National Journal
March 24, 2012
The Politician
The new Defense secretary has a daunting agenda. To achieve it, he’ll need to win over a skeptical institution. Good thing he’s been practicing for four decades.
“Have you seen my bin Laden corner?” It’s a late afternoon in March, and Leon Panetta is showing off mementos from the biggest triumph of his 40-year career in government. The Defense secretary points to a framed brick that Navy SEALs grabbed as a souvenir before they left the Qaida leader’s compound. Next to it hangs a giant wood gavel, presented by CIA lawyers, that reads “Usama bin Laden: Case Closed.” The last part of the shrine is a black-and-white photo—presumably taken by the CIA operatives casing the house before the raid—of the bin Laden compound. “That’s kind of a historical artifact now that they’ve gone ahead and torn down the house,” Panetta says, laughing.
We were veering off the agenda. Panetta had agreed to a quick photo shoot in his office, but his press team insisted that he only had five minutes between meetings. A trio of aides stood by the door, ready to usher me and the photographer out. But as we packed up our equipment, I spotted the brick and asked the secretary about it. With that opening, he simply couldn’t help himself. He led us around his office, telling the stories behind his photos. Our five-minute window had come and gone, but he felt compelled to schmooze.
Unlike Robert Gates, Panetta’s taciturn predecessor, the new secretary is a natural extrovert. He spent nine terms in the House, and it shows: He has a booming laugh, a quick smile, a love of whiskey, and a habit of using profanity—Jeremy Bash, Panetta’s chief of staff, says that his boss “taught Rahm Emmanuel how to curse”—that suggests he has taken you into his confidence. He is compulsively gabby and has a politician’s casual need to be liked.
Panetta’s instinct to inspire loyalty served him well in his first job running a giant federal fiefdom, the CIA. The agency was “not in a good place when Leon arrived,” a senior official working there at the time remembers. The Justice Department was investigating its brutal interrogation methods and its policy of rendition. “There was a little sense of besiegement here,” recalls the source, who still works at the agency. President-elect Obama had said that the CIA lost its way under the Bush administration, and top officials expected to lose their jobs.
Instead, days after his appointment leaked, Panetta invited the agency’s top brass, none of whom had met him before, to the Obama administration’s transition headquarters on Capitol Hill. He told them he had no intention of firing them, putting them instantly at ease. “He immediately took that concern off the table,” CIA Deputy Director Mike Morrell says. Within weeks, Panetta was regularly eating dinner at Morrell’s house. (Morrell’s children call him Leon.)
To solidify his relationships after he was confirmed in 2009, he went to war on behalf of the agency. Then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi had accused the CIA of concealing information about its interrogation of a terrorism suspect; Panetta publicly fired back that she and other top lawmakers had been fully briefed—and he had the documents to show it. Behind the scenes, he lobbied Obama not to indict any CIA employees for their actions during the Bush years. And he doubled down on drone strikes, the agency’s signature antiterrorism tactic; they more than quadrupled across Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen. By the end of his tenure, he was regarded as a kind of folk hero.
Panetta is now bringing his political skills to the Pentagon, where he’ll need them more than ever. The Defense Department is ending two wars, reshaping the armed forces for smaller conflicts, and cutting at least 10 percent ($487 billion) from its budget. It’s hardly the kind of agenda that excites Defense workers. The Joint Chiefs especially (the heads of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, and National Guard, plus their chairman and vice chairman) are the least likely to fight for a program that reduces their budgets and weakens their branches. So Panetta has embarked on an ambitious campaign to win—and hold—their allegiance. If he keeps the nation’s top generals on board, they can help him sell tough policies, such as an accelerated Afghan drawdown, to a skeptical Congress. If he loses them, they can fan congressional opposition to his entire agenda by publicly criticizing his policies and privately lobbying lawmakers to reject them.
He knows how badly he needs the chiefs. “I’ve seen in the past where divisions between what the secretary is saying and what the military leadership are saying and doing can really undermine the ability of the Pentagon to … speak with one voice,” Panetta says in an interview. The lessons of history, he believes, are clear. “One thing I’ve learned in over 40 years of being in Washington is that personal relationships count for a hell of a lot.”
After the Cold War, the Defense Department needed visionary secretaries to find the military’s role in a changed world. During Gates’s tenure, it needed a war-focused boss willing to fire generals and implement new strategies that worked. But at times like these, with wars ending and budgets falling, what the Pentagon needs more than anything else are the charms of a politician.
