Government Executive - Authors - Aamer Madhani

Donald Trump Tried to Sweet-talk Theresa May By Telling Her She’ll Be Thatcher and He’ll Be Reagan

Aamer Madhani, Quartz — Tue, 15 Nov 2016 09:56:36 -0500

Before the UK voted for Brexit, US president Barack Obama warned that doing so would put the country in the “back of the queue” for trade talks with the US. Britons ignored him and voted to leave the European Union anyway.

Britain had hoped to fare better with Donald Trump, who declared himself “Mr. Brexit” and promised to prioritize Britain in trade talks if he won the election. But Britain was nowhere near the front of the queue when president-elect Trump started making his first calls to foreign his leaders. British prime minister Theresa May was ninth on his list, behind the leaders of such countries as Egypt and Australia.

When they did speak, May’s spokesperson described their first conversation as “very warm,” in which Trump said that “he looked forward to enjoying the same close relationship that [Ronald] Reagan and [Margaret] Thatcher had.” But will Trump be May’ s transatlantic “political soulmate” as Reagan was to Thatcher?

Thatcher was the guest of honor at both the first and the last of Reagan’s state dinners as president. And although—or perhaps because—their relationship was based on mutual trust and respect, neither had a problem castigating the other. This was best illustrated in a phone conversation during the Falklands War, where Thatcher was furious with the US’s appearance of neutrality:

“I wonder if anyone over there realizes, I’d like to ask them. Just supposing Alaska was invaded …” asked Thatcher. “Now you’ve put all your people up there to retake it and someone suggested that a contact could come in … you wouldn’t do it.”

“No, no, although, Margaret, I have to say I don’t quite think Alaska is a similar situation” said Reagan.

“More or less so,” snapped Thatcher.

For his part, Reagan loyally defended Thatcher despite their sometimes frosty conversations. When Charles Price, the US ambassador to London, warned of Thatcher’s tendency to ride roughshod over dissenters, Reagan dismissed the warning and went on to praise “Margaret’s perseverance and persuasiveness,” which he described as one her “greatest strengths.”

Could May and Trump really have a similar relationship? May has been called on to moderate Trump (paywall) in a similar fashion; his protectionist policies spell trouble for Britain as it prepares to negotiate new trade terms with the US and the rest of the world. But she’s in stiff competition with Nigel Farage, ex leader of the nationalist UKIP party and Trump fanboy, who is positioning himself as the UK’s strongest link to the president-elect and has already met him in New York. In response, May is planning on launching a “charm offensive” to freeze out Farage and get her reins on Mr. Brexit.

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Obama: 'Lone wolf' attack is biggest concern

Aamer Madhani — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0400

"The biggest concern we have right now is not the launching of a major terrorist operation, although that risk is always there, the risk that we're especially concerned over right now is the lone wolf terrorist, somebody with a single weapon being able to carry out wide-scale massacres of the sort that we saw in Norway recently," Obama said in an interview with CNN, referring to the recent attack on a youth camp outside of Oslo that left 77 dead.

While the United States has made significant progress in degrading al Qaeda's capabilities in recent years, intelligence officials have noted that the terror organization has increasingly focused on seeking U.S.-born collaborators to carry out attacks.

In 2010, U.S. citizen Faizal Shahzad was convicted after a botched attempt to blow up a car bomb in New York's Times Square.

In 2009, a U.S. Army officer was charged in an attack at Ft. Hood, Texas, that killed 13 and left 29 others wounded. Investigators learned that the officer charged in the shooting, Nidal Hasan, had communicated with Anwar al-Aulaqi, a U.S.-born al Qaeda operative who is based in Yemen, prior to the attack. More recently, an AWOL soldier, Naser Abdo, was charged in federal court with possession of an "unregistered destructive device'' that was allegedly to be used in an assault at Ft. Hood.

"You know, when you've got one person who is deranged or driven by a hateful ideology, they can do a lot of damage, and it's a lot harder to trace those lone wolf operators," Obama said.

Obama is scheduled to visit September 11 memorial sites in New York, Northern Virginia, and Shanksville, Pa., on the anniversary. Former President George W. Bush is scheduled to attend the ceremony at Ground Zero in New York with Obama on September 11.

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With Afghan timetable in place, two senior officials are moving on

Yochi J. Dreazen and Aamer Madhani — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0400

With the Obama administration's new Afghan drawdown timetable in place, two of the most senior officials charged with managing the long war there are moving on.

Officials familiar with the matter say the White House's top adviser on Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute, plans to step down this summer. Maj. Gen. Frederick "Ben" Hodges, the director of the Pentagon's Pakistan Afghanistan Coordination Cell, will step aside next week to assume a new post at the helm of the Army's legislative affairs office, according to officials familiar with the matter. Neither move has been formally announced.

