In The Eye Of The Storm
Why President Bush's closest aide has just become a lightning rod
Condoleezza Rice had the golden touch. Defying stereotypes, prejudices, and humble beginnings, she showed an early talent in everything from ice skating to academics and, eventually, became an expert in the virtually all-male, all-white world of Sovietology. She caught the eye of the foreign-policy establishment and was named a Russia specialist in George Herbert Walker Bush's White House. After a stint as the youngest provost in Stanford University history, she returned to government under George W. Bush as the first African-American woman to serve as a president's national security adviser. With her trademark coiffure, glittering earrings, elegant suits, and graceful manner, she became familiar to Americans as an eloquent defender of the administration.
Now, Condi Rice is under attack as never before. Former National Security Council counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke's allegations that President Bush didn't do enough to fight terrorism prior to 9/11 and unwisely rushed to war with Iraq cast Rice in a particularly unflattering light. Clarke briefed Rice on al Qaeda, he said, in January 2001. Al Qaeda, he said, was at war with America and was planning a major series of attacks against U.S. interests. "As I briefed Rice on al Qaeda," Clarke wrote in his bestselling book, "her facial expression gave me the impression that she had never heard the term before, so I added, `Most people think of it as Usama bin Laden's group, but it's much more than that. It's a network of affiliated terrorist organizations with cells in over 50 countries, including the U.S.' Rice looked skeptical."
In his testimony, Clarke said the administration largely ignored his warnings--and put much of the blame squarely on Rice, who was in charge of the White House office that was supposed to keep track of such things.
Rice fired back almost immediately. Clarke, she said, was "arrogant in the extreme." She had received several memos from Clarke, she said, showing that he believed the White House had taken steps to counter an al Qaeda attack, even though no one knew where or when it might occur. She added that intelligence agencies believed the attack, if it came, would probably be abroad. "Leaving the impression with the American people that they can't trust their government to care about the threats facing them is harmful," Rice told U.S. News. "And I also think it is unfair to public servants" (box, Page 30). A senior U.S. official added: "I didn't think that much of what Dick said was consistent with what he had said before."
Double trouble. Clarke's insider account opened a new window on policymaking at the National Security Council and on Rice's role there--and the view isn't pretty. "This is the most dysfunctional NSC that ever existed," says a senior U.S. official. "But it's not Condi's fault. The person that's made it so dysfunctional is Cheney." For the first time, a vice president is sitting in on meetings with other NSC principals and is constantly involved in the policymaking. A copy of every NSC memo goes to the vice president's staff, so that Cheney can play an active role on issues that interest him.
Since Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld agree on virtually everything--they have been friends since serving in the administration of President Gerald Ford--"you have an alliance you can't defeat," says a U.S. official. "You're constantly in a battle to find some kind of middle ground that your conscience will let you live with." Cheney's office declined to respond to a request for comment.
The National Security Council was created in 1947 by President Harry Truman. It was designed to serve as an honest broker in giving the president options on all aspects of national security policy. NSC members are the president, vice president, secretary of state, and secretary of defense. Other senior officials sometimes participate. The council is supported by a staff of several dozen that includes policy experts like Clarke.
Over the years, Rice's predecessors--including Sandy Berger under President Clinton and Brent Scowcroft under George H. W. Bush--adopted the role of intermediary, trying to sharpen options and hammer out compromises. This is a role Rice has been unwilling or unable to play, according to NSC insiders. Administration officials say Rice has repeatedly been overruled and ignored by Cheney and Rumsfeld, the administration's leading hawks. Both pushed hard for war with Iraq and were able to exploit the sense of urgency after 9/11 and play to Bush's instinct for fast decision making and aggressive action instead of the patience and restraint urged by Secretary of State Colin Powell. "[Rice] gives the most powerful actors--Rumsfeld and Cheney--what they want," says a former adviser to Bush's father who remains in contact with administration officials. "In fact, she's been eaten alive by Rumsfeld and Cheney."
Defense and State have feuded over a number of issues, but none as important as Iraq. Rumsfeld and Cheney pushed for war while Powell favored more diplomacy. Rice's critics fault her for failing to resolve these splits. Critics say the infighting over the war diverted the administration's attention and prevented senior officials from making prudent and realistic plans for occupying and rebuilding Iraq--which is causing serious problems now.
