Duty

A mid two major wars and myriad other national security challenges, I also had to deal with countless institutional issues at the Defense Department. Some were deadly serious and required dramatic actions; some were nuisances; some were mildly amusing. Many had significant political ramifications.

THE AIR FORCE

During the Bush administration, the Air Force, the branch of the military in which I had served briefly as a junior officer, was one of my biggest headaches. I thought the service did a superb job in Iraq and Afghanistan providing close air support, medevac, and transport as well as ordnance (IED) disposal and performing other important and often dangerous tasks on the ground. Earlier, I described my frustration in trying to get the Air Force leadership to provide more drones for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance use in the wars. But there were other problems as well.

The most significant related to the Air Force’s responsibility for our nuclear-armed bombers and intercontinental ballistic missiles. On August 30, 2007, a B-52 bomber took off from Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota at 8:40 a.m. carrying six air-launched cruise missiles, each armed with a nuclear weapon capable of explosive power more than ten times that of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The plane landed at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana at 11:23 a.m. It was parked there without any of the stringent security measures required for such weapons. At ten that evening, a member of the munitions crew at Barksdale discovered that the warheads were not mock training rounds but actual nuclear weapons that had been loaded in error. Only then was the incident reported to the National Military Command Center (NMCC) as a “Bent Spear” event—“an incident involving nuclear weapons, warheads, components or vehicles transporting nuclear material of significant interest.” Air Force chief of staff General Mike Moseley reported the incident to me on August 31. I was incredulous at such a monumental screw-up. I immediately called Hadley and the president to inform them. With a justified edge to his voice, Bush told me to get to the bottom of this mistake and to keep him informed. The initial incident report from the NMCC stated, “No press interest anticipated.” Wrong.

The Air Force immediately conducted an inventory to ensure that all its other nuclear weapons were accounted for, then launched an investigation. On October 19, Secretary of the Air Force Michael Wynne announced its findings, among them: “There has been an erosion of adherence to weapons-handling standards at Minot Air Force Base and at Barksdale Air Force Base.” The Air Force relieved three colonels and four senior noncommissioned officers of their commands or positions. As with the outpatient treatment scandal at Walter Reed, I wondered why the disciplinary measures had been limited solely to midlevel officers and whether ultimate responsibility for that “erosion” belonged higher up the chain of command. Accordingly, I asked former Air Force chief of staff General Larry Welch (retired), a member of the Defense Science Board (an advisory board appointed by the president), to lead a board panel to study the incident as part of a broader examination of procedures and policies for handling nuclear weapons. He briefed his conclusions to the Senate Armed Services Committee on February 12, 2008: “The military units responsible for handling the bombs are not properly inspected and, as a result, may not be ready to perform their missions…. If you look at all the areas and all the ways that we have to store and handle these weapons in order to perform the mission, it just requires, we believe, more resources and more attention than they’re getting.” Structural changes combining nuclear and nonnuclear organizations had produced “markedly reduced levels of leadership whose daily focus is the nuclear enterprise and a general devaluation of the nuclear mission and those who perform the mission.” At no time was the public in danger from the weapons—even had the plane crashed—but Welch’s conclusions pointed to serious problems in the Air Force’s management of its nuclear responsibilities.

I allowed the Air Force to determine what disciplinary measures and organizational changes were needed as a result of this incident. I should have reacted more forcefully when I received Welch’s report.

On March 21, five weeks after Welch’s testimony, I was informed that two days earlier a Taiwanese military officer had told his U.S. security assistance contact that four ICBM warheads had been discovered in a shipment the Taiwanese had received sometime before. U.S. military representatives immediately inspected the shipment and found four Minuteman ICBM nose cones (“forward assemblies”) with associated electronics, and took custody of the container. (There were no nuclear weapons in the shipment.) The container was mislabeled, carrying the stock number for batteries. In August 2006, the Taiwanese had placed an order for U.S. military helicopter batteries, and when the shipment was received, it was placed in storage without being opened. When it was opened nearly two years later, the Taiwanese recognized the missile nose cones and contacted U.S. authorities.

