Peril

Goodreads    Barnes & Noble   Simon & Schuster   Amazon 

 

The book is divided into 72 short chapters, which are presented in the format of dialogue supported by minimal scene-setting and background. Indeed, the book reads more like a screenplay than a historical account. Yet, it contains a treasure-trove of raw historical data to help us understand the current “peril” that presents itself.  Although many of us have recognized the threat to American democracy, there are concomitant threats to national security above and beyond those that we traditionally acknowledge (i.e., fundamentalist Muslim terrorists).

The authors reveal that they conducted “hundreds of hours of interviews with more than 200 firsthand participants and witnesses to these events. Statements appearing in quotations are actual statements.  Other information was gleaned from either public records or personal calendars, emails, dairies and other communications. Interviews—which the authors were allowed to tape-record in most instances—were conducted under the rules of “deep background,” which meant the authors could use all the information they were given, but could not identify the source. The authors acknowledge that neither former President Trump nor President Biden agreed to be interviewed, although they have collected hundreds of first-hand accounts from their closest advisors and confidantes.

The book’s Prologue begins with a January 8^th back-channel phone call between chair of the Joint Chiefs General Mark Milley and his counterpart in the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, General Li Zuocheng. The Chinese had apparently been on high alert since October 30^th, believing the U.S. was secretly plotting to attack them. Milley spent an hour and a half (speaking through interpreters) attempting to reassure Li that no attack was imminent, promising to give warning if this changed. Li was rattled by (as perceived by the Chinese) a mentally unstable U.S. Commander-in-Chief and the chaos of January 6^th.  Milley explained that “democracy can be sloppy sometimes,” attempting to give Li the impression that January 6^th was a protest that had gotten out of control and turned into a riot.

However, Milley admits that he deliberately misled Li in order to avoid potentially catastrophic military action that could lead to war. “To the contrary, Milley believed that January 6 was a planned, coordinated, synchronized attack on the very heart of American democracy, designed to overthrow the government to prevent the certification of a legitimate election won by Joe Biden.” The rest of the Prologue details conversations between Milley and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, as the General attempted to also reassure Pelosi that he had secured commitments from each of the current members of the National Military Command Center to follow all protocols and procedures. As with General Li, Milley had to give Pelosi his word of honor that appropriate precautions had been activated to prevent an unhinged President from launching nuclear weapons.

Although the rest of the book is, for the most part chronological, the frequent scene and character viewpoint shifting can seem fragmented. The first third of the book focuses on the 2020 election. We see the slow process of Joe Biden as he made the decision to run for President for the third time and made his selection of Kamala Harris as VP. We get the inside strategy from both the Biden and Trump campaigns, as well as “insider” accounts of the events of 2020.

General Milley makes a frequent appearance in these vignettes. He describes attempting to use a classified report on domestic unrest to convince Trump that so-called “Antifa” and Black Lives Matter were not the threats that Trump was insisting they were. We get a blow-by-blow description of how both Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and General Milley were “duped” (in Esper’s own words) to walking with Trump across Lafayette Square in the now infamous photo-op where protestors were dispersed with tear gas and flash-bangs while Trump held an upside-down Bible in front of a boarded-up St. John’s Church.

Before Trump had made his way to the front of St. John’s, Milley had already figured out he had been set up by Trump and had veered off and left the scene. Milley received a lot of flack for his part in the charade, and he made a public apology at the National Defense University virtual graduation. Milley had contacted his predecessors for advice, and even asked General Colin Powell (chair of the Joint Chiefs from 1989 to 1993) if he should resign. Powell responded, “Fuck, no. I told you never to take the job. You never should have taken the job. Trump’s a fucking maniac.”

Inside the 2020 Presidential Campaigns

We get the inside story around the disagreement between Bill Barr and Robert Mueller about the characterization of Mueller’s report. Trump called it “total exoneration,” while Barr was accused by a federal judge of distorting the findings in the Mueller Report. Trump was not impeached and crowed to Woodward that the whole thing “…evaporated—It ended in a whimper.”

