The FRONTLINE Interviews
John Bolton
Former National Security Adviser
John Bolton served as national security adviser to Donald Trump from 2018 to 2019. He was previously the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and is the author of The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir.
The following interview was conducted by FRONTLINE’s Gabrielle Schonder on April 26, 2021. It has been edited for clarity and length.
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Global Reaction to 9/11
I want to take you to what will be the opening scene of our film, which is an image of a bipartisan group of congressmen who joined together on the Capitol steps, on the afternoon of 9/11, to sing “God Bless America” together.I wonder if you can help me understand how that scene captures where we are, as a country, in that moment.
Well, I think the realization was, we had obviously been attacked in a way that, historically, we had never seen before in New York, in Washington.And I think it produced a near-universal feeling that the country had to pull together to respond to it, not least of which because we didn’t know whether further attacks were coming.I must say, personally, I didn’t partake in much of that, because we were still desperately trying to understand what had happened, what might come in the next hours, how to deal with countries overseas, and operational questions like that.
Right after the attack, in President Bush’s first address to the nation, he references that our freedoms have come under attack, that this is a war against good versus evil.Looking back, what did that language reveal about President Bush’s view of the enemy?
Well, I think he saw very clearly that we had been struck right in core centers of the American civilization., and he was determined to respond to it.I watched from my window on the seventh floor of the State Department the Pentagon in flames.And I don’t think it’s anything any of us will ever forget.
The international community rallies behind America in that moment of solidarity.And I wonder what President Bush understood about America’s role in the world order.
Well, Bush was a very strong supporter of NATO.He believed in it, and he welcomed the NATO response of invoking Article 5 of the treaty of Washington [North Atlantic Treaty].And he very much believed that our activities should be conducted with our allies, because he saw the attack on America as the worst episode in a long line of terrorist attacks on Europe and other parts of the West.So it strengthened his view that this was a truly global conflict.
The Mission in Afghanistan
The decision to go into Afghanistan less than a month after the attack, calling it Operation Enduring Freedom, what did the language reveal about President Bush?
Well, I think you have to understand it in the context of the shift that had taken place and nomenclature.It used to be military operations had names that nobody understood.That evolved over time until the names often began to embody the objectives of the operation itself.And I think Bush and all of us really saw the attacks as an attack on our freedom, since the lifestyle of the terrorist was hardly free.And I think it was meant to be indicative of what that larger objective was.
And in terms of our democratic values, and the ambitions to perhaps export those, was that part of the discussion?
I don’t think, at that early stage, it was really any part of the discussion.The issue was whether Taliban would turn over Al Qaeda to us, as they were given the option to do, or we would go in and destroy both Al Qaeda and Taliban.That was it at that point.
Let me ask you about that strategy, because a moment we’re fixated on is Tora Bora.Osama bin Laden is able to escape and flee to Pakistan and begins sending videos out one by one.And somebody described it to us as “death by a thousand paper cuts.”And I wonder, watching our enemy clearly operating with a strategy, wondering where we were in that moment, after he fled.What was the American strategy?Or were we moving on?
Well, I think at that point, there were a lot of considerations around the debate how bin Laden and others had escaped, how he had gotten out of what seemed to be a cul-de-sac.But I don’t think people really thought about the longer-term implications of Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda in exile.I think the question was what to do with Taliban and how to take the next steps in Afghanistan, from the U.S. point of view.And really, it’s at that point that there begins to be more of a disagreement inside the administration and more broadly whether our objective is to destroy the terrorists or whether it’s to do nation building in Afghanistan.
How did you fall in that?
I don’t believe in nation building.I think the United States is, in itself, still engaged in building its own nation.And for us, it’s an eternal project.I don’t believe in social engineering.That’s why I’m a conservative.And I particularly don’t believe we’re good at social-engineering other countries.I think the American interest in Afghanistan, at that point, was destroying the terrorists.I don’t have any ill wishes for the Afghans, but it wasn’t for us to bring sweetness and light to Kabul.
And President Bush?
Well, I don’t think his thoughts were completely formed.I think there was a general idea that if we could restore central government to Afghanistan, we could go a long way toward eliminating the terrorist threat, eliminating the disarray that allowed Taliban to gain control in the first place.I think that was an initial mistake, because the history of Afghanistan has more often than not been a system of very dispersed government, and I don’t think the United States was going to change that.
Vice President Cheney’s response to the 9/11 attacks, the One Percent Doctrine, can you help us understand his response to 9/11 and give us a little bit of back story here?
Well, I think anytime you see the kind of tragedy we saw at 9/11, people want to do whatever they can to prevent it from happening again.And people forget, but within a month after 9/11, we were worried about anthrax attacks, and we feared that, and know from the historical record, that terrorist groups have tried to get not just biological and chemical weapons, but even nuclear weapons.
So if your objective is protect the homeland, the level of risk that you’re willing to bear is going to be very small.And until the evidence changes, the presumption should be that we don’t wait to be attacked, but that we take steps actively to defend ourselves.And I don’t think there is really much disagreement with that proposition.Congress was fully briefed after 9/11, and I didn’t hear any disagreement from anyone in Congress about what the next steps were.It’s always easy to second-guess looking back, but at the time, I think the country was very unified.
The Dark Side
Let me ask you a little bit about the reliance on fighting on the “dark side” to protect the United States.What did it reveal about how far we were willing to go?
Look, the United States is a very open, optimistic people.We’re trusting.We’re naive in many respects.And the fact was, we had taken it on the chin in a way that nobody had really expected.Second-guessing always makes it look like there was a half of a sentence in an intelligence report that should have told us they were going to fly airplanes into buildings.Easy to say in retrospect.
