Bush is systematically getting rid of anyone who'd tell him if he had a bad idea
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/17/politics/17recon.html?pagewanted=1&th&oref=login http://tinyurl.com/4h6lm Cabinet Choices Seen as Move for More Harmony and Control NYTimes November 17, 2004 By DAVID E. SANGER and STEVEN R. WEISMAN Published: November 17, 2004 ASHINGTON, Nov. 16 - President Bush has instructed his new national security team to end the running battles between the State and Defense departments and the Central Intelligence Agency, and intends to extend his personal control over agencies he has suspected of impeding his foreign policy aims, according to current and former administration officials. One senior official said Mr. Bush decided months ago to make no effort to retain Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, who had long indicated he planned to leave. Advertisement A close associate of Mr. Powell said he would have stayed if asked, at least for a while. "He was never asked," the associate said. So when Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, told Mr. Bush at Camp David on the weekend just after his re-election that she was willing to stay for a second term, he quickly offered her the secretary of state job, a post that she told friends last year she thought did not suit her sometimes impatient temperament. "Her interests ran to Defense," said a national security official who just left the administration. "But the president didn't want to change horses in the middle of a war." The essence of Mr. Bush's moves has been to fill crucial cabinet agencies with people he has relied on in the Oval Office, people who know his mind. "This is a different cabinet - it's a true kitchen cabinet," said one official who no longer works in the White House but deals with it often. But one of the mysteries is whether the reorganization foreshadows a change of approach, particularly in American diplomacy. Some saw the departure of Mr. Powell as the moment for conservatives under the influence of Vice President Dick Cheney to assume an even larger role. But some officials who know Ms. Rice well do not expect her to take a hard-line hawkish view when she goes to State. "This could actually turn out not so well for the ideologues," said one administration official, referring to the staff members in the vice president's office and the Pentagon who are openly skeptical of the idea of negotiating solutions to the crises over Iran's and North Korea's nuclear programs. According to officials who have heard accounts of the case Mr. Bush made to Ms. Rice, he argued that their strong personal ties would convince allies and hostile nations like Iran and North Korea that she was speaking directly for the president and could make deals in his name. "This is what Powell could never do," said a former official who is close to Ms. Rice and sat in on many of the White House situation room meetings where policy conflicts arose. "The world may have liked dealing with Colin - we all did - but it was never clear that he was speaking for the president. He knew it and they knew it." Ms. Rice's brief acceptance speech gave few hints of what course she planned to set if confirmed, as expected. But several officials said that in recent days she has spoken of leaping at the opportunity created by the death of Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader. Shortly after the election, Ms. Rice directed two top staff members, Elliott Abrams and Daniel Fried, to meet with European envoys in Washington to strengthen their involvement in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, to warn Europeans away from pressing their own pet ideas and to try to enlist their support for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's proposal to withdraw from Gaza. "It seemed to us that she was bypassing the State Department, and that the White House was going to be in charge of the Middle East," said an envoy who attended one of the meetings, speaking before Mr. Bush announced that she was his choice for secretary of state. Other envoys now wonder whether her involvement was an indication that she knew she would be occupying the State Department job before long. Administration officials say that it is possible that Ms. Rice will try to replicate the relationship Secretary of State James A. Baker 3d had with the first President Bush, that of presidential confidant as well as chief diplomat. But another hallmark of Mr. Baker, the fact that he relied on a coterie of his own advisers on the seventh floor, where his office is situated, rather than the large legions of foreign service officers working in the rest of the building, would not be welcome at the State Department. If a large-scale migration takes place from the National Security Council to the State Department, it could mark a transition between the institutions not seen since Henry Kissinger controlled both of them three decades ago, and would put the State Department under much closer scrutiny by White House loyalists. Several officials said they believed that was Mr. Bush's intent. Advertisement The process of moving confidantes into crucial cabinet posts began with the nomination of the White House counsel, Alberto R. Gonzales, to be attorney general. It accelerated Tuesday with the nomination of Ms. Rice and the elevation of her deputy Stephen J. Hadley to replace her as national security adviser, whose role is to adjudicate conflicts between agencies. Margaret Spellings, the president's top aide on social and education policy, is expected to be appointed secretary of education, perhaps as soon as Wednesday. But that leaves in place Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, a strong-willed hawk who often clashed with Ms. Rice. Most notably, she took over control of the occupation of Iraq, creating an Iraq Stabilization Group. Her aides had made no secret of her opinion that Mr. Rumsfeld had failed to devote enough planning, attention or resources to making a success of the occupation. Their relationship worsened after the abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib, the American-run prison west of Baghdad, became publicly known. Ms. Rice, her associates say, had warned Mr. Rumsfeld to focus to detention issues, but he often sent subordinates to meetings on the subject. So there is no end of speculation about whether Mr. Rumsfeld will have the kind of relationship with Ms. Rice that he had with Mr. Powell: one of constant bickering. Mr. Rumsfeld tried to tamp down that speculation on Tuesday, telling reporters traveling with him in Quito, Ecuador, that "long before this administration, we were friends." "She is an enormous talent," he said. "She is experienced, very bright, and as we all know, has a terrific relationship with the president, which is a very valuable thing." But he said that tensions would inevitably occur and that "it is the task, the responsibility, the duty of people who are participating in that national security process to make sure that the issues are raised and discussed," which "has worked very well in this administration." Ms. Rice's associates said they expected that there would be fewer and less heated arguments in the future, partly because Mr. Rumsfeld would be more wary of Ms. Rice and her relationship with the president. Some fear that an administration that seemed in a constant state of behind-the-scenes dissent may end up without enough. Lawrence Eagleburger, who served as secretary of state under Mr. Bush's father, told Paula Zahn of CNN on Monday night, "I do not believe that you should have in the secretary of state someone who has spent their last four years in the White House next to the president." There is merit, he said, in "tension between the State Department, the Defense Department and the National Security Council." The purge of some senior officials at the C.I.A., other officials note, could end up suppressing dissenting views on intelligence - the situation that led the administration to erroneously conclude that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. State Department officials said that events, more than personalities, would be driving the administration in its second term to make diplomatic approaches to Iran and North Korea, despite the urgings of conservatives who prefer confrontations over those countries' nuclear policies. Not least is the demand by Europeans for engagement with Iran - an approach Mr. Bush's aides once disdained, but now, with few alternatives, feel compelled to embraced and the demand by South Korea and China for a policy that offers more incentives to North Korea. -- Jay P Hailey ~Meow!~ MSNIM - jayphailey ; AIM -jayphailey03; ICQ - 37959005 HTTP://jayphailey.8m.com "Scott the Ripper....yeah, that fits. - JH _______________________________________________ Libnw mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] List info and subscriber options: http://immosys.com/mailman/listinfo/libnw Archives: http://immosys.com/mailman//pipermail/libnw