Trump’s own advisors kept telling him he needed to stop focusing on himself. Although Trump disparaged Biden’s mostly virtual campaign due to the raging Covid pandemic, Tony Fabrizio (one of Trump’s pollsters) told him, “Mr. President, every day this race is about you, we’re losing.  Every day the race is about Joe Biden, we’re winning. And right now, Joe Biden’s not doing anything, so the race is constantly about you.” Even AG Barr told Trump at one point that “this is not a base election,” that Trump needed to be focused on the suburbs and independents, many who “think you act like an asshole.”

Mitch McConnell told some of the unnamed sources that Trump was likely to lose based on his personality rather than because of any specific policy issue, including Covid: “Trump’s personality was his biggest problem and from a personality point of view, Joe was the opposite of Trump.” In his two previous runs for president, Biden had never received more than one percent of the vote. There were other accounts of various Republican politicos advice to Trump to move off of his personal grievance about a purported “stolen election” and focus on the future.

The 2020 Election and Development of the “Stop the Steal” Narrative

The middle third of the book takes us through the election, January 6^th, and Biden’s inauguration. In the wee hours of the morning after the polls had closed, we see candidate Biden urging everyone to have patience for all the votes to be counted.  Meanwhile, as Trump saw his early lead continue to disappear, by 2:30 am he was already claiming the election was a “fraud on the American public.” On November 6^th, Rudy Giuliani arrived at Trump campaign headquarters claiming he had evidence the election was “stolen.” Giuliani was waving around a sheaf of papers, claiming to have “eight affidavits,” which then became “27 affidavits,” and finally stating “I have 80 affidavits. If you just put me in charge, we can fix this.” Meanwhile Trump’s lawyers were having a “tense, basic, law school 101 discussion about what they should tell Trump.”

The next scene switches to Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell. McConnell’s strategy was to “give Trump room to let off steam” and not publicly recognize Biden as the new president-elect. McConnell still needed to work with Trump and knew there was a process for recounts and even court challenges (which, with Trump, there was likely to be). McConnell—who is also a realist—set up a back-channel to Biden through another Senator from Delaware.

On November 9^th, Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows calls Mark Esper, the acting Secretary of Defense, to tell Esper that Trump was going to fire him. Esper had anticipated this. In an interview for the Military Times, Esper said “Who’s going to come in behind me? It’s going to be a real ‘yes man.’ And then God help us.”

In another scene, we see Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visiting General Milley.  Pompeo was a classmate of Esper at West Point and was not happy about Esper’s termination. Milley confided that he believed Trump was in mental decline. Pompeo remarked that Esper’s termination was a “turning point” that was “perilous for the republic.” Milley said that his focus was on maintaining stability during the transition.

We see other machinations involving personnel. Trump attempted to name Kash Patel—then serving as Steven Miller’s chief of staff—as deputy FBI director. On November 11, Patel brings a memo to General Milley purportedly signed by Donald Trump. The memo directed the Acting Secretary of Defense to withdraw all federal troops from Somalia before December 31, 2020, and from Afghanistan by January 15, 2021. Because the memo appeared to have some irregularities, Milley took it to then-National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien. O’Brien claimed he had no idea what the memo was about. Keith Kellogg, Pence’s national security adviser examined the memo and said something was “wrong,” and the memo had not been issued by “the President.” The memo was passed around and then O’Brien returned to announce that the memo was a “mistake” and had been “nullified.” Case closed. We never find out what happened or who created the apparently bogus memo.

Meanwhile, Giuliani found himself a partner in legal gamesmanship in the form of Sidney Powell. Fox News prime-time anchor Tuck Carlson said if Powell could produce evidence of fraud, it would be the “biggest story ever in American politics.” However, Carlson found Powell to be “vague and evasive,” and noticed she had been directing people to her web page, where she asked them for money.

Long-time Trump supporters and staff loyalists in the White House began to be alarmed by the “Rudy and Sidney show.” Alyssa Farah—who had been Pence’s press secretary, had worked for Esper, and had been a friend of Hope Hicks as well as one of Meadows’ first hires—resigned. “I felt like we were lying to the public. Good, hardworking, salt of the earth people that supported the president, who don’t have a lot of time or money or energy to invest in politics.”

