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flights. The Chinese knew they were in the wrong. Capitulating to their threats and feigned outrage could embolden China’s military and political leaders to commit still more provocative acts. I did not believe that America would benefit from being seen as a weak supplicant. Moreover, I thought that there should be some kind of clear penalty for China’s dangerous behavior. I recommended that we temporarily suspend our military-to-military contacts with the PRC. I strongly favored these military exchanges in general, but the PRC had been using the contacts as intelligence-gathering missions, and had been denying us truly reciprocal visits of equal value by American military officers. Since the Chinese benefited from these military exchanges, this seemed to be an opportunity to impose a cost on them and to later renegotiate more balanced exchanges. Bush agreed to that proposal but remained undecided on the apology.

The impasse over the EP-3 crew ultimately ended with Bush approving a letter from U.S. Ambassador Joseph Prueher to the Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs expressing “regret” over China’s “missing pilot and aircraft” and for our EP-3 entering China’s airspace without “verbal clearance.”21 This language was unfortunate, since the fact was, of course, that our aircraft had entered China’s airspace only because the alternative was crashing in the South China Sea. The wording was in effect an apology, and the Chinese played it as one. The twenty-four U.S. crew members were released, though it would be months before we finally got back the EP-3, and then in pieces, after the Chinese had inspected every inch of it.

The April 2001 incident provided an early window into the workings of the Bush administration’s “interagency process”—the bureaucratic term for the way the several national security–related departments and agencies interact, advise the president, and carry out his decisions. The vice president, the secretary of state, the secretary of defense, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the director of the CIA, and the national security adviser all had an opportunity to offer their views to President Bush at the height of the crisis. Having considered the options, and the advice we recommended, he decided the course he thought was best. Even though Bush chose a course somewhat different from my recommendations, he made the decision. I thought that was exactly how the NSC should have functioned. Regrettably, that would not always be the case.

CHAPTER 24

The National Security Council

Throughout my decades in public life, I have seen personalities come and go, but some degree of friction in the NSC’s processes has remained a constant. In the Nixon administration, I observed then National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger and Secretary of State Bill Rogers differ over foreign policy before Nixon concluded that the solution was for Kissinger to take Rogers’ place while keeping his post at the NSC. As White House chief of staff, I saw in the Ford administration how the President had to navigate between Kissinger’s détente policy on the one hand and Jim Schlesinger’s (and later, my) concerns about it on the other. The media covered clashes between National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski and Secretary of State Cyrus Vance exhaustively during President Carter’s administration. I also observed the differences between Secretary of State George Shultz and Secretary of Defense Cap Weinberger during the Reagan years.

The disagreements were not simply the result of their personalities, though there is generally no shortage of strong views among senior government officials. More often than not, the differences were the almost inevitable result of the differing statutory responsibilities and roles of the various federal departments. Add to those the influences and pressures of the many congressional committees and subcommittees that oversee the executive branch and jealously guard their jurisdictions, interests, and authorities, and friction is created.

Just as there is no single successful model of