Bush seeks an end to security turf wars
By David E. Sanger and Steven R. Weisman The New York Times
Thursday, November 18, 2004
WASHINGTON President George W. Bush has instructed his new national security team to end the running battles between the State and Defense departments and the CIA, and to extend his personal control over agencies he has suspected of impeding his foreign policy aims, according to current and former administration officials.
.
One senior official said Bush had decided months ago to make no effort to retain Secretary of State Colin Powell, who had long indicated he planned to leave. A close associate of Powell said he would have stayed if asked, at least for a while. "He was never asked," the associate said.
.
So when Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, told Bush at Camp David, Maryland, on the weekend just after his re-election that she was willing to stay for a second term, he quickly offered her the secretary of state job, a post that she told friends last year she thought did not suit her sometimes impatient temperament.
.
"Her interests ran to Defense," said a national security official who just left the administration. "But the president didn't want to change horses in the middle of a war."
.
Bush nominated Rice as secretary of state on Tuesday and said the world would see in her "the strength, the grace and the decency of our country."
.
The president said he would appoint Rice's deputy, Stephen Hadley, to succeed her as national security adviser. And Powell's deputy, Richard Armitage, announced that he would step down.
.
Armitage's resignation continues a rapid postelection reshuffling of a foreign policy team that, even as it wrestled over deep internal divisions, led the United States during the terrorist attacks of 2001, two subsequent wars and wrenching strains on relationships with allies and adversaries.
.
The essence of Bush's moves since his re-election has been to fill key cabinet agencies with people he has relied on in the Oval Office, people who know his mind. "This is a different cabinet - it's a true Kitchen Cabinet," said one official who no longer works in the White House but deals with it often.
.
But one of the mysteries is whether the reorganization foreshadows a change of approach, particularly in U.S. diplomacy.
.
Some saw the departure of Powell as the moment for conservatives under the influence of Vice President Dick Cheney to assume an even larger role and seize key subcabinet posts.
.
But Rice is considered less ideological than many in the administration and more attuned to the president's own thinking.
.
The question is whether she will arrive at the State Department with an agenda known chiefly to her and the president. According to officials who have heard accounts of the case Bush made to Rice, he argued that their strong personal ties would convince allies and hostile nations like Iran and North Korea that she was speaking directly for the president and could make deals in his name.
.
"This is what Powell could never do," said a former official who is close to Rice and sat in on many of the White House situation room meetings where policy conflicts arose. "The world may have liked dealing with Colin - we all did - but it was never clear that he was speaking for the president. He knew it and they knew it."
.
Rice's brief acceptance speech gave few hints of what course she planned to set if confirmed, as is expected. But several officials said that in recent days she had spoken of leaping at the opportunity created by the death of Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader, and of deciding whether North Korea and Iran could be induced to end their suspected nuclear weapons programs.
.
The State Department and the White House were already bubbling with talk that senior officials of the National Security Council who work on those issues may be moving to the State Department.
.
If a large-scale migration takes place, it could mark a transition between the two institutions not seen since Henry Kissinger controlled both of them, three decades ago, and would put the State Department under much closer scrutiny by White House loyalists.
.
Several officials said they believed that was Bush's intent.
.
The process of moving confidantes into key cabinet posts began with the nomination of the White House counsel, Alberto Gonzales, to be attorney general. It accelerated on Tuesday with the nomination of Rice and the elevation of Hadley to replace her as national security adviser, whose role is to adjudicate conflicts between agencies.
.
Margaret Spellings, the president's top aide on social and education policy, is expected to be named secretary of education.
.
But that leaves in place Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, a strong-willed hawk who often clashed with Rice. Most notably, she took over control of the occupation of Iraq, creating an "Iraq Stabilization Group." Her aides had made no secret of her opinion that Rumsfeld had failed to devote enough planning, attention or resources to making a success of the occupation.
.
Their relationship worsened after the abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib, the U.S.-run prison west of Baghdad, became publicly known. Rice, her associates say, had warned Rumsfeld to pay attention to detention issues, but the defense secretary often sent subordinates to meetings on the subject.
.
So there is no end of speculation about whether Rumsfeld will have the kind of relationship with Rice that he had with Powell: one of constant bickering. Rumsfeld tried to tamp that speculation down on Tuesday, telling reporters traveling with him in Quito, Ecuador, "I have known Condi for a good number of years," and adding that "long before this administration, we were friends."
.
.
But he acknowledged that tensions would inevitably occur, and he said, "It is the task, the responsibility, the duty of people who are participating in that national security process to make sure that the issues are raised and discussed," a process that he said "has worked very well in this administration."
.
Rice's associates said they expected that there would be fewer and less heated arguments in the future, in part because Rumsfeld would be more wary of Rice and her relationship with the president.
.
.
State Department officials said that events, more than personalities, would be driving the administration in its second term to make diplomatic approaches to Iran and North Korea, despite the urgings of conservatives who prefer confrontations over those two countries' nuclear policies.
.
Not least is the demand by Europeans for engagement with Iran - an approach Bush's aides viewed with disdain, but now feel compelled to embrace because they have few alternatives - and the demand by South Korea and China for a policy that offers more incentives to North Korea.
