Can He Fix It?

On May 22, as President Bush flew to Berlin for the start of a weeklong diplomatic tour, White House chief of staff Andrew Card briefed the President in his private office aboard Air Force One. But Card wasn't there to prepare Bush for his meetings in Europe. Instead, he presented the President with a 1.5-in.-thick binder of eight policy options for reorganizing the Federal Government to guard against terrorist threats. Included was an idea Bush had resisted for months: the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, the first new Cabinet-level department in more than a decade. Card walked Bush through the proposals and showed him a case study of how Harry Truman created the Pentagon in 1947. One option Bush rejected, Card says, was to move the National Guard from the Defense Department to the new department. And the overhaul did not encompass the agencies most in need of reform--the FBI and the sprawling U.S. intelligence community. Taking on those powerful bureaucracies would have meant a bigger war than Bush was ready to wage. "The options were gradations from do nothing to do it all," says Card. The President chose "pretty close to do it all."

For the past month, as the rest of Washington soul-searched and second-guessed about the biggest intelligence failure in the history of the republic, the White House assured the country that the President wasn't losing any sleep at all. The FBI and the CIA would sort out their problems; those who collectively missed the clues that might have led to the hijackers were "fine people who loved America"; and nothing, as Bush told the nation again last week, "could have prevented the horror of Sept. 11."

Behind the scenes, a very different story was unfolding. With public confidence in the war on terrorism waning, the White House was plotting to get back in the game. Beginning in late April, a small working group--led by Card, budget director Mitchell Daniels and Homeland Security czar Tom Ridge--met secretly to design a plan for a new homeland-security system. Hyped as the most sweeping overhaul of the Federal Government in more than 50 years, the proposal put before Bush was drafted in just over a month. An official describes the clandestine enterprise as "sort of like the Manhattan Project," and paranoia about leaks ran so high that meetings were moved to the secure bunker beneath the White House where senior officials had taken cover on Sept. 11. Bush intended to roll out the plan in July, but disclosures about FBI and CIA lapses ratcheted up the pressure to go public now. Says a White House official: "Was the attitude sooner rather than later, more rather than less? Yes."

Just days after Bush approved Card's plan, speechwriter Michael Gerson was told to begin work on an address to be delivered the following week. Gerson went through 14 drafts, with editing provided by Card, presidential counselor Karen Hughes and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice. In an Oval Office meeting Tuesday, the advisers decided Bush should also confront the pre-9/11 intelligence failures and provide a progress report on the war against al-Qaeda. "We recognized the President had to address what's on the nation's mind," Hughes says. Cabinet members were not told of the plan for the new department until Wednesday, 24 hours before Bush spoke to the nation.