So I think the idea that we had to do more in the intelligence world, that we had to find out more about the pathways and the methods that the terrorists were using, was not only a perfectly natural response, it was the right response.And again, the objective here, we’re not conducting a law enforcement exercise.This isn’t a question of due process.This is a question of protecting our innocent civilians.And in any event, as Felix Frankfurter once said, due process is only that process which is due.
Guantanamo
Let me ask you an early question about what to do with enemy combatants.You know, Guantanamo is open.When those images are broadcasted abroad, I wonder if you can give us a perspective on how President Bush and the administration viewed those images.
Nobody in the administration was looking to do harsh things to any of the captives.And I think if you look at the record of decisions by Bush and everybody else that any exceptions to that treatment were contrary to the directives.The issue here is whether the technical requirements of the Geneva Conventions and other international treaties apply.I, to this day, object to calling Taliban “enemy combatants.”They were terrorists.They’re clearly not covered by the Geneva Conventions, the Supreme Court to the contrary notwithstanding.They don’t represent a state.They don’t wear uniforms.They don’t carry insignia ranks.They don’t act like soldiers.They act like terrorists.
But all that said, this is—tearing yourself away from the treaties doesn’t mean license to do anything you want.It means that they will get humane treatment, but we will not be banned by international treaties that manifestly don’t cover the situation we were facing.
I wonder if we can talk about enhanced interrogations and the black sites and, looking back, what it tells us about the way, again, we were fighting this war.
Well, I think the history, which is not disputed, is that before there was any enhanced interrogation, there was extensive legal analysis.And the point of the legal analysis for the decision-makers is, “Tell us what we can do, and tell us what we can’t do.”Now, some people disagree with the legal analysis.Take waterboarding as the classic example, where the lawyers who looked at it concluded it would not violate either the international torture convention or our own statutes.A lot of people disagree with that.That’s fine.But what was the nature of the disagreement?It was over the legal interpretation of the governing requirements.It wasn’t “To hell with the requirements.”It was “What do the requirements require us to do?”I don’t know what else the government could be asked to do to come to that conclusion.
Invading Iraq
Let me ask you about the turn to Iraq and the expansion of the war to the “axis of evil” and carrying out the Freedom Agenda.Can you help us understand President Bush’s worldview in this moment?
I think Bush and all of his advisers were evolving in their thinking all the time.I don’t think a lot of the words and phrases we use today sprang immediately to mind, but I do think there was a view that there were risks in the world, some associated with terrorists, some associated with weapons of mass destruction, some associated with both, that represented threats to the United States and our friends and allies that had not been adequately understood or adequately dealt with before.
And given the attack on 9/11, it fell to us to try and do better than we had before.So looking at these threats, looking at the terrorists, the rogue states, the weapons of mass destruction, we were trying to make sense out of an environment very, very different from the Cold War standoff that most of us had experienced in days gone by.
It sounds like you’re describing also a bit of a do-over, that we were going to pull in different sort of ambitions into this one sort of response.
Well, remember, in the aftermath of the Cold War, Bill Clinton and many others came close to describing the end of history.We didn’t face the threat of nuclear annihilation.We had a peace dividend.We had the Washington Consensus, you know, democracy, free markets, everything was going to be fine.9/11 came, and people said, “Say, what is the economic principles on which Al Qaeda government would be based?And how did they count votes in Al Qaeda elections?”I think the 9/11 attack was the end of the end of history for most people, certainly for those of us in the Bush administration.
And help us sort of understand, in the turn to Iraq, what it revealed about our understanding of the post-9/11 world.
The threats that I think we saw from Saddam Hussein were threats that had begun long before 9/11.I think that the risk, however, of Saddam Hussein’s desire to have nuclear, chemical and biological weapons was of a piece with the fear that terrorists would get them as well, whether buying them from likes of Iraq, Iran or North Korea, or developing on their own.The concept of state sponsors of terrorism, which had been first applied to Iran during the Reagan administration but which aptly described the number of rogue regimes around the world, showed the connection between the terrorist who had conducted the attacks on 9/11 and state sponsors, who provided them with resources, materiel, financing, weapons, sanctuary.And it looked to us like there were a number of these complicated and very dangerous threats that we had not adequately understood previously.
Let me ask you about back at home, Secretary of State Colin Powell traveling to the U.N. Can you tell us a little bit about his back story?
You mean on the presentation of the evidence on Iraq?
Yeah, the presentation, but even before that, who is he in this moment, you know?What did he represent within the administration?But what is his role here in this moment?
I don’t think there was any disagreement within the administration that the response in Afghanistan, the initial response, was entirely appropriate.But I don’t recall in any conversations I had with Powell that he expressly said at any point he didn’t think we should overthrow Saddam Hussein.I think, like many people who had significant roles in the first Gulf War, he recognized that Saddam Hussein’s remaining in power constituted a threat to peace and security in the region and to the United States and to Europe.So there were a lot of complicated issues to be resolved.But I don’t think at any point Powell ever said expressly, “I don’t want to do this.”1
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FRONTLINE: Interview with Colin Powell
He is one of the most trusted figures in the administration at that time.What was the significance of that, given—
I think his reputation was such that he was a very valuable and trusted figure.And I think that’s why President Bush asked him to go to the Security Council, to make the case for what we hoped was going to be a second use of force resolution that would augment resolution 678 from the first Gulf War.
You know, looking back, what was the result of turning our attention to Iraq?