The personnel shifts come at a pivotal time for the deeply unpopular Afghan war, which is shedding both public and congressional support. The administration announced plans last week to withdraw 10,000 troops from Afghanistan this year while bringing the remaining 23,000 "surge" troops home by next September. The drawdown will begin next month, making July an inflection point of sorts for the decade-long conflict. Obama has promised to remove virtually all American forces by the end of 2014.

The personnel moves are the latest changes to the administration's national-security ranks, which are about to undergo their most far-reaching shifts in years. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, the architect of the Afghan withdrawal plan, retires effective Thursday, and will be replaced the following day by Central Intelligence Agency Director Leon Panetta. Panetta's slot at the CIA will be filled by Gen. David Petraeus, currently the top American commander in Kabul. Petraeus, in turn, will be succeeded by Marine Lt. Gen. John Allen, whose confirmation hearing will be held on Tuesday.

Although little known to the general public, Lute was Obama's primary adviser on Afghanistan. During the administration's surge debates in 2009, Lute was one of the loudest voices arguing against giving senior generals the 80,000 reinforcements they initially requested. More recently, Lute joined Vice President Joe Biden and other civilian officials in pushing Petraeus to withdraw U.S. troops faster than the commander deemed safe. Biden, backed by Lute, supported plans to remove 15,000 of the troops this year and the remaining 18,000 troops by spring 2012. Petraeus wanted to limit this year's withdrawals and keep the remaining surge forces in Afghanistan through the end of next year.

Lute played a second, informal role as a back-channel intermediary to Petraeus and other senior generals, whose relationships with National Security Adviser Tom Donilon and other civilian White House officials are rocky at best. Despite their policy differences, Lute maintains good relationships with Petraeus and other top officers, allowing him to broker disputes between the two sides while preventing Obama's relationship with the Pentagon from rupturing.

Hodges, meanwhile, is a highly-regarded general who served as the top American commander in southern Afghanistan's volatile Kandahar Province in 2009 as coalition forces were undertaking a broad push to evict the Taliban from its strongholds there. The offensive that Hodges helped design has markedly improved security conditions throughout Kandahar, and White House officials pointed to the progress there when detailing their withdrawal plans last week.

People familiar with the matter said that Hodges will be succeeded by Brig. Gen. Stephen Townsend, who just completed a tour as the deputy commanding general for operations in Regional Command-East, the violent portion of Afghanistan which abuts the country's porous border with Pakistan. Hodges will move to the Army's legislative affairs office in early July, clearing the way for Townsend to take over the Pentagon's Pakistan/Afghanistan office.

Lute's future remains far murkier. An administration official said no date for Lute's departure has been set. "We keep begging him to stay," the official said.

Lute was tapped as the Bush administration's unofficial "war czar" in 2007, when he was picked by President Bush to serve as his adviser on Iraq and Afghanistan policy. Lute initially reported straight to Bush; in the Obama administration, he answers to Donilon.

Retired Army Lt. Gen. David Barno, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, said that the administration would be hesitant to let Lute step down before they could find his replacement. Before finally settling on Lute, Bush administration officials had been turned down by at least three prominent four-star generals. With public support for the war at record lows and U.S. troops beginning to head for the exits, finding Lute's replacement could be just as difficult.

"It will be tough for the White House to let him depart with no one lined up for his job," Barno said.

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Special ops nominee defends night raids in Afghan war

Aamer Madhani — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0400

Vice Adm. William McRaven, the man who commanded the operation to kill Osama bin Laden, on Tuesday defended the use of night raids by U.S. special operation forces in Afghanistan.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has argued that the stealth kill-or-capture missions carried out in the dead of night have left too many innocent civilians dead and undermines the public's trust in NATO forces and the Afghan government. Karzai has threatened to prohibit American forces from conducting such raids.

But speaking before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday, McRaven-who has been tapped by President Obama to be the next head of the Special Operations Command-said that the operations are often misconstrued as violent.

Prompted by questioning from Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., McRaven suggested putting an end to American-led night raids would "be detrimental to the special-operations aspect of the fight in Afghanistan," said McRaven, who was making his first public appearance since the successful bin Laden operation in May.

McRaven, who until recently headed the elite, terrorist-hunting Joint Special Operations Command, said over the last 12 months his task force had conducted approximately 1,700 night raids in Afghanistan.

"I think what is lost on a lot of folks is that approximately 84 (percent) to 86 percent of those missions we never fired a shot," McRaven said.

With the U.S. military beginning its drawdown of 33,000 surge troops next month, U.S. commanders may have to become more reliant on counterterrorism tactics of hunting and killing terrorists through night raids and drone strikes as the U.S. troop presence diminishes. But on Tuesday, McRaven and Lt. Gen. John Allen, Obama's nominee to the next top commander in Afghanistan, said that there are still enough troops in Afghanistan to carry out a counterinsurgency strategy focused on securing the population.

