Over the past year, the Sept. 11 commission has taken testimony from the president, the vice president and a host of other top officials.
In the panel’s public hearings, the nation learned that prior to the terrorist attacks, the CIA and the FBI failed to share what little intelligence they had on Al Qaeda; that federal aviation officials and military commanders communicated poorly with each other about how to respond to the hijacked airplanes, and that no operational ties bound Iraq and Al Qaeda in a terrorist pact against the United States, despite the contrary impression left with the public by the White House prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Now the commission is at a crossroads. With a July deadline fast approaching, it must write a report and present its recommendations to Congress and the nation on how to prevent future attacks.
Reform of the CIA and the FBI, as well as improved communication links between aviation officials and the Pentagon, doubtless will be high on its list. But these changes are insufficient in themselves. To improve homeland defense, the commission must also address a crucial weakness that has arisen within the National Security Council.
The NSC’s management is the responsibility of the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice. Recently, Time magazine placed her on a list of the world’s 100 most influential people, along with President Bush. Conspicuously absent were Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
But, her high profile aside, Rice has failed to effectively manage the council.
Established in 1947, the NSC is the most important institution in the government for the making of foreign and defense policy. Its primary function is to advise the president on integration of domestic, foreign, and military policies relating to national security.
Success in achieving this integration depends substantially on the adviser’s talents and perseverance.
Range of talent
Eighteen individuals have held this office, some more deftly than others. In the council’s early years, advisers tended to view their roles passively–as conveyor belts for paper passing in and out of the White House. In contrast, Henry Kissinger of the Nixon administration and Zbigniew Brzezinski of the Carter administration were aggressive in recommending policy and advancing the president’s decisions through energetic advocacy.
During the Reagan administration, Vice Admiral John Poindexter became too much of an activist when he led the council’s staff into improper operational activities, now known as the Iran-contra scandal.
Brent Scowcroft, who served Presidents Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush, and Samuel “Sandy” Berger of the Clinton administration adopted a more balanced approach, making sure the basic administrative responsibilities of the office were carried out, along with the tasks of personal counseling to the president and public advocacy of their administration’s policies.
Scowcroft and Berger came close to the ideal model of a national security adviser. They served as honest brokers, faithfully representing the views and recommendations of NSC principals while sharing their own thoughts with the president. They managed and coordinated the day-to-day work of the council and helped explain foreign policy initiatives to an increasingly demanding public and media.
How does Rice measure up to this standard?
As a protege of Scowcroft’s, she learned the lesson about honest brokering. She also tried to ease tensions between this administration’s strong-willed secretaries of state and defense and the vice president–though not always with success. As well, she has become a valuable counselor and confidant to the president, achieving a closeness to him that is unprecedented among security advisers.
Talk show advocate
As for the role of public advocate, she has surpassed even the voluble secretaries of state and defense, defending the president forcefully on the Sunday talk shows and before the Sept. 11 Commission.
Yet with respect to the most fundamental challenge that faces a national security adviser–the management and coordination of the NSC–Rice has stumbled badly, failing even to live up to the president’s own definition of the adviser’s purpose.
Last October, Bush said that “the role of the national security adviser is not only to provide good advice to the president . . . but her job is also to deal interagency and to help unstick things that may get stuck . . . she’s an `unsticker.’ “
This description, however inelegant, carries an important insight into the job. When strong policy disagreements or seemingly intractable problems arise within an administration, it is the adviser’s role to break the logjam.
Here the record points to evidence of frequent foreign policy drift under Rice’s management, including how to handle the North Korea nuclear crisis, the stalled Middle East peace process, and the muddled attempts at nation building in Iraq.
Last October, with great fanfare, the president appointed Rice the head of the Iraq Stabilization Group within the NSC. Its purpose was to assert greater White House control over Iraq policy–to “crack the whip,” as one official put it at the time. Seven months later, the Iraqi Stabilization Group is rarely heard from and has had negligible effect.
Plan presented early
But it was the Sept. 11 commission, in its public hearings, that presented Exhibit A in the long list of indecisive responses that characterizes much of this administration’s approach to global challenges. As former NSC counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke told the commission, he turned over to Rice on Jan. 25, 2001–just five days after Bush took office–a plan to thwart the Al Qaeda terrorist organization.
According to Clarke’s testimony, Rice turned the plan over to a NSC subcommittee for review, which took eight months. Finally, the proposal went to the council’s principals and was approved on Sept. 4, one week before the terrorist attacks.
At no point does it appear that Rice tried to move this interagency review along at a faster pace. Despite her talents in carrying out many of the duties expected of a national security adviser, Rice failed in the most important one of all: to serve as the decision catalyst the president sought and the nation so desperately needed.
As the Sept. 11 commission prepares its recommendations, it should take into account the utmost importance of this “unsticker” role for the national security adviser.
Absent the performance of this task, other reforms in the wake of our national tragedy may be for naught.
