American Experience (1988) s32e06 Episode Script

1
ANNOUNCER:
Tonight on
"American Experience,"
a two-night event.
He had taken office
after one of the closest
and most controversial elections
in the nation's history.
DAN RATHER:
CBS News special report
the United States Supreme Court
has reached a decision
in the case of Bush v. Gore.
ANNOUNCER:
His opponents claimed
he had risen to the top
only because
he was his father's son.
WAYNE SLATER:
His life was a pattern,
and part of that pattern
was duplicating
his father's successes.
DOUG WEAD:
Inside the family,
I think they were
a little nervous
because they were afraid
he'd fail at it.
And he knew that,
which drove him on all the more.
LAWRENCE WRIGHT:
He was an incredibly
disciplined candidate.
JOSH BOLTEN:
One of the best one-on-one
politicians of the modern age.
(explosions boom)
STEPHEN HADLEY:
While he campaigned
as a domestic president,
he was now going to be
a wartime president.
ANNOUNCER:
During two terms as president,
George W. Bush would soar
to the heights of popularity
BUSH:
I can hear you
ANNOUNCER:
then plummet to the depths
of public disfavor.
PETER BAKER:
He has been beset by so many
crises, so many challenges,
that it would have been
overwhelming
to almost anyone else.
GEORGE PACKER:
He wanted to be a great figure
in history
and to be
on the side of the angels.
ROBERT DRAPER:
The president's virtues and
vices were one and the same.
He's the big-picture visionary
who won't pay attention
to the details when he needs to.
BUSH:
I hear the voices,
and I read the front page,
and I know the speculation,
but I'm the decider,
and I decide what is best.
♪
ANNOUNCER:
"George W. Bush."
Part one begins tonight.
Part one begins tonight.
ANNOUNCER:
This program contains content
which may not be suitable
for all audiences.
Viewer discretion is advised.
BETTY ONG (on radio):
The cockpit's not answering.
Somebody's stabbed
in business class.
And, um, I think there is Mace.
That we can't breathe.
I don't know,
I think we're getting hijacked.
WOMAN:
Which flight are you on?
ONG:
Boston to Los Angeles.
Hello?
MOHAMMED ATTA:
Nobody move, everything
will be okay.
If you try to make any moves,
you will injure yourself
and the airplane.
Just stay quiet.
MAN:
We have ah, a problem here.
We have a hijacked aircraft
headed towards New York.
MAN 2:
Is, is this real-world
or exercise?
MAN 1:
No, this is not an exercise,
not a test.
(siren blares in distance)
(cameras clicking,
people talking in background)
ARI FLEISCHER:
September 11 unfolded
from clear blue skies,
perfect, cool weather
in Florida.
The president went
for an early-morning jog.
MAN:
How far did you go
altogether?
Four-and-a-half.
Four-and-a-half miles?
I think so.
MICHAEL MORELL:
I went down to get
into the president's motorcade,
and it was on the ride from the
hotel to the elementary school
that the first plane hit.
I remember Ari turning around
in the van and saying,
"Michael, do you know anything
about a plane
hitting the World Trade Center?"
DAN BARTLETT:
We were just pulling up
to the school
when the first tower
had been hit.
He had a quizzical look
on his face.
"Was it bad weather?"
You know, he was a pilot
Didn't make sense.
SANDRA KAY DANIELS:
Get ready!
CHILDREN: More!
DANIELS:
Yes, more!
Get ready!
CHILDREN: Might!
DANIELS:
Yes, might! Get ready!
NARRATOR:
While President Bush sat
in the Emma Booker Elementary
School classroom
in Sarasota, Florida,
his staff was scrambling
for information.
At just after 9:00 a.m.,
Chief of Staff Andy Card
interrupted the reading.
The teacher told the students
to take out their books,
and I whispered
into his right ear:
"A second plane
hit the second tower.
America is under attack."
FLEISCHER:
So I wrote on the back
of a yellow legal pad,
"Don't say anything yet."
I put my back to the press corps
and I flashed the card
to the president.
He made one of those little nods
like that.
MAN:
Thank you, press
if you can step out the door
we came in, please.
MAN 2:
Mr. President,
are you aware of the reports
of the plane crash in New York?
We'll talk about it later.
MAN 1:
Thank you, all
if you could step out
the door we came in.
FLEISCHER:
And then we got the press
out of the room
where the reading
was being done,
assembled in the holding room.
♪
BARTLETT:
Immediately, we have
what is commonly called
"the fog of war."
FLEISCHER:
As the president's
on a secure phone,
the rest of us are working
our phones,
trying to figure out
what we can figure out,
starting to work on a statement
for the president to deliver.
It was controlled chaos
in that room,
and it was information gathering
under immense, immense pressure.
WOMAN (on phone):
I saw a large plane, a jet,
go immediately headed directly
into the World Trade Center.
It, it just flew into it,
into the into the other tower,
coming from south to north.
I watched the planes fly
into the World Trade Center.
REPORTER:
We're just getting
initial reports of that.
And again, we must tell you
that we're trying to get
as much information,
but it is trickling in.
NARRATOR:
After a brief televised address,
Bush and his entourage sped
toward the Sarasota airport.
(sirens blaring, horns beeping)
Normally, a motorcade goes,
like, 40 miles an hour.
We got on the highway,
and we were doing
85 miles an hour.
Little was said.
NARRATOR:
In the car,
Bush learned a third plane
had been hijacked,
and flown into the Pentagon.
The phone rang.
And the president picked it up
and began talking.
And I could only hear one side
of the conversation,
but I knew it was bad when
he said, "Is Rumsfeld alive?"
MORELL:
We got back to the airport,
and I remember seeing
Air Force One
ringed by Secret Service agents
with automatic weapons visible.
And I had never seen that
before.
I remember getting on the plane,
and I remember the plane
taking off
much more rapidly
than it usually took off
and ascending
at a very steep angle.
FLEISCHER:
The president wanted to get back
to Washington.
He thought it was important
for the nation
to see the president
back in Washington.
At the same time,
it was the last thing
the Secret Service
would ever want to happen.
RICHARD CLARKE:
We did not want to bring
the president back
into what, frankly,
was a war zone.
There were F-15s
circling the White House,
armored vehicles, like tanks.
The Pentagon had blown up.
Most of the city
had been evacuated.
We didn't know
what was yet to happen.
The White House
might be a target
for such an airplane attack.
Everybody back.
NARRATOR:
In the president's absence
from Washington,
Vice President Dick Cheney
assumed operational control
of the federal government
from a secret bunker
under the White House,
where he was patched through
to Air Force One.
JOSHUA BOLTEN:
There were several occasions
when the vice president
was talking to the president,
and they got cut off.
The communications were,
were frustratingly primitive.
NARRATOR:
Straining to hear each other,
Bush and Cheney
discussed what to do
with planes still in the air,
some of which
were not communicating
with ground control.
Bush directed Cheney
to ground every flight
in U.S. airspace.
But one plane
did not heed the order.
BOLTEN:
United Flight 93 was not
responding to communications
and was now headed
toward Washington, DC.
NARRATOR:
After consulting with Cheney,
Bush authorized fighter jets
to shoot down United Flight 93.
BOLTEN:
It was quiet around the table,
because everybody appreciated
the gravity of that moment.
We were dispatching
the U.S. military
to shoot down
a civilian aircraft
loaded with innocent Americans.
MAN (on radio):
The region commander
has declared
that we can shoot down aircraft
that do not respond
to our directions copy that?
MAN 2:
Copy that, sir.
MAN 3:
Vice president has cleared.
BOLTEN:
We didn't hear anything
about what happened to it
for some time,
until eventually,
we heard that it turned out
that it was a bunch
of brave American civilians
who, who brought that plane down
on their own.
NARRATOR:
Although the president insisted
on returning to Washington,
the Secret Service
remained adamant
that it was not yet safe.
After a brief stop to refuel
in Louisiana,
Air Force One,
flying at 45,000 feet
and zig-zagging to avoid
a possible missile attack,
headed for Offutt Air Force Base
in Omaha, Nebraska.
CLARKE:
We put him in one of the most
secure places we could,
the headquarters
of Strategic Command.
We had a video set up
so that we could talk to him,
and we could see him
walking into the bunker.
Very determined.
He sat down, and before
anybody could say anything,
he looked at us,
up on the TV screens,
and said,
"I am coming back to Washington.
"Don't argue with me.
I'm coming back now!"
NARRATOR:
By 4:30 p.m.,
Air Force One
was headed back to Washington.
BARTLETT:
I'll never forget the images
arriving into DC airspace
on Air Force One,
with two fighter jets so close
to our wings,
you could see the stubble
of the beard of the pilot.
And then to look down
on our nation's capital,
and it just be deserted,
and seeing smoke
billowing out of the Pentagon.
You could have heard a pin drop
on that airplane.
In all the chaos,
it was eerily silent.
(people talking in background)
NARRATOR:
Finally back at the White House,
Bush and his team readied
the most important speech
of his presidency so far,
which he would deliver
to the nation that night.
BARTLETT:
There was a lot of debate
internally
about what was
the appropriate message.
It was certainly clear
to President Bush
that his presidency
was fundamentally altered
on that day.
WOMAN:
Two minutes.
♪
BUSH:
Today our fellow citizens,
our way of life
Our very freedom
Came under attack
in a series of deliberate
and deadly terrorist acts.
NARRATOR:
Midway through the speech,
Bush made a statement
that would lay the groundwork
for a sweeping war on terror,
shifting the course
of American foreign policy
and defining his presidency.
We will make no distinction
between the terrorists
who committed these acts
and those who harbor them.
NARRATOR:
In the span
of just over 12 hours,
a president who had been scorned
as inexperienced and unprepared,
overshadowed by his father,
and unappreciated
by the country,
had been thrust into a crisis
the likes of which
few presidents had ever faced.
FLEISCHER:
He became a war president,
as he would put it.
The nation rallied
because we were attacked,
but I think the nation
also had question marks
about its nine-month-long
president at that point.
Who are you?
What will you do?
♪
♪
NARRATOR:
Little in the past
of George Walker Bush
had prepared him
for the challenges
he would face after 9/11,
nor inspire much confidence
that he could rise to them.
WAYNE SLATER:
George Bush was almost
the perfect example,
if not the wastrel,
the profligate kid,
the good-time Charlie,
the wonderfully engaging friend
and fraternity brother
that you've met
a thousand times.
What he wasn't,
at least to my mind,
was someone who would emerge
as governor of Texas
or president
of the United States.
