CHENEY WENT TO WORK filling the key posts. He had already decided to keep one Tower holdover, Don Atwood, as Deputy Secretary. A competent, undynamic former General Motors executive, Atwood would be responsible for some of the nuts-and-bolts management of the Pentagon Building and budget.
To run the talent hunt for the other jobs, Cheney brought in Steve Herbits, a 47-year-old Republican political operator who had served as special assistant to Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld.
Toward the end of the first week Cheney was in office, Herbits came in and presented a one-page diagnosis of each of the services and the kinds of civilians Cheney should appoint to run them.
The Army, he’d written, was in deep trouble. It was going to take the biggest budget cuts over the next eight years, when perhaps four of its 16 divisions would be eliminated. For Secretary of the Army, Cheney should choose someone who could plan the cuts logically and then beat the shit out of the generals to implement them.
Herbits said the Navy was run by tradition-bound admirals who were defiant of civilian authority and spoke a language outsiders didn’t understand. They had to find a secretary who understood the tradition and the language, but would not be captured by the admirals.
The Air Force is totally out of control, Herbits’s diagnosis said. The chief of staff, General Larry Welch, was disdainful of civilians, and the whole service was cliquish.
There was only one way to beat them: brains. They had to find a civilian secretary who knew the Air Force culture, weapon systems and habits. An inexperienced secretary would soon be coopted, giving the Air Force a representative in Cheney’s civilian circle, rather than Cheney a representative in the Air Force’s inner circle.
Cheney already knew enough to be wary of the Air Force. The officers were a smooth lot, who made a great show of being helpful and responsive. Make a request and lots of colonels and generals would appear and talk to you until you had briefings and viewgraphs and neatly tabbed studies coming out your ears. Lots of motion, lots of paper flying around, lots of men in light blue uniforms and crisp shirts to answer any question. The Air Force seemed craftier than the other services, more familiar with Washington’s ways, more adept at throwing up a smoke screen. Like almost everyone in the Pentagon, they were selling, but Air Force salesmanship was more consistent and better packaged, as if the service spoke with one persuasive voice. You had to look hard to see exactly what was up. The senior Air Force officer corps was so unified and impenetrable, it was often called the “Blue Curtain.” Herbits and Cheney agreed it would be necessary not only to understand the Air Force, but to learn how to get around it, if necessary.
• • •
Air Force Chief Larry Welch had a chilly reputation not just inside the Pentagon, but all around Washington. He seemed to emerge with reluctance from the absolute order of his fourth-floor E-Ring office, where papers, pens, folders and documents were arranged in perfect stacks and rows. On the inside of his attaché case was a neatly aligned collection of a dozen black binder clips, at the ready to organize any unruly stack of papers that might come his way.
From the moment Welch arrived at congressional hearings, his manner left no doubt about his low view of the messy legislative-media arena. But Welch realized he had to accept the congressional role in military issues. One such issue that he thought it was time to resolve was the decade-long debate over how to upgrade the Air Force’s land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs).
The Bush White House had put off a decision for the time being, but in Congress a debate had been raging over whether the Air Force should go with the small missile known as the Midgetman or the larger one called the MX. Welch had spent time on the Hill talking to members about the options, and he knew the lay of the land.
Before Cheney’s confirmation, Welch had gone to acting Secretary William Howard Taft IV, seeking permission to participate in the Hill debate. The Air Force couldn’t be silent on this, he told Taft. Congressmen were asking for the Air Force’s position, yet there was no clear administration policy for the service to push.
Shall we fall off the wagon? Welch had asked Taft. It would be unwise to leave a vacuum. There was no telling what decision the Congress might reach without Air Force input. He would like to talk to the key members in the House and Senate.
Taft told Welch he was right, and that he should go do it.
Welch also had visited Scowcroft at the White House. Although the administration hadn’t decided what mix of MX and Midgetman it wanted, he told Scowcroft, the Air Force couldn’t let the issue lie in limbo. He needed to take the congressional pulse and lay out some options.
Scowcroft said he didn’t have any trouble with some discussion and information sharing, but that ultimately it would be up to the White House, not the Air Force, to make a recommendation to Congress.
Welch began visiting Hill offices.
George Wilson, the Pentagon correspondent for The Washington Post, was familiar with the way the White House and the Pentagon often shopped ideas around in Congress before making decisions. He was told by some lawmakers that Welch was making the rounds with a compromise ICBM proposal.