Well, I think the most important result was that Saddam Hussein was overthrown and that that threat was removed.I think you could make a good argument, largely with 20/20 hindsight, that we reduced resources in Afghanistan more than we should have.But I also think you can make the argument that we spent too much time in Afghanistan on nation building, put too many resources into that which could have been applied, at least in a budgetary sense, to the counterterrorism and intelligence-gathering functions that I think really are at the core of American national interest there.
Let me ask you about Donald Rumsfeld’s ambitions for postwar Iraq.Can you characterize his views?
Well, I think there was real disagreement within the Bush administration over what to do once Saddam had been overthrown.And I don’t agree with those who say there was no plan for Iraq.I think the problem was, there were too many plans.I think that the right course would have been to turn government functions back to Iraqis as soon as possible, not to set up the Coalition Provisional Authority as we did.And I think Rumsfeld felt uneasy with that the whole time.And he had a conflict in his own mind to, on the one hand, wanting to be sure we had military control inside Iraq so that our forces weren’t in danger and that we could turn our attention to other threats in the region, but at the same time, not wanting to own the civilian government in Iraq.
And I think this goes to a very basic point.This is where a fundamental split takes place between those who wanted to do nation building in Iraq and those who wanted to maintain an essentially military presence.And if I could say one thing here.People often ask the question, “Was going into Iraq the right thing to do?,” as if the entire course of history, from 2003 until Obama withdrew in 2008—2011, was a straight line, with no alterations, changes or perturbations permitted.
Once you made the first decision, every other decision that was made during that period followed inevitably from the first one.That is not true.There were several different phases of activity in Iraq.The first was the military invasion and overthrow of Saddam Hussein, which was an unqualified success.And then, after that, there were a series of discrete decisions that were not determined in advance by the initial decision to invade.
And I think people, for their own reasons, don’t like to talk about it that way.Maybe they don’t like to believe it.But it is, in fact, a series of different steps, as to which there was disagreement even among those who advocated the initial decision to overthrow Saddam.
But looking back at this period that we’re talking about, how much trust in government, how much trust in intelligence back here at home, as we think about the U.N. speech, how much trust were we losing during this period, domestically, in our officials, in our ambitions for Iraq?
Well, I think partisan politics reentered the picture in a big way with the implication that Bush and others had distorted intelligence to justify the initial attack on Saddam Hussein.And I have to say, in my experience, I didn’t see any manipulation of the intelligence.I think there were a variety of things that were gotten wrong, but I also think that the initial concern about what Saddam Hussein’s intentions were—remained correct, and that the threat that he posed, which was not necessarily his capability in one or another particular area of weapons of mass destruction but the regime itself that was the threat.
Thank you.But what is this period of disagreement, and as you say, these two sort of camps within the administration about nation building or rooting out terrorism?What does it reveal about our American power in this moment?
Well, the debate was not crisp and clear, that’s for sure.And it wasn’t crisp and clear in the body politic as a whole.If you believed that neither the United States nor anybody else, even the hallowed United Nations can do nation building very effectively, then I think you’re going to take a skeptical view of what any outsider’s role is going to be, and also why decision-making should have been returned to Iraqis sooner rather than later.You don’t build political maturity by making decisions for other people.You build political maturity by making them make their own decisions, including the mistakes that they’re going to make.
Our concern was not what the government of Iraq did in terms of domestic functions.Our concern was the international security implications.And those, I think, we had a right to insist on an effective way of predominant American role in decision-making.But everything else—the shape of the Iraqi government, its different elements and responsibilities—I think should have been given back to the Iraqis much more quickly.
Abu Ghraib
Can I ask you about Abu Ghraib and the impact of those images when they are broadcast across the world?
They had a dramatically negative image.They were all in contravention to applicable doctrine in training.It was a disgrace for part of the military.I think they felt that very strongly.Rumsfeld offered to resign as a result of it, although none of it came from his orders, and all of it was contrary to what our soldiers had been told.It was a terrible mistake.But the nature of the mistake was not revealing the true character of the United States.It was completely contrary to what their orders were.
The impact, though, within the administration, do you remember sort of that time period?
Well, I think there was a great sinking feeling that with everything else that was problematic about the situation in Iraq, this just had nothing but a negative impact.There was simply no way you could explain it, although the explanation, I think, was entirely correct.And the punishment that was meted out to the individuals who engaged in the conduct was entirely appropriate.
We talked about sort of the political division here at home that’s growing during this time, the state of Iraq.As we sort of think back to that moment of unity that we began our conversation talking about, and we talk about sort of our moral and political competence at this stage, how far had we come?
Well, I think that the overall situation in Iraq showed repeatedly that when it came to pursuing our own vital national interest, from the initial invasion through the surge in 2007-2008, we knew how to do it, and we got it right.We made mistakes along the way, but we corrected.The mistakes in Iraq came from the nation building project.And the idea that if you could—if you could do better community relations, somehow the terrorist threat would disappear, that’s just not—the two thoughts are not equivalent.
And I think we have to understand the difference and not condemn the entire exercise in Iraq as a mistake, when its initial objectives and the ultimate security outcome were, I think, largely accomplished, but where many of the associated civil and political outcomes were not.I think they’re two very different things.
And at the close of sort of the Bush years, though, the world’s view of America, how that had changed?
I think that people have a view of America that suits their own interest.And when they feel safe, they regard us as too pushy, too interventionist.And that’s what you heard a lot of at the end of the Bush administration.When they feel weak and defenseless, they say America has gone isolationist.So I tune a lot of the international reaction out.