NARRATOR:
In 1970, 24-year-old George Bush
was far
from the Washington fast track
Often found poolside
at Chateaux Dijon,
an apartment complex catering
to the young and single,
where he lived in Houston.
CHARLIE YOUNGER:
He was kind of drifting,
to be honest with you.
I don't think he had a focus
on where he was heading.
I don't think he had
a regular job, you know,
that was a career path for him.
He had to figure out
what he wanted to do,
and he wasn't doing it
very quickly.
Mostly, he was drinking,
carousing, and having fun.
ROBERT McCLESKEY:
He'd drink too much,
and he could really be obnoxious
when he drank too much.
For lack of a better word,
he could be a real
ass (no audio) when he drank.
♪
NARRATOR:
Bush's father,
George Herbert Walker Bush,
was a political star
in the Republican Party.
PETER BAKER:
At this point, his father is
in a succession
of appointed jobs
from Richard Nixon
and Gerald Ford:
ambassador
to the United Nations,
Republican Party chairman,
ambassador to China,
and, finally, C.I.A. director.
BUSH:
It's a whole new realm of life
for my dad and our family.
Having been in elected politics,
you kind of deal in one area,
and now in
international politics,
it's just I think it's just,
it's going to add
so much more breadth
to this man's life,
it's just fantastically
exciting.
BAKER:
He is at the height
of American government.
In diplomacy, foreign policy,
he's dealing
with weighty issues.
And back home,
his son is trying
to find himself.
NARRATOR:
Father and son
were often at odds
over W's waywardness.
The situation reached
its breaking point
during the Christmas holidays
in 1972.
After a night of heavy drinking,
Bush crashed into his
neighbor's garbage cans.
His 16-year-old brother Marvin
was in the car.
When his parents confronted him,
Bush revealed
a seething resentment,
challenging his father
to a fight.
The father was always
measuring the son,
and the measuring, of course,
is what makes it so hard
for, you know, the firstborn
of a, of a storied family.
They share a name,
they share a family,
they share a legacy.
It is possible to overstate
the level of tension there,
but it is important
to understanding who they are.
NARRATOR:
W, or Little George,
as his family called him,
was born
in New Haven, Connecticut,
on July 6, 1946,
while his father was studying
at Yale.
BAKER:
His father is from a family
that mixed with the Roosevelts
and the Vanderbilts
and the, and the elites
of American society.
No pressure.
(laughs)
Right?
But here is the inheritor
of a dynasty, in effect.
RON SUSKIND:
My God,
George W. Bush grows up with
this insanely accomplished dad.
He's the captain
of every team he's on,
from Yale baseball on forward.
BAKER:
His father was
the youngest Navy aviator
in the Pacific.
He was shot down over the ocean.
Two of his crewmates died.
He survived,
and is rescued by a submarine.
NARRATOR:
After graduating from Yale,
George H.W. Bush
or Poppy, as he was called
in the family
set about building up
his own fortune,
moving his wife, Barbara,
and young son from Connecticut
to Midland-Odessa, Texas,
where the oil was gushing.
BILL MINUTAGLIO:
This wasn't, you know,
Connecticut.
They parachuted
into a foreign country.
It was just a culture shock,
and out in far West Texas,
where people literally
were chewing tobacco,
where, literally, tumbleweeds
would come tumbling by.
♪
NARRATOR:
But Little George was
very much at home in Texas.
"The word I'd use is idyllic,"
he recalled
of his childhood home.
"When I would speak
about the American Dream,
it was Midland I had in mind."
In 1953,
tragedy would strike the family,
when Bush's
three-year-old sister Robin died
after battling leukemia.
Barbara Bush fell
into a deep depression.
BAKER:
His father responded
by working even harder
and not being around very much,
so it was left to George W.
To be the comfort to his mother.
He told jokes, he cracked wise,
he was trying
to get her to smile.
And it became a lifelong trait
for him, you know
the cut-up, the class clown.
He was a bit of a scamp,
he was a bit of a troublemaker.
He got in trouble when he was
caught with a cigarette,
he got in trouble
when he crashed the family car,
when he was 14 twice.
NARRATOR:
"Georgie aggravates the hell
out of me at times,"
an exasperated Poppy
would complain.
"But then at times, I am
so proud of him, I could die."
Like all Bush boys,
George was sent to prep school
at Phillips Academy
in Massachusetts.
Unable to match
his father's exploits
on the baseball diamond,
Bush concentrated
on his social skills,
becoming head cheerleader.
Upon graduation,
he followed two previous
generations of Bushes
to Yale University.
BAKER:
He doesn't have
his father's history,
he doesn't have his father's
academic or athletic skills,
so he becomes
a student of people
a student of other kids.
CLAY JOHNSON:
Well, he is a people person.
He was friendly,
warm, humorous, uh,
but had this fantastic,
genuine interest in people.
NARRATOR:
Bush spent most of his time
at Yale
drinking, socializing,
and studiously ignoring
the growing discord
in the country
over the war in Vietnam.
But by 1968, Bush's senior year,
he could no longer hold
the outside world at bay.
(people yelling and chanting
in background)
NARRATOR:
Bush knew that
with commencement,
he would lose
the academic deferment
that had shielded him
from the draft.
♪
In his heart of hearts, he
did not want to go to Vietnam.
But he knew damn well
that his father's next step
had been to join the military
and then become a war hero.
NARRATOR:
To avoid combat in Vietnam,
Bush joined the
147th Texas Air National Guard,
along with other sons of wealthy
and well-connected Texans.
Though Bush proved
an able pilot,
he was never tested in battle.
The 147th, it was said,
would only see action
if Oklahoma decided
to invade Texas.
MINUTAGLIO:
Some people derisively called it
a champagne unit.
Certainly, Bush had help getting
into the National Guard.
It was a matter
of privilege and access.
NARRATOR:
Decades later,
questions would surface
whether Bush had pulled strings
to join the 147th,
and whether he left
before fulfilling his full term.
But in 1970,
he was honorably discharged,
a fighter pilot
who had never seen combat.
At each stage, you know,
he's following
his dad's footsteps.
Each stage,
never as successful as the dad.
NARRATOR:
With little direction
of his own,
Bush remained on the course
his father had set,
this time seeking his fortune
in the Texas oil fields.
After earning an MBA from
Harvard Business School in 1975,
W procured some seed money
from the family
and returned to Midland.
SLATER:
It was an opportunity
to duplicate
his father's success
in the oil business.
But it was also a place,
I think,
he felt comfortable immediately.
"This is who I am.
"I'm a guy
who's wearing cowboy boots.
"I'm a guy
who knows what a pumpjack is
"and can go down
to the Midland diner
and eat with anyone."
YOUNGER:
Probably was tired of
Drifting, if that's a good term.
So he came to Midland
with a singular focus, I think.
♪
NARRATOR:
In Midland,
Bush formed
his own oil exploration company
named Arbusto,
Spanish for "bush."
He drilled across West Texas
looking for a big strike.
But as he worked to get Arbusto
off the ground,
W found himself tempted by yet
another Bush family tradition.
I'm George Bush,
running for the Congress.
I'm George Bush
YOUNGER:
This group of conservative
Midland oil men
thought he would be
a good candidate.
They, they encouraged him
to run,
and, and he accepted
the challenge,
and he was a natural.
SLATER:
While it was way premature
for someone
who, relatively speaking,
just got there,
his life was a pattern,
and part of that pattern
was duplicating
the father's successes,
but at the same time
defining himself,
in the West Texas tradition,
as his own man.
♪
NARRATOR:
A few weeks
after announcing his candidacy,
Bush attended
a backyard barbecue
where a pretty, young librarian
named Laura Welch
caught his eye.
"If there is
love at first sight,"
Bush would later write,
"this was it."
McCLESKEY:
I don't know, you know,
that anybody would have put them
together at all.
They just were two totally
different personalities.
Like I say, you know,
most people that knew
both of them were surprised.
This is clearly a case
of opposites attracting
the quiet, somewhat shy,
introverted school librarian
meets up with the
wise-cracking, rough-edged,
cowboy persona,
hard-drinking George Bush.
As he put it, she was beautiful,
she was elegant, she was smart,
and he said,
"She accepted my rough edges
and helped to smooth them."
NARRATOR:
No sooner had they married
than the couple was back out
on the road,
driving the West Texas district
from Lubbock to Abilene.
BUSH:
That campaign was
my first year of my marriage.
It was just like honeymooning
on the campaign trail.
I feel sure I can be
an effective congressman.
I'll listen to you,
I'll work hard for you,
and I'll introduce
and vote for legislation
that's in our best interests.
Together, we can do a lot
for West Texas.
BAKER:
He was running against
a Democrat named Kent Hance,
and Hance just portrayed him
as a as an outsider,
somebody from New England,
and Bush has to prove himself
as being an authentic Texan.
HANCE:
We put a theme of, you know,
"I'm one of you,
and he's not."
Uh, "He's an outsider."
We tried to make it a race
of Texas Tech versus Yale.
BAKER:
He has to answer for it.
He has to answer
for this New England family
he's trying to escape from
in some ways.
NARRATOR:
With Poppy's help,
W's campaign broke
Texas state fundraising records,
but along with the money
came charges of nepotism.
You look at the four fundraisers
he's had,
and the fact
that his dad's there,
that definitely helps him
raise money.
It you know,
it's amazing to me
that here we are, running
for an important position,
and we're now talking
about whether or not people
in the 19th congressional
district
are confusing me with my dad.
NARRATOR:
Although the race was closer
than anyone expected,
Bush's congressional run ended
in defeat.
HANCE:
He used to say
that we tried
to "good-old-boy" him to death.
Uh, we did "good-old-boy" him,
but, but I'll say this.
After the race was over,
he said he'd never be
out- "good-old-boyed" again
in the state of Texas.
NARRATOR:
After his congressional loss,
W returned to the oil business,
now suffering
through a prolonged slump.
George and Laura were also
struggling to start a family,
and had begun interviews with
a Fort Worth adoption agency.
They were well into the process
when Laura learned she was
pregnant with twin girls.
Jenna and Barbara Bush
were born in 1981,
each named after a grandmother.
With a young family
to provide for,
Bush felt ever more pressured
to make a big strike,
and ever more frustrated
by his repeated failures.
His company, some joked,
should change its name
from Arbusto to Ar-bust-o.
YOUNGER:
It's very risky.
I mean, you know,
you can be a millionaire one day
and absolutely broke
the next day.
It was always better to be
lucky than, than good.
I mean, let's face it,
he wasn't particularly lucky.
He's ranked, I think,
in the 995th-biggest oil company
in Texas
or something like that.
