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paperwork and logistics challenges that would otherwise consume the CPA’s time. A large number of Pentagon officials—military and civilian—volunteered to go over to Iraq to help. Unfortunately that esprit de corps was not widely found in other cabinet departments. The Department of State, outfitted with large numbers of experts in diplomacy and foreign affairs, provided two hundred names of would-be recruits. But when Jeffery and his team began contacting them, most demurred, many saying that their spouses or families didn’t want them going to Iraq.3 Overall, the State Department was filling less than 40 percent of the slots it was slated to fill on the governance teams.4 One State official later admitted their attitude: “Let’s see what impediments we can put in their way. Let’s see how long we can be in delivering this particular commodity or individual or amount of expertise. Let’s see how long we can stiff ’em.”5 I asked the director of administration at the Pentagon, Raymond DuBois, to coordinate financial and personnel support to the CPA. He became so frustrated with State’s lack of cooperation that he personally canvassed the retired Foreign Service officer community for volunteers.6

In order to get up to speed, I encouraged Bremer to work closely with Garner. I hoped he could take advantage of Garner’s knowledge of Iraq and its emerging leadership. I had also asked my special assistant, Larry Di Rita, whom I had sent to Kuwait to help Garner stand up ORHA several months earlier, to stay on in Baghdad to help bring Bremer up to speed. A sharp and gregarious formal naval officer, Di Rita could help to impose structure and order into what was bound to be a challenging start for the CPA. But Bremer seemed not to want much assistance from those who had been engaged in Iraq before he arrived. He was eager to send Garner back to America and excluded him from key meetings during their transition.

Bremer’s relationship with Sanchez was also apparently strained from the start, perhaps because Bremer thought he needed to establish control of Iraq and not yield authority to the military.* I was concerned that Bremer refused to meet with the four-star commander of Joint Forces Command, Admiral Ed Giambastiani, when he was in Iraq working on a lessons-learned project, which proved to be a valuable assessment of what actually took place in the days after Saddam’s ouster.7

Most troubling was that Bremer proved reluctant to cede any significant authority to the Iraqis. In his memoir he noted that several weeks before he arrived in Baghdad he heard on the radio that “Jay Garner had announced his intention to appoint an Iraqi government by May 15.” Upon hearing the news, Bremer wrote, “I almost drove off the George Washington Parkway.”8 Garner’s plan, in fact, would have consisted of a group of Iraqis advising the CPA, not a total handover of authority. Through political conferences in the Iraqi cities of Nasiriyah and Baghdad, Garner had skillfully cultivated leaders for the new Iraq, among internals as well as externals. He also had ensured there was an Iraqi presence in each of the country’s twenty-three ministries.9 When Bremer departed for Baghdad, I believed he would work with Garner to build on his momentum by creating an Iraqi transitional government. It took months before I realized that this was not what Bremer had in mind.

At the State Department’s insistence, I reluctantly had agreed to a month or so delay in implementing the Iraqi Interim Authority when the policy was established in March. I agreed that Bremer needed a chance to find his footing in Baghdad. But Bremer wanted to delay implementation of the IIA and the creation of an independent Iraqi government possibly by years, and seemed to think he had the President’s support to do so. Bremer later wrote, “[T]he President’s instructions to me ... when I had lunch with him alone on May 6th, were that we’re going to take our time to get it right... . The President had effectively, though perhaps not formally, changed his position on the question of a short or long