Known and Unknown_ A Memoir - Donald Rumsfeld [176]
In one August 2002 memo to Rice, I raised this lack of resolution. “It sometimes happens that a matter mentioned at a meeting is said to have been ‘decided’ because it elicited no objection,” I wrote. “That is not a good practice. Nothing should be deemed decided unless we expressly agree to decide it.”15 Rice started putting a note at the bottom of draft decision memos: “If no objections are raised by a specific deadline, the memo will be considered approved by the principals.” That, too, was impractical. Powell and I were frequently traveling. I did not want to have others assume I agreed with something simply because I missed an arbitrary deadline.16
From 2001 to 2005, I sent Rice a series of memos suggesting ways I thought the NSC process might be strengthened.17 “As we have discussed, the interagency process could be improved to help all of us better manage the high volume of work we have,” I wrote to Rice in August 2002. “I’ve talked with my folks about it to see if we could come up with some ideas that might be helpful.”18 Some of the problems I raised in my memos were administrative and relatively minor but could have resulted in an improvement in efficiency. For example, I noted that we had principals committee meetings on a weekly basis, sometimes two to three meetings a week, at the White House. Unlike the national security adviser, the rest of us—the secretary of state, the director of the CIA, and I—had departments we needed to run. Going to the White House so often was time consuming. If the NSC’s performance was improved, many hours of time each week would be freed up, we would be better prepared, and more meetings would end with concrete decisions.*
No one likes to have his or her style of management questioned. Rice was a person whose general performance over the years had undoubtedly been seen as above reproach. She seemed unaccustomed to constructive suggestions, and not much changed for the better. The core problems the NSC faced resulted from the effort to paper over differences of views.
In his book, Peter Rodman wrote: “[I]t is no small task to provide psychological support to the person on whose shoulders rests the heaviest burden of decision in the world.”20 Throughout the Bush administration, Rice was a regular presence at Camp David and in Crawford, and was almost always the last person the President talked to on any given national security issue. She used that proximity and authority to press for action in the President’s name. But it was not always clear to me when she had been directed by the President to do something or when she simply believed she was acting in the President’s best interest—one could not check every question with the President himself. And one could certainly not fault Rice for being disloyal to the President. I thought it unlikely that Rice was managing the NSC as she did without Bush’s awareness and agreement.
Nonetheless, I always found that in one-on-one situations, Bush was perfectly willing to make a decision even when presented with vexing choices. The bridging approach Rice favored did not take advantage of Bush’s demonstrated willingness to engage in the candid, open, and fair hearing of views I knew he was fully capable of managing. I believe that kind of engagement would have resulted in a more effective NSC process.
This aversion to decisions in favor of one course of action or another—and sometimes in favor of one department or agency over another—ironically led to more disharmony than would have been the case if the President had had an opportunity to make the decisions himself. Rice’s emphasis on bridging and consensus concealed misgivings that were later manifested in leaks to the press. This conveyed to the world an NSC often in less than good order.
Outside observers in the press and partisans have always taken note of and hyped differences within every administration. NSC meetings,