At one point, he says,
"I'm all name and no money."
MICHAEL GERSON:
I think his friends and family,
when he was nearly 40 years old,
were worried about what he was
going to do with his life.
He drank too much and he had
very little direction.
NARRATOR:
Feeling lost,
Bush began to attend
a weekly Bible study session
at the suggestion
of some friends.
The program was called
Community Bible Study
and was a scriptural boot camp.
He's looking for something,
right?
He's seeking out direction,
meaning, understanding.
Religion begins to give him
that definition,
that path forward.
SLATER:
The oil business
was up and down,
and there was a kind of
spiritual sense in Midland,
and an understanding
that things go down,
but they will go up,
and that, fundamentally,
you must have faith,
and part of that faith
was a Christian faith.
He transitioned
from a churchgoer
to a Christ follower,
and wanted to emulate
the tenets and teachings
of Jesus Christ,
and he made
a definite transformation there.
♪
NARRATOR:
Armed with a newfound faith,
Bush finally addressed
one of his lifelong demons
Alcohol.
The decisive moment would come
after Bush's 40th
birthday party.
He woke up hungover,
he'd overdone it
the night before,
and he didn't feel good,
and I think Laura told him
that he could have
behaved better.
He just said,
"I don't need this in my life.
It's robbing me of my energy."
You know, "It's taking
too much of my time."
BUSH:
Well, I quit
because at times, I thought,
you know,
I like to drink too much.
Somebody said,
"Well, can you think of any day
you hadn't had a beer?"
And, uh I couldn't.
YOUNGER:
I think another big factor is,
he didn't want to be
an embarrassment to his dad.
And it's always been
a driving force in his life.
NARRATOR:
After serving two terms
as Ronald Reagan's
vice president,
George H.W. Bush was
the G.O.P.'s leading candidate
for the
1988 presidential election.
With a White House bid
would come increased scrutiny
of the entire Bush family.
BAKER:
His father was gearing up
to run for president.
A bad incident by his son
would reflect terribly
on the father.
It's that fear
that helps him
finally get his act together.
He sells his oil business,
he moved to Washington,
and he joins the campaign.
And he has no title.
His dad says,
"You don't need a title,
you're my son."
BUSH:
Victory time!
MAN:
Oh, but your hand looks good.
BUSH:
What time is it?
Victory time!
This is the non-political part
of this.
BAKER:
This is a moment that begins
to change their relationship.
His father begins
to trust his son
and give him responsibility,
knowing he can rely on him.
For W, he begins to sort of
shed some of the baggage
that had been there in the past.
REPORTER:
George Bush is
the 41st president
of the United States.
DOUG WEAD:
After the '88 election,
he started talking
about who's going to go where,
who on the staff is going to go
to the inaugural committee,
who's going to go
to the White House,
and in the middle
of that conversation,
he pauses, and he says,
"What's going to happen to me?"
First child of the first family,
George Bush, Jr.!
(crowd cheering and applauding)
R.G. RATCLIFFE:
There was sort of a push
for both him and his brother Jeb
to go into politics.
The family kind of favored Jeb.
George had been sort of
the ne'er-do-well son.
Jeb is our politician.
He's the
Republican county chairman
of Dade County, Florida Miami.
You oughta ask Jeb,
don't skip him.
NARRATOR:
W felt overlooked
and unappreciated.
"My pool has been expanded
so much
because of who my dad is,"
Bush would tell a reporter.
"The advantage is
that everybody knows who I am.
"The disadvantage is, no matter
how great my accomplishments,
no one is going to give me
credit for them."
While his father prepared
to move into the White House,
Bush returned to Texas,
and for the first time,
set out on a course of his own.
SLATER:
The opportunity came up to buy
the Texas Rangers baseball team.
And there was no question,
I think, in his mind
that there was
a political calculus
in the sense
that this can't hurt.
We're fixing to build
the greatest baseball park
ever built.
He didn't have enough
to buy a baseball team,
so what he does is,
he does what he does best
He networks.
Pulls together
tens of millions of dollars
by other people's money.
He becomes sort of
this fixture at the ballpark.
SLATER:
Bush, being Bush,
put on
his Texas Rangers cowboy boots,
and got a seat
not up in the box,
not where the owners
usually sit,
but down there
where the rest of the fans sat,
and that's where he was,
game after game.
It really is
the most fabulous place to watch
baseball ever built.
SLATER:
And he became
a really beloved figure
for the Texas Rangers.
Now Bush could say,
"I did this on my own,
I'm my own man."
YOUNGER:
There was one little other
subtle thing,
that while he was partner
with the Rangers,
he went to all 254 counties
in the state of Texas
in the name
of promoting Ranger baseball,
but he was also getting
name recognition
in all 254 counties,
and I think
that would fend him well
in any future
statewide political run.
I think that was another motive.
NARRATOR:
In 1992, Poppy's long
political career
came to an abrupt
and shocking end
with his re-election defeat
by the dynamic
Arkansas governor,
Bill Clinton.
There is important work
to be done,
and America must always
come first.
(chanting): Thank you, George!
Thank you very much,
look
PERRY:
The loss to Bill Clinton
was a blow to the whole family.
I just don't think
they ever thought
that the war hero
George H.W. Bush,
the statesman that he was,
could lose to the Baby Boomer,
draft-dodging,
marijuana-smoking Bill Clinton.
They were devastated by it.
But as one door closes,
another door opens.
It turns out
that for George W. Bush,
this would be the door opener
for him.
NARRATOR:
Just days after
his little brother Jeb
declared his candidacy
for governor of Florida,
W announced his own in Texas.
Let's make it official.
WOMAN:
All right!
I'm a candidate
for governor of Texas.
NARRATOR:
He would be challenging
Ann Richards,
the popular Democrat incumbent
and longtime nemesis
of the Bush family.
BAKER:
And he's going to run
against the very person,
Ann Richards,
Democratic governor,
who had mocked his dad
So viciously, in his view
at the Democratic convention.
Poor George.
(crowd laughing)
He was born
with a silver foot in his mouth.
YOUNGER:
A lot of people,
myself included,
thought that she'd be very hard
to beat.
But
He said, "I'm going to run,
and I'm going to beat her."
I think that he wanted
to even that score.
RATCLIFFE:
Ann Richards was
a stage persona.
I mean, she was charismatic,
electric,
she was funny,
she was quick-witted.
(gun fires)
And she could be really mean.
You know, I have a fella
who is challenging me
for governor,
and I am sure
(crowd booing, shouting)
And I, I really and truly
and I've said many times
I know he means well,
and if he would start by running
for the city council or for
(crowd cheering and applauding)
WEAD:
Inside the family,
I think they were
a little nervous,
because they were afraid
he'd fail at it.
And he knew that,
which drove him on all the more.
NARRATOR:
On the surface,
Richards looked unbeatable,
an incumbent
with an approval rating
in the high 60s.
But Bush had an edge
the help of a clever Republican
strategist named Karl Rove.
Rove was a longtime associate
of Poppy's,
and one of the most formidable
and ruthless strategists
in the country.
He had been captivated by W
since their first meeting
in the 1970s.
In walks this guy in his
National Guard Air flight jacket
wearing cowboy boots and Levis.
He exuded more charisma
than anybody should
and he was smart as heck.
I mean, I know the,
you know, the reputation,
the good old boy from Midland,
the village idiot.
But here's a Yale history major
and a Harvard MBA.
LAWRENCE WRIGHT:
He was a screw-up at the time.
Karl saw something in Bush
before anybody else did.
He was smitten.
NARRATOR:
W was central
to Karl Rove's vision
of a solid red Texas
someone who could appeal
to centrist Democrats
and Republicans alike.
For Bush,
Rove was the strategic brain
who could take him
to the political heights
he dreamed of.
LOUIS DUBOSE:
I mean, Karl Rove was Pygmalion,
and he created George W. Bush.
He saw that this was
a kind of ruggedly handsome guy,
young man,
who could be groomed
for something greater.
He convinced George Bush
that he was that candidate,
and then he made him
that candidate.
I have spent
11 long, long joyous months
campaigning all over the state.
My mission was to tell Texans
that there is another
George Bush in this state.
And I have been able to do so.
(cheering)
SLATER:
The only thing
George W. Bush doesn't have
is any knowledge
of how government works.
And so what Rove did is,
recruited experts
and put Bush onto a series
of lessons
that went for months
in which he learned
about the budget,
and he learned about taxes,
and he learned
how to answer questions.
Every politician,
if they're smart,
recognizes they need help.
He kept going around saying,
"I'm a capitalist!"
You know, "Mr. Bush,
"you maybe oughta stop
saying, 'Capitalist, '
"and start saying,
'I believe in free enterprise
and I'm a businessman.'"
SLATER:
Ann Richards knew
that George W. Bush
could run a good race
against her,
but she underestimated him
because she thought he was dumb.
He just relished that, and,
and
He's self-confident enough that
he didn't let that get to him.
He made fun of it,
and was able
to let it roll off his back.
Unless you can put
a dollar figure
to what you propose,
and then tell the people
how you are going to pay for it,
you are being inexperienced
at the cost of the taxpayers
of Texas.
The incumbent governor
of the State of Texas
is spending all her money on TV
trying to make me
something I'm not.
We ought to be discussing
welfare reform,
juvenile justice, education,
ways to make Texas
a better place for our children.
NARRATOR:
Bush's discipline
took the Richards campaign
by surprise.
WRIGHT:
One thing that Bush
was capable of doing
is staying on message.
He just never went
outside the lines.
He was an incredibly
disciplined candidate.
NARRATOR:
By election day,
he was polling higher
than anyone
had thought possible.
Running for governor
was important to Bush
for his own self-validation:
to win an office,
do it on his own,
and kind of prove to his parents
that he could be
as good as Jeb was.
Thank you all very much.
REPORTER:
Their younger son Jeb
lost a close race
for the governor of Florida
RATCLIFFE:
Uh, surprise, surprise,
Jeb lost and George won.
REPORTER:
A race that was supposed to last
well into the night
was over early.
(chanting)
ROVE:
Lots of people are cheering
and getting excited.
Lots of friends of his
are in the room,
and he wants to go talk
to his parents.
So, he motions to me,
and he walks into the,
to the bathroom,
and he calls up his dad.
It's clear his father's
just in complete meltdown
about Jeb losing.
(chuckling):
And finally, the now
governor-to-be of Texas, said,
"Well, Dad, I won."
(crowd cheering)
NARRATOR:
On January 17, 1995,
George W. Bush was sworn in
as governor of Texas.