Coming on the heels of the Bent Spear incident, it was clear that all hell was going to break loose. My staff and the multiple organizations in the Pentagon involved worked through the weekend trying to determine what had happened. I called the leadership of the Armed Services and Appropriations Committees on the twenty-fourth to inform them, and the Chinese ambassador was put in the picture by Defense at five p.m. the same day. We were very sensitive to the possibility that our mistake would be misconstrued or misinterpreted by the Chinese, and I wanted to do everything possible to underscore that it was a mistake, not a covert scheme to arm Taiwan with nuclear weapons. Throughout, I wanted complete transparency.

I had not pursued General Welch’s concerns aggressively enough initially, and I would not make that mistake a second time. Because all our bombers carrying nuclear weapons and all our ICBMs are the responsibility of the Air Force, I wanted an independent non–Air Force officer to lead the inquiry. And so, I asked Admiral Kirkland Donald, the head of the Navy’s nuclear programs, to “conduct an investigation into the facts and circumstances surrounding the accountability for, and shipment of, sensitive missile components provided to the Government of Taiwan on or around August 2006.” I gave the admiral a sweeping mandate for the investigation and asked him for recommendations not only in terms of improvements in policies and procedures but also in terms of holding “accountable anyone at any level… who failed to perform his or her duties and responsibilities properly.” I asked for his report as soon as possible but in no more than sixty days. That same day I directed the secretaries of the Air Force and Navy and the director of the Defense Logistics Agency (the support organization that had handled the shipment to Taiwan) to inventory all nuclear and nuclear-related materials held by their respective departments.

Admiral Donald gave me his preliminary report on April 15, reporting that nothing nefarious had taken place and that there was no evidence the Taiwanese had accessed or tampered with the nose cones. I asked him whether the standards of accountability had become lax over time. I recalled for him, and he heard me out patiently, that however briefly, I had been in the Strategic Air Command in the 1960s—General Curtis LeMay’s SAC—when discipline and accountability standards were very high. At any SAC bomber or missile base at any time in those days, a planeload of inspectors from SAC headquarters in Omaha might arrive without prior notice and take the unit apart piece by piece. Failure to pass one of these Operational Readiness Inspections almost always led to the unit commander being fired. It seemed to me, I told Donald, that those standards were no longer maintained in the Air Force nuclear mission. Accompanied by General Cartwright, I briefed the president on Donald’s preliminary conclusions the next day.

Donald’s final conclusions confirmed that the safety, security, and reliability of our nuclear arsenal were solid. But as I said in a news conference shortly thereafter, his report made clear that there had been an “overall decline in Air Force nuclear weapons stewardship, a problem… not effectively addressed for over a decade. Both the Minot-Barksdale nuclear weapons transfer incident and the Taiwan misshipment… have a common origin: the gradual erosion of nuclear standards and a lack of effective oversight by the Air Force leadership.”

The Defense Department and the Air Force and Navy must ensure the absolute safety and secure stewardship of the nation’s nuclear arsenal. There is no room for error. For the American people, allies, potential adversaries—the whole efficacy of deterrence depends upon the perfect performance of that stewardship. The Donald report and its sobering conclusions required immediate and dramatic action to make clear that the deficiencies he identified would not be tolerated and that correcting them would become the top priority of the Air Force leadership and that of the Department of Defense. Donald already had identified nine generals (seven Air Force, two Army) and eight colonels who he thought should be held accountable.

For a problem of this magnitude, I decided I had to go higher, dismissing both Secretary Wynne and General Moseley. I consulted with Admiral Mullen, Gordon England, and General Cartwright. Mullen sent me an e-mail on June 2 in which he observed that “the decline in the nuclear mission in the Air Force is representative and symptomatic of a greater decline, for which I can tie responsibility directly to the two most senior leaders…. I believe our Air Force leadership has to be held accountable.” Cartwright, who had special expertise on this issue because of his past leadership of Strategic Command, agreed. So did the president.

I have always believed that firing someone or asking for a resignation should be carried out face-to-face by the one making the decision. (The only two presidents I had worked for who were willing to do this were Ford and Carter.) I had to violate this principle for the first—and only—time in the case of Wynne and Moseley because of a leak. They were both at an Air Force conference at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, and I asked Gordon England, who was traveling west that day, to stop and talk to Wynne. I asked Mike Mullen to talk to Moseley. I took no pleasure from the dismissals. I enjoyed working with both men, but I didn’t believe they really understood the magnitude of the problem or how dangerous it could be.

