FLASH MULTIMEDIA GALLERY: Ten Days in September President Bush gathered his war cabinet at Camp David for a day of intensive discussions about how to respond to the Sept. 11 attacks. "After today, we'll have a plan of action," Bush said.  (Eric Draper - The White House) Find Post Stories by Day: Sept. 11 Sept. 12 Sept. 13 Sept. 14 Sept. 15 Sept. 16 Sept. 17 Sept. 18 Sept. 19 Full Archive ___________________   --or-- Search Full Archive by Keyword:   • Advanced Search • America at War Story Archive ___ Post Series ___ Ten Days in September • Part 1: America's Chaotic Road to War (The Washington Post, Jan 27, 2002) • Part 2: 'We Will Rally the World' (The Washington Post, Jan 28, 2002) • Part 3: Afghan Campaign's Blueprint Emerges (The Washington Post, Jan 29, 2002) • Part 4: A Pivotal Day of Grief and Anger (The Washington Post, Jan 30, 2002) LIVE ONLINE Post reporter Bob Woodward will answer your questions on this Post series on Thursday, Jan. 31, at Noon EST. • Submit your question now _____ From Sept. 15 _____ Photo Galleries: • The Day in Photos Video Features: • Bush Radio Address (Audio) • Pentagon Wreckage Footage • Full List of Audio/Video Live Online Discussions: • Maurice Sonnenberg, terrorism expert • Richard Williams, Oklahoma City bombing survivor • Rev. Phil Wogaman, Interfaith Alliance • Full List of Discussions News Graphics: • Pakistan At a Glance • Full archive of graphics, maps and images searchable by topic. Transcripts: • Bush Radio Address • Full List of Transcripts Special Report: • America at War: Full coverage of the Sept. 11 attacks and retaliation, and the ongoing war on terrorism. ___ About This Series ___ This series is based on interviews with President Bush, Vice President Cheney and many other key officials inside the administration and out. The interviews were supplemented by notes of National Security Council meetings made available to The Washington Post, along with notes taken by several participants. This account is inevitably incomplete. The president, the White House staff and senior Cabinet officers responded in detail to questions. Some matters they refused to discuss, citing national security and a desire to protect the confidentiality of internal deliberations. E-Mail This Article Printer-Friendly Version Subscribe to The Post

By Bob Woodward and Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, January 31, 2002; Page A01

Fifth in a series

CIA Director George J. Tenet arrived at Camp David with a briefcase stuffed with top-secret documents and plans, in many respects the culmination of more than four years of work on Osama bin Laden, the al Qaeda network and worldwide terrorism.

The briefing packet he handed to President Bush and other members of the war cabinet carried a cover sheet entitled "Going to War." In the upper left corner was a picture of bin Laden inside a red circle. A red slash was superimposed over his face in the CIA's adaptation of the universal symbol of warning and prohibition.

Bush had assembled his advisers in Laurel Lodge at the 125-acre presidential retreat in the Catoctin Mountains of Maryland for a day of intensive discussions about how to respond to the attacks of Sept. 11. They had been conferring regularly but mostly in short meetings. This session would give them a chance to talk at length without interruption and to revisit some of the questions they had been wrestling with the past four days.

Tenet was just one of several advisers called on to offer ideas and options on a day designed more for deliberation and recommendations than presidential decision. But Tenet's 30-minute presentation, an expanded version of what he had told Bush and the war cabinet on Sept. 13, sketched the architecture of what the president was looking for: a worldwide campaign on terrorism with an opening phase focused on bin Laden, al Qaeda and the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.

Tenet brought with him a detailed master plan for covert war in Afghanistan and a top-secret "Worldwide Attack Matrix" outlining a clandestine anti-terror campaign in 80 countries around the world. What he was ready to propose represented a striking and risky departure for U.S. policy and would give the CIA the broadest and most lethal authority in its history.

Another option discussed by Bush's advisers during the week-a military campaign against Iraq-also would be considered at Camp David. But at a key moment, when asked by Bush, four of his five top advisers would recommend that Iraq not be included in an initial round of military strikes.