So help me God.
(crowd cheering and applauding)
NARRATOR:
Bush was just the second
Republican governor
elected in Texas
in over 100 years.
He would soon
have to hold his own
against the entrenched
Democratic powers
who ran the state legislature
with an iron hand.
ROVE:
The governor of Texas
is constitutionally weak.
The speaker and, particularly,
the lieutenant governor
are all-powerful.
Literally, no bill
can be brought up
without the permission of the,
of the lieutenant governor.
Lieutenant governor
was Bob Bullock,
who was strong
as an acre of garlic.
DUBOSE:
He was meaner than a snake.
He was intimidating.
Senators described
his drive-by ass-chewings.
NARRATOR:
To Bullock's surprise,
Bush approached him
with an olive branch.
BARTLETT:
George W. Bush
didn't come in
acting like he knew everything.
He listened.
And, and I think Bullock
probably didn't expect that.
DUBOSE:
George W. Bush
and Karl Rove seduced him.
They courted him,
they worked him.
And he came to hold Bush
in really high regard,
and in the end, was something
of a political godfather.
NARRATOR:
With Bullock's support,
Bush sailed
through his first term,
easily fending off
a Democratic challenger
for re-election
in 1998.
WRIGHT:
It was Bob Bullock
who was the first person
to declare,
on Bush's 50th birthday,
"We're looking at the next
president of the United States."
Nobody had ever said that.
And, it was a Democrat
it was the leading Democrat
in the state.
It was a kind of anointing.
You bet, I'm glad to hi.
NARRATOR:
By the mid-1990s,
the one-time good old boy,
the Bush family's black sheep,
was being seriously discussed
as a Republican
presidential candidate.
I got a call one day from a,
from a reporter,
and they were asking me
about a poll
"that shows your boss
as the frontrunner to be
the G.O.P. nominee
for president."
I made a beeline for his office,
and he said, "What?"
We were both
kind of incredulous.
And then it sort of
snowballed from there.
WRIGHT:
People began to look at him
as a presidential contender,
but he thought he wasn't ready.
He told his friends that,
you know,
he felt
like a cork in the river,
that it was just,
it was carrying him along,
almost without his own volition.
(crowd cheering and applauding)
BUSH:
I come here
under no illusions.
I know expectations
are sky-high.
But I got a pretty good reminder
about life its own self
when my daughter,
one of our twins, said,
"Daddy,
I've been reading the polls.
You're not nearly as cool
as the people think you are."
ROVE:
We built up
a gigantic fundraising apparatus
outside of Texas.
So we went to California,
we went to New York.
We took his dad's network.
BUSH:
I'm running for
president of the United States.
There's no turning back.
He had Harvard Business School
classmates
that were being successful
all around the country.
And I intend to be
the next
president of the United States.
ROVE:
Baseball friends.
We, we had his brother's network
by then.
There was an early announcement
of the campaign contributions.
And it was stunning.
It was so many
millions of dollars
that was simply beyond anything
anybody expected.
NARRATOR:
By the summer of 2000,
Bush had built an insurmountable
lead in the Republican race.
But as he accepted
the nomination of his party,
he knew he faced
an uphill battle
to defeat
the Democratic candidate,
Vice President Al Gore.
BAKER:
Al Gore is running
to succeed a popular president.
Bill Clinton had been impeached,
but his approval ratings
were in the 60s.
So once again,
Bush is kind of taking on,
in effect, an underdog role.
NARRATOR:
Bush had always done best
when least was expected.
In the fall of 2000,
he took to the campaign trail
criss-crossing the country
with the energy
of a Texas twister.
BAKER:
He felt very comfortable
on the campaign trail.
He enjoyed it,
he enjoyed being with people.
He is a classic extrovert
in that sense
he got energy from other people.
We need a leader to bring
Republicans and Democrats
together to reform
BOLTEN:
One of the best
one-on-one politicians
of the modern age.
It was always a frustration
to those of us
who worked for him
that that didn't always
communicate through mass media.
NARRATOR:
While Bush shined
when face-to-face with voters,
on television, he often seemed
unready to be president.
BUSH:
If you're a single mother
with two children
which is the toughest job
in America,
as far as I'm concerned
and you're working hard
to put food on your family
The American public
was seeing someone
who had not spent
their entire life in politics.
I mean, he went into politics
as a middle-aged person,
and he didn't have
a set of acting skills
that a lot of other politicians
had developed over time,
so you did get certain gaffes.
I want to make it clear
to people that
You know, the idea of putting
"subliminable" messages into ads
is, is ridiculous.
We cannot let terrorists
and rogue nations
hold this nation hostile
or hold our allies hostile.
More nations have
"nucular" weapons,
and still more have
"nucular" aspirations.
(audience laughing)
That guy mispronounces
everything.
While his opponents howled
what a clown he was
I know that human being and fish
can coexist peacefully.
SLATER:
He never really worried
that this was
going to cost him a single vote.
People were gonna vote for him
because he, George W. Bush,
why, he's just like we are.
If you think about it,
it is quite a trick
for this man who was born
to wealth and power,
and this sort of most exclusive
echelon of American society,
to somehow convince
a lot of voters
that he was just a regular guy.
(crowd cheering)
NARRATOR:
His missteps also played
into a key strategy,
one that had served Bush well
for much of his political life
to set expectations low
and consistently surpass them.
But Bush knew his inexperience
was a vulnerability,
particularly on foreign policy
and national security.
INTERVIEWER:
The prime minister of India?
Uh, the new prime minister
of India is, uh
Uh no.
NARRATOR:
He'd need to compensate
by weighing his ticket
with a seasoned vice president,
someone with unquestionable
bona fides.
So I'm proud to announce
that Dick Cheney,
a man of great integrity,
sound judgment, and experience,
is my choice to be
the next vice president
of the United States.
(crowd cheers and applauds)
NARRATOR:
For Bush, there was only
one choice
Dick Cheney,
a veteran of Congress
who had served as his father's
secretary of defense.
There's no question as to what
drew Bush to Dick Cheney.
There were two qualities.
First, Cheney was experienced.
Second, Cheney did not have
presidential ambitions.
So Bush would never
have to look over his shoulder.
Thank you.
NARRATOR:
After initially declining,
Cheney finally agreed,
but only after
extracting a pledge
that he would be given
unprecedented power and access.
BARTON GELLMAN:
He would be welcome
into any meeting,
that he would have a strong
voice in foreign policy,
defense policy,
economic policies.
He turned it
into a much more attractive job
before he accepted it.
NARRATOR:
While the selection of Cheney
lent gravitas to the ticket,
Bush still needed to prove
that he could go toe-to-toe
with Gore.
The public saw
the two men square off
in the first of three
nationally televised debates.
As Bush took to the stage,
expectations
were at historic lows,
exactly where
he and Rove wanted them.
BARTLETT:
The most decisive moments
in a presidential campaign
always seem to come down
to the debates.
That's really where Al Gore
really got pretty bollocksed-up.
Well, we do
come from different places.
I come from West Texas
BAKER:
Al Gore is seen
rolling his eyes and sighing
at the things
that George W. Bush is saying,
and kind of looking down
at Bush,
who of course is not as
practiced or as knowledgeable
about national and international
issues as Gore is.
It looked kind of, you know,
condescending and,
and unappealing.
(audience applauding)
(crowd cheering)
NARRATOR:
As election day approached,
polls showed that Gore's once
significant lead had vanished,
and Bush had vaulted ahead.
The mood in Bush's camp
was ecstatic.
(cheering and applauding)
NARRATOR:
Then, with just days remaining,
a long-buried secret suddenly
surfaced in the national media.
BARTLETT:
It was actually a staffer
on my team who came to me,
and he says, "Hey, Bartlett,
"you're not going
to believe this,
"but there's
this Fox affiliate up there
who claims that they
have evidence of a D.U.I."
Obviously,
there's a report out tonight
that 24 years ago,
I was apprehended
in Kennebunkport, Maine,
for a D.U.I.
That's an accurate story.
I'm not proud of that,
and I, uh
I've oftentimes said
that years ago,
I made some mistakes,
I occasionally drank too much,
and I did on that night.
BARTLETT:
We always knew
this was going to be close.
But there was a sense
that weekend,
when you saw
the polling numbers,
that this hurt,
and that this was gonna make it
a real nail-biter.
NARRATOR:
The 11th-hour revelation
had hurt Bush,
but no one knew exactly
how much.
♪
On election night,
Bush retreated to Texas
with his family
to watch the returns.
ROVE:
He was at the governor's
mansion.
He's surrounded
by family and friends.
I was in my office
at the campaign.
Early returns come in,
obviously.
Indiana, Kentucky,
we're looking okay
We're looking good.
But Florida, you know,
Jeb had been nervous
about Florida,
and we're watching Florida.
And then we get
the early call on Florida.
A big call to make.
CNN announces that we call
Florida in the Al Gore column.
This is a state both campaigns
desperately wanted to win.
BOLTEN:
Karl believed,
and persuaded all of us,
that the networks were,
were getting it wrong.
BAKER:
They called it for Gore
at first,
and that looked like it was it.
That looked like it was over.
Stand by, uh,
CNN, right now, is moving
our earlier declaration
of Florida
back to the
too-close-to-call column.
BOLTEN:
Projections start changing
and it goes to, "We don't know,
Florida is a toss-up."
And then one of the networks
came out and called it for Bush.
REPORTER:
At 18 minutes past 2:00
Eastern Time,
CNN declares that
George Walker Bush has won
Florida's 25 electoral votes.
BOLTEN:
And I remember catching
Karl Rove's eye.
Even he, at that moment,
thought that the networks
had been premature.
ROVE:
It's one thing
to remove the call for Gore.
It's another thing
to call a state for Bush.
I don't see
where that's coming from.
(inhales)
But it's clear
Florida's gonna be tight, tight,
tight, tight, tight.
NARRATOR:
Certain that he'd lost
an agonizingly close race,
Al Gore called Bush
to concede the election.
BAKER:
Bush graciously accepts it
and says, "You ran a good race,
thanks very much."
But suddenly it's not over.
Suddenly, there are
more numbers coming in.
Call a doctor, call the police,
call a psychic.
In Florida, it's tightened up.
Only 37,000 votes now separate
George Bush and Al Gore,
49% to 49%.
And then all of a sudden,
the phone rang again.
And I remember hearing him just
sort of incredulously saying,
"You're retracting
your concession?"
It was unimaginable.
The vice president
has re-called the governor
and retracted his concession.
