Known and Unknown_ A Memoir - Donald Rumsfeld [199]
We had worked together very little in the eight months I had been in office; as a result, it took some time for us to get used to each other. My habit of asking probing questions was new to Franks; he needed to become comfortable with my queries and confident of my regard for him. After several weeks of daily contact, and at least one sushi dinner, we developed an effective working relationship.
President Bush took to Franks from the start. Once, when Bush asked him how he was doing, Franks replied, “Mr. President, I’m sharper than a frog hair split four ways.”3 That was the kind of folksy manner they both liked. He and Franks would occasionally joke about how far “two boys from Midland” had come.
Franks knew something about the history of Afghanistan and its long record of defeating outsiders attempting conquest. He also knew that when seeking cooperation from Afghanistan’s neighbors in the weeks ahead he would be having many cups of tea with the political and military leaders of the twenty-six countries in CENTCOM’s area of operations.
Franks’ immediate task was to develop a war plan. Though even the best one off the shelf would have required substantial updating to fit the new realities we faced, the fact was that there was no existing war plan for Afghanistan. Further complicating matters, there was scant current intelligence on the country. Steep and damaging budget cuts to our intelligence community during the 1990s had resulted in American operatives being moved to other matters after the Soviet withdrawal. By 2001, our intelligence personnel did not know the extent to which tribal leaders would tolerate, let alone welcome, American forces into the country. We didn’t even have an up-to-date picture of the terrain. In some cases our analysts were working with decades-old British maps. The early information we did receive was spotty: one site might or might not have been an al-Qaida safe house; another may or may not have been a Taliban weapons facility. In addition, few intelligence operatives and analysts spoke the Afghan languages.
We faced other planning issues. The use of our Navy would be limited in landlocked Afghanistan. The high altitudes and dust would make helicopter operations challenging. Ground forces would have a difficult time trying to operate in the unfamiliar and inhospitable Afghan terrain in the approaching winter months. The United States did not have even modest working relationships. with most of Afghanistan’s neighbors.* The Department of Defense would need to rapidly organize a campaign—in which it could cooperate with local militias, conduct manhunts, and operate with agility—as the enemy reacted and adapted in an environment it knew far better.
Several days after 9/11, I asked Franks how long he thought it would take CENTCOM to craft a plan for Afghanistan. We both knew he would need considerably more detail than the sketchy options presented by Shelton at Camp David on September 15.
“Two months,” Franks responded.
The President was not going to wait patiently for another two months to take action. Daily threat reports provided by the intelligence community cautioned that additional terrorist attacks were likely. Therefore, we needed to begin putting pressure on their networks as rapidly as possible. Additionally, the passes through the towering Afghan mountains would soon be blanketed with snow, rendering them impassable.
“General, I’m afraid we don’t have that much time,” I told Franks. I asked him to come up with a first cut of a plan in a few days.
On September 21, 2001, Franks and I drove over to the White House to present his initial