.
By David E. Sanger and Steven R. Weisman The New York Times
Thursday, November 18, 2004
WASHINGTON President George W. Bush has instructed his new national security team to end the running battles between the State and Defense departments and the CIA, and to extend his personal control over agencies he has suspected of impeding his foreign policy aims, according to current and former administration officials.
.
One senior official said Bush had decided months ago to make no effort to retain Secretary of State Colin Powell, who had long indicated he planned to leave. A close associate of Powell said he would have stayed if asked, at least for a while. "He was never asked," the associate said.
.
So when Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, told Bush at Camp David, Maryland, on the weekend just after his re-election that she was willing to stay for a second term, he quickly offered her the secretary of state job, a post that she told friends last year she thought did not suit her sometimes impatient temperament.
.
"Her interests ran to Defense," said a national security official who just left the administration. "But the president didn't want to change horses in the middle of a war."
.
Bush nominated Rice as secretary of state on Tuesday and said the world would see in her "the strength, the grace and the decency of our country."
.
The president said he would appoint Rice's deputy, Stephen Hadley, to succeed her as national security adviser. And Powell's deputy, Richard Armitage, announced that he would step down.
.
Armitage's resignation continues a rapid postelection reshuffling of a foreign policy team that, even as it wrestled over deep internal divisions, led the United States during the terrorist attacks of 2001, two subsequent wars and wrenching strains on relationships with allies and adversaries.
.
The essence of Bush's moves since his re-election has been to fill key cabinet agencies with people he has relied on in the Oval Office, people who know his mind. "This is a different cabinet - it's a true Kitchen Cabinet," said one official who no longer works in the White House but deals with it often.
.
But one of the mysteries is whether the reorganization foreshadows a change of approach, particularly in U.S. diplomacy.
.
Some saw the departure of Powell as the moment for conservatives under the influence of Vice President Dick Cheney to assume an even larger role and seize key subcabinet posts.
.
But Rice is considered less ideological than many in the administration and more attuned to the president's own thinking.
.
The question is whether she will arrive at the State Department with an agenda known chiefly to her and the president. According to officials who have heard accounts of the case Bush made to Rice, he argued that their strong personal ties would convince allies and hostile nations like Iran and North Korea that she was speaking directly for the president and could make deals in his name.
.
"This is what Powell could never do," said a former official who is close to Rice and sat in on many of the White House situation room meetings where policy conflicts arose. "The world may have liked dealing with Colin - we all did - but it was never clear that he was speaking for the president. He knew it and they knew it."
.
Rice's brief acceptance speech gave few hints of what course she planned to set if confirmed, as is expected. But several officials said that in recent days she had spoken of leaping at the opportunity created by the death of Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader, and of deciding whether North Korea and Iran could be induced to end their suspected nuclear weapons programs.
.
The State Department and the White House were already bubbling with talk that senior officials of the National Security Council who work on those issues may be moving to the State Department.
.
If a large-scale migration takes place, it could mark a transition between the two institutions not seen since Henry Kissinger controlled both of them, three decades ago, and would put the State Department under much closer scrutiny by White House loyalists.
.
Several officials said they believed that was Bush's intent.
.
The process of moving confidantes into key cabinet posts began with the nomination of the White House counsel, Alberto Gonzales, to be attorney general. It accelerated on Tuesday with the nomination of Rice and the elevation of Hadley to replace her as national security adviser, whose role is to adjudicate conflicts between agencies.
.
Margaret Spellings, the president's top aide on social and education policy, is expected to be named secretary of education.
.
But that leaves in place Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, a strong-willed hawk who often clashed with Rice. Most notably, she took over control of the occupation of Iraq, creating an "Iraq Stabilization Group." Her aides had made no secret of her opinion that Rumsfeld had failed to devote enough planning, attention or resources to making a success of the occupation.
.
Their relationship worsened after the abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib, the U.S.-run prison west of Baghdad, became publicly known. Rice, her associates say, had warned Rumsfeld to pay attention to detention issues, but the defense secretary often sent subordinates to meetings on the subject.
.
So there is no end of speculation about whether Rumsfeld will have the kind of relationship with Rice that he had with Powell: one of constant bickering. Rumsfeld tried to tamp that speculation down on Tuesday, telling reporters traveling with him in Quito, Ecuador, "I have known Condi for a good number of years," and adding that "long before this administration, we were friends."
.
.
But he acknowledged that tensions would inevitably occur, and he said, "It is the task, the responsibility, the duty of people who are participating in that national security process to make sure that the issues are raised and discussed," a process that he said "has worked very well in this administration."
.
Rice's associates said they expected that there would be fewer and less heated arguments in the future, in part because Rumsfeld would be more wary of Rice and her relationship with the president.
.
.
State Department officials said that events, more than personalities, would be driving the administration in its second term to make diplomatic approaches to Iran and North Korea, despite the urgings of conservatives who prefer confrontations over those two countries' nuclear policies.
.
Not least is the demand by Europeans for engagement with Iran - an approach Bush's aides viewed with disdain, but now feel compelled to embrace because they have few alternatives - and the demand by South Korea and China for a policy that offers more incentives to North Korea.
.