And domestically, what had changed here at home?
I think the explanation of what we did in both Afghanistan and Iraq got lost in the battle over the democracy project.And I think that was very unfortunate, because I think these threats from international terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction remained as dangerous, or in fact more dangerous, at the end of the Bush administration than at the beginning.But you couldn’t break through, in many cases, to have the debate on those issues when people were saying, “You can’t impose democracy at the point of a gun.”I never believed you could.I was worried about the people on the other side of the gun, who were building weapons that could do devastating impacts around the world.
An Iraqi reporter throws his shoe at President Bush.This is really at the end of the administration.What did it reveal about the rage that Iraqis had towards America?
Nothing.Nothing.It reveals what one Iraqi thought.You know, this characterization of acts like that as revealing national mood I think is inaccurate and unhelpful.What it did show was that by that time, America had become another Iraqi political faction.That was the mistake.We didn’t get involved heavily, really, in West German politics after World War II, or really in Japanese politics, even though we had massive occupation forces there.And we did it because, with a little guidance, more in the case of Japan than West Germany, we wanted them to develop democracies on their own.And we were very successful, and the German and Japanese people were very successful.
I think our excessive political involvement in Iraq was the cause of the problem, not the American military.In fact, at about that time, when you heard criticism of America’s role in Iraq from many Arab leaders, when you asked them the question, “Well, should we withdraw militarily?,” they’d say, “Well, of course not.”That’s the difference.And that’s the distinction we failed to keep.
The Obama Years
I’m going to ask you now about the Obama years.We’re going to transition presidents.Obama is awarded the Nobel Prize, as somebody described to us, almost before he figures out where the situation room is.Can you describe him in this moment and what it reveals about his view on these wars?
You know, the Nobel Prize for Peace has gone downhill steadily since they awarded it to George Marshall, and the award to Obama was perhaps the worst example.Under their own nominating procedures, he had only been in office a few months when the nomination took place, and the decision followed shortly after that.It had nothing to do with his achievements in office, since there weren’t any.It had to do with the left-wing bias of the Nobel committee, and frankly, he should have given it back.
The contradiction, of course, of who Obama is in this moment and how he’s about to embark on his own doctrine, was that evident at the time?
I don’t think anybody really knew what Obama would do.And honestly, I don’t think he did either.I think he came to office with less understanding of international affairs than most recent presidents and went through a lot of different permutations.I still would disagree with the proposition there is an Obama doctrine, because I don’t think you can tell coherently what emerged after eight years of his administration.
Obama’s Use of Drones
But quickly, he has a dependency on drones, on targeted assassinations, on JSOC [Joint Special Operations Command].And I wonder if you can help us understand what these programs reveal about his approach to war.
Well, these are tactics; these are not strategies.It doesn’t reflect coherent policymaking.It reflects a desire to say, “I did something,” so that you can’t be criticized for it, but without thinking through the consequences.And all of these techniques are tools that people use, but they don’t reflect a coherent appreciation of what the overall objective is.And I think that was one of his problems, is that he thought and thought a lot about these things and apparently, according to his own memoirs and others’, talked and talked a lot about them.But I still don’t think that he could describe exactly where he wanted to end up, and I think that’s reflected in the outcome.I don’t know where we ended up.
We appeared to be killing the No. 3 of Al Qaeda over and over again, and I’m curious what your view was of that strategy.
The idea that standing back and occasionally targeting successfully top leaders of what is basically an ideological movement reflects an unwillingness to come to grips with the ideology itself, and that was what the war on terrorism was all about, conducted well or poorly.This is not about individuals; this is about a politicization of religious beliefs that led to threats all around the world, emanating from a lot of sources, but beginning, really, with the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979 and spreading across the Islamic world.That isn’t going to be resolved, or even mitigated, by occasionally successful assassinations.
What do you think President Obama had learned about President Bush’s own experience in managing the realities of the war on terror?
I think Obama felt and said that he wanted to move beyond the war on terror, that we had become obsessed with it, and that he wanted to pivot to Asia and away from the Middle East.And all of that’s fine, except that that assumes you can pivot away while the terrorists go their own way and say, “Well, gee, we wanted to attack the United States, but they don’t want us to attack them anymore, so I guess we won’t.”It doesn’t work like that.
And I think the fact that Obama later had to resolve the threat of ISIS, or had to try and deal with the threat of ISIS, shows that he completely misunderstood the nature of the ideology and the threat to American interests and the interests of our friends and allies in the Middle East and around the world.
What do you think he’s telling himself that he’s doing in this moment?
You know, I don’t really know.I’m probably the last person who can give you any insight into that.I never had a clue.
Let me ask you about the death of OBL [Osama bin Laden], the symbolism of the killing at this moment, so many years after 9/11?
I think it was very important that the attack succeed.“Better late than never” is still a good motto.But again, eliminating even a figure as important as Osama bin Laden doesn’t end the threat of terrorism.I wish we had done it earlier.It might have had a greater significance had it happened at Tora Bora, because we might also have eliminated more of the leadership there.But when you’re dealing with an ideology that has spread far more broadly than we understood at 9/11, or even many years later, it’s not simply a question of killing the key figures.
The enemy had grown so large that this wasn’t going to solve anything?
Well, it was large and dispersed, and it metastasized in ways that we didn’t understand.And I think a large reason that we didn’t understand it is that we wouldn’t come to grips with the fact that we were facing another ideological threat.It wasn’t the same as communism; it was a religious ideology, and I think for many more or less secular people, that’s hard to understand.But if you look at the sweep of history, religious ideology has played an enormous role, and I think that’s still the nature of the problem.