Toward the end of November, Attorney General William Barr, FBI Director Chris Wray, and computer experts at the FBI and DHS determined that there had been no widespread “fraud” or hacking of voting machines. Barr told Trump, “It’s all bullshit. The allegations are not panning out.” Barr attempted to redirect Trump toward supporting the Republican Senators in Georgia who were subject to a runoff election on January 5^th. Trump, however, had now become fixated on “all these charts” that Trump believed were evidence of fraud. Trump was now going to Fox News with the bogus allegations. Barr called the Rudy and Sidney team “clown car” and “fucking nuts.”  Conversations between Barr and Trump became testier, as Barr attempted to patiently and logically walk Trump through the fallacies of the so-called “evidence.” At one point Trump accused Barr, “…you must really hate Trump.”

There was further infighting between Giuliani and Powell. Not so much about legal strategy but about who was going to be Trump’s “special counsel.” There was a shouting match between the two where each accused the other of leaving him or her out of the loop, which descended into “don’t talk down to me.” In mid-December, Barr had announced his resignation, stating that there was no need for a special counsel because he “saw no evidence of systemic or broad-based fraud” during the election. “Trump was irate. Don’t worry, Giuliani and others assured him, we still have another play. Mike Pence.”

We follow Pence as he seeks the advice of former Vice-President Dan Quayle. Quayle is the one and only person who has been in the same position as Pence found himself in on January 6^th. As Vice-President, his only constitutional duty is to preside over the Senate—which includes the certification of electoral votes. Like Pence, Quayle had to preside over an electoral vote-count that essentially ended his own position (George H.W. Bush—like Trump—was a one-term President). Quayle had also exhaustively researched the constitutional law involving the Electoral Count Act (3 U.S.C. §15)—a law that was passed in 1887 after several states submitted competing slates of electors and which some 62 percent of voters today agree needs to be “modernized.” A somewhat disturbing question is why former VP Quayle was so intensively researching the law on this issue when there were no competing electors in 1992. Maybe he was just a stickler for doing his homework.] Quayle patiently reviewed all of the “evidence” that Trump’s lawyers were throwing at him and told Pence “There’s no evidence,” and that all he could do was to “listen to the parliamentarian….and let this go.”

In addition to Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, another individual who was pushing the “stop the steal” narrative was Steve Bannon. Although Bannon had left the Trump White House within the first year, they never lost contact. Bannon had been charged in August for defrauding donors to the privatized “We Build the Wall” project—something that Trump had promised to do during his 2016 campaign and said that Mexico would pay for it. Bannon—who may have been angling for a pardon—told Trump that he had to “make a dramatic return to Washington,” to drag back Pence from the “fucking ski slopes,” and focus on January 6^th. “We’re going to bury Biden on January 6^th, fucking bury him.”

Lead Up to January 6th

In Chapter 41, we follow Lee Holmes, Lindsey Graham’s chief counsel on the judiciary Committee, as he digs through all of Giuliani’s claims about a “stolen election.” The story goes into great detail, showing how one piece of (accurate) data was flipped, manipulated and morphed into a totally alternate conclusion. “Holmes was stunned at the blatant discrepancies in Giuliani’s submission.” When Holmes presented this information to Graham, Graham called it, “Third grade” and said, “I can get an affidavit tomorrow saying the world is flat.” The story goes into detail debunking the claim about “overvotes” in Arizona, then tells us that Graham was convinced that Governor Doug Ducey (a Republican) had run a fair election. Graham told Trump that the reason he lost Arizona was because of his attacks on the popular late Senator John McCain.

A minor character we get a few scenes from is Senator Mike Lee of Utah. Lee’s father had been a founding dean at the Brigham Young University law school. Lee considered himself a constitutional “strict constructionist,” and he listened with alarm as talk began to circulate about Congressional interference with the election. If there really were alternate or dueling slates of electors (as there had been in 1887), there surely would have been something in the news. He had heard of some Trump allies putting themselves forward as “alternate electors,” but figured it was merely some social media campaign.