"There will continue to be a counterterrorism dimension to the overarching counterinsurgency campaign, and as time passes, as conditions in the battle space evolve, as we approach 2014 and as we define our long-term relationship with Afghanistan, we may well see that the development of [counterterrorism] will become even more important as time goes on," Allen said.

The use of night raids by American forces has long been controversial in the decade-old war. Under Gen. Stanley McChrystal, special operations forces dialed back the use of night raids after criticism from Karzai and other Afghan leaders. But once Gen. David Petraeus assumed control of the International Security Assistance Force last year, night raids once again became a cornerstone of the American strategy.

In May, Karzai's office again criticized the night raids and called for any nighttime operations to be carried out by Afghan troops after night raids in Khost and Takhar provinces left civilians dead.

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Potential envoy offers sober outlook on Afghanistan

Aamer Madhani — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0400

At his confirmation hearing on Wednesday, President Obama's nominee to be the next U.S. envoy to Kabul said it's critical the United States remain committed to Afghanistan, recalling the specter of a past American engagement there after the fall of the Soviet Union.

"As Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has noted, we walked away from Afghanistan once in 1989 with disastrous consequences," Ryan Crocker told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

In his comments before the committee, Crocker offered a sober assessment of the situation in Afghanistan and noted that the government led by President Hamid Karzai faces enormous challenges in governance and rule of law that could upend American efforts in the country.

"Making progress on these issues has been hard, and it will go on being hard," Crocker said. "But hard does not mean hopeless." He echoed other officials when he said progress had been made but the situation remains "fragile and reversible."

Crocker's comments come amid a growing push in Congress for the U.S. military to begin withdrawing a significant number of troops from Afghanistan as President Obama considers the size and scope of an initial drawdown of troops set for next month. Asked directly by Foreign Relations Chairman John Kerry, D-Mass., whether he thought Obama needs to maintain the current U.S. troop level, which stands at about 100,000, Crocker demurred, saying that he hasn't been privy to the internal White House debate.

In questioning, Crocker was asked repeatedly about the mountainous cost of the war-the U.S. military is burning through about $10 billion per month in operations and set to spend another $3.2 billion in foreign assistance in 2012. The committee's Democratic majority released a report ahead of Crocker's testimony noting that the State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development are currently spending about $320 million a month on foreign aid in Afghanistan. The report noted that the U.S is using the money to win "hearts and minds," but there is limited evidence that the programs are working.

"While the United States has genuine national security interests in Afghanistan, our current commitment, in troops and dollars, is neither proportional to our interests nor sustainable, in my judgment," Kerry said.

Crocker, who is credited along with Gen. David Petraeus with helping turn around the war in Iraq, said that ultimately the administration's goal is to dismantle al-Qaida and set conditions that Afghanistan won't again be used as a safe haven for the terrorist group. "I don't come with the intention of producing the perfect society," Crocker said.

A 37-year veteran of the foreign service, Crocker served as ambassador to Baghdad, Beirut, and Islamabad and reopened the U.S. Embassy in Kabul after the fall of the Taliban.

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No decision on troop withdrawal by Obama

Aamer Madhani — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0400

President Obama huddled with top national-security advisers on Monday to discuss the White House's Afghanistan strategy, but he has yet to make a decision on just how many troops he'll call home when a long-planned reduction of troops begins next month.

Today's two-hour meeting in the Situation Room kicked off an intense week of reflection on Afghanistan policy and comes as Obama faces increasing pressure from Congress -- as well as some members of his administration -- to withdraw a significant number of American forces. While the president and his advisers discussed the progress that's been made on the ground since last month's killing of Osama bin Laden, there was no discussion about the size of next month's scheduled drawdown of troops, said White House press secretary Jay Carney.

"It will be a real drawdown but it will depend on conditions on the ground," Carney said.

Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, National Security Adviser Tom Donilon, and Obama's counterterrorism adviser John Brennan were among those who attended today's meeting, as did Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who is scheduled to retire at the end of this month. Gates joined the briefing via secure video conference from Afghanistan. Carney said that the president would wait to hear recommendations from Gates and Gen. David Petraeus, the head of U.S. and international forces in Afghanistan, before deciding on the size of the cutback. Over the weekend, Gates argued for a modest approach and suggested that he'd prefer to see more support troops and few combat troops removed in the initial cuts. "If it were up to me I'd leave the shooters until last," Gates said.

The president had set July as a deadline to begin withdrawal of troops in Afghanistan, a milestone he set when he agreed late in 2009 to deploy an additional 30,000 troops to try to turn the tide of the war.