The last two months
of a campaign,
it feels like
you're running a marathon,
and the only thing that gets you
through those last two months
is the knowledge
that, come election day,
win or lose, at least it's over.
And they're basically saying,
"Keep running
and we'll let you know
when you can stop."
All right,
we're officially saying
that Florida is too close to
call because of a recall
of campaign and voter
Counters are being called back
to work
to count absentee ballots.
GERSON:
You know, a speechwriter
has to be prepared
for any eventuality.
We were prepared for victory,
we were prepared for defeat,
but we were not prepared
for that outcome.
NARRATOR:
By dawn the next morning,
the question of who would be
the country's next leader
was no clearer.
BUSH:
You know, I've fully prepared
to go out
and give a speech, and, uh
Thanking my supporters,
and, uh
He, he withdrew his, uh
His earlier comments,
and here we sit.
NARRATOR:
Overnight counting
had narrowed Bush's lead
to less than 1,800 votes
out of nearly six million cast
a statistical dead heat.
The race was so close
that a machine recount
was ordered for all
of Florida's 67 counties.
BUSH:
I feel like a man
who worked my heart out,
put out a positive message,
and, uh, and, uh
A person who is, uh
Looking forward
to a quick resolution
of, of the ballots
in the state of Florida.
ROVE:
But it was, like,
up and down, up and down,
up and down.
And the skies over Tallahassee
are filled with jets
of personal injury
trial lawyers,
delivering tons of lawyers
to Florida.
And the battle is on.
NARRATOR:
Much of the disputes
centered on the minutiae
of imperfectly cast ballots
holes that hadn't been
fully punched through,
lines that hadn't been
fully connected.
Millions of Americans learned
the phrase "hanging chad"
the dangling bit of paper
that only vaguely hinted
at a voter's intentions.
WRIGHT:
Tens of thousands of ballots
that were incorrectly marked.
And if you counted them one way,
Bush would win.
And if you counted them
another way,
Gore would win.
NARRATOR:
By November 10,
Bush's lead had dwindled
to a mere 327 votes.
BAKER:
They've got the lead.
Their demand
is to shut down any recounts.
The minute that lead switches,
they lose
the argument they have,
which is that they're ahead
and that the other guys
are trying
to steal the election.
(chanting):
Hey, Al, get out
of Cheney's house!
Hey, Al
Both sides are getting more
frustrated at each other
by the day.
♪
NARRATOR:
As the battle over the White
House dragged on,
Bush retreated to his ranch,
a 1,600-acre expanse of canyons,
ponds, and cedar forests
near Crawford, Texas.
GERSON:
I remember him
showing me his arms,
which were covered
with scratches
from clearing cedar on his ranch
and, I think,
taking out a lot of frustration
on the, on vegetation.
NARRATOR:
By December,
the focus of the recount
had shifted to the courts,
where a flurry of decisions left
both sides declaring victory.
Finally, on December 11,
the U.S. Supreme Court
heard the case.
♪
DAN RATHER:
This is a CBS News
Special Report.
Dan Rather at CBS News
World Headquarters in New York.
Good evening.
We are on the air because the
United States Supreme Court
has reached a decision in the
case of Bush versus Gore.
NARRATOR:
36 days after the election
was held,
the Supreme Court ruled that all
recounts must stop immediately,
thereby preserving
Bush's razor-thin lead.
The election was close,
but tonight, after a count,
a recount,
and yet another manual recount,
Secretary Cheney and I
are honored and humbled
to have won
the state of Florida,
which gives us
the needed electoral votes
to win the election.
We will therefore
undertake the responsibility
of preparing to serve
as America's next president
and vice president.
NARRATOR:
On January 20, 2001,
in a chilly Washington drizzle,
George W. Bush was inaugurated
the 43rd president
of the United States.
Few presidents
had come into office
facing greater doubts
about their legitimacy.
REPORTER:
Protesting is now very intense
as we're coming up here,
screaming, "Fraud,
Bush stole the election."
The police are now in
about three or four rows deep
along here,
trying to push back protesters.
Police are in riot gear, um,
a lot of screaming,
a lot of pushing,
a lot of yelling.
It's hard to tell exactly
how much the president can see,
but he can hear all of this
ROBINSON:
The division was so bitter,
and neither side really won.
The decision was made
by the Supreme Court.
It's like a fight that never
really got resolved,
and I think that we've sort of
been in our corners ever since.
Racist, sexist, anti-gay!
Bush and Cheney go away!
The mood of the country,
obviously the mood
of the opposition party,
it was raw, you could feel it,
it was palpable
in Washington, DC.
There were going to be
a part of the public,
and a large part
of the opposition party, that,
there was always in their mind,
going to be an asterisk
on this presidency.
NARRATOR:
As he addressed
the largest crowd
he had ever faced,
Bush sought to calm the frayed
nerves of the country.
BUSH:
And sometimes, our differences
run so deep,
it seems we share a continent,
but not a country.
We do not accept this.
And we will not allow it.
(crowd applauding)
DAVID FRUM:
We could not say,
"That's the job
the American people
elected us to do."
You couldn't say that,
because the American people had,
in their totality,
preferred the other guy.
That was something
that we were conscious of.
BUSH:
Today we affirm a new commitment
to live out our nation's promise
through civility,
courage, compassion,
and character.
NARRATOR:
Even as he pursued
reconciliation,
Bush was eager
to quickly assert control.
But the mechanisms
of government,
particularly foreign policy,
were still mysterious.
WRIGHT:
His father was one of the most
experienced people
in foreign affairs.
And George Bush was
untraveled and not interested.
And so he picked people to do
that part of the job for him.
NARRATOR:
As secretary of defense,
Bush named Dick Cheney's mentor,
Donald Rumsfeld,
who had held the same job
under President Gerald Ford.
Rumsfeld brought with him
to the Pentagon
a coterie of advisers
known as "neo-conservatives,"
foremost among them
his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz.
The neo-cons ardently believed
in the spread
of American power and values
through military strength.
JAMES MANN:
Their view was
that the United States
had enough power
to exert its will,
at least on any major issue.
The emphasis was particularly
on military power,
as opposed to diplomacy.
There was
a mistrust of diplomacy
and international institutions.
NARRATOR:
While a neo-conservative enclave
was forming in the Pentagon,
Bush named a moderate,
Condoleezza Rice,
to be his
national security adviser.
At the State Department,
he appointed one of his father's
most trusted advisers,
General Colin Powell.
KAREN DeYOUNG:
He was a person
of great stature,
he had military experience.
He was widely respected
across the country.
He could calm a lot of people,
certainly Republican moderates,
who felt that Bush
was getting his advice
from people who were pretty
far over to the right,
of a neo-conservative bent.
General Powell
is a strong figure
and Dick Cheney
is no shrinking violet.
But neither is Don Rumsfeld.
Nor Condi Rice.
I view the four as being,
being able
to complement each other.
NARRATOR:
This arrangement
Rumsfeld and the neo-cons
at Defense;
Powell and the moderates
at State
Established a lasting fault line
in the administration's
foreign policy.
I don't think President Bush
intentionally went
for a team of rivals.
I think he went
for a team of strong members.
And if that meant
they were rivals, so be it.
But he came into office
not lacking in confidence
about his own position
and his own abilities
to sort out good advice.
TIMOTHY NAFTALI:
This is in a way, a dream team,
although when people made
that argument,
they forgot that no group
of smart, articulate
foreign policy experts
agrees, usually.
And what you need is a president
who can make the decision.
PERRY:
There was this vacuum
for George Bush
about his foreign policy,
his defense policy.
He had no ideology
in those spaces.
And so those with strong views
obviously saw the opening
or the vacuum there,
and they filled it.
NARRATOR:
But the foreign entanglements
which were to define
Bush's presidency
were nowhere in sight
as he took office
in January 2001.
With the country
peaceful and prosperous,
Bush could focus
on the domestic agenda
on which he had campaigned.
In May, he pushed through
a $1.3 trillion tax cut
with provisions
to help all taxpayers,
but especially the wealthy.
He also moved forward
on education reform
with the help of Massachusetts
Democrat Ted Kennedy.
FRUM:
George Bush had been elected
on a very clear mandate.
He was going to cut taxes,
he was going to institute
certain educational reforms,
and he was going to continue
on the debt reduction path
that Bill Clinton
had put the country on.
The tax cut is passed.
The education bill
is well on the way.
The debt reduction
was going to continue
as long
as the prosperity continued.
And by August, you had
this tremendous feeling
of, "Now what?"
At the White House today,
President Bush
gathered his cabinet
to mark what he called
six months of accomplishments.
The president starts
a monthlong vacation tomorrow,
the longest of any president
since Richard Nixon.
(chainsaw buzzing)
NARRATOR:
By the summer of 2001,
his presidency seemed
to be going so well
that Bush took
an extended vacation
at his Texas ranch.
Coming out here
makes you realize
that Washington
is a wonderful place,
but it's certainly not
the center
of all wisdom and knowledge.
NARRATOR:
He fished, cut wood,
and enjoyed his time
away from Washington.
♪
Bush continued to receive
daily intelligence briefings
during his vacation,
but he did not
seem particularly concerned
by an August 6 briefing entitled
"Bin Laden Determined
to Strike in U.S."
Ever since taking office,
Bush had received
regular reports
about the activities
of the terrorist group Al Qaeda,
led by a Saudi millionaire
named Osama Bin Laden.
But this was an escalation.
SUSKIND:
The bells are ringing
in the intelligence community.
Red alerts.
They don't know specifically
what it is,
but they can see the activation
of, of a whole array of people
that they follow.
Bush doesn't want to hear it.
CLARKE:
We heard from a number
of intelligence sources
that a major attack
was being planned by Al Qaeda.
As the summer went on,
we thought
perhaps it would occur
around July the 4th.
When July the 4th passed,
and there was no attack,
I think some people in
the Bush administration thought,
"Uh, well, we were wrong.
We were making this all up."
NARRATOR:
President Bush wasn't alone
in failing to appreciate
the threat Al Qaeda posed.
His more seasoned
national security team
also took little note
of the warnings
they received that summer.
These old dinosaurs
of U.S. foreign policy
were stuck in a time warp.
They're not
mentally flexible enough
to understand
the world has changed
since they were in office.
They were thinking
about the Cold War,
where states
were the source of threat.
They dismissed
these non-state actors,
these shadowy groups.
That was one of the flaws
in W's thinking,
that bringing old veterans in
would be useful
in a time of change.
It wasn't, it was the opposite.
(people screaming and yelling)
(sirens wailing)
(debris falling,
people calling in panic)
MAN:
Oh, my God!