Seated around a large table in the wood-paneled conference room, Bush and his advisers were informally dressed, many wearing jackets because of the chilly temperatures that morning. Bush was flanked on his right by Vice President Cheney and his left by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, with Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld next to Powell.

Bush had recorded his weekly radio address from the same cabin earlier in the day, and conferred with Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice. At 9:19 a.m. he invited reporters into the conference room for a few questions. He was pointing toward war but deliberately circumspect about what he intended to do-and when.

"This is an administration that will not talk about how we gather intelligence, how we know what we're going to do, nor what our plans are," he said. "When we move, we will communicate with you in an appropriate manner. We're at war."

The morning agenda called for a series of presentations, with each followed by a period of freewheeling discussion-sometimes brief, sometimes lengthy, other times focused, in many cases quite unfocused. By the end of the morning, the unstructured format sometimes seemed to leave the president's team even farther from consensus.

The session began with a prayer, followed by the first presentations-from Powell and Treasury Secretary Paul H. O'Neill. Powell talked about the international coalition, with special emphasis on Pakistan. O'Neill reviewed Treasury's efforts to develop a plan to attack al Qaeda's financial assets.

President Bush delivered his weekly radio address from Camp David. (Eric Draper - The White House)

Then came Tenet with his professionally packaged briefing papers. He flipped past the cover to the first page, which read, "Initial Hook: Destroying al Qaeda, Closing the safe haven." The haven was Afghanistan. Then he went methodically, page by page, through the briefing material, providing for the president and the others the basic covert-action foundation for an unconventional war on terrorism.

It would start with a half-dozen small CIA paramilitary teams on the ground in Afghanistan. They could eventually link up with military Special Forces units, who would bring firepower and technology to aid the opposition fighters in Afghanistan. The plan called for intelligence-sharing with other nations and a full-scale attack on the financial underpinnings of the terrorist network, plus covert operations across the globe.

At the heart of the proposal was a recommendation that the president give the CIA what Tenet labeled "exceptional authorities" to attack and destroy al Qaeda in Afghanistan and the rest of the world. Tenet wanted a broad, general intelligence order that would allow the CIA to conduct the necessary covert operations without having to come back for formal approval for each specific operation. Tenet said he needed the new authority to allow the agency to operate without restraint-and he wanted encouragement from the president to take risks.

Tenet had with him a draft of a presidential intelligence order that would give the CIA power to use the full range of covert instruments, including deadly force.

For more than two decades, the CIA had simply modified previous presidential findings to obtain formally its authority for counterterrorism. Tenet's new proposal, technically called a Memorandum of Notification, was presented as a modification to the worldwide counterterrorism intelligence finding signed on May 12, 1986, by President Ronald Reagan. As if symbolically erasing the more recent past, it superseded five such memoranda signed by President Bill Clinton.

Another proposal was that the CIA increase liaison work with key foreign intelligence services. Tenet hoped to obtain the assistance of these agencies with some of the hundreds of millions of dollars in new funding he was seeking. Using such intelligence services as surrogates could triple or quadruple the CIA's effectiveness.

Like much of the world of covert activity, these kinds of arrangements carried risks: It would put the United States in league with questionable agencies, some with dreadful human rights records. Some of these intelligence services had a reputation for ruthlessness and they used torture to obtain confessions. Tenet acknowledged that these were not people you were likely to be sitting next to in church on Sunday.

Tenet also said the United States already had a "large asset base," given the work the CIA had been doing in countries near Afghanistan.

The unmanned Predator surveillance aircraft that was now armed with Hellfire missiles had been operating for more than a year out of Uzbekistan to provide real-time video of Afghanistan. It could be used to kill bin Laden and his key lieutenants from the air-a major focus of what Tenet now proposed. In addition, he said, the United States should seek to work closely with Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Pakistan to stop the travel of al Qaeda leaders and "close all border crossings" to them. Tenet called for initiating intelligence contact with some rogue states that he said might be helpful in trying to destroy al Qaeda.