Obama will sit down with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Tuesday, and the leaders' conversation is expected to weigh heavily on operations in Afghanistan, where Germany had deployed troops in the northern province of Kunduz. On Wednesday, Obama will hold a video conference with Afghan President Hamid Karzai to discuss the drawdown, and Obama's pick to be his next ambassador to Kabul, Ryan Crocker, will appear before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for his confirmation hearing. Crocker will undoubtedly be pressed by senators on how quickly he thinks the U.S. military can depart Afghanistan.

Obama's liberal base is pushing hard for a significant troop reduction. Earlier this month, House opponents were narrowly defeated, 204-215, in passing an amendment to the Defense authorization bill that called on Obama to speed up the withdrawal. Lawmakers have increasingly questioned the hefty price tag of the war that is running $120 billion per year. It's an issue that the White House is sensitive to. Earlier this month, the National Security Council rejected a Pentagon plan to reject 73,000 Afghan security forces as too costly. And some members of the president's national-security team have reportedly argued for large cuts.

Increasingly, the conversation in Washington, particularly among members of Congress, about Afghanistan is marked by a sense of exasperation, said Ronald Neumann, who served as ambassador to Kabul from 2005 to 2007.

"I think the bin Laden death makes it easier for people to say about Afghanistan: 'Okay, we've done that. Now, let's quit,' " Neumann said.

Carney said the president is cognizant of the costs of the war, but it won't be his primary consideration when making his decision on the size of the upcoming troop cuts.

"In the broader sense, we have limited resources and we have to make decisions about our priorities," Carney said. "Obviously, every decision is made with a mind towards cost, but this is about U.S. national-security interests primarily."

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On visit to border, Obama pushes to revive immigration reform

Aamer Madhani — Tue, 10 May 2011 00:00:00 -0400

President Obama renewed his call for comprehensive immigration reform in a major address at the U.S.-Mexico border on Tuesday and attempted to restart the debate on an issue he spoke passionately about as a candidate but has made little headway on during his presidency.

In a speech in El Paso, Texas, Obama argued that his administration has made significant progress on border security over the last two years, answering GOP opponents' objections to tackling reform legislatively.

The Obama administration has doubled the number of agents patrolling the border and has deported nearly 400,000 illegal immigrants last year-facts that the president said underscore that the conditions are right for a serious debate on overhauling the nation's immigration policy, administration officials said. The president also said that current immigration laws are keeping innovative thinkers and skilled workers from contributing to the U.S. economy.

But even in making his case to reopen the debate on immigration reform, Obama noted that it would be difficult to get comprehensive immigration reform through a divided Congress.

"We have gone above and beyond what was requested by the very Republicans who said they supported broader reform as long as we got serious about enforcement," Obama said. "All the stuff they asked for, we've done. But even though we've answered these concerns, I suspect there will be those who will try to move the goal posts one more time."

In his address, Obama offered broad outlines of what he thought comprehensive reform should look like. He suggested that the U.S. government has to fulfill its responsibility of securing the nation's borders. Businesses that exploit undocumented workers should be dealt with severely. Illegal workers currently in the country would have to pay fines, taxes, learn English and go to the back of line of those trying to immigrate legally. And the law needs to be reshaped so that it's easier for foreigners who come to the U.S. for school to stay and work once they earn their degrees.

To be sure, passing any legislation with a divided Congress faces long odds. But by simply putting the issue on the front burner, the president's effort could help energize a constituency that will be key to his reelection efforts.

"There's a political consequence and what he says will go a long way in promoting enthusiasm among Hispanic voters," Rep. Charles Gonzalez, D-Texas, chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, told National Journal.

As a candidate, Obama spoke passionately about immigration reform, intoning a moral imperative to bring an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants living in the United States "out of the shadows."

Addressing the issue now could have a direct impact on the president's survival at the polls in 2012. Obama won 67 percent of the Hispanic vote in 2008, but he has been hammered by CHC members for giving immigration reform short shrift after promising on the campaign trail that he would make passing it a central part of his agenda during the first year of his presidency. CHC members have also criticized the administration for setting a new record in 2010 with 392,000 deportations.

Obama did back the Dream Act, legislation that would offer young illegal immigrants a path to legal residency by going to college or serving the U.S. military, but an attempt to pass the legislation was blocked in Senate during the lame-duck session.

Last week, members of the CHC pressed Obama to use administrative powers to prevent deportation of illegal immigrants that would have been protected under the Dream Act, but Obama seemed hesitant to act unilaterally and told lawmakers that immigration needed to be fixed through legislation.

"I know some here wish that I could just bypass Congress and change the law myself," Obama said on Tuesday. "But that's not how a democracy works."

Hispanic groups are reminding the president that they played a large part in helping him win in 2008, and could make the difference in many battleground states in his reelection effort.