Why the Chiefs matter
From the outside, the Pentagon looks like a monolith whose senior officials march in lock-step behind a president or a Defense secretary. In reality, the building is full of competing satrapies, each run by a member of the Joint Chiefs. By a 1986 law, the chiefs are required to give Congress their best military advice—even when it undermines administration policy. That hands the generals enormous power to persuade Congress to change war plans, save specific weapons systems, or block White House initiatives. When they disagree with the secretary, they can make his life hell.
Les Aspin, the Defense secretary appointed in 1993 by President Clinton to reap the post-Cold War “peace dividend,” faced a landscape similar to Panetta’s. Aspin first alienated Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Colin Powell and other top officials by crafting a plan to cut 375,000 troops—well beyond Powell’s recommendation of 150,000. The generals were even more outraged by Clinton’s effort to lift the military’s ban on openly gay service members, which Powell had warned the president not to do. In response, the chiefs privately lobbied lawmakers to kill the effort and voiced their public opposition during high-profile hearings. In the end, a Democratic Congress enacted “don’t ask, don’t tell” (though Clinton did eventually cut 320,000 troops by the end of his presidency). Aspin, however, could not be rehabilitated. He tendered his resignation before a year was up.
Donald Rumsfeld’s tenure under George W. Bush offers another cautionary tale. He took the reins with a transformative plan to shrink the standing forces, cut outdated systems, expand special-operations forces, and invest in high-tech (and unproven) warplanes and other armaments. But he saw no need to convince his uniformed counterparts of the merits. In the summer of 2001, disgruntled Pentagon officials leaked that Rumsfeld was preparing to cut two Army divisions (roughly 50,000 troops), a quarter of the Air Force’s fighter squadrons, and two of the Navy’s 12 carrier battle groups. The staff of Joint Chiefs Chairman Hugh Shelton responded with a report that the services should stay the same size or even grow. In an interview, a recently retired general who served at that time said that the chiefs were gearing up for a “full-scale war” to fight Rumsfeld’s cuts. By late August, the general said, they had already begun meeting with sympathetic lawmakers.
The relationship became so toxic that on Sept. 10, 2001, Rumsfeld spoke of “an adversary that poses a threat, a serious threat, to the security of the United States of America.” He was referring to the intransigent officers inside the Pentagon, not the terrorists who would attack it the next day. Al-Qaida’s attacks, followed by two wars, led to an explosion in Pentagon spending, so the proposed cuts never materialized. Still, Rumsfeld’s relationship with the chiefs deteriorated even further before the start of the Iraq war, when he ousted Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki for telling Congress that the occupation would require more troops than the administration was willing to send. Several chiefs complained to reporters about this humiliation. In the end, Rumsfeld circumvented the chiefs by planning the war directly with Gen. Tommy Franks, who was in charge of Central Command. But his image as a polarizing figure—there were rumors he’d be the first Bush Cabinet member forced to quit—was locked in.
For the Defense secretaries who keep the chiefs on board, the payoffs can be immense. When Clark Clifford took over for Robert McNamara in 1968, the military had been through several bruising battles over the Vietnam War. McNamara had marginalized the Joint Chiefs in the war-planning. (One grumbled to the Associated Press that the secretary had relied on the “civilians on his staff for advice” and asked the generals to weigh in only after each “scenario” had been decided.) Clifford took a more solicitous approach. He regularly invited the chiefs to meetings in his office and at his home, and they came to feel like stakeholders. So when he moved to cut the Pentagon budget by $1.2 billion (about 2 percent)—by eliminating an Army infantry division, 50 Navy warships, and nine air squadrons—they agreed.
Dick Cheney played an even more sophisticated game when he was George H.W. Bush’s Defense secretary, using both sticks (excommunication) and carrots (respect, inclusion). He publicly reprimanded Air Force Chief Larry Welch for having discussions with Congress that Cheney had not sanctioned, according to James Mann’s account in Rise of the Vulcans. And just before the first Persian Gulf War, he fired Welch’s successor, Michael Dugan, for telling reporters which Iraqi targets the military might bomb. The other chiefs understood that their opinions would be heard if they arrived through the proper channels, and they became more guarded. Some of them continued to disagree with decisions—such as the one not to overthrow Saddam Hussein or destroy his weapons—but they didn’t voice those concerns to Congress or the press.
