Army Private First Class Bradley Manning was quickly identified and charged with downloading the documents from a computer at his base in Iraq and sending them to WikiLeaks. In violation of security rules, he had apparently carried compact discs disguised as music CDs into a secure facility and spent his duty hours downloading the documents from classified networks.
Manning had gotten such broad access to so many databases because, after the Gulf War, and particularly with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, there was a concerted effort to make as much information as possible available to every level of command. Huge broadband capacity was developed in both Iraq and Afghanistan, and wide access was provided to all levels. But we would learn, after the fact, that in many forward-deployed areas there was poor physical and operational security in and around facilities holding classified information, a failure to suspend the access to classified information of individuals who displayed behavioral and medical problems, and “weak to no implementation of tools restricting the use and monitoring of network activities.” According to the findings of the undersecretary of defense for intelligence in January 2011:
It is common knowledge that rules are frequently broken in a war zone to accomplish the mission. This may be necessary outside the perimeter and where there is risk of direct hostile action. But these behaviors have extended into garrison culture in forward-deployed areas, where the boredom of routine and limited activity options have exacerbated the problem…. The issue is more about compliance than policy—less about what we share and more about how we share it. Compliance is high at the strategic and operational level, but degrades closer to the fight. In forward-deployed areas, many mandatory practices are ignored or standards lowered.
Secretary Clinton had a lot of explaining to do in capitals around the world for a problem caused by the Defense Department. Both she and I noticed that once open and candid interlocutors around the world now turned silent the second they saw an American official take out pen and paper for notes.
I tried to offer some perspective in one press briefing. I pointed out, for example, that these State Department documents demonstrated for everyone to see that there was no significant difference between what American officials said in public and what they said in private. Drawing on my many years of painful experience, I also reminded people that the American government leaks like a sieve—“and always has.” I cited President John Adams’s lament: “How can a government go on, publishing all their negotiations with foreign nations, I know not. To me it appears as dangerous and pernicious as it is novel.” I also recalled that when serious congressional oversight of CIA began in the mid-1970s, many thought foreign services would stop sharing information with us, but it never happened. I said I thought terms being bandied about such as “meltdown,” “game-changer,” and so on were overstated and overwrought.
Governments deal with the United States because it is in their interest, not because they like us or trust us or because of our ability to keep secrets. Some respect us, some fear us, many need us. We have by far the largest economy and the most powerful military. As has been said, in global affairs, we are the indispensable nation. So, other countries will continue to deal with us. Is this embarrassing? Yes. Awkward? Somewhat. But the longer-term impact? Very modest.
Another disaster, at least as far as I was concerned, was my trip to Bolivia at the end of November 2010 for a meeting of the Conference of Defense Ministers of the Americas. I detested these huge conferences. They are boring beyond words, and little ever results. But because it involves every country in North and South America, the U.S. secretary of defense must go for political and diplomatic reasons. My first such conference, in 2008, was tolerable because it was hosted by the Canadians at the spectacular mountain town of Banff, Alberta. The second, in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, promised to be awful in several respects. In a conference hosted by the government of virulently anti-American leftist Bolivian leader Evo Morales, I foresaw a full day of getting pounded on by my Bolivian hosts and their buddies from Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela. When I made known I was considering not attending, both the Canadian and Brazilian defense ministers promised me they would lean on the Bolivians to behave. I took them at their word and showed up on November 21.
The drive from the airport in Santa Cruz to the hotel was the only time as secretary when I was actually uneasy about my personal security. I was discomforted knowing that Morales didn’t care if I got killed, and I figured that that attitude might well trickle down to my heavily armed Bolivian military escort. The route was along narrow back roads crowded with cows, chickens, dogs, and people—every corner looking like an opportunity for an ambush right out of Tom Clancy’s novel Clear and Present Danger. Each time we had to slow or stop, I got a little more nervous. Then we arrived at the un-air-conditioned Hotel Camino Real, which was open to the street. The doctor traveling with us advised us essentially to curl up on the bed in a fetal position and not to touch anything. Don’t eat the food, he said. Don’t touch the water (even to shower). Don’t go outside the hotel. The staff put a fan in my room that was about three feet in diameter and created the sense of sleeping outdoors during a tornado.
My meeting with the Bolivian defense minister wasn’t too bad. He clearly had gotten the message from the Canadians and Brazilians. The conference opened, however, with a fifty-five-minute-long welcoming diatribe from Morales. He accused former U.S. ambassadors of backing coup attempts against him and the U.S. consulate of “using machine guns against my administration.” He said U.S. embassies all over the world sponsor coups. Then he got personal, looking straight at me and accusing CIA and the Defense Department of being behind all these depredations.
Morales was trying to provoke me into walking out in protest. Tempered by the fires of countless tirades from members of Congress over the years, I sat expressionless throughout Morales’s performance. After he finished and departed, a number of Latin American ministers came up to me to apologize because they felt Morales had violated the region’s rules for hospitality. I just wanted the damn meeting to end so I could get out of Bolivia. The return trip to the airport was just as exciting and nerve-racking as the trip into town, and I was never so glad to feel that Air Force plane lift off from a runway.
Every administration must deal with difficult allies and difficult foes. I thought President Obama and the administration in 2009 and 2010, for the most part, handled both kinds of relationships well, although I would often cringe at the rhetorical excess of how wonderfully we were doing, especially compared to the Bush administration. Fortunately, the rancor and bitterness of the Afghan debate in late 2009 did not spill over into other areas, and the team worked together better than most I had observed.
There were only two major personnel changes during the period. In May 2010, Denny Blair was forced out as director of national intelligence. He was replaced by my old friend and colleague Jim Clapper. Blair had never been able to develop strong relationships at the White House, and I think the final straw was his single-handed attempt to negotiate an agreement with the French intelligence services limiting activities in each other’s country. The idea had zero support anywhere in the administration and, frankly, was considered kind of bizarre.
And then, after publication of Bob Woodward’s book Obama’s Wars in September 2010, Jim Jones left as national security adviser. He had never been a good fit in the Obama White House, as I said, and frankly, I was surprised he lasted as long as he did. I believe the timing of his departure was influenced significantly by Woodward’s book. Jones appeared to be a major source; there were many disparaging comments about the rest of the White House staff and even his own staff that could only have come from Jim. Based in no small part on what he had been telling me all along about Donilon, I was quoted as saying that Donilon would be a “complete disaster” as national security adviser. That quote could only have come from Jones. There were a number of other comments I felt had come from Doug Lute, particularly many of the negative references to Mullen and me and to the military’s purported efforts to box in the president on Afghanistan. After an auspicious beginning in the Bush administration and although I felt indebted to him for taking on the NSC war coordinator role, Doug had turned out to be a real disappointment in the Obama administration. In both the Bush and Obama administrations, the NSC/NSS seemed to be a rich lode of information for Woodward, a level of cooperation I never understood.