Yeah.Even as we now transfer into our second presidency that we’re discussing, I mean, it’s a fundamental misunderstanding of the problem and the enemy.
Yeah.When we discussed the threat of international terrorism, that itself may be part of the problem.It’s not the tactic of terrorism; it’s the radical Islamicist threat behind it.And there is a certain amount of political correctness involved here in America and in Europe, which is pretty remarkable, because if you go to the Arab world and talk to many of the political leaders there, they see the threat of Islamic terrorism as being directed at them.And if you look at the casualties of Islamic terrorism over the past 30 or 40 years, more of them have been in the Islamic world than in the West, so they understand the nature of the threat, in many respects, better than we do.And yet we haven’t been able to communicate that effectively to broader Western populations.
Why is that?
I think the basic problem is the unwillingness to see an ideology at work.I think part of that is due to the simplistic view of the left in Europe and the United States that all of this is caused by economic deprivation.I mean, that alone is a form of primitive Marxism, what they called economic determinism.Everything is based on economics.So if you alleviate poverty, you’ll eliminate terrorism.It’s just not true.
Let me ask you about an event that happens under the Obama years, which is the largest leak of national security secrets in our history.So this is WikiLeaks.But this is really the [Edward] Snowden revelations.You know, these stories come as a shock and reveal hundreds of secret programs, some aimed at Americans.What is the fallout of these revelations?
I think that because they’re so poorly understood that they have more of a negative impact than they should.I think there’s a paradox at work here that the people who really understand what’s going on in these programs find it hard to defend, indeed reluctant in some cases to defend publicly, because you have to say even more about the nature of the programs to justify them and to show that the threats that their opponents see to civil liberties in the United States, for example, are very badly misguided.
I think this contributes to the notion that there’s a deep state doing these things.Many people today associate the threat of the deep state with right-wing conspiracy theories, but over the years, it’s come from left-wing conspiracy theories even more.And it’s certainly much more interesting than the gray bureaucratic lives that even most of the people in our intelligence community lead.And that’s a problem in dealing with it, too.People want to think there are deep dark secrets going on, and the reality is, there are actually very few that would make a movie if based on the truth.
Let me ask you a bit about Obama’s decision to withdraw troops from Iraq and declare victory.The decision doesn’t conform to the reality of the situation, and I wonder if you can help us understand what he is attempting to do here.
I think Obama believed that, ironically, the Bush surge of 2007-2008 had succeeded and that he could withdraw.And he found a very short time thereafter he had to go back, because of the appearance of ISIS, which the all-knowing Obama first called the “JV terrorists.”The fundamental misconception is this: We did not go into either Afghanistan or Iraq to advance the interest of the Afghan or Iraqi people.We did not go in to create their capability of self-defense.We did not intend to rest American security on Iraqi or Afghan capabilities.We wanted—we should want it to rest on our capabilities.
So the idea that the Iraqis are ready to go, or that today the Afghans are ready to go, meaning we can leave, fundamentally misperceives what the whole enterprise is about.We’re not there for them; we’re there for us.And when we leave, nobody’s there for us.And Obama found that out in Iraq.
Following the decision, there are the attacks in Paris.There are the attacks in San Bernardino and Orlando, the beheading videos of Western hostages who are held in orange jumpsuits like Guantanamo.And I wonder if you can help us understand the symbolism and the fear at this moment.
Well, I think for many critics of the Bush administration’s efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, and very widespread in the Obama administration, and certainly widespread in the Oval Office during the Trump administration, people thought Middle East is a long way away from us.But in fact, in the age of the internet, of course it’s not.So that the ability to use advanced communications for propaganda purposes has never been greater.And it has had an effect.The threat is not simply confined to the Middle East.And the ability to affect people in faraway places, to induce them to commit terrorist acts, is really very powerful.And the ability to use the propaganda of terrorist acts, even committed in the Middle East, has never been more powerful.
It shows the continuing strength of the terrorist ideology, that it changes with respect to circumstances, but it has not diminished.
And when we think back to the Nobel Peace moment, and then the end of the Obama years, the effect on the Obama strategy in the region, on the world’s view of America?
Well, I think the world gave Obama a pass.I think Europe in particular gave him a pass, because they thought he was a European; he was post-American, in many respects.He talked about being above, you know, mere patriotism.And I think the Europeans, or at least many of the Europeans, liked that.But I think it reflected a view of the international environment that was badly separated from reality.
And so at the end of the Obama years, the North Korean nuclear threat remains.The Iranian nuclear threat remains, not only notwithstanding the nuclear deal with Iran, but because of the nuclear deal with Iran.And the international terrorist threat represented by ISIS remains under active engagement.So I think—I think we actually—the overall security situation of the United States deteriorated during the Obama administration.
The Election of Donald Trump
And now I bring you to the 2016 campaign and candidate Trump, which I know you’re watching from afar.But you’re obviously talking to many of those key advisers.And you’re in and out of this period.But I wonder if you can help us with a scene that we are trying to delve into, which is, on the 15th anniversary of 9/11, two presidential candidates visit the World Trade Center.And we’re interested in sort of understanding how Donald Trump views 9/11.This is his first appearance related to the attack, the first public appearance.And I wonder if you can help us sort of understand perhaps the political opportunity that he sees there.
Well, I’m not sure I can, really.I think he hoped to benefit from the remaining feeling in the United States that we had been attacked by forces that we didn’t fully understand and that we needed a strong American defense capability to prevent that from happening again.He stressed, repeatedly, that he wanted a strong American military.And I think that’s what he was hoping to capitalize on.