Oh, my God!
(sirens blaring,
car alarms running)
♪
NARRATOR:
In the days after the attacks
on September 11,
a pall descended
over much of Washington.
The belief was not only strong,
it was a near-certainty
that a next wave of attacks
was going to happen.
There were credible threats
on the president
and on the White House
that took place day after day.
FRUM:
This city was in the grip
of wild rumors.
I remember having a thought
every time
I walked through downtown,
"Is this the day
a car bomb goes off?"
♪
Our perception wasn't just
that they had conducted
this incredible attack directly
against the United States,
it was that they could even
do something bigger
in the future,
like use nuclear weapons
or biological weapons.
That suddenly became a reality.
NARRATOR:
The terrorist threat Bush had
dismissed only weeks earlier
now consumed him.
He instructed
his national security staff
to inform him of any possible
attack, no matter how unlikely.
So we put together what
we called the "threat matrix,"
that listed
every single threat report,
where it came from,
who the source was,
what was being done about it,
what kind of credibility
we gave to it,
and we would begin the briefing
by him going through it.
"Michael,
tell me about number 21.
Michael,
tell me about number 45."
NARRATOR:
Bush struggled to conceal
his own grief and worry.
"I could see the lines cut
deeper in his face," Laura said,
"and I knew he was lying awake
next to me at night."
(cameras clicking)
I am a, I am a loving guy,
and I'm also someone, however,
who's got a job to do,
and I intend to do it.
And, um, this is
a terrible moment.
He was not conveying
what he wanted to convey,
this message of strength.
(people talking in background)
GERSON:
Colin Powell sent him a note,
essentially saying,
"Don't show too much emotion
in public."
The president read the note
in front of everyone
that was assembled
at a cabinet meeting
and said, "Don't worry,
I'm not losing it."
NARRATOR:
Above all, Bush felt
he had let the country down,
and he was determined
never to do so again.
"I felt my responsibility
was clear," he later confessed.
"I would pour my heart and soul
into protecting the country,
whatever it took."
He told me
that his number-one job
was to protect
the American people,
and he told me
that he failed on 9/11.
And that he could not
let that happen again.
STEPHEN HADLEY:
While he campaigned
as a domestic president,
he was now going to be
a wartime president.
He had to get the country ready
for what was going to be
a long struggle.
♪
NARRATOR:
Three days after the attack,
Bush rose early for a day
that would test his leadership
as few others.
A day to console the country
in its grief,
while also giving voice
to its anger.
That morning,
he attended a service
at the National Cathedral
before an extraordinary
assemblage of dignitaries,
including his parents.
BUSH:
Our responsibility to history
is already clear:
to answer these attacks
and rid the world of evil.
War has been waged against us
by stealth and deceit
and murder.
This nation is peaceful,
but fierce
when stirred to anger.
HUGHES:
And I remember him telling me
he didn't want
to look at his family,
because he knew
that if they were in tears,
he would break down.
And so he was, I think,
trying to look generally
over people's heads
in order not to let the emotions
of the moment overcome him.
It is said that adversity
introduces us to ourselves.
This is true of a nation,
as well.
He was very much embracing
and understanding
the moment in history,
what it was going
to require of him.
ROVE:
I don't know
where he summoned it.
That was a, that was
a tough moment for anybody.
He sits back down
and his father takes his hand
and squeezes it.
I mean, he did it,
he did what he needed to do.
The pride of a father
seeing his son
in that awesome moment
of responsibility,
and then a son feeling
the support and confidence
of his, of his parents.
NARRATOR:
Later that day,
the president
traveled to New York
to visit the wreckage
of the World Trade Center
for the first time.
FLEISCHER:
Five miles out,
you could actually
smell the burning,
the ashes, three days later.
That was the first thing
all of us noticed.
CARD:
Police barricades are up.
People behind the barricades
are all wearing hard hats,
and the president says
"I want to stop and get out."
(people cheering and whistling)
NARRATOR:
Although no public remarks
had been scheduled,
Bush grabbed a bullhorn
and climbed atop
the ruins of a fire truck.
As we mourn the loss
of thousands of our citizens
MAN:
George,
we can't hear you!
I can hear you!
(crowd cheering)
I can hear you,
the rest of the world hears you,
and the people
(crowd cheering)
And the people who
knocked these buildings down
will hear all of us soon.
(crowd cheering)
This is where George W. Bush's
talent as a politician
was evident.
He wanted to send a signal
from there
that we were going to rebuild
as a country.
That, that tearing down
the Twin Towers created
a, a wound, but it wasn't
going to be a scar.
That's where he showed
a certain visceral understanding
of the American spirit.
I watched him that day
turn from a president
whose presidency
was drifting a little bit
to a man with a purpose.
I saw him become
the commander-in-chief that day.
NARRATOR:
On the trip back to Washington,
word reached Bush
that Congress had voted
overwhelmingly
to authorize the use of force
against those responsible
for 9/11.
The next day,
he convened a meeting
of his national security team
at Camp David in rural Maryland.
By now, U.S. intelligence
had confirmed that Al Qaeda had
been responsible for the attack,
and were being sheltered
and supported
by the Taliban government
in Afghanistan.
We're going to meet
and deliberate and discuss,
but there's no question
about it.
This act will not stand.
We will find those who did it.
We will smoke 'em
out of their holes.
We will get 'em running.
And we'll bring 'em to justice.
NARRATOR:
Some advisers urged Bush
to exercise diplomacy,
but the president
was having none of it.
MORELL:
There was breakfast before
the policy meeting started,
and I was standing
with the president,
and a State Department official
came over
and essentially
lobbied the president
that we should put pressure
on the Taliban
to give Bin Laden over
to the United States
and to kick Al Qaeda
out of their country.
And the president looked at us
and he said, "(No audio) it,
we're going to war."
The president's mindset was,
"They did this,
"they have the capability
to do this,
"and I have to make sure
they don't do it again,
and the only way to do that
is militarily."
NARRATOR:
Some members
of the administration
believed that Afghanistan
was the wrong target.
Paul Wolfowitz, one of
the leading neo-conservatives
at the Pentagon,
urged Bush to focus
military action
on what he regarded
as the greater threat:
Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
They thought that the solution
to all problems in the Mideast
ran through Baghdad.
If we could just
get rid of Saddam Hussein,
you know,
it would all fall into place.
DeYOUNG:
Wolfowitz and other people,
I think,
saw this finally
as an opportunity to say,
"We're going to get Iraq."
Bush,
I think wisely,
and with the advice of
others around the table, said,
you know, "Maybe someday
we'll get to that,
"but right now,
people want to know
who did it and what are you
going to do about it?"
(missiles launching)
BUSH:
On my orders,
the United States military
has begun strikes
against Al Qaeda
terrorist training camps
and military installations
of the Taliban regime
in Afghanistan.
NARRATOR:
On October 7,
military operations
began in Afghanistan.
(machine gun firing)
Together with
an Afghan rebel force
called the Northern Alliance,
C.I.A. paramilitary units
planned to drive the Taliban
out of the capital
and capture Osama Bin Laden.
Though confident of victory,
Bush's team understood
that Afghanistan posed
unique challenges.
Condi Rice recalls
that they, they put out
a big map of Afghanistan.
It was very rough terrain,
very rough territory.
She recalls looking at it
and saying,
"Oh, my God, isn't that
where empires go to die?"
NARRATOR:
At first, progress was slow.
As newspapers and pundits
wondered
whether the U.S. had waded
into a quagmire,
Bush pressed his aides
for answers
on why military victories
were so hard to come by.
I began to almost avoid him,
because I knew his
first question was going to be,
"How's this going?
How's this going?"
And he was
demonstrably, palpably,
visibly frustrated.
I was pretty confident
that as soon as they had
one big military victory,
that it would be,
to use an expression
from Vietnam,
something of a domino
phenomenon.
It was just getting
that first big military victory.
(people cheering in background)
NARRATOR:
On November 9,
U.S. and Northern Alliance
forces
broke through in Mazar-i-Sharif,
a northern city
held by the Taliban
for several years.
Other Taliban strongholds
quickly succumbed, as well.
But the military victories
created a new problem
for which the administration
was unprepared:
what to do
with suspected terrorists
captured on the battlefield.
As they started to gather
more detainees in Afghanistan,
the question arose,
"Well, what are you going to do
with these people?"
And there was enormous, uh, urge
to get intelligence from them.
That was the goal.
Remember, there was
a tremendous expectation
that there were
other attacks pending,
real-time.
And that causes the president
to face
some pretty difficult decisions.
How do you detain people?
Where do you detain people?
How do you get information?
And what do you do
with what you learn?
NARRATOR:
For more than half a century,
the United States had abided
by the Geneva Conventions,
rules protecting
prisoners of war
from abusive treatment.
But Vice President Dick Cheney
and others
believed those rules
were too restrictive
when dealing with possible
terrorists in a post-9/11 world.
If you gave them
the status of prisoners of war,
they would be subject
to the Geneva Conventions,
and very strict limits
on how you could
interrogate them.
All you have to tell
the interrogator is
your name, rank,
and serial number.
Cheney and his allies believed
they could remove these people
from the protections of Geneva.
You were going to have to ask
very tough questions
with very tough consequences
and compulsion
in order to get answers
from Taliban
and Al Qaeda prisoners,
and that in order to do so,
you had to deny them
the legal status
of prisoners of war.
We also have to work the,
sort of the dark side,
if you will.
We're going to spend time
in the shadows
in the intelligence world.
A lot of what needs
to be done here
will have to be done quietly,
without any discussion,
using sources and methods
that are available
to our intelligence agencies
if we're going to be successful.
That's the world
these folks operate in.
ISIKOFF:
There was very much
a macho quality to this.
These were people of action,
people who didn't get hung up
in endless meetings and debates
and, you know,
"We have to worry
about what Congress might think,
how the media might react."
No.
They were going to do
what needed to be done,
and consequences be damned.
NARRATOR:
To justify
"working the dark side"
without congressional approval,
Cheney relied
on a theory of executive power
that placed the president
beyond the oversight
of Congress.
ISIKOFF:
As Cheney saw it,
this was a mortal threat
to the country.
You know, this was none
of Congress's business
to tell the president
of the United States
how to conduct foreign policy.
NARRATOR:
For years, Cheney
had been preoccupied
by so-called
weapons of mass destruction,
particularly biological agents
that could easily and rapidly
spread through
a defenseless population.
(whistle blowing)
Cheney's worst fears
seemed realized
just three weeks after 9/11,
when another attack began
to unfold on American soil.
