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officials, including but not exclusively some at the Pentagon. I had met him once or twice at meetings set up for the Iraqi exiles. He struck me as one of a number of bright Iraqis looking to do what they could for their country. However, no one in the Department of Defense urged that Chalabi be “anointed” as the ruler of post-Saddam Iraq, although some officials admired his skills. Robert Blackwill, who served as Rice’s director for Iraq and was previously U.S. ambassador to India, once remarked that Chalabi was the “Michael Jordan of Iraq.” I assumed Chalabi would participate in an interim government, but I had no idea who would emerge as its head. That was for the Iraqis to decide.

The State Department’s and CIA’s desire to ensure that Chalabi not have a leadership role in postwar Iraq may have led both organizations to oppose the exiles generally. For example, CIA officials opposed our efforts to constitute a force of Iraqi exiles to fight and act as interpreters and translators alongside our troops in the invasion. Tenet was cool to the idea. When “Agency officers suggested to DoD that they scrap the idea of a fighting force of Iraqi exiles ... [w]e were scoffed at once again,” he wrote.26 While not large in size, I believed the Free Iraqi Forces, as they were called, could be a useful corrective to the perception that the United States was invading Iraq to occupy the country rather than liberate it.27 At least in part because of a lack of cooperation from the State Department and the CIA, we were unable to recruit and train enough Free Iraqi Forces to show that Iraqis were involved in the military campaign to rid their country of Saddam.28

State Department and CIA officials instead argued that the United States should assist Iraqis from inside the country to emerge as the new leaders. I had no problem with that approach—in theory. But in reality it would take a long time to assemble a team of acceptable and capable candidates within Iraq after Saddam’s ouster. His Iraq was hardly a training ground for aspiring leaders. Visible political opponents tended not to have long lives. Regrettably, because of State Department wariness of the Iraqi externals, the United States did little to include them in planning for the postwar period until after Saddam’s regime had fallen.*

Instead of putting an Iraqi face on postwar Iraq as soon as possible, the State Department proposed an American-led civil authority for an indefinite period.29 On March 1, 2003, Powell sent a memo from the State Department historian labeled “informative.” The paper argued that any occupation would take “time.” That apparently was Colin Powell’s position on the matter.30

At a principals meeting in the White House on March 7, 2003, two weeks before war would begin, we discussed whether to put Iraqis in charge of the post-Saddam government sooner rather than later. In Powell’s absence—he was in New York at the United Nations—Richard Armitage represented the State Department.

In late 2002, I had proposed that after Saddam’s regime was toppled, we should promptly announce a provisional council, the Iraqi Interim Authority (IIA). This Interim Authority, designed as an Iraqi variation on the one in Afghanistan, was intended to bring Iraqis from all parts of the country, plus externals, and all political factions into a temporary national governing coalition. Its immediate but limited responsibilities would include supervising the drafting of a constitution, playing a significant role in the conduct of Iraq’s foreign policy, and administering selected departments of the government. Membership would include representatives from Iraq’s Kurdish, Sunni, and Shiite populations. For several months, the deputies and the interagency coordinating committees discussed, debated, and refined the concept. The State Department had been uncomfortable with the proposal.

“Don’t rush this,” Armitage urged in our NSC meeting. “We’ll sacrifice legitimacy.”

Vice President Cheney countered that no one, least of all him, was pushing for a few Iraqis with Washington connections