Susan Rice - Tough Love: My Story of the Things Worth Fighting For

Simon & Schuster

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Copyright 2019 by SERice LLC

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First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition October 2019

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Interior design by Dana Sloan

Jacket photography Christopher Patey/Dayreps

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN 978-1-5011-8997-5

ISBN 978-1-5011-8999-9 (ebook)

To my parents, Lois Dickson Rice and Emmett J. Rice, who gave me all I needed and much more,

To my husband and life partner, Ian, without whom none of this would be possible,

To our beloved children, Jake and Maris, who have taught me what matters,

And to my brother, Johnny, who has never let me get away with anything.

WASHINGTON, D.C.

JANUARY 20, 2017

I t starts like every other day, even though it is the last.

My intelligence briefer waits in the Secret Service vehicle outside my house to hand over the classified iPad containing the last Presidents Daily Brief of the Obama administration. We ride downtown together, as usual, but on this day the streets are eerily empty. Gray overcast skies, promising a good chance of rain, weigh on the city as we drive past familiar landmarksGeorgetown, the Kennedy Center, the State Department, and the Federal Reserve.

Outside the temperature is an unseasonable 43 degrees and rising, and Im relieved to be wearing just a comfortable black, fitted jacket and black pants with a gold short-sleeved top underneath. No heavy winter clothing on what would typically be a frigid day.

There are five of us in the black armored SUV. My briefer and I sit behind two Secret Service agents who man the front seats. Between us is a red and black secure phone that comes in handy when I am on the road and the White House Situation Room needs to reach me. Often its Secretary of State John Kerry on the line. Behind me in the back row of seats, where my kids normally ride, is my husband, Ian, who is coming to help me carry away my last boxes and, more importantly, to share in the nostalgia of closing this chapter of our lives.

As we pull into the White House complex, my briefer passes me a gift bag containing a very nice bottle of scotcha totally unexpected parting presentwhich he says presciently, may come in handy some days down the road.

Because the driveway separating the White House from the Old Executive Office Building is packed with two motorcadesone for President Obama and one for President-elect Trumpwe have to jump out of the car and walk through the final exterior gate with Secret Service agents trailing behind, rather than drive up to the door of the West Wing basement to disembark, as we always do.

Its 9 a.m. on Inauguration Day: Friday, January 20, 2017. It feels more than a little strange.

Almost all of the White House staff is gone. The most senior worked through January 19. Only a handful remain. As national security advisor, I am on dutyuntil 12:01 p.m. when the forty-fifth president takes the oath of office. If, God forbid, there is a terrorist attack before noon on the Capitol where almost the entirety of the U.S. government is collected, I will be expected to respond as I would on any other day during the prior three and a half years. Assuming that no such crisis will occur, I plan on spending the final hours of my tenure tying up some loose ends, relinquishing the remaining documents that must go to the Archives, packing the last personal items in my office, and saying goodbye to those few colleagues Ive yet to bid farewell.

My feelings are all jumbled up. I am sad to leave, knowing that I will mightily miss working with such good people and close friends every day. To a person, the senior staff of this White House, Obamas second-term team, are committed, kind, collegial, and selfless. It is them and my extraordinary National Security Council (NSC) colleagues I will miss the most. For years, through all kinds of trials, we hung together in battle on behalf of what we believed was right for our country, on behalf of a president we respected and loved. I will miss seeing President Obama every day and receiving his customary smart-ass ribbings about my shoes, my short stature, or my tennis game, which he claims without any evidence (and much to the contrary) that he can best. I will miss the thrill and the import of serving my country at the highest levels and working on issues of utmost consequence. I cant imagine that anything hereafter will compare.

Yet I am also excited to be free. To be back in charge of my life. To be responsible primarily to my loved ones and myself. To wake up when I want, exercise as much as I wish, wear yoga pants every day if I feel like it, spend quality time with my kids, and refresh the romance with the love of my life. Most immediately, I am looking forward in two days to running off to a faraway island with Ian (and no kids) for almost three weeks!

At one point, I might have worried about surviving devoid of the ongoing adrenaline rush that is a life of service, particularly in the White House. Not now. Sixteen years earlier, at the end of the Clinton administration, I made the transition from an intense government job to private life. Over the course of my fifty-two years, I had learned how to drive myself at varying speedsfrom fifth gear to second gearand am confident that I remember how to downshift.

Three hours left.

Curious, Ian and I walk around the first floor of the West Wing. Tall, lanky, as handsome and almost as youthful-looking as when we first met in college, my husbandwho worked for years in television news, most recently as an executive producerhas his phone camera at the ready. All the jumbo photos of Obama and his family and staff have been removed from the walls. Empty wooden frames await Trump photos to fill them.

Susan I hear the unmistakable voice of Ben Rhodes, deputy national security advisor and one of my closest friends, calling to us. I know Im about to get one of the best hugs in the world. Ben is compact, with short-cropped hair and an impish demeanor. No one can beat him for loyalty, devotion, or dangerous tandem moves on the dance floor. I turn and see him approaching with Anita Decker Breckenridge, the striking blond, appropriately fierce deputy White House chief of staff, who carries a bottle of Veuve Clicquot champagne. We follow her like shes the Pied Piper to find Ferial Govashiri, the presidents unfailingly warm and upbeat assistant. She is standing vigil in the outer Oval Office, making sure that as long as Obama is president, nothing untoward is going down on his premises.