A Florida man has contracted
a very rare and potentially
deadly form of anthrax.
NARRATOR:
In early October,
envelopes containing a powdered
deadly form of anthrax
were received in the mail
by news anchors and politicians
around the country.
The envelopes also contained
crudely written letters
with the words:
"Death to America.
Death to Israel.
Allah is great."
FRUM:
The anthrax attacks
That is one of
the most underappreciated events
of the period,
because I think
that was the thing
that really locked in
a lot of the mood of dread
that was such a feature of
those first months after 9/11.
NARRATOR:
In all, 17 people were stricken
with anthrax.
Five would die.
A massive investigation
would eventually
point to domestic origins,
but at the time,
the anthrax attacks
only strengthened
Cheney's argument
that there could be no limits
to the war on terror.
SUSKIND:
Cheney says,
"We need to think in a new way
about these
high-impact threats."
He says, "If there's
a one-percent chance
"that terrorists
have gotten their hands
"on weapons of mass destruction,
"we need to treat it
as a certainty.
"It's not about our analysis,
it's about our response."
NARRATOR:
Cheney urged Bush to suspend
the Geneva Conventions
for captured fighters
in Afghanistan,
so that an array of more extreme
interrogation techniques,
including
harsh physical punishment,
could be used against them.
But other key advisers
disagreed.
ISIKOFF:
Colin Powell was uncomfortable
with this.
He was a military guy
who operated
under military rules,
in which, you know, there were
very clear prohibitions
on using tactics
like were being proposed
by his colleagues
in the Bush administration.
NARRATOR:
The decision over what to do
with suspected
Al Qaeda prisoners
would be one of the most
momentous of Bush's presidency.
As the president
weighed how to proceed,
Cheney was a persistent
and persuasive presence.
ROBINSON:
It became the narrative
that Cheney was really the,
the brains of the operation,
that he was leading Bush
wherever he wanted him to go.
And I have really come
to doubt that.
George W. Bush
is not a stupid person.
He is a very bright man.
He certainly delegated
a lot of tasks to Cheney,
but I don't for a minute believe
that wool was comprehensively
pulled over his eyes
by this sort of scheming
vice president.
On the issues
that Bush cared about,
when a decision was before him,
he was the decider, as he said.
The caricature that Cheney
would tell him what to do
is just false.
Bush would not have
put up with that.
But Cheney was very good
at setting the table
and lining up the shot
so that Bush was likely
to take it.
LAWRENCE WILKERSON:
It was kind of remarkable
to watch him work.
Powell put it this way to me,
in a metaphor I'll never forget.
He came back from a meeting
with the president,
and he said, "Larry,
"the vice president knows
"how to get the cowboy in Bush
to pull his .45
"and start shooting,
and I don't know how to get him
to put it back in the holster."
NARRATOR:
In a series of decisions
beginning in January of 2002,
Bush suspended
Geneva's protections
for captured enemy combatants
in Afghanistan,
and approved a menu of so-called
"enhanced
interrogation tactics."
Administration lawyers
provided legal cover.
MORELL:
At the time,
the Department of Justice
attorneys said
that these enhanced
interrogation techniques
were not torture,
they did not violate
any anti-torture treaties,
they did not rise to that level,
that they were indeed legal.
President Bush was told that.
NARRATOR:
Already, the first wave
of captured enemy combatants
were being transferred
from the battlefields
of Afghanistan
and neighboring Pakistan
to Guantánamo Bay,
a U.S. military base in Cuba
converted
into a makeshift prison.
You're talking about cells they
prefer to call outdoor cells.
Many will call them cages.
They are simply roofed cubicles
surrounded by wire mesh fence.
Exposure to the elements.
There will be a concrete floor,
a mat,
a bucket to be used for
personal hygiene that's it.
Very, very tight security.
NARRATOR:
C.I.A. specialists descended
on Guantánamo,
where they put into practice
the newly approved
interrogation techniques.
The tactics included everything
from slapping somebody
in the face,
pushing them up against a wall,
denying them food,
denying them liquids,
putting someone in a confined
space for a long period of time,
rectal feeding,
continuous sleep deprivation.
And then the worst of them
that we've heard about
is waterboarding,
where you simulate
drowning somebody.
NARRATOR:
Bush believed the C.I.A.'s use
of violence against captured
prisoners in Guantánamo
and at secret "black sites"
around the world,
was justified
if it saved American lives.
If you really believe
that Al Qaeda
is about ready
to attack you again,
and if you really believe
that these individuals,
who you have captured,
know what those attack plans
are,
and you couldn't get
the information any other way,
and if those attacks happened,
many, many, many
more Americans could die,
how could you not do it?
NARRATOR:
Bush's critics argued
that his approval of the
enhanced interrogation program
created a ripple effect,
a culture of cruelty
that trickled down
to all those charged
with carrying out
the war on terror.
The president said,
"Torture people."
That's the message
that went down
from the highest power
in America.
That's what it got interpreted
in the field.
I don't think anyone
at that moment realized
the effects that that decision
would have
down where the rubber
meets the road.
All presidents
who are in wartime
are having to try to balance
national security
with civil rights and liberties.
All presidents.
Every day, they lived
with the thought
that another terrorist attack
could occur,
and they were going to do
everything they could
to try to stop that.
And sometimes that meant skating
right up to the line
of civil rights and liberties,
and sometimes it meant
crossing it.
NARRATOR:
But many worried
that these tactics
would exact a heavy toll,
both morally and practically.
PRIEST:
It's these bigger issues:
Who are we as a country?
Are we a leader in
humanitarian issues or not?
You know, do we care
about human rights or not?
All of these things
were up for grabs.
The days after 9/11,
the entire world was with us.
There were tens of thousands
of people
in the streets of Tehran
not yelling "death to America,"
but expressing their sympathy
with America.
The world was with us,
and we squandered it.
And the reputation
of the United States
was tarnished
for generations to come
in the Middle East
by the things that we did.
(helicopter blades whipping)
NARRATOR:
By mid-November 2001,
the war in Afghanistan
seemed to be nearing its end
as U.S.-led forces stormed
the capital, Kabul.
A few weeks later,
they took Kandahar,
the Taliban's last stronghold.
But the sweetness of victory
was tempered
when Osama Bin Laden
slipped away from allied forces
during a ferocious battle
in the mountainous region
of Tora Bora.
MORELL:
The president said,
"Michael, is there anything new
this morning?"
And I said, "Mr. President,
"I have some really bad news
for you.
Bin Laden has escaped
from Tora Bora."
And I had never seen
the president lose his temper
in my entire year
of briefing him.
I had never seen him get mad.
He did in this case.
NARRATOR:
Bin Laden's escape
and the swift collapse
of the Taliban government
left Bush and much
of the country unsatisfied.
Afghanistan's not big enough.
It's not proportional.
It needs to be bigger.
The towers are burning,
the Pentagon's burning,
they attacked
the United States
The response
has to be proportional
to what occurred to us.
Afghanistan really didn't do it.
Afghanistan did not
send the signal to the world,
"Don't mess
with the United States."
We need a state actor.
Saddam Hussein,
let's go after him.
That'll send
the signal to the world
that you don't mess
with the United States.
NARRATOR:
Initially resistant
to the neo-cons' argument
to invade Iraq right away,
Bush felt himself
increasingly drawn to the idea.
The reasons
were not only political;
they were personal.
(explosions echo)
In 1991, Bush's father had
waged the first Gulf War
against Saddam's forces
in Kuwait.
The war was over quickly,
but to avoid
a bloody occupation,
George H.W. Bush
had halted the U.S. advance
before reaching Baghdad,
allowing Saddam to survive.
GELLMAN:
Bush developed a sense
that there was unfinished
business
from the first Persian Gulf War
in the early 1990s;
that leaving Saddam in power
had been a mistake.
Bush was attracted to the idea
of finishing something
his father had left undone.
There was also a strong sense
that Iraq was a growing threat
to U.S. interests,
and that was because the regime
of arms control restrictions
and sanctions
that was keeping Iraq bottled up
after that first Gulf War
were beginning to erode.
ROBINSON:
There was this powerful
determination
within the administration
that nothing like 9/11
would ever happen again.
I mean, they racked
their brains,
like,
"How did we not see this?"
"How can we make sure
we never ever miss
something like this again?"
In that sense, what you get is
a classic overreaction,
and you go not just
into Afghanistan,
but you go into Iraq.
NARRATOR:
For President Bush,
removing Saddam also presented
an opportunity:
to spread American values
throughout the Middle East,
and to put his personal stamp
on history.
W's opinion of the role
of America in the world
was very much formed
by his father's experience
in World War II.
So many sons of fathers
like that,
uh, they, they looked back
at how America saved
civilization,
as, as they saw it.
That image of a powerful America
sheltering the rest of the world
under its arm
was very much
in, in Bush's mind.
(applause slows and ends)
All of us need to understand
it is now time
to plant the flag of freedom
firmly in our nation
and around the world.
Because what we do today
will determine whether or not
our children and
our grandchildren can grow up
in a life that we knew.
(audience applauding)
He truly believed
that there were things
he was destined to do.
And one of those things
was to spread the American way
in opportune moments.
An almost evangelical sense
of rectitude and righteousness
did motivate Bush.
NARRATOR:
Throughout late 2001
and early 2002,
Bush moved closer
to a decision to invade Iraq.
He ordered the Pentagon
to revise its war plans,
and tasked Cheney
with turning up proof
of Saddam's weapons program.
Cheney threw himself
into the effort,
making frequent trips
to C.I.A. headquarters,
where he met directly
with C.I.A. analysts.
SUSKIND:
And he's saying in briefings,
"I want to hear everything,
even the rawest intelligence,"
and there's a pushback.
"You don't want to hear
the raw stuff.
Some of it's meaningless."
You know, it hasn't
It's not vetted intelligence.
But Cheney
wants to hear everything.
So Cheney's getting
a feed of, of fear.
NARRATOR:
Cheney's hands-on approach
reflected a deep skepticism
of the C.I.A.'s ability
to interpret
its own intelligence.
He was suspicious
that the C.I.A.
as an institution
was too conservative
about threats,
was willing
to gloss things over,
or required a higher
standard of proof
than Cheney believed
was necessary
in order to respond
to a potential threat.
NARRATOR:
Cheney had seen for himself
how the C.I.A. had missed
Saddam's nuclear weapons program
during the first Gulf War.
When they accounted
for non-conventional weapons
at the end of that war,
they found a nuclear program
by Saddam Hussein and his regime
that was far more advanced
than the intel
that they had at the time.