The simultaneous firing of both the service secretary and the service chief predictably stunned the Air Force, the rest of the department, and Washington. But there were no dire repercussions. There would later be allegations that I fired the two of them because of their foot-dragging on ISR, or more commonly, because we disagreed on whether to build more F-22 combat aircraft, or on other modernization issues. But it was the Donald report alone that sealed their fate.

At a press conference, I announced that I had asked former secretary of defense and energy and former CIA director Jim Schlesinger to lead a senior-level task force to recommend improvements to ensure that “the highest levels of accountability and control are maintained in the stewardship and operation of nuclear weapons and related materials and systems across the entire Department of Defense.” The Schlesinger panel identified further problems, including neglect in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. I believe the Air Force gave nuclear issues too low a priority. It had been at war in the skies over Iraq for seventeen years and over Afghanistan for seven. After the end of the Cold War, I believe the nuclear mission became a second-class citizen in the Air Force, a backwater starved of proper resources and the best people. The later focus on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan compounded the problem. It would be vital for the new secretary and chief of staff to correct that.

After I announced recommended replacements for those jobs, I left Washington to visit three Air Force bases, where I wanted to explain my decisions to airmen and give them a chance to ask questions or just vent. I have always felt it important, after making a tough, or especially, a controversial decision, to be willing to meet face-to-face with those most affected. At Langley Air Force Base in Virginia, headquarters of Air Combat Command, the airmen, fighter pilots, and those who support them were respectful but cool. Their questions were thoughtful: What is the balance between current and future threats? How much drone capability do you intend to buy? A fighter wing commander asked about procuring more F-22s and whether the focus was too much on “the here and now versus future threats.” Why wasn’t it more widely known how much the Air Force was doing in the current wars? What other priorities should the new Air Force leadership have to make sure they were “playing as well with others as you would like”? Above all, the session with hundreds of airmen gave me a chance to explain the firings firsthand. Woody Allen has said that 90 percent of life is just showing up. I felt that just showing up at Langley demonstrated my respect for those who probably most vigorously disagreed with my decision on Wynne and Moseley.

The reception at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs and at headquarters of Air Force Space Command was better, but the warmest reception was at Scott Air Force Base in Illinois, headquarters of Air Mobility Command and Transportation Command, the latter led by General Norton Schwartz, who I had announced would be nominated to be the new Air Force chief of staff. These were the airmen who flew troops and equipment all over the world, and Schwartz was one of them. When I mentioned his name, there was a huge burst of applause. At all three bases, though, most of the questions were about current and future priorities. As was not the case in Washington, their eyes were on the mission, not on personalities.

The firing of Moseley and Wynne led to one of the most awkward moments of my life. I received an invitation from Wynne to attend his farewell ceremony at the Air Force Memorial on June 20. I sought assurances that Mike genuinely wanted me to attend; he wasn’t just following protocol. Even though I knew it would be an uncomfortable situation, I agreed to attend and speak. When I arrived, Moseley and Wynne and their wives greeted me. My experience has always been that spouses take actions like mine much harder than do their husbands, and that certainly proved to be the case here. Everyone was respectful, but if looks could kill, I’d have been a goner. Wynne, Moseley, and I marched out to three big leather chairs in front of bleachers filled with Wynne’s family and friends. There was a lot of quiet murmuring about what the hell I was doing there, and I could feel the daggers pointed in my direction. As the ceremony went on, I kept waiting for a child to come up to me and give me a good kick in the shin and ask if I was the jerk who had fired his grandpa. I swore I would never put myself in that position again.

To my surprise, Schwartz’s nomination proved difficult with Congress. Congressman Mike Rogers of Michigan called Schwartz to say he believed the general had misled him in 2003–4 as then-director of the Joint Staff when Rogers complained about unprotected arms caches in Iraq. He said he intended to so inform the White House and his congressional colleagues. A few weeks later Senator Levin told me we needed to meet early the following week to discuss the Schwartz nomination. I immediately agreed.

The meeting took place in my office on July 28 and included Senators Levin and Warner, Mike Mullen, and me. Senators coming to the Pentagon to discuss a nomination was highly unusual, if not unprecedented, at least in my experience, and the stuff of high Washington drama. They said there were concerns about Schwartz’s forthrightness. Specifically, at a hearing on February 25, 2003, General Eric Shinseki, Army chief of staff, had famously testified that hundreds of thousands of troops would be needed after the invasion of Iraq. Schwartz, then a three-star general assigned to the Joint Staff, testified the next day that the number of troops would depend upon the circumstances—for example, whether the post-Saddam Iraqi army was helpful. He did not reveal that Rumsfeld had specifically given instructions that no one testifying should speculate on troop numbers.

