My command-and-control headquarters, a few feet away through a plywood door, followed the same logic. Most of our quarter of the hangar comprised what we called the situational awareness room (SAR): I worked primarily at the head of a rectangular horseshoe table that faced a wall of screens. My intelligence director, operations director, and command sergeant major flanked me. Liaisons from more than half a dozen agencies eventually sat at the same U-shaped table, though in the summer of 2004 only the CIA seat was filled.
The SAR reflected how my command style and command team were evolving. As I stressed transparency and inclusion, I shared everything with the team sitting around the horseshoe and beyond. E-mails that came in were sent back out with more people added to the “cc” line. We listened to phone calls on speakerphone. (Rare exceptions to this policy of transparency were sensitive personnel issues and cases when sharing would betray someone’s trust.) As a result, I increasingly found T.T. and other senior officers could frequently anticipate my position on an issue and make the decision themselves.
While effective, this immersive command approach was also a bit like playing the run-and-gun style of basketball I’d preferred in my youth. It required almost nonstop focus. My command staff and I often discussed urgent decisions, all while keeping an eye on the screens depicting ongoing operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. It could also lead my full attention to snap to near-term issues—what we called “pop-up targets” after the silhouette figures on army marksmanship ranges. Aware of this pitfall, I tried to create venues for strategic thinking—frequently gathering members of my command group, subordinate task forces, and an intelligence analyst with in-depth knowledge so we could stew in a topic.
I lived in a plywood hooch about twenty meters from the entrance to the bunker. I shared it with my command sergeant major, Jody Nacy, and operations sergeant major John Van Cleave—both extraordinary soldiers and close friends. I slept on a cot-size, metal-framed bed that spanned the width of the room. On nails and screws I put into the plywood walls I hung backpacks and equipment and tacked up pictures of Annie. The room was spare but convenient. I believed it reinforced the message I preached about focused, unadorned commitment.
Until we won, this was home.
* * *
As we were establishing our base in Iraq, so too were Al Qaeda’s top leaders. Sometime in the late summer of 2004, Abdul Hadi al-Iraqi, a Mosul-born Al Qaeda lieutenant working in Pakistan, reportedly made his fourth and final trip to Iraq as an emissary between bin Laden and Zarqawi. He arrived to mediate an agreement at what was a tense time between the two camps. Al Qaeda was increasingly hampered, while news-making Zarqawi was still not fighting under its formal banner.
Since Zarqawi had sent his letter to bin Laden and Zawahiri the previous January, tentatively requesting their formal support, they likely were hung up on whether to endorse the most controversial pillar of Zarqawi’s Iraq strategy—the unrestrained targeting of Shia Muslims. The rogue Jordanian likely forced Al Qaeda’s hand, as the strategy was already going full bore. In their discussions, Al-Iraqi probably told Zarqawi he needed to curtail his “messaging”—the carnage and beheadings his group broadcast abroad—to avoid tarnishing the Al Qaeda brand. They likely haggled over whether Zarqawi needed permission to launch attacks outside Iraq. A red line was surely that Zarqawi could not publicly challenge Al Qaeda’s leadership. When al-Iraqi left Iraq and returned to Pakistan, he likely did so with an agreement from Zarqawi in hand, for soon Al Qaeda’s network would officially have a new franchise.
Around this time, Bennet Sacolick, commanding Green, came into my office to brief the command. Tall, with long limbs, a thin face, and closely cut graying hair, Bennet looked more like a high-school basketball coach than a veteran commando. And he was different. Thoughtful, talented, and pleasingly iconoclastic, he could also be headstrong and slow to carry out changes with which he didn’t fully agree. I could live with that. This was a force of strong-willed professionals, and I had learned it worked best to harness, not constrain, their energy and ideas. He had the tricky responsibility of commanding Green as it moved from what it was—an insular, powerful fiefdom—to what it would be—one of the most important nodes in an integrated network.