There was this feeling
that we were underestimating
the risk in this case.
NARRATOR:
To repeat the same mistake
this time, Cheney believed,
would be catastrophic.
He and his allies weren't
going to let that happen.
ISIKOFF:
Cheney had an agenda.
He knew what he wanted
the answer to be,
he knew what he wanted
the end result to be.
And they begin pressuring
the intelligence community
to find the evidence
that supports
their preconceived notions
about the threat that
Saddam posed to the world.
NARRATOR:
Under Cheney's prodding,
the C.I.A.
began to generate reports
that Iraq was harboring
weapons of mass destruction.
In terms of biological
and chemical weapons,
it was not
an outlandish position at all
to believe that
Saddam Hussein still had them.
He had had them,
he had built them,
he had used them,
he had lied many, many times
before, during, and after
U.N. weapons inspections.
The nuclear case
was always much, much weaker.
But the idea that there was
a threat of an atomic attack
by a man like Saddam Hussein
was much more likely to
capture the public imagination.
NARRATOR:
Cheney briefed Bush
on intelligence
that Iraq was attempting
to acquire uranium from Africa,
and the centrifuges necessary
to enrich it
into a nuclear bomb.
These reports, and many others,
were poorly sourced,
uncorroborated,
and doubted
by experts in the field.
But, under pressure,
the C.I.A. presented them
as proof.
They took raw intelligence,
they picked through it.
It didn't matter
what its credibility was
Its credibility
could be assessed as poor,
it didn't matter.
As long as it fit
what they wanted to do,
they plucked it out
and put it on the board.
And then they packaged it,
once they got enough pieces,
and they sent it
to the White House.
Yes, the agency pushed a story
beyond the facts,
beyond the truth.
That was our failure,
but we were fully aware
of the consequences,
that the noose
was around our neck.
We can't afford to fail
one time, and we got it wrong.
NARRATOR:
Woefully uneducated
in foreign affairs,
inclined to believe
the worst about Saddam,
Bush did nothing
to probe the reliability
of the C.I.A.'s reporting.
Instead, he accepted as fact
what Cheney and others
had long argued:
that Iraq had a viable
chemical, biological,
and nuclear weapons program.
DeYOUNG:
Bush thought of himself
as a big-picture kinda guy.
But I think in many cases,
he didn't recognize
how he was gradually being moved
to those positions.
WRIGHT:
George Bush was surrounded
by people who had an agenda.
And they had a president
who, in every other respect,
was a very self-confident
person,
but in terms of foreign affairs,
he was uncertain.
And, and so they used that.
Bush is presented
with one idea after another
that Saddam is actually seeking
these weapons
of mass destruction.
Had that been true,
it would have been justified,
but it wasn't true
It was cooked up.
I hold his cabinet
and his advisers responsible.
But ultimately,
the president is the one
who has to take the blame.
NARRATOR:
By the summer of 2002,
Bush and his team
had transitioned
from contemplating invasion
to selling the idea
to the American people.
You needed
to bring the country along,
because you were going to send
some Americans to their deaths.
And so there was
this torturous effort
to give the impression
that Saddam was on the verge
of having
a full-fledged WMD program,
which meant he could use
nuclear weapons against us.
And that's where
they misled the American people.
NARRATOR:
Senior members
of the administration
fanned out across the airwaves
to make the case for war,
sometimes repeating
unfounded or incorrect
intelligence claims.
There will always be
some uncertainty
about how quickly
he can acquire a nuclear weapon.
But we don't want
the smoking gun
to be a mushroom cloud.
He now is trying through
his illicit procurement network
to acquire the equipment
he needs
to be able to enrich uranium
to make a bomb.
TIM RUSSERT:
Aluminum tubes.
Specifically aluminum tubes.
There is a story in "The New
York Times" this morning
this morning that
he is still trying to acquire,
for example, some of
the specialized aluminum tubing
one needs to develop centrifuges
that would give you
an enrichment capability.
NARRATOR:
Though he would participate
in the administration's
public relations offensive,
Colin Powell was uncomfortable
with the unilateral rush to war.
On August 5,
he'd sat down with Bush
in the White House Treaty Room,
warning the president
that he could not simply
win a quick military victory
and walk away.
"If you break it,"
he said, "you own it."
Instead, Powell advised,
Bush should build
an international coalition
before heading into war.
DeYOUNG:
Certainly, Colin Powell was
saying, "Slow down."
He was not arguing with the,
with the intelligence.
What Powell was saying is,
"If you're going to do this,
don't do it without allies.
"Don't just rush in.
"You have to convince
the rest of the world
"that this has to be the next
step in the war on terror.
It's not the kind of thing
you go out and do by yourself."
NARRATOR:
But Powell's advice
was drowned out
by a chorus of hawks
and hardliners
who were certain
that Saddam's army
could be easily vanquished,
and the country
quickly turned over
to an elected Iraqi government.
CHENEY:
My belief is, we will in fact
be greeted as liberators.
The read we get
on the people of Iraq
is, there's no question
but what, they want to get rid
of Saddam Hussein,
and they will welcome
as liberators the United States
when we come to do that.
So many people
around George Bush
were telling him,
"This is a cakewalk.
"We're going to go in,
"the people are going
to be happy we liberated them,
"democracy will flourish,
we'll be thanked."
So, I do think
that President Bush thought
he would be seen as a hero
and be out of there quickly.
NARRATOR:
Though Colin Powell
was isolated
inside the administration,
he did have some
powerful friends on the outside.
Ten days
after his meeting with Bush,
an op-ed appeared
in "The Wall Street Journal"
written by Brent Scowcroft,
former national security adviser
under George H.W. Bush
and a close family friend.
The editorial
was immediately interpreted
as a message from Bush's father:
"Don't attack Iraq."
There was a lot of discussion
when Bush became president
that his father would be
this sort of shadow figure,
and he never was.
According
to Bush's own recollections,
he really didn't ask his father
for that much advice.
Few people in the world
could have been
more beneficial than his father.
It must have caused some agony
on his father's part
when he saw his son
taking advice
that was leading him
in the wrong direction.
NARRATOR:
Bush had always been caught
between wanting
to please his father
and wanting to prove
his independence.
Now, he ignored
his father's advice,
and plowed ahead towards war.
If we know Saddam Hussein
has dangerous weapons today
And we do
does it make any sense
for the world to wait
to confront him
as he grows even stronger,
and develops
even more dangerous weapons?
He was showing
that he was his own man,
and any obstacle
was a test of resolve,
and to walk around it,
or to back off and reconsider,
would be a sign of weakness.
NARRATOR:
In October, Bush sought
congressional authorization
for military action
against Iraq.
PACKER:
Bush pushed a war resolution
on Congress
just before the mid-terms
in 2002,
in order to corner Democrats
and force them to say
either, you know, "I'm not
prepared to defend the country
"from chemical, biological,
and nuclear weapons from Iraq,
and I will lose,"
or "I am,"
and Bush will get his vote.
Rather than trying to really
create bipartisan support,
it was more like blackmail.
NARRATOR:
Congress overwhelmingly
voted in favor
of authorizing military action
against Iraq.
A month later, Republicans,
who had campaigned
on the need to invade Iraq,
swept to a convincing victory
in the mid-term
congressional elections.
Is the path now cleared for
a possible U.S. war with Iraq?
Today, many believe
that possibility for war
is significantly greater
than it was at this time
only yesterday.
The reason?
An American president
with new political momentum.
NARRATOR:
Clearly, Bush now had
the country behind him.
But the rest of the world
remained skeptical
that all options short of war
had been exhausted.
In November, the United Nations
passed Resolution 1441,
giving Saddam more time
by allowing weapons inspectors
back into the country.
A few months later,
Tony Blair,
the British prime minister,
begged the president to return
to the U.N. Security Council
to seek a resolution
explicitly authorizing
the invasion.
Powell strongly agreed
with Blair.
ROBIN WRIGHT:
There were those
in the administration
who did not believe
in international institutions
to begin with,
so there was skepticism
about, about whether
it was even worth trying it,
but Powell made the case,
"You have to go to the U.N.
to be seen
to have at least tried."
And if they succeeded,
then the world
would come back and say,
"Oh, you were right."
NARRATOR:
Reluctantly,
Bush accepted
Blair and Powell's advice,
and ordered Powell himself
to make the case to the U.N.
Here was not Dick Cheney,
here was not President Bush.
Here was probably
the most respected member
of the foreign policy
establishment.
NARRATOR:
The speech before
the Security Council
would be one
of the most scrutinized
in the history of the body.
Powell wanted it to be airtight,
all but discarding
an early draft provided
by the vice president's office.
HAASS:
We argued over lots of things
in it.
We took out a lot,
almost everything
that we'd been given.
We went through it
from the ground up,
and painstakingly
put together a script
that Colin Powell
felt, felt comfortable with.
NARRATOR:
On February 5, President Bush
watched from the White House
as Colin Powell
made one final appeal
for international support.
Despite his extensive vetting,
Powell repeated several claims
that were exaggerated or untrue.
POWELL:
We know that Iraq has
at least seven of these mobile
biological agent factories.
Saddam Hussein is determined to
get his hands on a nuclear bomb.
He is so determined
that he has made repeated
covert attempts
to acquire high-specification
aluminum tubes.
NARRATOR:
In the end, Powell failed
to persuade the holdouts
on the Security Council:
China, Russia, and France.
A week later,
large-scale protests broke out
in cities around the world,
calling for the United States
to stand down.
But for Bush,
the die had been cast.
ISIKOFF:
He had been influenced by
Cheney and others to believe
that Iraq was the primary threat
facing the country.
He was wrong,
but it's what he believed.
Most of the case
for the Iraq War
rested on the assumption
that Saddam Hussein
had weapons of mass destruction.
If we had known otherwise,
it would've been insane
to go to war.
You don't go to war
based on a lie.
(crowd shouting)
HADLEY:
I said to him, you know,
"You must be nervous
about what follows."
And he said, "Actually,
I'm very comfortable.
"You know,
I'm, I'm not a regretter.
"You know,
I've made that decision.
"You know, we'll let
the chips fall where they may,
and on to the next thing."
(missile launches)
BUSH:
My fellow citizens.
At this hour,
American and coalition forces
are in the early stages
of military operations
to disarm Iraq,
to free its people,
and to defend the world
from grave danger.
On my orders,
coalition forces have begun
striking selected targets
of military importance
to undermine Saddam Hussein's
ability to wage war.
May God bless our country,
and all who defend her.
♪
♪
ANNOUNCER:
"American Experience:
George W. Bush"
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♪
♪