The night of March 23, Wilson called Welch, who confirmed he had been “pulsing the system.”
A front-page story in the next morning’s Post, headlined “Air Force Acts to End ICBM Deadlock,” reported that Welch had suggested a compromise plan. Next to the story was a photo of Welch.
Cheney read the story. It was his eighth day in office. He had heard several days earlier from the ranking Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, William L. Dickinson of Alabama, that Welch had been over trying to make a deal with Chairman Les Aspin.
Since his time as White House chief of staff, Cheney had believed that strategic missiles were the President’s turf. It wasn’t so much the Secretary’s business that Welch was trying to do, it was the President’s business.
Cheney was scheduled that day to give his maiden press conference as Secretary. Dan Howard, the holdover Pentagon spokesman, slated to be replaced by Pete Williams as soon as Williams was confirmed, came in to go over potential questions. Howard said that Cheney was sure to get a question on the Post story about General Welch’s pulsing mission on the Hill.
“You’ve got two choices,” Howard said. “You can slide off it or come out swinging.”
“My instinct is to cut him off at the knees,” Cheney responded.
Howard said that normally he would not agree, but this situation called for strong action. The word from Taft’s office was that he had authorized Welch to seek information from the Congress, but not to negotiate. Welch will be pissed off, Howard said, but the damage can be repaired later.
Cheney understood the symbolic importance of first impressions. In the earliest days of his presidency in the summer of 1974, Gerald Ford had been photographed toasting his own English muffin for breakfast. Widely publicized, the photo had set a tone of nonimperial simplicity that endured and boosted Ford’s popularity. Now Cheney knew he would be setting his own tone, not just publicly but in the suites and corridors of the Pentagon itself. Washington was watching his early moves. Just after his nomination, Evans and Novak had written in their column, “Cheney cannot soon seize control of the building.”
• • •
At noon, like thousands of others in the Pentagon, Welch settled down to watch the first public performance by the new Secretary, a press conference televised live over the Pentagon’s closed-circuit television system.
The first question to Cheney was about talk of an ICBM compromise.
“To say that a compromise is near, I think, would be premature,” Cheney replied.
The second question was specifically about Welch.
“Mr. Secretary,” a reporter asked, “General Welch, the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, apparently has been up on the Hill working this program himself. Is that a change of policy for the Defense Department to have a service chief negotiate his own strategic system?”
“General Welch was freelancing,” Cheney said. “He was not speaking for the department. He was obviously up there on his own hook, so to speak.”
Cheney was asked if he accepted that sort of action.
“No, I’m not happy with it, frankly,” Cheney added, his voice steady.
“I think it’s inappropriate for a uniformed officer to be in a position where he’s in fact negotiating an arrangement. I have not had an opportunity yet to talk to him about it. I’ve been over at the White House all morning. I will have the opportunity to discuss it with him. I’ll make known to him my displeasure. Everybody’s entitled to one mistake.”
Wilson, the Post reporter who had written the story, said now to Cheney that Welch had “made very clear he was not preempting you or the President.”
“Good,” Cheney replied. “Well, I’m sure he’ll make that clear when he talks to me about it.” There was laughter in the press room.
Welch was stunned. One of the first rules they taught in any beginning military leadership course was that you praised subordinates in public and rebuked them in private. Nothing could be more humiliating or demoralizing than a public scolding. This reprimand had been broadcast to the entire world.
The general took several minutes to compose himself, then walked out of his office and down one flight of stairs to the Secretary’s suite.
“I am not a freelancer,” Welch said, standing before Cheney. “I have never been a freelancer. I support the administration’s position and have worked harder than anybody in this town to make it come out the way the administration wants it to.”
Cheney said the issue was closed.
Welch saw that he was not going to get an apology. Cheney seemed to want to smooth the issue over. Maybe, Welch thought, Cheney could not afford to backtrack. Welch did not mention the explicit permission he had received from both Taft and Scowcroft. After all, it had been his own idea to go to Congress; and he was senior enough to take responsibility for his actions, no matter who had approved them.
Welch tried to convince Cheney that he could count on the military. The greatest support he would get in the building would come from the military leadership.
Cheney did not want to discuss it further.
• • •
Downstairs in the Chairman’s office, Crowe was almost beside himself. He had had no advance warning that the new Secretary was going to dress down one of the chiefs publicly. Cheney had not discussed it with him.
