The World According to Bob Inman
How should we change the U.N.? Why didn't we plan for the peace in Iraq? Where could the terrorists strike next? The intelligence and national security guru has the answers you're looking for— and a few choice words about that leak.
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I'm assuming, then, that you're not a co-chair of the Wesley Clark campaign in Texas.
I am not.
So once we're in, we're in, and you support it.
Yes, but I think you start looking for how you can get out. The path we were on appeared to be generating strong opposition, so we promised to be out by the end of June—not in the sense of the troops being out but from a governing point of view. We were going to turn over authority to the Iraq Governing Council. But then the Ayatollah al-Sistani says, "Nope, I want an election," which he thinks the Shiites will probably win. And suddenly we're back to figuring out how we deal with this problem.
Grade the president in a broad sense on how he has managed the many challenges that we all acknowledge he's had to deal with.
One of the notable features of his time as governor was that he kept a relatively limited agenda. He settled on four or five things that he thought were important, got what he could get, and declared victory. Nothing that I saw in his six years here indicated that he had a capacity to deal with a large range of problems simultaneously. So my expectations were set pretty low. And, in fact, we still see that his basic impulse is to settle on a few things that he thinks are the most important and devote most of his energies to those. The war on terror is chief among them.
I've been told he has been a very good student of foreign affairs from the moment he decided to run—you know, "Hey, I need to learn about this"—and that he devoted time to understand what he could. But it was not natural for him. I thought the Kyoto treaty was a terrible treaty, but I thought the way the administration handled it was poor. They created animosities; they seemed to be peremptory about their views of the rest of the world. Instead of dismissing it with the sweep of a hand, why couldn't they cover it with a little sugarcoating? "Well, gee, if we could just make a few changes, we could agree to it."
On the other hand, he has a good feel for relationships. The relationship with [Russian president Vladimir] Putin got off to a good start. The China relationship got off to a disastrous start, but if you look at where we are compared with where we were, I have to say our relations with China really have come a long way. I would like to see that same effort to try to interact with Brazil.
It sounds like, on balance, you give President Bush a fairly good grade on foreign affairs.
I do. The one note that is discouraging to me, where he's made a fundamental mistake, is the announcement of his policy of preemption. Every president has had it in his bag. More than one has tried to use it. But you don't announce it, just as you don't admit covert operations up front.
With your CIA hat on, talk to me about the Valerie Plame leak.
There are three kinds of leaks. There is the disaffected employee who didn't get the job or the promotion that he thought he was due, so he leaks documents that can be embarrassing to the administration. There's the person trying to sell a program, a policy, or a weapon system, or to defeat somebody else's. This leaker engages in a kind of disinformation, because he usually distorts the facts to make his case. The most damaging leaks to intelligence sources and methods are the third category: The official in the executive branch, or in rare occasions in Congress, who wants to impress his friends at dinner or his favorite journalist with how much he knows. He includes sensitive information, and it shows up in the press. The damage is done.
And the Plame link is in that last category?
Yes.
I take it that as a member of the intelligence community, you regard the Plame situation with—
Distaste and dismay.
What do you think happened, and what do you think will come of it?
I believe that her husband [former U.S. ambassador to Iraq Joseph Wilson] enjoyed the limelight as a critic of the administration. And the instant reaction of the people who felt personally offended by this was to lash out and, in that sense, to sort of disqualify Wilson's reliability. "Well, after all, it's his wife who got him out there." "Oh? Who's that?" Now, how many people actually knew that his wife was involved in covert operations? That narrows the circle.
Do you believe the president knows who leaked her name?
No, I doubt it.
Should the person be prosecuted?
He or she should be held accountable. Whether you prosecute comes down to whether it was a deliberate effort to expose her or an inadvertent revelation.
With regard to homeland security, what would you be focusing on right now if you were still in a position to influence policy?
Weaknesses in our transportation system: ground maintenance, cargo, flights on which our standards don't apply; I'm thinking of aircraft coming from outside the U.S., where the same security measures aren't in effect. Beyond that, I worry about the huge number of containers that are not inspected but come into this country every day. We're steadily increasing our ability to examine them at the major ports, but we're not there yet. I'm old enough to remember the explosion at Texas City and the tremendous number of casualties that resulted. Let's say a ship was coming into the Houston Ship Channel and you set off an explosion just as it was passing the refineries. You could probably block the channel and start massive fires. It's not easy to pull off, but then again, if you look at the potential damage and the impact that you could have . . .
The last thing I want to ask you about is politics. Do you think a presidential candidate's foreign policy experience or service in the military ought to be either a qualifier or a disqualifier in terms of fitness for office?
We went through a long period after World War II in which every one of the presidents had had military service of some kind. We've moved into an era now where a large percentage of the population has not had that experience, so I don't want to say that every candidate has to have that kind of background. But I think 9/11 has changed fundamentally the public's view of what matters. It isn't just the economy anymore. It's also, Is he going to be able to deal with the outside world?
We alluded before to General Clark, whose view of the war effort you don't share. Senator John Kerry, the Democratic front-runner, is also a former military man. Do you begrudge him his view of the war as well?
Clark and Kerry are different in that Clark had a career in the military and has moved on and now carefully selects from that long career. Kerry was a soldier. He was in the military at a point in time. He served, he came back, he was opposed to what he was involved in, and he took an active role opposing it. I wasn't enchanted with his opposition, but he showed some personal courage in doing as he did when he was in the service.
Do any of these fellows on the Democratic side intrigue you from the standpoint of what they're selling?
I don't think we have a lot of substantive debate or discussion at this point.
Let me put it another way. Would you be comfortable if we had another four years of this administration?
I would hope that in a second term, if there is a second term, given what he's learned in four years, the president would take some different approaches.
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