Obama won in 2008 despite capturing just 43 percent of the white vote. With the economy foundering, he could find it difficult to maintain even that modest level of support in 2012. But thanks to minority population growth in key states he won in 2008-including Florida, Nevada, and Virginia-he could still pull out victory with an even smaller segment of white voters, according to a National Journal analysis.

More than any group, Hispanics are driving the country's minority growth. One in six Americans is Hispanic, or about 50.5 million in total, according to the 2010 census. That's up from one in eight, or 35.3 million, in 2000.

In his speech, Obama reframed immigration reform as an economic and law-and-order issue. Administration officials said that the White House would also draw members of the faith-based community and business leaders into the conversation, an effort that they hope could help draw Republicans into the discussion. The White House is in the process of arranging 30 community conversations to raise the issue's profile.

"When an issue is this complex and raises such strong feelings, it's easier for politicians to defer the problem until after the next election. And there's always a next election," Obama said. "So we've seen a lot of blame and politics and ugly rhetoric. We've seen good faith efforts -- from leaders of both parties -- fall prey to the usual Washington games. And all the while, we've seen the mounting consequences of decades of inaction."

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Goal was to kill, not capture bin Laden

Yochi J. Dreazen, Marc Ambinder, and Aamer Madhani — Wed, 04 May 2011 00:00:00 -0400

But there's one option the administration appears to have never seriously considered: taking bin Laden alive.

In an important new detail about Sunday's raid, the White House disclosed on Tuesday that bin Laden was unarmed when the SEALs shot him in the head and chest, killing him instantly. The administration said that bin Laden resisted capture, but hasn't suggested in any of its public comments that the SEALs were in any immediate danger when they opened fire on him during their assault on his compound in an affluent Islamabad suburb of Abbottabad.

The SEALs' decision to fatally shoot bin Laden -- even though he didn't have a weapon - wasn't an accident. The administration had made clear to the military's clandestine Joint Special Operations Command that it wanted bin Laden dead, according to a senior U.S. official with knowledge of the discussions. A high-ranking military officer briefed on the assault said the SEALs knew their mission was not to take him alive.

Read the full story at NationalJournal.com

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Step by step: How the U.S. killed bin Laden

Yochi J. Dreazen and Aamer Madhani — Mon, 02 May 2011 00:00:00 -0400

Soon after coming to office, President Obama made it clear that killing or capturing Osama bin Laden was one of his highest national-security priorities.

But it wasn't until last summer that intelligence officials caught a break in their pursuit of al-Qaida's leader.

Numerous behind-the-scenes accounts of the killing of bin Laden have been flowing since Sunday night's stunning announcement of his death. Here is what National Journal knows now:

In September 2010, the CIA presented Obama with a set of assessments that indicated bin Laden could be hiding in a compound in northwest Pakistan. Starting in mid-March, the president convened at least nine National Security Council meetings to discuss the intelligence suggesting that bin Laden was possibly hiding out virtually in plain sight.

The CIA developed its theory of bin Laden being there through leads gained from individuals in al-Qaida's inner circle and from fighters captured after September 11. Intelligence officials were repeatedly told about one courier working for bin Laden as someone that America's most-wanted man deeply trusted.

The detainees provided the courier's nickname to U.S. officials and identified him as a protégé of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and a trusted assistant of Abu Faraj al-Libbi, once al-Qaida's third-highest-ranking official (he was captured in 2005). Intelligence officials identified the courier's name four years ago, but it took two more years to zero in on areas of Pakistan where he and his brother operated.

Finally in August 2010, they were able to track him down to the sprawling compound in Abbottabad, a relatively affluent enclave favored by retired Pakistani military, a senior administration official said. The compound was massive and tightly guarded with only two points of access which raised American suspicions that it was more than some Pakistani General's retirement home.

"The physical security measures of the compound are extraordinary," a senior administration official said. "It has 12- to 18-foot walls topped with barbed wire.... Internal walls sectioned off different portions of the compound to provide extra privacy.... The residents of the compound burn their trash, unlike their neighbors, who put the trash out for collection."

Bin Laden and his family were living on the top two floors of the three-story structure, the most prominent building on the property. The compound had neither Internet nor telephone access which was unusual, to say the least, since the property was estimated by American officials to be worth approximately $1 million.

"Many of his terrorist associates in other parts of Pakistan and throughout the region are living in much more dire conditions," a senior administration official said. "You have to be wondering what they're thinking at this moment when they see that their leader was living, relatively speaking, high on the hog." In the hours since bin Laden's killing, American officials have clearly pointed to his luxurious quarters to dispirit al-Qaida forces and Taliban sympathizers who might lament their woeful conditions on the battlefield while their leader, rather than roughing it in some cave, as many had long believed, lived like a wealthy Pakistani mansion.