At the same time, Cheney cultivated Powell, the first chairman after the Goldwater-Nichols Act went into effect. The 1986 law empowers the chairman to speak on behalf of the entire military rather than having to seek consensus from the services. He also personally controls the joint staff, which had previously worked for all of the chiefs. Cheney kept a standing 5 p.m. with the chairman meeting every Wednesday and would end other meetings early to ensure that he saw Powell on time, according to Mann. In return, Powell was a vocal and eloquent public defender of the Bush administration’s war polices. “Cheney kept the chiefs in line by showing he was willing to discipline them if they crossed over the line,” said Charles Stevenson, the author of SECDEF: The Nearly Impossible Job of Secretary of Defense. “But he also knew how to cultivate them and keep them as allies.”
In his recent tour, Gates used the Cheney approach when he arrived in 2007. He declined to nominate Chairman Peter Pace, who had hurt his credibility in Congress by defending a failed Iraq strategy, to a customary second term—a move so unusual that it was seen as a firing. Then he axed Air Force Chief of Staff Michael Moseley (and his civilian counterpart, Air Force Secretary William Wynne) in 2008 after a B-52 bomber crossed the country carrying six armed nukes. But he won the loyalty of the remaining chiefs by tirelessly helping them to sell a skeptical Congress on the troop surge in Iraq, which salvaged the war. Gates also maintained a close, and highly public, relationship with Chairman Mike Mullen. The two men lived next to door to each other in downtown Washington and frequently ended their days with vodkas or cigars on the porch of Gates’s house.
Still, his toughest moments came when Gates didn’t have the chiefs on board—underscoring their importance. He opted to support the repeal of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, but then-Army Chief George Casey, and then-Marine Commandant James Conway and the other Joint Chiefs, warned that it would hurt military cohesion. That gave Republicans in Congress the ammunition they needed to temporarily block the move. Gates also helped to craft President Obama’s Afghan surge, to send 33,000 troops and then begin withdrawing them 18 months later. Days after the plan’s announcement, Mullen told a House panel that the timeline was more “aggressive” than the military had wanted and would “incur more risk.” Gates ultimately persuaded Congress to eliminate don’t ask, don’t tell, and the administration implemented his version of the surge. But the repeal took much longer than the White House had hoped and forced it to spend more political capital than expected. Republican presidential candidates and lawmakers have used both issues to accuse the administration of disregarding military expertise and putting political considerations ahead of strategic ones. It wouldn’t have played out that way if Gates had been able to sell the chiefs on the administration’s priorities.
The charm offensive
Panetta had hoped that CIA director would be his last job in Washington. “My approach has always been to roll up my sleeves, do the best damn job I can in the position I’m in, and, very frankly, at the end of that job if I can go back to Carmel Valley and enjoy life there, that’s fine with me,” Panetta says. “Unfortunately, every time I do that, somebody comes up with another idea for another job.”
First, Vice President Joe Biden, a fellow Catholic who knew Panetta well from their Hill days, lobbied him to take the Pentagon job in early April. Panetta said no. On Easter Monday, Obama called and offered it again. Panetta proffered other names the president should consider. Finally, White House Chief of Staff William Daley summoned Panetta and told him that he was Obama’s only choice. After all, the CIA had made him an expert on the most pressing defense problems (Afghanistan, Iran); earlier stints as House Budget Committee chairman and director of the Office of Management and Budget made him an expert in Pentagon cuts. Panetta called his wife and asked if she could live with his taking another assignment in Washington. When he hung up, he told his staff that his wife was a saint. He accepted.
Still, he was not an obvious choice. In the 1980s, Panetta voted against the Reagan administration’s missile-defense program. In the 1990s, he opposed the first Gulf War. Now he’ll have to help repair the shattered U.S. relationship with Pakistan, press Israel not to bomb Iran (while preparing for a possible American strike), and sell $487 billion of defense cuts for an unpopular president to a skeptical Congress in an election year during which Republicans have painted Obama—and, by extension, Panetta—as soft on national security. The task will require all of his political skill and plenty of help from the chiefs.
During a dinner at Washington’s University Club before Panetta was confirmed, Rumsfeld and fellow former Defense Secretaries William Cohen and William Perry drove home the point. They shared war stories but kept stressing how important it was to manage the chiefs. He got the same message from Gates, one of his closest friends. Marine Lt. Gen. John Kelly, Panetta’s top military aide, told him that the Joint Chiefs “oftentimes felt that they were operating in their own worlds and did not have the kind of access to the secretary’s office than they wanted,” Panetta recalls.