Trump’s legal team kept telling Lee that evidence of fraud would be forthcoming, that a court decision in their favor was imminent. People Lee did not know (and who he was unsure were even his constituents) were continuing to call his cell phone, urging him to “stop the steal.” Lee was also provided a copy of the now-infamous Eastman memo on January 2^nd. Lee attended a rally in Georgia with Trump on January 4^th, where Trump barely focused on the Senate races, instead announcing, “They’re not taking this White House. We’re going to fight like hell.” That night, Lee went to bed with a “deep feeling of frustration and bewilderment,” wondering if there was something he was not seeing.

One the evening of January 5^th, a crowd of Trump supporters gathered around the Willard Hotel, noisy and euphoric at the possibility of Trump taking back the election and hoping to catch a glimpse of Rudy Giuliani or Steve Bannon. “As midnight approached, crowds outside were becoming rowdier. Police officers clashed with far-right militia-type activists and the so-called Proud Boys who roamed the otherwise empty streets of the capital. Food debris piled to the brim of trash cans. Metropolitan Police arrested five people on assault and weapons possession charges.”

We are in the room at the White House on January 5^th, when Trump attempts to pressure Mike Pence to throw out legitimate votes—an almost Biblical “sell-your-soul” turning point. [Personally, I am totally curious to know where/who the authors got this conversation from.] Trump tells Pence, “All I want you to do, Mike, is let the House decide this election.” When Pence tells Trump he “doesn’t have the authority,” Trump chillingly says, “wouldn’t it be cool to have that power?” Pence patiently attempts to explain all of the sources he had checked and that he had been “read in on this” by lawyers. Trump becomes increasingly agitated and belligerent: “You don’t understand, Mike. You can do this. I don’t want to be your friend anymore if you don’t do this.” Trump then berates Pence, calling him weak and accusing him of betrayal. Pence did not budge. When Pence was finally able to duck away, aides report his stress level looked to be at level 15 on a ten-point scale. But Pence “did not break.”

After Pence left, Trump opened a door near the Resolute desk to hear the din of police sirens and the noise of an already-worked-up mob of supporters. Although it was 31 degrees outside and the room grew cold quickly, Trump did not close the door, but talked about how “great” everything was and that “tomorrow’s going to be a big day.” He also went around the room asking everyone how to get congressional Republicans to “do the right thing.”

Law enforcement and security personnel were aware of threats associated with January 6^th. First was Trump’s own statement that it was going to be “wild.” Twitter and other social media were literally lit up with violent threats to shoot, hang, blow up, and kill. D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser had sent communications to acting AG Jeffrey Rosen and top Pentagon officials on January 5^th that the District of Columbia was discouraging deployment of federal personnel without notifying the Metro P.D. first. The Metro P.D. had asked for a small supplement of 340 National Guard, mainly to post at positions for traffic control. The Pentagon civilian coordinator for that day had specifically been instructed that they did not want a repeat of the use of force at Lafayette Square—no troops with guns, no helmets, no riot gear, no weapons.

The Aftermath of January 6^th

While the insurrection was in progress, Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell attempted to find out where all the Senators were, so he could reconvene them quickly and finish the job of counting the votes. “We are coming back tonight,” McConnell told his chief of staff. “I want to do it in prime time, so the country sees us back and we’re going to finish the counting of the electoral votes. It’s important that the public, in prime time, know the assault had failed.”

There was overt hostility among Republicans, especially toward those of their own who some suspected might have been complicit in the insurrection. No one spoke to Senator Josh Hawley, whose image had been captured raising a fist in apparent solidarity with Trump insurrectionists. McConnell figured he would allow everyone who was planning to “object” to state their grievances when Arizona was up for the count, and then they would be able to move on with business. But Hawley and others also objected to Pennsylvania. Many Republicans groaned, because this meant they were going to be there even longer. The cameras caught a “death stare” at Hawley from Senator Mitt Romney.