Intelligence analysts studied the compound, which was built in 2005, carefully. While convinced that a high-value target was staying there, they assessed whether it could be someone other than bin Laden, perhaps his second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

"We conducted red-team exercises and other forms of alternative analysis to check our work," the senior administration official said. "No other candidate fit the bill as well as bin Laden did."

The president finally gave the order on Friday morning for the operation to pursue bin Laden-just before he departed for Alabama to visit areas ravaged by last week's tornadoes, a senior administration official said.

Early Sunday morning in Pakistan, the strike began.

The team that killed Osama bin Laden would have taken him alive if it had the chance, said John Brennan, a counterrorism adivser to Obama, but he said administration officials were doubtful that bin Laden would go down without a fight.

"If we had the opportunity to take him alive, we would have done that," said Brennan, adding that the president "put a premium on making sure that our personnel were protected" during the raid.

By 1 p.m. in Washington on Sunday, top advisers had gathered at the White House. Around 2 p.m., shortly after returning to the White House after playing nine holes of golf, Obama huddled with them to review final preparations for the operation. He returned to the Situation Room at 3:32 p.m. for another update, and by 3:50 p.m. he was given word that bin Laden was "tentatively identified" as among those killed in the operation.

More information trickled in indicating that it was indeed bin Laden-including preliminary DNA analysis, Brennan said. At 7 p.m., Obama was told it was a "high probability" that it was, indeed, bin Laden.

"We got him," Obama declared, according to Brennan, after he was confident that U.S. forces captured the terrorist.

The entire operation took just 40 minutes and involved a small U.S. team of commandos, a senior administration official said.

The detachment of Navy SEALs earmarked for the mission spent most of April practicing the assault at a secret base inside neighboring Afghanistan, according to a senior military official with direct knowledge of their preparations. The SEALs constructed a full-scale mock-up of the compound to practice the most effective ways of breaching its perimeter and assaulting various numbers of defenders, the official said. During the weeks of preparations, the compound in Pakistan was kept under round-the-clock surveillance by the U.S., but the official declined to say what combination of drones, aircraft, or satellites was used to monitor the target site. The SEALs, meanwhile, were kept in a constant state of readiness in case the order came to launch the mission sooner than expected because of signs that bin Laden was preparing to depart the fortified building, the official said.

As the SEALS conducted the raid, Obama and senior advisers monitored the operation in real time, Brennan told reporters on Monday afternoon. In the Situation Room, the mood was tense.

"It was probably one of the most anxiety-filled periods of time in the lives of the people who were assembled here yesterday," Brennan said. "The minutes passed like days and the president was very concerned about the security of our personnel."

A stealth raid wasn't the only option Obama considered. One administration official said that Obama advisers presented him with the option of bombing the compound. Advisers also presented the president with plans to conduct raids on the compound on two other occasions, but Obama rejected the plan, according to another administration official.

In addition to bin Laden, four others were killed in the strike on the compound: an adult son of bin Laden, two of bin Laden's couriers, and a woman, who an administration official said was used as a human shield.

Administration officials offered scant details about how bin Laden conducted himself in his final moments, only saying that he was felled in a firefight and suffered a wound to the left side of his face.

It's also unclear how long bin Laden had been living at the compound, but intelligence officials say multiple sources indicated that he was there with his youngest wife and several family members. Brennan said the woman who died in the raid was believed one of bin Laden's wives, and he used her as a human shield.

No Americans were killed in the operation, according to U.S. officials, which was kept secret from the Pakistani government until after it was completed. But a U.S. helicopter was lost in the operation because of mechanical failure, creating white knuckle moments in the Situation Room.

"When that helicopter was seen to be unable to move, all of sudden you had to go into Plan B," Brennan said. "And they did it flawlessly ... but seeing that helicopter in a place and in condition that it was supposed to be, I think for me, and for other people in the room, was" tense.

Later in the evening, Obama called former presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush to deliver the news.

When the president walked into the East Room to deliver the news to the world late Sunday night, more than a dozen White House staffers-including Vice President Joe Biden, Chief of Staff William Daley, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, CIA Director Leon Panetta, and National Security Adviser Tom Donilon-were on hand to hear him make the announcement in person.

Hundreds of people, meanwhile, had gathered outside the White House to celebrate the news.

By Monday, bin Laden was buried in the North Arabian Sea. A U.S. military officer read the Islamic funeral rites over bin Laden in English and a native speaker translated his words into Arabic before he was interred.

While White House officials said that the killing of bin Laden is a huge milestone in the battle against al-Qaida, the battle ahead remains difficult.

"This does not mean we are putting down our guard as far as al-Qaida is concerned," Brennan said. "It may be a mortally wounded tiger that still has some life in it, and it's dangerous. We need to keep up the pressure."

Marc Ambinder and Rebecca Kaplan contributed.