But as we saw later, after he became president, he didn’t really understand the nature of the Middle East.He didn’t understand the range of threats that we saw, and he didn’t particularly care to learn what they were.
Early on, though, in the campaign, he’s using some of the language of the war on terror and 9/11 in campaign speeches.You know, the Muslim ban comes up pretty early.He’s using terms like “radical Islamic terrorism.”What does it reveal about his understanding of where America is post-9/11?
I think that those references really don’t apply to the international environment.I think they apply to immigration, and I think that’s what it relates back to.He saw a great concern that America had lost control of its borders.He articulated that in a variety of ways, talking about people coming across the southern border.And he knew, because it was a real threat, that porous border meant not just more economic immigrants coming into the United States illegally, but terrorists and others who didn’t wish us well coming in.So that for him, it was part of the reinforcement of his position on immigration and not a foreign policy concept.
And that’s a pretty incredible line to draw, though, you know, to go from sort of the threat abroad to the threat at home.What is he doing?What is he implying there?
I think you have to understand the things that he says as relating not to coherent international policies or domestic policies, but relating to the political future of Donald Trump.And I think he saw reactions in the electorate that persuaded him that these were things to talk about that would help him politically.And I’m not sure, in his own mind, he ever drew more of a connection than that.And I think it’s a mistake to try to fashion philosophies and policies that don’t exist.
Once he’s in office, he appoints Jim Mattis to secretary of defense.And I just wonder if you can help us understand who Jim Mattis is.
Well, Mattis had effectively been fired by the Obama administration for a variety of reasons.And I think a lot of people on the Republican side thought that he had been treated wrongly, so this was a way of getting back at Obama.Trump gave him the nickname “Mad Dog,” and he liked that.2He thought Mattis looked like chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and so he made him secretary of defense.That was a mistake, too.But I think Trump very much thought of characters in his world as being from central casting, and I think that’s what he wanted from Jim Mattis.
2
Associated Press: AP Fact Check
And Jim Mattis’ understanding of the post-9/11 period, how that differs from Trump’s?
Well, Trump didn’t have an understanding of the post-9/11 period and didn’t learn much after he got into office.Mattis had very strong views on the subjects of Afghanistan and Iraq, based on his own experience in the region, being a combatant commander of the Central Command.And he tried to articulate those views and those understandings to Trump, as did many other people, basically without success.
There’s going to be an early “tank” meeting that we start to unpack.But in it, Mattis is briefing the president.He’s been preparing for weeks for it, to make the case about the value of keeping troops overseas.And the president’s response is, “We’ve spent over a million dollars, a trillion in Iraq and Afghanistan.We need to get out of there.We’re paying too much money.We’re getting nothing in return.And now we’ll have to rebuild Mosul before we can leave.”Can you help us understand the president’s view of America’s role in the world and what he’s expressing in that tank meeting?
Well, I wasn’t there, but I heard a lot of him during the 17 months I was there, and I think several things stand out.First, the thing that matters more than anything else, apart from Donald Trump, is the one thing he understands, which is money.And he sees a lot of money that’s going out, and he can’t see any concrete result from it.And he’s hearing from a number of people that all of the money has been wasted.Now, I think a lot of money was wasted in Afghanistan and Iraq, most of it in connection with the nation building.But for Trump, looking at it as a balance sheet, he just—he sees a lot of money going out.He doesn’t see much coming in.
He said at one point in a meeting that I participated in later, when warned about the risk of attacks on America if we pulled out of Afghanistan, he said, “Well, but, you know, what happened on 9/11?What was the cost of the buildings that were destroyed?You can rebuild them.”And there was, needless to say, silence in the room, because there were 3,000 people who died in those attacks as well.
But this is the sort of approach that Trump took to these things.And he didn’t—he didn’t put it all together, except that he knew he didn’t want to preside, as Bush and Obama did, over endless wars, because he didn’t see any benefit to Donald Trump.
I’m just stuck on what you just said.What does that tell you about how he viewed 9/11 and the attack?
I think you have to look at Trump not through the prism of a typical policymaker, because policy was not what interested him.So how he viewed things was through the prisms of his own experience, business, balance sheets, and through how it affected Donald Trump.And a lot of people theorize and abstract from things that he says and his conduct and trying to build a bigger picture.I don’t think there is a bigger picture.
But 9/11 and the loss of life here at home in his city was no exception to how he views—?
As I say, his reaction, at least in part, was the buildings could easily be replaced.It’s—the idea that the attack on 9/11 had the kind of impact on Trump that it had on Bush is like describing two separate universes.Now of course, Bush was in office.But I think, for most Americans, 9/11 was one of those moments that you remember.You remember where you were.You remember what you were doing.You remember what your reactions were.I never really heard Trump refer to 9/11.
What was the promise that he made that was so different from his predecessors about Iraq and Afghanistan?
Well, in his view, if you could end the endless wars, you would stop the outflow of money.And I think he believed that we should spend more on defense.And he certainly did increase defense budgets significantly over the really paltry levels of the Obama administration.I think that was incredibly important, although I think there’s a lot more to do.And he felt that the Middle East was so far away, that the terrorists had so far to come, that you would save a lot of money and not have much risk.And this discussion occurred more times than I can count, almost everybody else, with a few exceptions in the administration, disagreed with his analysis.But he was never permanently persuaded of a different course.