A key portion of Tenet's briefing covered operations inside Afghanistan, and here he presented in more detail how the Northern Alliance, the loose amalgam of forces that had been fighting the Taliban for years, could be used. The CIA believed the alliance was potentially a powerful force but was desperate for money, weapons and intelligence. Tenet advocated substantially stepping up "direct support of the Northern Alliance," a proposal the president had said he would approve. U.S. ground forces could then link up with the Northern Alliance fighters.

Operationally, Tenet envisioned a strategy to create "a northern front, closing the safe haven." His idea was that Afghan opposition forces, aided by the United States, would move first against the northern city of Mazar-e Sharif, try to break the Taliban's grip on that city and open up the border with Uzbekistan. From there the campaign could move to other cities in the north, he said.

The CIA director also described a role for the opposition tribes in the southern part of Afghanistan, groups hostile to the northern opposition forces but crucial to a campaign against al Qaeda and the Taliban. Tenet said the CIA had begun working with a number of tribal leaders in the south the previous year. Some would try to play on both sides, he said, but once the war began, they could be enticed by money, food, ammunition and supplies to join the U.S.-led campaign.

On the financial front, Tenet called for clandestine computer surveillance and electronic eavesdropping to locate the assets of al Qaeda and other terrorist groups, with a particular focus on the charitable groups that were a critical element in bin Laden's funding.

Tenet then turned to another top secret document, called the "Worldwide Attack Matrix," which described covert operations in 80 countries that were either underway or that he was now recommending. The actions ranged from routine propaganda to lethal covert action in preparation for military attacks. Included were efforts to disrupt terrorist plots or attacks in countries in Asia, the Middle East and Africa. In some countries, CIA teams would break into facilities to obtain information.

Because the CIA had been working aggressively against terrorism for years, Tenet said, the agency had done extensive target development and network analysis. What it needed was money and flexibility-so the CIA could move quickly, even instantly, if it discovered terrorist targets-and broad authority.

Rumsfeld was enthusiastic about what Tenet laid out that morning, despite potential friction between the CIA and the Pentagon over roles and responsibilities in any military campaign. "I was convinced we had to get people on the ground," Rumsfeld said in an interview. "And to the extent the CIA had relationships or could develop relationships that would facilitate that, [then] that would be critically important."

"Rumsfeld understood the utility of having the CIA involved," the president said in an interview last month. "I think he quickly grasped what I grasped. . . . It was near unanimity on the immediate plan for Afghanistan, which was to mate up our assets with the Northern Alliance troops."

When the CIA director finished his presentation, Bush left no doubt what he thought of it, virtually shouting with enthusiasm: "Great job."

After a break, Bush turned to Robert S. Mueller III, who had taken over as FBI director the week before the attacks.

Mueller, a former federal prosecutor, had spent years working on the 1988 terrorist bombing of Pan Am Flight 103. He knew that the worst thing that could happen to an FBI director was to have a major domestic terrorist incident on his watch. The second thing he knew was that he had not prepared a presentation. He had been shocked that he had been invited to the Camp David war-planning session and expected to be called on somewhat later, if at all.

Not used to the company and slightly intimidated by the presence of the nation's top leadership, Mueller soon found himself giving a routine summary of the investigation into the four Sept. 11 hijackings. He told other FBI officials afterward that he was so unhappy with his own performance that he brought his remarks to an early close. At least one of the president's advisers concluded that the FBI was still too focused on prosecuting terrorists and not on preventing them from acting.

Attorney General John D. Ashcroft provided an update to the group on his efforts to develop a legislative package to expand the powers of law enforcement to fight terrorism. He outlined a two-phase strategy, aimed first at "immediate disruption and prevention of terrorism" and followed by longer-term efforts to put terrorists "off keel." Ashcroft warned that it was "important to disrupt" the terrorists now, but added, "We need to remember these are patient people," noting that eight years passed between the two attacks on the World Trade Center. The administration needed a new long-term strategy, he said, "because that's the kind of strategy they have in place."