Rice, 49, is the president's closest adviser and retains favor with him partly because she is so loyal and partly because she was loyal to his father. But there are other reasons. "In W's case, Condi reinforces a sense of mission," says a former aide to the father. "She's got a very strong religious background, and so does President Bush. Her late father was a minister."
Yet what some call dysfunction may have a certain benefit to the commander in chief. "Ultimately, the president gets the apparatus he wants and deserves," says a senior official in the Clinton administration. "The cynical view is this is exactly the way Bush wants it done. He's got Powell taking flak from the right, and he's got Rumsfeld taking flak from the left. This kind of schizophrenic government may be politically helpful to him because it keeps the criticism away from the president. But I don't think it's good government. Only one person in government can bring these people together, and that's the national security adviser."
But if Rice has been unwilling to act the disciplinarian professionally, the same cannot be said for her personal life. Rice, who has never married, is, like Bush, a borderline fanatic about fitness; she exercises on a treadmill every morning and often lifts weights. She practices piano with a chamber music group on weekends. (Her parents based her name on the Italian musical notation con dolcezza--to play "with sweetness.") She enjoys sports, especially pro football, and has said her dream job would be National Football League commissioner. She is a devout Christian. Aboard Air Force One from El Salvador to Washington on Palm Sunday 2002, she inspired the president and other officials when she led them in hymns and religious songs.
Sounding board. Rice spends weekends with Bush and the first lady at Camp David, taking walks with them and assembling jigsaw puzzles, and she accompanies the couple to their ranch at Crawford, Texas. "She's always there with the president," says an associate. "She's always someone he can talk to." Yet she does refuse to join the president in the outdoor activities he loves, such as chopping cedar and clearing brush. "Southern ladies don't do cedar," says Rice, who was raised in Alabama.
The Clarke furor may have marked Rice's low point, but she has been in hot water before. Just after Bush took office, in the spring of 2001, she told European Union envoys at the home of the Swedish ambassador that the Kyoto climate-change treaty was "dead on arrival" because Bush opposed it. The diplomats expected a more conciliatory approach. To this day, they still talk about that moment as emblematic of the administration's arrogance.
She has been widely faulted for promoting a false report that Saddam Hussein had sought "yellowcake" uranium in Niger in order to build nuclear weapons. Bush included the claim in his State of the Union speech in January 2003, just prior to the Iraq war. Rice has since admitted the report was not credible.
In the past week, she has raised more questions about the administration's credibility. Rice said Bush told her on Sept. 16, 2001, that "Iraq is to the side" in setting priorities for the war on terrorism, but this is contradicted by an order signed by the president on September 17 ordering the Pentagon to start formulating military options for invading Iraq. Rice said the White House had a strategy before 9/11 for military operations against al Qaeda and the Taliban. But Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage appeared to contradict that in testimony before the commission. He said military options were not included in the planning before September 11.
Retractions. Perhaps most important, Rice has backed away from her previous statement that "I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center . . . that they would try to use an airplane as a missile." Rice told the investigative commission that she erred. The commission, in fact, has been informed that U.S. intelligence agencies and Clarke had issued warnings prior to 9/11 that terrorists could use airplanes as missiles.
Rice has long been considered a reasonable bet to become the first African-American woman named as secretary of state if Bush wins a second term and Powell leaves. Now that bet is uncertain. For her part, Rice in private takes the criticism hard, partly because she isn't used to it; she has always enjoyed adulation and positive media coverage and has seemed to enjoy the work. "I told her she would love it at the White House," said Scowcroft, "and she's come to me again and again and said I was right." Now friends describe her as weary and unsettled but stoic, believing she can recover. "Her poise almost seems to be a gift from God that she has developed through deep faith," says Kiron Skinner, a longtime Rice friend and historian at Carnegie Mellon University. Rice says that when she needs strength, she reads Romans 5 in the Bible, which advises the righteous to "glory in tribulations" because suffering breeds patience and hope. For the foreseeable future, Condoleezza Rice will have no end of tribulations to glory in.
With Kevin Whitelaw, Mark Mazzetti, Angie C. Marek and Thomas Omestad
This story appears in the April 5, 2004 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.