Levin told me he thought Schwartz’s answer had been evasive. He went on to say that Senator Bill Nelson of Florida was concerned about Schwartz’s candor on several occasions between February and October 2003. He added that Senator Saxby Chambliss thought Schwartz wasn’t strong enough for the job, a view shared by others. He said Schwartz needed to come up and testify again the next day and that Mullen and I needed to meet in executive session with the committee later the same day. No such meeting had taken place within the memory of anyone involved. On the twenty-ninth, prior to that session, Levin and Warner met with Shinseki to discuss the numbers debate in 2003, which the general said had been “all over the place.” He also quietly told both senators that Schwartz would make a good chief of staff of the Air Force. Warner called to tell me about the meeting.

The executive session began at about five-thirty p.m. in a large conference room with the same configuration as the usual hearing room, the senators at a large U-shaped table, Mike and I at a small table some distance away. There were fifteen or sixteen senators, limited staff, and no press. Levin began by reading a long excerpt of Schwartz’s testimony in 2003 and raising the issue of candor. Warner described the meeting with Shinseki, leaving out the retired general’s endorsement of Schwartz. Levin then asked us to comment.

I was inwardly steaming. I did not believe for a second that Schwartz had tried to mislead anyone in 2003 and felt that the senators, especially Levin, at that time had placed him in an impossible position, in essence demanding that a staff officer offer an opinion on a matter over which he had no decision-making authority and had specifically been instructed not to speculate—all to score political points against Rumsfeld and the president. For Schwartz’s sake, I curbed my anger and matter-of-factly came to his defense. I gave the senators my personal assurance that no one would be more forthcoming and candid with them than Schwartz. I told them I had led several very large institutions and had hired and fired a lot of people, had confidence in my judgment of people, and was confident Schwartz was the best man for the job. I added that not to confirm him would be a disaster for the Air Force, that the bench was thin and there was no obvious alternative. On the question of evasiveness in 2003, I said they needed to consider the context of the time, the fact that the troop numbers were changing constantly and that there had been no final decision by either the secretary or the president. Admiral Mullen was also strong in his defense of Schwartz’s integrity, reinforcing my comments. After the two-hour session ended, Levin told me that Schwartz’s nomination would have failed without the meeting.

Schwartz, Mike Donley as secretary, and General Duncan McNabb as the new commander of Transportation Command were confirmed on August 1. A few days later I received a note from Senator Warner praising Mullen’s and my efforts on behalf of Schwartz. The whole affair left a very bad taste in my mouth nonetheless. Schwartz, a good man, had unnecessarily been put through a wringer. Politically motivated senators should have been put in the dock, not Schwartz.

There were two other episodes involving the Air Force that took a lot of my time during 2008. The most difficult was the effort to select the contractor to build a new tanker aircraft for the Air Force. The two competitors were Boeing and a partnership of Northrop Grumman and Europe’s EADS/Airbus, and each had a support team in Congress from the states where the planes would be built. The Boeing team was comprised of members of the congressional delegations from Washington, Kansas, and, to a lesser extent, Missouri; the Airbus team was principally from Alabama. The contract was to build 179 tanker aircraft valued at $35 billion. It was the service’s highest acquisition priority. Originally the contract had been awarded to Boeing in an unusual leasing arrangement, but irregularities mooted the decision. The Boeing CEO and CFO resigned and at least one senior civilian Air Force official went to jail for handling the contract bid while simultaneously seeking employment with Boeing. The egregious problems were exposed by a corruption investigation pushed by Senator McCain, who went on the warpath against the Air Force. On December 1, 2006, even before my confirmation hearing, McCain asked me to explain to him how I would ensure that the tanker competition would be conducted “fully, fairly, and transparently.” When the contract was finally awarded to the Northrop/Airbus team in February 2008, it was protested by Boeing. The General Accounting Office issued a report in mid-June identifying 111 minor and major problems with the contracting process—half a dozen or so of real significance. Six days later I received a handwritten note from Jack Murtha, chairman of the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, with a straightforward statement: “You need to get rid of the AF acquisition team.”

