John Gans - White House Warriors: How the National Security Council Transformed the American Way of War

White House Warriors

White
House
Warriors

How the National Security
Council Transformed the
American Way of War

JOHN GANS

Liveright Publishing Corporation

A Division of W. W. Norton & Company

Independent Publishers Since 1923

New York London

To Anjuli, who loves with all her heart.

The greatest trust between man and man is the trust of giving counsel.

FRANCIS BACON, OF COUNSEL

Excuse me, darling.... I want you to remember this face here, okay? This is the guy behind the guy, behind the guy.

TRENT, SWINGERS

T he grandfather clock by the door in the Oval Office was ticking.

The president, years into a divisive war, was about to announce the biggest decision of his time in the White House. Facing resistance from senior military officers and hesitation from his secretary of state, the commander in chief had made a controversial and risky choice. In a speech later that day, he would tell the American people of a plan to send tens of thousands of additional US troops to a bloody conflict where thousands of American service members had already been killed and dozens of attacks were occurring each day.

Disagreeing with his advisors and isolated from a public pessimistic about the war, the president was far out on a limb when a member of the National Security Council staff, known in Washington simply as the NSC, joined him in the Oval Office. After giving the president a quick briefing before the speech and starting to walk out of the room, the young aide turned to say one more thing. Trying to buck up the war-weary president, she said: I know you feel really alone right now, but I want you to know that you are not alone. I am standing there with you.

Of course, this NSC staffer was down the hall and back behind the scenes by the time the president faced the nation all alone and gave his televised speech that evening. Her name was not mentioned, she did not get called before Congress to explain the strategy, nor was the staffer charged with traveling the country explaining the choice to the public. Technically, she did not even work in the White House itself but instead labored far from the eyes of the public she served in the building next door.

The Executive Office Building looks important, a six-story mountain of Virginia and Maine granite, all columns and mansard rooftops, and protected by an iron fence. Completed in 1888, the State, War, and Navy Building was rechristened when its eponymous and growing tenants departed for new confines in the years before and after World War II. Still the plaque that bears the Executive Office Buildings generic name is no help to tourists and other passersby wondering what all the badged and busy men and women, who hustle up the buildings imposing staircases early each morning, do all day and often late into the night.

Today, those toiling on the third floor are the staffers of the National Security Council,

Just as housing the NSC was not the original purpose of the Executive Office Building itself, presidential warriors were not the plan when Congress created the staff in a single line of law in 1947. But every president needs help, whether it is with little questions (what is the name of a foreign leaders wife?) or the big ones (should we go to war?). As the NSC staff has helped with the inane tasks and the near-impossible challenges, each commander in chief has, in his own way, trusted and empowered the dedicated staffers sitting right next door.

In return, though the War Department left the Executive Office Building decades ago, the NSCs warriors have kept up the fight. Shielded in secrecy and driven by a responsibility to the president as well as the countrys security, the staff works, and sometimes battles, to get answers and ideas, often in the face of opposition from secretaries of defense and state. From the Executive Office Buildings third floor and in one-on-one conversations with the commander in chief, the NSC has exerted more influence over presidential decisions than any single institution or individual over the last seventy years, transforming not just Americas way of war but also the way Washington works.

The men and women walking the hushed corridors of the Executive Office Building do not look like warriors. Most are middle-aged professionals with penchants for dark business suits and prestigious graduate degrees, who have spent their lives serving their country in windowless offices, on far-off battlefields, or at embassies abroad. Before arriving at the NSC, many joined the military or the nations diplomatic corps, some dedicated themselves to teaching and writing about national security, and others spent their days working for the types of politicians who become presidents. By the time they joined the staff, each had shown the pluckand the good fortunerequired to end up staffing a president.

OSullivan might have started her journey to the Executive Office Building earlier than any NSC staffer in history. As an elementary school student in Massachusetts, the precocious second grader wrote a paper on what she believed to be the state of Palestine. After her teacher patiently explained that it was not an independent nation, the seven-year-old OSullivan, ashamed her research had missed such a critical fact, was driven to learn more. She went on to college in Washington, then a job on Capitol Hill, a doctorate at the University of Oxford, and later a role at a prominent think tank before she joined the government a month after the attacks of September 11, 2001.

In Washington and books about it, individuals are often referred to by the name of their institution, so a three-star general comes to represent all of the Pentagon just as an assistant secretary of state serves as the entire departments voice. The NSC is no different, and in conversations in Washington, especially on the war, OSullivan was considered a representative of the staff and even the White House. Yet the NSCs members have come from different placesrich and poor; registered Democrats, Republicans, and independents; some were wonks in second grade and others bloomed much laterand they have chosen to serve in the Cold War, the war on terror, and the decade in between.

When the crimson-haired OSullivan first joined the NSC in 2004, she was a striking presence for more than just her hair color in the Executive Office Buildings checkered hallways and on the wider Bush national security team. The 34-year-old OSullivan was a rare young woman in meetings when the business of national security, especially at the highest levels, was still dominated by middle-aged men. Having worked in her careers earliest days for a Democratic senator, OSullivan was also not a dyed-in-the-wool conservative, let alone a hawk, in the Republican administration. And unlike many in Washington, she had gone to war, as a civilian who arrived in Baghdad in the first few days of the 2003 invasion.

Even if OSullivan stood out in discussions, it is relatively hard to see her and other NSC staffers in news coverage or in the history books. Presidents get most of the credit, blame, and attention, often followed by the cabinet secretaries on the National Security Council, military leaders, and the staffs boss, the national security advisor. Staffers instead are found often just out of the news cameras frame and just below historians radars, usually sitting, listening, watching, and taking notes on the backbench of meetings in the White House Situation Room, the Oval Office, and elsewhere.