when my wife would sometimes ask me how my day had gone, I’d just have to reply, “One damn thing after another.”

CHAPTER 8

Transition

I did not enjoy being secretary of defense. As soldiers would put it, I had too many rocks in my rucksack: foreign wars, war with Congress, war with my own department, one crisis after another. Above all, I had to send young men and women in harm’s way. Visiting them on the front lines and seeing the miserable conditions in which they lived, seeing them in hospitals, writing condolence letters to their families, and going to their funerals took a great toll on me. In Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book
Team of Rivals
, she wrote of President Lincoln’s secretary of war, Edwin Stanton, who, after making a decision that would lead to a soldier’s death, was found “leaning over a desk, his face buried in his hands and his heavy frame shaking with sobs. ‘God help me to do my duty. God help me to do my duty!’ he was repeating in a low wail of anguish.” I wrote out that passage and kept it in my desk.

I wrote earlier that my time as secretary had two themes, war and love—the latter referring to my feelings about the troops. Sometime in 2008 I began telling troops in the war zones and elsewhere that I felt a sense of responsibility for them as if they were my own sons and daughters. I did not exaggerate. Nothing moved me more than a simple “thanks” from a soldier, and nothing made me madder than when I learned that one of them was being badly treated by his or her service or the Pentagon bureaucracy. My senior military assistants spent a huge amount of time helping individual young men and women in uniform who encountered
indifference or neglect when faced with a problem; usually I would learn of such things in a letter sent to me, or see something in the media, or hear something in a meeting with troops. Whether it was getting new washing machines for a remote forward operating base in Afghanistan or helping a young Marine with post-traumatic stress cope with the bureaucracy, no problem was too trivial. I wanted those troops to know I would do anything to help them—and I hoped that word would spread. I also wanted to set an example: if I could make time to try to help a single soldier, then by God so could everyone else in authority. I knew my overwhelming love and sense of responsibility for the troops, along with my deep conviction that we had to succeed in these wars, would lead me to stay on as secretary if asked by a new president.

After my initial months in the job, Gordon England gave me a small countdown clock, ticking off the days, hours, and seconds until noon on January 20, 2009, when I could set aside my duties and return home for good—as the label on the clock said, “Back to the real Washington,” a reference to my home in Washington State. Journalists and members of Congress were always surprised when I could tell them exactly how many days I had left as secretary; I carried that clock in my briefcase and consulted it often.

With the election in 2008, we were facing the first presidential transition in wartime since 1968. I was determined to minimize any chance of a dropped baton and began planning for the changeover as early as October 1, 2007, when I asked Eric Edelman to tell the Defense Policy Board, chaired by former deputy secretary of defense John Hamre, that I wanted them to devote their summer 2008 meeting solely to transition issues. Sometimes there was a temptation by an outgoing administration to try to solve all problems before Inauguration Day, but this would be my seventh presidential transition, and I had yet to see a new administration that did not inherit problems.

Early in 2008, there was press speculation that I might be asked to stay on as secretary at least for a while to ensure the smooth handoff of the wars, no matter who was elected president. At the end of March, when I attended an eightieth birthday party for Zbigniew Brzezinski, he said he had told the Obama campaign that if Obama won, he should keep me on. I stared at Zbig and said, “I thought you were my friend.” Press inquiries about whether I would stay if asked increased as the
spring went along, and I usually would just pull out my countdown clock and show the questioner how long I had left. I devoted a fair amount of effort to quelling such speculation, often saying, “I learned a long time ago never to say never, but the circumstances under which I would do that are inconceivable to me.” During those months, I was clear both privately and publicly that I did not want to remain as secretary, did not intend to try to stay, and wanted only to go home at the end of the Bush administration.

My strategy was to be so adamant about not wanting to stay on that no one would ask. Because I knew that, if asked, I would give the same answer I had given President Bush in November 2006: With kids doing their duty fighting and dying in two wars, how could I not also do mine? I maintained a disciplined, consistent, and negative response to questions on this throughout the presidential campaign, with one private lapse. In an e-mail exchange in early April with my old friend and former deputy secretary of state for Bush 43, Rich Armitage, I let my guard down: “The best part of the job [secretary of defense] is the same as at Texas A&M: the kids. They blow me away. They make me cry. They are so awesome. Only they could get me to stay.” I then caught myself, and added, “Okay, that’s really highly classified. Because if Becky saw it, she would kill me.”

Even as I was trying to build a wall that would prevent me from being asked to stay, I was aware of the gossip and rumors circulating about me—and Mike Mullen. My press spokesman, Geoff Morrell, learned in late May 2008 from his contacts that the Obama campaign had “taken aboard” Mullen’s argument that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan simply wouldn’t allow for a months-long interregnum. Morrell was told that Obama wanted a bipartisan cabinet and that my staying in place would show foreigners that U.S. resolve would be undiminished; it would also reassure the domestic audience that Obama could be trusted on national security. There was some criticism on my own staff, once again, about Mullen’s “aggressive” legislative and public affairs “campaign.” I believed that his being seen as holding an independent view of things would be helpful with a change of administrations because he and Petraeus would then be better able to stand up to a new president if he wanted to do something drastic in Iraq. As I told one of my senior aides, “Admiral Mullen is fundamentally in the right place on Iraq and Afghanistan.” President Bush clearly wasn’t as confident as I was about Mike’s views
on Iraq, because repeatedly over the ensuing months I would hear from various folks at the White House their concern that the chairman was already “positioning” himself for the next president.

In mid-June, there were several press articles about my efforts to organize a smooth transition, and speculation intensified about my being asked to remain in place for a while. Mullen and I often discussed how to handle the handover. I established a transition Senior Steering Group, chaired by my chief of staff, Robert Rangel. I did so to ensure that the vast preparations routinely undertaken by the Defense Department had coherence and coordination—and would be under my control. Mullen’s involvement was important because he would still be in his position in a new administration and would be central to continuity and a smooth transition. Senior Pentagon civilians had to be prepared to remain in place beyond Inauguration Day so a new secretary wasn’t sitting in his office virtually alone; that had been the case with Secretary Rumsfeld in 2001 as he waited for everyone else to be confirmed. Meanwhile one of Obama’s senior campaign advisers, Richard Danzig, was quoted in an article as saying, “My personal position is Gates is a very good secretary of defense and would be an even better one in an Obama administration.” In the same article, a McCain adviser said that McCain likely would ask me to stay on for several months to ensure a smooth wartime transition.