On July 9, I announced a limited rebid of the tanker contract that would be overseen not by the Air Force but by the undersecretary of defense for acquisition, logistics, and technology, John Young. Two months later, on September 10, I told Congress that I was terminating the tanker rebid because it had “become clear that the solicitation and award cannot be accomplished by January. Thus, I believe that rather than hand the next administration an incomplete and possibly contested process, we should cleanly defer this procurement to the next team.”

I didn’t think it appropriate or wise to try to award a contract of this size and sensitivity in the final days of an outgoing administration, especially because the contract had become the most politically explosive and emotional procurement I had ever seen. Each company bought full-page ads to try to persuade the department and Congress that it should be awarded the contract—ads I suspected we would end up paying for as part of the overhead charges in the competition. Members of Congress were outrageous in their claims and pressures, with Boeing supporters pushing “buy American” legislation—even though most of the Airbus planes eventually would have been built in Alabama by American workers—and pointing to Airbus’s unfair advantage because of subsidies from European governments. Airbus accused Boeing of unfair practices in the failure of the first two contract awards. At one hearing, one of my staff was walking behind Senator Patty Murray of Washington and noticed that no one had bothered to remove the Boeing letterhead from her talking points. Both companies, and supporters of both in Congress, were all, in my view, reprehensible in the tactics and distortions they employed to drive the Defense Department to a decision in their favor. There was so much heat and so little light in the debate that I thought a cooling-off period would be beneficial. And so I punted the contract decision to my successor. To my great dismay, I would end up receiving my own punt.

A very different kind of Air Force–related issue came up in the spring of 2008, a time when I was preoccupied with drawdowns in Iraq, conflict with the chiefs over the National Military Strategy and “next-war-itis,” growing concern over Afghanistan, and the Air Force’s reluctance to expand its ISR efforts aggressively.

When it comes to the treatment of the remains of American servicemen and women killed in combat, no two places are more sensitive or more sacred than the mortuary at Dover Air Force Base and Arlington National Cemetery. Perfection in performance is expected at both, and both have been involved in recent years in inexcusable errors and lapses in judgment. The first of these lapses to come to my attention was at Dover. The remains of uniformed Americans who die overseas are flown to Dover AFB in Delaware, where the Air Force conducts autopsies for all the services and prepares the remains for onward transportation for burial. It is a solemn responsibility.

The morning of May 9 my senior military assistant, Pete Chiarelli, received an e-mail from an Army lieutenant colonel who, at the request of a fallen soldier’s wife, had met his transfer case (casket) when it arrived at Dover. He wrote Chiarelli that the transfer from the plane had not been particularly dignified and that he had then followed the transfer vehicle carrying the remains of the soldier to an off-base crematorium that was marked as a pet crematorium. While he said there were separate facilities for pet and human remains, there was no indication of that on the exterior of the building. Chiarelli soon learned that the mortuary staff at Dover had contracted with a company that ran a local pet crematorium to cremate the remains of some seventy-five servicemen. There had never been any mixing of human and pet remains.

We had to act fast to fix this problem to prevent a huge public outcry. Beyond the facilities issue, when a number of the remains had been delivered to the crematorium, no U.S. military personnel stood vigil and ensured their dignified handling, which was contrary to policy. Cremations were stopped at this facility immediately, and new contracts signed with civilian mortuaries in the area. In each case, a uniformed military escort would stand vigil during the cremation. And the Air Force decided to build its own crematorium at the base. We informed the press of what had happened the evening of the same day we learned about it, along with the remedial measures, and our transparency was favorably reported. Unfortunately, this would not be the last problem at Dover.

OTHER CHALLENGES

In the winter of 2007–8, I was dealing with hot spots all around the world: Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, North Korea, Russia, China, Venezuela, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. My days were filled with problems of mind-boggling variety. For example, sandwiched between my visit to Russia and meetings with the Israeli and Afghan defense ministers, on October 15, 2007, a Patriot missile at the U.S. base in Qatar was accidently fired during a training exercise and landed several miles away, in the backyard of the Qatari chief of defense, a general who had been incredibly kind to U.S. soldiers, opening his estate for recreational purposes. Fortunately, no one was hurt. How the hell does a Patriot missile just go off? I asked my staff rather rudely. I said all questions should be directed to Central Command.