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Obama to propose five-year spending freeze

Aamer Madhani — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 00:00:00 -0500

White House calls for review to stop leaks

Aamer Madhani — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 00:00:00 -0500

The White House has named a longtime counterterrorism official to head up an interagency review on the handling of classified and secret government files in the aftermath of the latest dump of sensitive documents by the website WikiLeaks.

Russell Travers, who has spent more than 30 years working inside the government's intelligence community, has been tapped to oversee a broad review of the handling of classified material and help come up with reforms to thwart another wide-scale theft of government documents, according to the White House.

The President's Intelligence Advisory Board will also conduct an independent review of how the executive branch shares and protects classified information. The board is tasked with ensuring that agencies have a proper understanding of the requirements in safeguarding classified information, getting a general sense of government officials' attitudes on leaks, and assessing how the government handles sensitive information and documents.

Travers, who is deputy director at the National Counterterrorism Center, will add the title of national security staff's senior adviser for information access and security policy.

Travers will "lead a comprehensive effort to identify and develop the structural reforms needed in light of the Wikileaks breach," the White House said in a statement.

Administration officials downplayed the damage caused by the leaks of confidential cables from U.S. embassies worldwide, but have vowed to prosecute anyone found to have played a role in leaking the documents to WikiLeaks.

Some of the leaked cables included U.S. diplomats retelling blunt talk from world leaders -- who never dreamed their comments to American envoys would be made public -- as well as snarky opinions by diplomats who believed cables would be seen only by colleagues in Washington.

"The fact is governments deal with the United States because it's in their interest, not because they like us, not because they trust us, and not because they think we can keep secrets," Defense Secretary Robert Gates said earlier this week.

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Security adviser to depart White House

George E. Condon Jr., Yochi J. Dreazen, and Aamer Madhani — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 00:00:00 -0400

Gen. James Jones will announce that he is stepping down Friday as national security adviser, a senior administration official told National Journal. His top deputy, Thomas Donilon, will be elevated to replace him, the official confirmed.

Jones' departure has been long expected, and Donilon was on a short list of potential replacements for recently departed chief of staff Rahm Emanuel.

Donilon was not the preferred choice of Jones, who is known to have recommended that he be replaced by Gen. James Cartwright, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. And Donilon actually may have been the choice of congressional Republicans, who believe they can score political points by going after his years as an executive at troubled mortgage giant Fannie Mae from 1999 to 2005.

Donilon was a key player in planning Obama's 30,000-troop surge in Afghanistan. He had come to the White House as a member of the transition team for State Department review; before that, he was one of the top staff who prepped candidate Obama for his debates with John McCain. Earlier, was a senior aide to Joe Biden's presidential campaign, and he served on the Senate Majority's National Security Advisory Group from 2005 to 2007.

Donilon's previous policy roles include working as assistant secretary of state for public affairs and as chief of staff to Clinton Secretary of State Warren Christopher. As part of that role, he helped negotiate the Bosnian peace accords and expansion of NATO. He is a well-known Washington figure, a former partner at O'Melveny & Myers and the brother of Democratic political consultant Mike Donilon.

Bob Woodward's new book about the Obama administration's Afghan war, Obama's Wars, paints a fairly critical portrait of Donilon, who is described as having an antagonistic relationship with Defense Secretary Robert Gates and many members of the uniformed military. In one episode, Woodward writes that Donilon was so angry over the initial U.S. military response to the Haitian earthquake that he told Jones to order the firing of Gen. Douglas Fraser, the head of the military's Southern Command, which was leading the relief effort. Jones refused. Gates later told Jones that Donilon didn't treat the military leadership with sufficient respect and would be a "disaster" as national security adviser, according to Woodward.

Donilon's relationship with Jones is also described as strained. Woodward writes that Jones felt uneasy with Donilon's close relationship with the president, which the general felt relegated him to the sidelines. Donilon, meanwhile, is said to have been uneasy about Jones' management style and short work day, at least by West Wing standards. In another scene from the book, Jones calls Donilon into his office for a performance review of sorts. He praises his deputy for his organizational skills, intellectual capacity and vigor, but criticizes him to his face for never having visited Iraq or Afghanistan. "You have no credibility with the military," Jones told him, according to the book.

More substantively, Donilon's elevation could fuel the administration's dispute with the uniformed military about the current state of the Afghan war. In December, the administration is slated to hold a policy review of the current approach, which committed 30,000 reinforcements for a hybrid mission focused on beating back the resurgent Taliban while better protecting key population areas. Defense officials familiar with the administration's months-long debate say that Donilon was a persistent and vocal opponent of sending so many new troops to Afghanistan and preferred a smaller troop increase and a much more sharply focused counter-terror campaign.