Much like his predecessors, he’ll declare victory and announce that the troops are coming home.And you wrote in your book, it wasn’t going to go away because we were tired of it or because we found it inconvenient to balancing our budget.Most important of all, this wasn’t a war about making Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria or any country nicer, safer places to live.I am not a nation builder.This was about keeping America safe from another 9/11.As you look back at three presidents’ handling the response to 9/11, what didn’t they understand about these wars?
Well, I think Bush, Obama and Trump were really very different.Trump’s in a category of his own.He is in his own world in that sense.I think the common problem underlying the Bush and Obama administrations was really the unwillingness to come to grips with the ideology.I think Bush came a lot closer to doing that than Obama did.But I think the Freedom Agenda kind of distracted him.And I think the idea that you could have programs in countries where the threats had come from, that would eliminate the threats, was a very attractive idea.But it was—it was badly flawed.Of the three of them, I’d still rather see Bush as president.
But each of them have sort of their victory moments in a war with no victories, it seems.The irony of that?
No.I think that all three, in a way, saw the political benefits of being able to say, “OK, we’ve accomplished what we went to do.”They would want to do that because they want their constituency to feel that they’ve actually accomplished something.And I think that’s, in a sense, part of the American character.We’re an impatient people.But also, we like to resolve things, unlike Europeans say we manage problems, Americans like to solve problems.It’s a—it’s a—I think it’s an attribute of our character that by and large is very fine, but it has its downsides, because it means we’re not as patient as we should be.And some things take a long time.
People talk about the endless war in Afghanistan, 20 years of American troops there.We’ve been in Germany and Japan for 75 years.Who talks about the endless presence there?Because people understood that that presence was for national interest that changed over time.And that’s why Obama thought he could get out of Iraq and then ended up going back in, because sometimes, the threats don’t change.
Let me ask you a bit about something I left out, that Mattis resigns.It kind of goes, there is this clash with the president, and I wonder what your view is about Trump continuing on with fewer guardrails.Many of you will leave this administration.And what are the results?
Well, I think that in the transition and the early days of the administration, there were so many people involved who had never had any experience in government that fundamental mistakes were made that could never be corrected later.And in the early days of the administration, efforts to try and make those corrections actually boomeranged and resulted in Trump distrusting many of his own advisers for thinking that they could outsmart him.
So trying to have a very candid discussion with Trump that led from policy conclusion A to policy conclusion B to policy conclusion C became impossible.I think it was impossible, for example, by the time I got there.Now, given that it was Trump, it may always have been impossible.But I think the early lack of experience with the government, lost time during the transition, lost time during the first months of the administration but certainly in the international space, was time you could never make up.
Legacy of the Trump Years
And the summary of Trump’s war, the summary of the Trump years?
Well, I think we were very lucky to get through them without more mistakes than were made.I think his handling of the coronavirus domestically was a graphic demonstration of his inability to think and act strategically over a sustained period of time, and I think we ended up the worse for it.Coronavirus was a slow-moving crisis.But I think those failures would have been compounded geometrically if we had had a fast-moving international crisis.So I’m glad that we didn’t.
And I think Trump should be viewed by Americans and by foreign countries as an aberration.He’s an anomaly.You cannot draw conclusions about the future of America, America’s trustworthiness, credibility, capability, durability or anything else based on extrapolating from the Trump administration.
I understand, I just think there’s a steady march, though, of the last 20 years, and American leadership changing, American perhaps trust changing, competence.And I just wonder how we got here from those early days of 9/11 that we began talking about.
Well, I don’t think you’re starting at the right point.I think the point to start at is victory in the Cold War, victory in the third world war of the 20th century, two hot wars, one cold war—America totally victorious to the point that commentators and politicians are talking about the end of history.I mean, I think the country went through a collective period of amnesia at that point and thought that the world was safe for everybody.9/11 was the worst kind of wake-up call that that theory about the end of history was badly wrong.
So the country had to rise to that challenge, and I think did, in a very successful way.We face another challenge right now, which is the existential threat of China.We’re going to face it for the rest of this century.And I think it’s been true historically, in many different kinds of civilizations, that they are tested best when they are threatened.So I’m not at all worried about that future, assuming we can come to grips with the nature of the threat we’re facing.And I don’t much care what the international reaction is, because I think people are going to complain about the United States almost no matter what we do.
During the Cold War, Eric Severeid once said the problem in looking at what the world says about the United States versus the Soviet Union is like comparing a bull and a matador.The bull is the Soviet Union.The crowd never complains about the bull’s performance.They only complain about the matador’s performance, but the matador almost always wins.So I think we have to be resolved in our own minds that we’re satisfied with our performance, and the rest of the world’s opinion will vary accordingly.
Twenty Years Later
But domestically, here at home?As I talk to you now, in this atmosphere, I mean, what had changed in the shadow of our response to 9/11?
I think that the country itself has gone through a number of different phases.But I think it responds when leaders explain what the nature of the threat is.Sometimes the threat is manifested easy—Pearl Harbor and 9/11.Other times the threat is more sustained, as it was during the Cold War.You’re never going to get unanimity of opinion in any event, but you can get broad consensus.
And I think drawing conclusions that the country is in decline is just a mistake.I mean, I’m not happy with the presidencies of Obama, Trump or Biden, but I don’t think that means the country is in decline.
Let me ask you, in the lead-up to Jan. 6, about President Trump’s use of language here at home to describe the radical left, antifa, he appears to be borrowing language from the war on terror to weaponize it here at home and turn it inward.Is that what you saw?I wonder if you could help me sort of understand what it reveals about the moment America is in and what he saw.
