Thread by @tobyharnden

THREAD: 20 years ago today. From “First Casualty” p. 56. President George W. Bush articulated U.S. policy toward Afghanistan & the Taliban to two @CIA officers at Camp David: “Fuck diplomacy. We are going to war.” - 1

The two @CIA officers were Cofer Black & @MichaelJMorell, Bush’s PDB briefer. It was a Saturday & Bush had convened his war council. Half a world away, in Quetta. @CIA Islamabad station chief Bob Grenier was meeting with the Taliban’s Mullah Osmani (p. 55) - 2

A major subject four days after 9/11 was Iraq. Not a typo - IRAQ. Also at this Camp David meeting were VP Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Steve Hadley, Colin Powell, Rich Armitage, Don Rumsfeld & Paul Wolfowitz, John Ashcroft, FBI’s Robert Mueller, @ CIA director George Tenet - 3

The day b4, Congress had authorized Bush to use “all necessary and appropriate force” against the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks & those who harbored them; 518 members voted in favor, with Representative Barbara Lee, a Democrat from California, the lone dissenter. (p. 47) - 4

Cofer Black was a little bored. He’d already made his “flies across their eyeballs” pitch to Bush on 9/13 (a phrase the Africa Division hand had picked up when he was in Kinshasa, capital of Zaire, supporting anti-communists during civil war in
neighboring Angola) (p. 48) - 5

First Casualty p. 48: “Black had spent career assessing people & calculating how to persuade them to side with him; he had read [Bush] correctly. Colin Powell later reflected on the impact Black’s September 13 presentation had on Bush: the president wanted to kill somebody.”- 6

Tenet delivered his brief on Afghanistan, stressing that Americans would be insurgents not invaders, helping the Afghans expel the foreign invaders of Al-Qaeda. Cofer Black surreptitiously rolled a tennis ball for Bush’s Scottish terrier Barney (p. 48) - 7

Cofer Black, George Tenet & @CIA were thinking only about Afghanistan. But when Tenet finished, Rumsfeld suggested that if the new War on Terror was going to be global, military action against Iraq should be considered. (p. 48) - 8

First Casualty p. 48: “Rumsfeld’s deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, chipped in that Saddam Hussein could well have been involved in 9/11, and that perhaps it was time to ‘cut the head off the snake’ by attacking Iraq.” - 9

Cofer Black’s brain was screaming. “I can’t believe what I’m hearing,” he thought. The CTC director felt he could not remain silent. He raised his hand. (when I interviewed him, Black was still incredulous - his exact description was: “my brain was screaming”) p. 48 - 10

Cofer Black raised his hand and said, “Mr. President, we were attacked on September 11 by Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. Saddam Hussein and Iraq have nothing whatsoever to do with this.” Black knew all about OBL from Sudan (p. 48) - 11

First Casualty p. 48: “Bush told everyone to move on, and it seemed that the notion of going after Iraq had been dismissed.” (SPOILER: It hadn’t - see First Casualty p. 156, 164, 312-315, 317, 328) - 12

But for now Bush focused on Afghanistan, with @CIA leading. First Casualty p. 49: “US military had been caught flat-footed. The Pentagon, which had plans for almost every conceivable contingency, lacked an Afghanistan war plan... Though seething, Rumsfeld had little choice” - 13

Meanwhile, in Quetta, @CIA’s Grenier was meeting with Mullah Osmani. Taliban’s Southern Zone commander. - tried to play the role of respectful intermediary, telling him war would be “a disaster for everyone, victor and vanquished alike,” & spell end of the Taliban (p. 55) - 14

Osmani was having none of it. “If you attack us, we will defeat you!” he ranted. “Just as we defeated the Soviets!”(SPOILER: He was killed in US air strike 2006 but ultimately he was right). meeting was 5 hours. Osmani agreed to ask Mullah Omar 2 hand over bin Laden (p. 55). - 14

First Casualty p. 55-56: “Unbeknown to Grenier, however, his preferred way forward was already a dead end in both Washington and Quetta. As Grenier met with Osmani, half a world away at Camp David there was a break in Bush’s war council.” - 15

Bush was with Cofer Black, Morell, & State Dept. official who suggested America’s first response to 9/11 shld. be diplomatic overture to Taliban. “After the official had walked away, Bush turned to the CIA men & said, ‘Fuck diplomacy. We are going to war.’”(p. 56) - 16 END THREAD