He vows to change that. “There is no way that I could do this job without the advice, leadership, and friendship of my military leaders,” he says. He spent much of his first day on the job meeting with Mullen and the chiefs. As soon as Gen. Martin Dempsey took over for Mullen, Panetta invited him to dinner at Tosca, a tony, downtown Italian restaurant, where they spent the night boozing and swapping jokes. He holds two weekly meetings with the chiefs—one in his office, another in “the Tank,” a super-secure bunker located several stories under the Pentagon. And he met with the generals nearly every day during the frenzied final weeks before the department rolled out its pared-back budget request. Partly, that’s just in his DNA: “Leon Panetta was this gregarious politician who … draws energy from interactions with people,” says Bash, his chief of staff. But aides say it also reflects a concerted effort to ally with the chiefs.
The charm offensive includes a more informal style than Gates had. Panetta’s meetings rarely start or end on time, and he and Dempsey routinely spend the first few minutes jokingly insulting each other’s Italian and Irish heritages. One military official who asked to speak anonymously said he was stunned by “the creative ways in which he combines ‘f-bombs’ and ‘mf-bombs.’ ” Most afternoons, Panetta can be seen walking his beloved golden retriever, Bravo, whom he brings to work, on the grassy parade grounds outside the Pentagon. (Bravo is the “best secret agent I have,” he says. The pooch “doesn’t tell anybody about any of the secrets he’s heard.”) On the other hand, some Pentagon detractors who spoke on the condition of anonymity worry that Panetta is too undisciplined and jocular for a very serious job: Meetings run late, and, unlike Gates, who read through the thick briefing book he got each night, Panetta does not—although, according to those who have briefed him, he asks pointed questions all the same.
So far, at least, his outreach appears to have paid off. When Obama made an unusual visit to the Pentagon to unveil his budget-cutting plans, the president was flanked by every member of the Joint Chiefs. Close observers of the Pentagon said they couldn’t remember any other situation where the generals gave such a unanimous—and highly public—endorsement to a controversial policy that weakens them. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Rudy de Leon, who served as deputy secretary of Defense during the Clinton administration. “Keeping the chiefs on your side may be the most important part of the job, because if you lose them, everything else becomes much, much harder. Panetta clearly has them on his side right now.”
They have rewarded his solicitude with gratitude—and more. Gen. James F. Amos, the commandant of the Marine Corps, said via e-mail that he and the rest of the Joint Chiefs appreciated how often Panetta reached out to them during the budget process and incorporated their suggestions. Defense officials say that their insistence persuaded Panetta to boost cyberdefense spending, for instance, even as the topline number plunged. And the chiefs noticed when Panetta enraged Democratic members of Congress by saying that entitlements like Social Security should be cut before defense spending. (As a lawmaker, Panetta was devoted to social-welfare programs.) “In the past, I’ve seen such budget pressures bring out the worst in people,” Amos said. “Secretary Panetta is a great team builder.… My sense is that all the service chiefs are happy to have him at the helm.”
When Panetta told reporters in early February that the United States planned to wind down its combat role in Afghanistan next year and give Afghanis primary security responsibility, it sounded like he was rushing the administration’s schedule. He earned a wave of negative coverage in the United States, Afghanistan, and Europe. With the criticism mounting, Army Chief Ray Odierno used a TV interview with Fox News to publicly defend Panetta; he said this had been the U.S. strategy “all along.” For good measure, Odierno praised the Defense secretary for being “very collaborative with the Joint Chiefs.”
Mutual respect, however, is not irreversible, and the Pentagon will face some controversial decisions soon. Panetta and the generals will have to sort out the scale and timing of the Afghan drawdown (the administration wants to pull out as quickly as possible while the chiefs want the opposite). The budget wars, meanwhile, are far from over: Although the chiefs agree on the broad contours of the cuts, they could make trouble when they start to lose their favorite programs.
Sources inside the Pentagon speculate that Panetta would step down early in a second Obama term. Such a short tenure could make him a placeholder, not a secretary who leaves a lasting stamp on the department. The flip side is that if Panetta steers the agency through some of the biggest challenges it has faced in decades—spending cuts, the Afghan drawdown, a possible conflict with Iran—without a leadership crisis, then that may be legacy enough.
Mastermind Century Group 