Mike Mullen brought me a more serious challenge on January 10, 2008, when he informed me that a U.S. satellite was falling. While there was a 10 percent or less chance of it landing in a populated area, it carried a toxic propellant, hydrazine, that was a threat to humans. Over the next several weeks, Strategic Command, under the leadership of General Kevin Chilton, developed options for shooting down the satellite because of the hydrazine. Chilton briefed President Bush on the plans. If we used one SM-3 missile launched from an Aegis destroyer, the odds of success were estimated at 79 percent; using two missiles, the odds were 91 percent. The president approved shooting down the satellite (the operation was dubbed Burnt Frost) and delegated the decision and timing to me. The optimal window for the launch was February 20, when I was aboard the E-4B on my way to Asia. I had a final conversation with Generals Cartwright and Chilton from the plane about 1:40 p.m. my time, and after discussing weather issues and deciding to say nothing publicly until after the shot, I gave the go-ahead. The missile was launched about two and a half hours later and destroyed the tumbling satellite. General Cartwright gave the press the details; there was no debris larger than a football, and the likelihood that the propellant tank was destroyed was “very good.” It was an impressive display of the capability of the SM-3 missile, a key component of our missile defense system. When I landed in Canberra, my Australian counterpart said, “Nice shot, Bob.”

I devoted a lot of time during the Bush administration to trying to figure out how to close the detention center at Guantánamo Bay. My first major decision relating to the facility was shortly after I became secretary. In 2006, the Pentagon had asked for congressional approval to spend $102 million on a court complex at Gitmo for trying the detainees. The complex was to include two courtrooms, conference and meeting facilities, and housing for twelve hundred people. I directed that the proposal be killed and that plans be prepared for a temporary facility at about a tenth of the cost.

By 2007 the detention center had become almost luxurious, with exercise equipment including elliptical trainers, television rooms, reading rooms with literature and magazines in Arabic and other languages, and extraordinarily professional and well-trained prison guards. But due to highly publicized photographs of the initial rough conditions and reports of abusive interrogations of several high-value detainees during its first year in operation, Guantánamo still carried enormous negative baggage politically around the world. President Bush and Condi Rice had both said publicly that they would like to see it closed. I did as well.

The challenge all along was that some of the prisoners at Guantá-namo were declared enemies of the United States who made it quite clear that, if released, they would like nothing better than to kill more Americans. They therefore could not be released. If Guantánamo were closed, where would they be sent? Secretary Rice and I, in conversations with both the president and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales in January 2007, urged that the prison be closed and suggested that perhaps the prisoners could be moved to military facilities in the United States, where they would remain in military custody and subject to military judicial proceedings. Cheney and Gonzales disliked that idea, with government lawyers arguing that bringing the prisoners to the United States could give them significant additional rights under the Constitution. Rice’s and my initiative went nowhere. I did not share with my Bush administration colleagues the letter of praise for these efforts that I received from the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union. As Bush 41 would say, Wouldn’t be prudent.

At a hearing on May 20, 2008, Senator Dianne Feinstein asked me for a progress report on Guantánamo. “The brutally frank answer is that we’re stuck and we’re stuck in several ways,” I said. Some detainees were ready to be sent home, but their governments didn’t want them or could not guarantee their safekeeping. (A recent suicide bomber in Mosul had been a released detainee.) In Congress, there was a “not in my backyard” mentality with regard to moving the worst of the worst to military or civilian prisons in the United States.

The last effort inside the Bush administration to close Guantánamo was during the summer of 2008, after a Supreme Court decision knocked down the administration’s position with respect to detainee rights, including denying them habeas corpus. There were two meetings in the latter half of June in the Roosevelt Room at the White House, the president’s day-to-day conference room. It has several paintings of both Franklin and Theodore Roosevelt and the latter’s Nobel Peace Prize medal, as well as the flags of the military services with historic battle streamers dating back to the Revolution. Chief of Staff Josh Bolten chaired the meetings, attended by Rice, Attorney General Mike Mukasey (who had replaced Gonzales the preceding November), me, the FBI director, a number of White House staff, including some from the vice president’s office, and more lawyers than I could count. We went around and around on the implications of the Supreme Court decision, the legal complications of bringing detainees to the United States, the administration’s losing streak in the courts, and the politics of the issue. Rice and I were the only two in the meetings who argued for an aggressive effort to get legislation that would permit us to close the prison. Some on the White House staff, such as the communications director, Ed Gillespie, were concerned how the Republican base would react and asked how we could protect the American people if we closed Gitmo. I responded that they should forget the politics and let the president seize a historic initiative.