The final presentation of the morning came from Gen. Henry H. Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who had also brought a big briefcase to Camp David. Bush had ordered the Pentagon to come to the meeting with plenty of options, and Shelton was prepared to talk about military action against both Afghanistan and, if pressed, Iraq, although he opposed that step then. But as the day developed, he discussed only three options, all aimed at Afghanistan.

The first called for a strike with cruise missiles, a plan the military could execute quickly if speed was the president's overriding priority. The missiles could be launched by Navy ships or Air Force planes from hundreds of miles away. The targets included al Qaeda's training camps.

The problem, Shelton said, was that the camps were virtually empty and therefore the missile attacks would not be that effective. Clearly, Shelton was not enamored of this idea, nor were the others. Bush had brushed off the possibility from Day One that his response would be an antiseptic "pinprick" attack.

Option Two combined cruise missiles with manned bomber attacks. Shelton said Bush could initially choose a strike lasting three or four days or something longer, maybe up to 10 days. The targets included al Qaeda training camps and some Taliban targets, depending on whether the president wanted to go after the Taliban militarily at the start. But this too had limits. As Cheney had said the first night of the crisis, there were few high-value targets in Afghanistan, a country devastated by two decades of war. Another disadvantage was that it could reinforce perceptions that the United States wanted a largely risk-free war on terrorism.

Shelton described the third and most robust option as cruise missiles, bombers and what the planners like to call "boots on the ground." This option included all the elements of the second option along with U.S. Special Forces, the elite commandos, and possibly the Army and Marines being deployed inside Afghanistan. But he said it would take a minimum of 10 to 12 days just to get initial forces on the ground-in reality it took far longer-because bases and overflight rights would be needed for search-and-rescue teams to bring out any downed pilots.

If there was already a consensus to go to war, the discussions that followed many of the morning's presentations underscored to the participants the complexity and uncertainty of their undertaking.

Bush and his team faced a far different situation than Bush's father, George H.W. Bush, had 11 years earlier, after Iraq had invaded Kuwait in 1990. On Saturday, Aug. 4, 1990, again at Camp David and in the same lodge, Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, then commander of the Central Command, had presented a detailed, off-the-shelf proposal for military action. It was called Operations Plan 90-1002, and it was the basic military plan that would be executed over the next seven months to oust Iraq from Kuwait.

In the case of Afghanistan, a military plan would have to be devised quickly, once the president made decisions about the shape of the war, the initial focus of the campaign and the relationship between the CIA and the Pentagon.

Based on the recollections of many of the participants and some notes taken at the meeting, the topics that morning included the politics of the region-Afghanistan and the surrounding countries; the shaping of a coalition; the need to think unconventionally about fighting the war; and whether Iraq should be included in the war's first phase.

At one point, as they discussed the inherent risks of any operation in Afghanistan, someone said this was not likely to be like the Balkans, where ethnic hatreds had occupied the Clinton administration for most of its tenure. Rice said the problems of Afghanistan and the surrounding region were so complicated, "We're going to wish this was the Balkans."

The ideal result from this campaign, the president said, would be to kick terrorists out of some places like Afghanistan and through that action persuade other countries that had supported terrorism in the past, such as Iran, to change their behavior.

Powell noted that everyone in the international coalition was ready to go after al Qaeda, but that extending the war to other terrorist groups or countries could cause some of them to drop out.

The president said he didn't want other countries dictating terms or conditions for the war on terrorism. "At some point," the president said, "we may be the only ones left. That's okay with me. We are America."

Powell didn't reply, but going it alone was precisely what he wanted to avoid if possible. In Powell's view, the president's formulation was not realistic. The United States could not launch an effective war in Afghanistan or worldwide without a coalition. He believed the president made such statements knowing they might not withstand a second analysis. The tough talk might be necessary but it was not policy.

In contrast, Cheney took the president at his word, and was convinced the president was absolutely serious when he said they would go it alone if necessary.

Continued on Page 2