I don’t think it reveals much about America.I think it reveals a lot about Trump, that he saw the way to reelection as deepening the divisions and motivating the people he thought would vote for him.This is not because Trump has a broad policy view of what flows from this rhetoric.It’s because he sees it as a way in what must have been an increasingly pessimistic view of his campaign advisers, that the campaign was not succeeding, that this was the one way he could motivate enough people to come out and vote for him.I think it’s another example of why Trump is an aberration, and not any indication of the future for the country, or for the Republican party.
Let me ask you about the last two decades that we have been talking about and the lead-up to the assault on the Capitol steps, again, thinking again about the division here at home and maybe what had changed since 9/11.How do you explain the assault on the Capitol in the context of 9/11?
I don’t really see it in the context of 9/11.I do think that a lot of Americans, right and left, increasingly have seen the government as unresponsive to them.And you know the old political saying, “When responsible politicians don’t address the concerns of the people, irresponsible politicians address their concerns.”And so there was a group, for example, in 2016, who voted for Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary against Hillary Clinton but in the general election voted for Trump.And people say, “How can you vote for Bernie Sanders one day and Donald Trump the next?”And the answer is, because they didn’t—they thought they were both outsiders in the context of Washington.
And I think there is still a very broad feeling of people that the government exists really to perpetuate itself, that the government is a self-licking ice cream cone.And I think Trump capitalized on that.But that doesn’t mean that it works more than once—and in his case, it didn’t—or that it will work for others.And I don’t think that whatever his appeals to 9/11 or the spirit of 9/11 really have any lasting value in a different context.Others may try and emulate that, but he failed in 2020, and I think they will fail as well.
And you know, then let me ask you about Biden’s war.And it’s a very early moment for this question, but it’s clear that this may be the latest president who wants to move on from the legacy that we’ve been talking about.And I wonder if you can help us understand if there’s any way he can escape it, you know, with the announcement that he’s going to withdraw from Afghanistan at the point of the 20th anniversary of 9/11?Your thoughts on that and what he’s trying to do?
Well, I think picking 9/11 as the target date by which to withdraw from Afghanistan shows this is purely political.The last thing that we ought to be doing on 9/11 is watching Americans pull down the flag the last time in Afghanistan.I think this is a—we should call it the Trump-Biden decision to withdraw from Afghanistan.I have no feeling of optimism that good things are going to come from this.I think it’s nearly certainly that Taliban will resume effective control over most of Afghanistan, that terrorism will again take root there, and that, as sad as it may seem, the country is going to face another 9/11 at some point.Winston Churchill once talked in dark days, in the late 1930s, about the “confirmed unteachability of mankind,” and I think that’s what the decision to withdraw from Afghanistan reflects.
It’s Michael Kirk, Ambassador Bolton.We’ve talked to lots of people in lengthy interviews like this who tell us that, vis-à-vis American values, especially trust in the government, that something sad and fundamental has happened.And they’re pretty hard on Colin Powell, very hard on the government through the weapons of mass destruction campaign, where they essentially say the American people were flat-out lied to.Could you respond as forcefully as you feel like responding to the people who make this argument?
Look, the American people were not lied to about our intelligence on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.They may think that they were, but they are mistaken.In terms of trust in the government, you know, when you lose trust based on a complete misconception, I don’t know how to respond to that.I would simply say, trust has been lost in the American government a lot of different times in a lot of different contexts.Look at Watergate—loss of trust in the government?My goodness, that was a catastrophic, end to a long period of trust in the government, resulting in the only resignation of a president in our history, and would have resulted in conviction upon impeachment if Nixon hadn’t resigned.That’s loss of trust on a cosmic scale.
But, you know, this idea that the Bush administration consciously lied about the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq is fundamentally wrong.Mistakes were obviously made.I think the most important mistake, as the Silberman-Robb Commission concluded, was believing Saddam Hussein claiming that he had massive stocks of chemical weapons.Our concern about chemical weapons was not based on intelligence.It was based on the declaration Saddam Hussein made to the United Nations after the first Gulf War, when he claimed huge supplies of chemical weapons.
When U.N. weapons inspectors went to him and said, “OK, we’re here to destroy the chemical weapons,” the Iraqis said, “We’ve already destroyed them.”The U.N. weapons inspectors said, “Fine.Show us the records.Let’s look at the locations where they were destroyed.Let us talk to the scientists and technicians who destroyed them.”And Saddam Hussein said, “No, we destroyed them.You’ll have to take our word for it.”
I will tell you, as of the time of the attack on Iraq, there was nobody in any serious position who did not believe Iraq had chemical weapons.I can remember being in debates with people who said, “If you invade Iraq they’ll use the chemical weapons.Your invasion will bring about the use of the chemical weapons.”They didn’t say there are no chemical weapons.Everybody believed that Saddam had them, and they believed that the convincing evidence of that was he refused to make available the evidence of their destruction.
Hans Blix, former chairman of the IAEA and the head U.N. weapons inspector, said to the Iraqis at the time, “You’ve got to show us the records.This stuff isn’t marmalade,” he said.“We want to see the records that show you’ve destroyed it.”There weren’t any records.Now, was it a mistake to believe that Saddam Hussein had chemicals ready for use as weapons simply because he said so and lied about that?And because he said he had destroyed them, he said that to the U.N. weapons inspectors, and lied about that, and lied about it to his own general, who believed that, while they didn’t have chemical weapons, the general next door did.He lied, and he lied, and he lied.And we believed him.That was a mistake.But it was not based on a mistake about an intelligence, and it was not a lie to the American people.
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