With the new campaign showing few, if any, battlefield gains, Donilon -- once he ascends to his new post -- will be able to more strongly push the military to shift tactics and prepare for a larger withdrawal next summer than senior military commanders have said they want. The upshot is that the Donilon pick means that the divisions within the administration's war Cabinet, which were extensively detailed in news coverage and Woodward's book, are certain to escalate in the months ahead.

Rebecca Kaplan contributed to this report.

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Administration defends handling of oil spill

Aamer Madhani — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 00:00:00 -0400

Responding to preliminary reports released Wednesday by the presidential commission on the Gulf of Mexico oil spill and offshore drilling, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said the White House worked diligently to provide "accurate and timely information" on the oil spill.

"The worst-case scenario was being discussed on national television," Gibbs said. "We know the response was robust in ensuring that every possible step was taken to protect the coastline and prevent more damage from being done."

The report criticizes the federal government for creating the impression that it was "either not fully competent to handle the spill or not fully candid with the American people about the scope of the problem."

It also paints a picture of an administration that failed to be frank with the American people, and lays out perhaps a more serious charge that the administration was trying to prevent scientists from publishing worst-case scenarios about the oil spill.

The Office of Management and Budget halted efforts in late April or early May by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to reveal worst-case discharge numbers from the Deepwater Horizon well that exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, according to the report.

Kenneth Baer, a spokesman for OMB, said the assertion is misleading. Baer noted that NOAA was tasked with analyzing the impact the oil spill could have on the shoreline -- not flow rates. OMB officials had suggested that NOAA revise its report to take into account various cleanup efforts that were already in progress.

"If you are going to analyze what the impact could possibly be, you probably need to account that all these mitigation efforts are under way," Baer said. "These were collegial discussions. They weren't denied or told 'you can't do it.' There wasn't a heavy hand."

The commission also contends that the federal government's estimates during the first month of the crisis that about 5,000 barrels of oil were flowing into the Gulf of Mexico each day "undermined public confidence." Government officials and independent scientists later concluded that about 60,000 barrels of day poured into the gulf.

Carol Browner, Obama's climate and energy czar, was singled out for saying in a television report on August 4 that 75 percent oil was "gone."

Gibbs acknowledged that Browner misspoke, but the White House clarified Browner's remarks during a White House briefing hours after the interview. At that point, White House officials said about 50 percent of the oil was "completely gone."

"Carol probably did hundreds of hours of interviews, and may have misspoke once, which is a very good track record," Gibbs said.

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President seeks to rekindle Sept. 11 unity

Aamer Madhani — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 00:00:00 -0400

On the eve of the ninth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, President Obama expressed concern Friday that a surge of anti-Muslim sentiment throughout the country may reflect that the nation is starting to misplace blame for the attacks.

During this morning's news conference, he stayed close to his talking points when making his pitch to Republicans to embrace his economic plan and to voters to stick with the Democrats in the midterm elections.

But when he made his remarks about growing tensions about the Muslim community, the president was impassioned.

Obama even praised former President George W. Bush to make his point, noting that Bush made clear after the attacks that the United States was not at war with Islam but with "terrorists and murderers who had perverted" the religion.

"I was so proud of the country rallying around that idea, that notion: That we are not going to be divided by religion, we're not going to be divided by ethnicity," Obama said. "We have to make sure that we don't start turning on each other."

Distrust of Muslims has come into sharp focus in the debate about a plan to build an Islamic center near ground zero in New York, which has coincided with a threat by a Christian pastor in Florida to burn a pile of Korans on Sept. 11 to protest construction of that center.

A Washington Post-ABC News poll published earlier this week showed 49 percent of Americans had a generally unfavorable view of Islam.

Obama's defense of the prospective Cordoba House complex is politically risky. Throughout his presidency, he's been dogged by whispers that he is a Muslim, and a recent Pew Research Center poll showed that 18 percent of Americans believe Obama is a Muslim.

Obama recognized the sensitivity of building the Islamic center so close to ground zero. But he also made the case that U.S. values would be trampled on if the Muslims were thwarted from building on the plot.

"This country stands for the proposition that all men and women are created equal, that they have certain inalienable rights; one of those inalienable rights is to practice their religion freely," Obama said. "What that means is that if you could build a church on a site, you could build a synagogue on a site; if you could build a Hindu temple on a site, then you should be able to build a mosque on the site."

The president also attempted to frame his concerns about anti-Muslim sentiment in national security terms, making the case that the United States needs to continue to engage the Muslim world as the nation fights wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and attempts to help negotiate a peace accord between Israelis and Palestinians. He pointed out that many of the U.S. troops fighting in Afghanistan are Muslims.

"They're our neighbors. They're our friends. They're our co-workers," Obama said. "And, you know, when we start acting as if their religion is somehow offensive, what are we saying to them?"

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