Crowe knew this was going to hurt. He had been trying to get the chiefs to be more open, more a part of the defense debate. Now this public lashing would drive them even further away from dealing with the Congress and the press.
Pitiful, Crowe said to himself. In his first week in office, a new Secretary who has never served in the military, never served on any of the armed services committees, publicly chastises a senior officer? Crowe had never heard anything like it. Clearly, Cheney felt a need to establish his machismo, to lay down a marker that he was the number-one guy around the building. Cheney also was pandering to the media, where the rebuke would surely be given big play.
Late that afternoon, Crowe and Cheney had their daily private meeting.
“I hope that blast didn’t cause you a problem,” Cheney said. He added that Welch had not denied going to the Congress.
Crowe had decided it would be best to speak frankly. “I just plain disagree with you, Mr. Secretary,” he began. “It’s not right.” Crowe explained the seriousness of the matter. Cheney effectively had accused Welch of willful disobedience of an order, which was a violation of a military officer’s oath. “You picked the wrong guy. If you want a chief to slap down, I can give you plenty.” Welch, Crowe explained, was the most quiet, buttoned-down and inhibited service chief. In the Tank, the second-floor Pentagon conference room where the Joint Chiefs of Staff hold their regular meetings, he was a listener. And of all the chiefs he was the most flexible and “purple,” Crowe said, using the Pentagon term for officers open to points of view outside that of their own service—“purple” referring to a combination of all the service uniform colors.
Crowe went further. For Cheney to get in a public spat with one of the chiefs was below his dignity as Secretary. By trying to demonstrate his authority in such a public fashion, Cheney had suggested that he himself was uncertain of it.
Cheney seemed a little chastened, Crowe thought, but very calm as he listened to his Chairman rake him over the coals.
As Crowe expected, the story made a splash in the media. Most major newspapers carried it on page one, with headlines reporting Cheney “assails,” “rebukes” and “scolds” the Air Force chief.
Within the military, it was soon known as the shot heard round the world. Officers traded analyses of what it foreshadowed for the military’s fortunes under Cheney, as well as for the Air Force and for Welch himself. Welch was considered one of the leading contenders to succeed Crowe.
Welch went deep into his shadow. He said nothing publicly, but he felt it necessary to speak to the active-duty four-star Air Force generals. A veteran of 137 combat missions in Vietnam, he told one of the generals, “I’ve been shot at by professionals and I’m still here. So being shot at by an amateur is not likely to cause me any pain.”
The rebuke also reverberated among retired Air Force generals, a tight-knit group that kept tabs on Pentagon politics. Two retired four-stars told Welch they were going to make a big stink. They planned to go to Congress and get some of the Air Force’s friends there to demand a public apology from Cheney. Both had access to influential congressmen and the media.
Welch told them not to do it. A feud between the Air Force and the Secretary of Defense would be bad for everyone. Suppose they succeeded in making a big deal of it—how could that be to the advantage of the Air Force? By reducing the effectiveness of the Secretary of Defense? They had to be kidding, Welch thought. If Cheney needed this kind of small victory to be effective, let him have it.
Welch said that he would resign his office at once if the two retirees did anything privately or publicly. They never did.
Within several days of the rebuke, two former secretaries of Defense suggested to Cheney that he had taken the wrong course. Harold Brown, Secretary during the Carter administration, told Cheney that saving face was important in the service cultures, and that he should take care not to alienate the military.
James Schlesinger, who had run the Pentagon under Nixon and Ford, told Cheney that he was in no danger of a military coup, and that the senior military officers would be his crucial supporters when he tried to get his programs and budgets approved. They knew how the system worked, and could implement or sabotage the Secretary’s agenda. Overall, Schlesinger added, the problem with the military was not that the senior officers were uncontrollable, but the opposite. After a lifetime of taking orders, generals and admirals were, if anything, too compliant.
Representative Les Aspin, the Wisconsin Democrat who was Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, felt that he had played a role in selling Welch on the idea of a missile compromise in the first place. Several days after the rebuke, Aspin saw Cheney at a breakfast and took the Secretary aside.
“Jesus Christ, Dick,” Aspin said, “Welch wasn’t doing anything like that, and he always made it clear it was your decision.”
Cheney responded with a knowing half-smile. “It was useful to do that,” he said.
“Okay,” replied Aspin, “I understand that agenda.”