In My Time - Dick Cheney [201]
ON APRIL 4, 2002, President Bush expressed concern for the “mounting toll of terror” and announced he was sending Secretary of State Powell back to the region to focus on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. On April 12, with Powell in the Middle East, the National Security Council convened to discuss conditions for a possible Powell meeting with Arafat. In the middle of the discussion, an NSC staffer entered the Situation Room with news that there had been another suicide bombing in Jerusalem. There were six dead and over a hundred injured.
Nevertheless, at a press briefing in Israel, Secretary Powell decided to float the idea of an international conference on the Israeli-Palestinian issue. The president had not agreed to this, and it was a bad idea. Giving Arafat a place on the world stage would only legitimize him at a moment he was making it clear that he had chosen the path of terror. Secretary Powell repeated the offer again a few weeks later, making a similar announcement in a press briefing in Washington with some of his European and UN counterparts. When I heard this I called National Security Advisor Rice from Air Force Two and suggested she needed to let Secretary Powell know that he was once more out of line with the president’s policy. We had all discussed next steps in the Middle East with the president in the Oval Office that morning, and he had not authorized Colin to announce we would participate in an international conference. I’m not sure what transpired between Condi and Colin, but the next day, when the Principals Committee—the NSC minus the president—met to discuss the Middle East, Colin apologized. He said he had “exceeded his brief” and gone beyond what the president wanted him to say.
My concern as we discussed the peace process and next steps was that we all needed to remember our number-one priority was winning the War on Terror. I argued that we would benefit from a limited or interim Israeli-Palestinian agreement that would allow a cooling-off period and give time for new leadership to emerge on the Palestinian side. But it was critically important that we not launch high-profile international conferences or summit meetings in futile pursuit of a final settlement agreement that Arafat showed no willingness to embrace on any reasonable terms. Bill Clinton had made that mistake at the end of his second term with a high-profile, high-expectations, and high-stakes maneuver that brought Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak to Camp David for a series of talks that failed tragically and led to the renewed intifada. There was no way we could afford to repeat that train wreck if we wanted successfully to pursue the War on Terror.
Looking back, I believe that Secretary Powell’s trip to the Middle East in the spring of 2002 was a watershed moment in relations between the State Department and the White House. Both Powell and his deputy, Richard Armitage, seemed to take the fact that the White House had been compelled to walk back Powell’s announcement of a Middle East conference as a personal affront to the secretary. I had built many relationships over the thirty-four years since I had first come to Washington, and it was about this time that I began hearing from a number of former and current high-ranking government officials that Secretary Powell and Deputy Secretary Armitage were not only failing to support the president’s policies, but were openly disdainful of them. I knew that Powell had been stung by press reports that he was not a strong secretary, but now it was as though a tie had been cut.
THAT SPRING WE HAD a visitor from another part of the world: Chinese Vice President Hu Jintao. As a matter of protocol, he and I were counterparts, and I had him out to the Vice President’s Residence for lunch. Of all the lunches I hosted over the years