Condi and I lost the argument, and the problem of closing the prison at Guantánamo would fall to the next president. He would find the challenge just as daunting. On October 20, 2008, I directed the Pentagon to begin contingency planning to close Gitmo if the new president was to order it on taking office in January. I said the planning should include legislative remedies to the risks posed by closing the facility, examination of the Navy brig in Charleston, South Carolina, as an alternative, and identifying the two or three safeguards we would need in legislation as we figured out what to do with the detainees.

Piracy and the effort to ban cluster munitions (weapons that eject multiple explosive bomblets designed to kill troops or destroy vehicles) consumed considerable time during the last months of the Bush administration. The munitions were widely used by the Soviets in Afghanistan, by U.S. forces along the Korean demilitarized zone, and by the Israelis against Hizballah in 2006. The United States had become increasingly isolated internationally on the cluster munitions issue, refusing to sign on to an international ban. At the end of June, the White House saw this as a burgeoning public relations problem and wanted me to speak out in defense of the munitions and why they were important. In a meeting, I said, “So you want me to be the poster boy for cluster munitions?” Cheney, with a bit of a smile, said, “Yes, just like I was with torture and Hadley was with land mines!” Steve told me he wanted to be able to tell the president that I had personally looked into this and believed that the munitions were vitally important.

I consulted with senior leaders at the Pentagon. Mike Mullen said cluster munitions were very important, very effective weapons. Eric Edelman said there was broad interagency agreement that the munitions had utility and that 90 percent of casualties from unexploded munitions are from conventional bombs. Banning cluster bombs therefore would increase the risk of innocent casualties because we would need to use more conventional bombs. The Marine commandant, General James T. Conway, observed that North Korea, Russia, Iran, and India all had cluster munitions and none would sign an agreement banning them. Our solution was to develop cluster munitions that would automatically deactivate after a certain time. We committed to replacing 99 percent of our cluster munitions over a ten-year period.

As for piracy, it had been a growing problem for years in the Strait of Malacca, between Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore, through which a huge percentage of global seaborne commerce passes. We had worked with those three governments, and over time they greatly reduced the level of piracy. But pirates operating out of Somalia became increasingly emboldened as they encountered little opposition either from the ships they seized and held for ransom or from local or international forces. Also, they lived and recruited in areas of Somalia where there was no governance, and no foreign country—especially the United States—would send military forces to clean out the nests. As we spent more and more time in the Situation Room trying to figure out how to resolve the problem, Condi at one point exclaimed, “Pirates? Pirates? For God’s sake, the last American secretary of state to deal with pirates was Thomas Jefferson!” Over time the international community, led by NATO, assembled a substantial naval force in the region, including both Chinese and Russian navy ships, and shipowners began using more aggressive techniques to keep the pirates from boarding—removing ladders, using hoses, arming the crews, placing security teams aboard. These measures reduced the threat but did not end it. For poor Somalis, the risks of getting caught or killed paled compared to the money they could make.

The last two examples of unexpected challenges that consumed vast quantities of time and energy concern two individuals in uniform, one of whom had a bright future but baggage, the other a heroic Marine sergeant.

Lieutenant General Stan McChrystal was the commander of the Joint Special Operations Command from 2003 to 2008. In this capacity, he led U.S. Special Forces in both Iraq and Afghanistan in the conduct of clandestine operations to capture or kill members of al Qaeda and insurgent leaders. His operations were remarkably successful, including the capture of Saddam Hussein and the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, and played a major role in the success of the surge in Iraq and the counterinsurgency in Afghanistan. I had come to know and admire McChrystal during my first year as secretary, and I believed he was perhaps the finest warrior and leader of men in combat I had ever met. I was determined to promote him to a higher level of responsibility. But I thought Stan would have some difficulty getting confirmed for higher rank and position. He had been “the tip of the spear” for nearly five years in two theaters of war. Given how controversial Iraq had become, and the experience of both Pete Pace and George Casey, I saw trouble on that front. McChrystal had also been one of the subjects of an investigation into the death by friendly fire of Corporal Pat Tillman because he signed off on a Silver Star medal for valor for Tillman with a citation that made no mention of friendly fire as the cause of his death. The Pentagon investigation of the case recommended that eight officers be disciplined, one of them McChrystal. The Army did not agree and took no action against him.

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.”