When the Senate had reconvened to finish the electoral vote, Lindsey Graham took to the floor with “a stream of consciousness of personal distress and political realism.”  Graham began by summarizing all of the research he and his team had done to investigate claims of election fraud. While expressing appreciation for his time with Trump (and Trump’s presidency), he finally had to say, “Count me out…Enough is enough…We’ve got to end it…Mike, Mr. Vice President, just hang in there.…”You’ve got a son who flies F-35s. You’ve got a son-in-law who flies F-18s. They’re out their flying so that we get it right here. Jo Biden, I’ve traveled the world with Joe. I hoped he lost. I prayed he would lose. He won.”

Adam Smith is chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, a 24-year veteran of Congress from Washington state, and a moderate Democrat. On January 7, Smith was aboard an Alaska Airlines flight to return home after the ordeal of the previous day. On his return home the prior year, the plane had been nearly empty due to the pandemic. But today, it was crowded and noisy with MAGA-hat wearing Trumpers. Smith found himself surrounded with Q-Anon conspiracy chatter, as well has mention of “6MWE” (its meaning which Smith had no idea about at the time). Smith felt like he was in the locker room of a losing team after a game. There was much lamentation that the insurrection had failed and now America had “gone to hell” and become “a terrible place.” One man declared that he was going to move to South Korea, which he erroneously claimed as “90 percent Christian.” Smith was glad for his mask and his anonymity.

One of the last scenes involving Mike Pence is at a staff farewell party on January 8^th.  Pence’s wife Karen had worked for days preparing “goodie bag” gifts for staffers.  When Pence and his wife entered his office for the party, his staffers erupted in applause—an applause which kept up for several minutes. Karen started to cry.  Pence said, “It had been an emotional week,” then praised Karen for always sticking with him. The authors note, “This was a world where feelings about Trump were always left unspoken, where angst was packed away. The applause said everything they wanted to say to Pence, and he seemed to know it.”

The Early Days of the Biden Presidency

In the final third of the book, we get an inside look at the negotiations (and opposition) to Biden’s coronavirus rescue plan, the rollout of vaccines, and Biden’s decision process to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan. Throughout the book, we see that Biden is a deliberative decision-maker, seeking input and advice from as many sources as he believes might have relevant information. In contrast to Trump—whose decisional modus operandi almost invariably involved his own self-interest—Biden truly wanted to do the right thing, even when he wasn’t sure what it was.

Biden was no stranger to Afghanistan. We get a Biden’s eye view of the situation in Afghanistan both from his prior service as Vice-President and right now. Biden’s emotional space around Afghanistan was wrapped up into the loss of his now deceased son Beau, who had served there. Biden had previously warned President Obama not to get “jammed” by establishment war hawks at the Pentagon as well as his own Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton. The Trump administration had already negotiated a withdrawal agreement with the Taliban (which excluded the official Afghan government), with the final withdrawal scheduled for May 1, 2021. To no one’s surprise, there was lack of clarity about details, disagreement about who was to do what, and how the agreement was to be enforced.

Biden was determined not to get “jammed” and caught in the loop of partial troop withdrawal, followed by attacks, followed by sending in more troops to defend the ones that were attacked. Three Presidents—Obama, Trump, and Biden—all ran on the promise of getting the U.S. out of yet another “forever war.” It was an easy trap to fall into, harder to break free of. In another scene, we hear Senator Lindsey Graham furiously ranting at both Biden and Trump for even entertaining a decision to leave Afghanistan. Graham had made more than two dozen trips to Afghanistan over the last 20 years and considered himself an expert. In Graham’s view, the withdrawal of U.S. troops would lead only to the resurgence of radical Islam, international terrorism, and destabilize the region.

We see the re-emergence of Biden’s history as a negotiator. Biden had a technique of using very long meetings to “move people off their talking points.” Most Senators only knew the “short version of proposed legislation,” so Biden knew there was often something buried deep that someone could find agreement with. This is contrasted with the style of Mitch McConnell, who was “ruthlessly partisan” and would only resort to bipartisanship if there was no other way of getting a deal.

We see the same partisan hardness in (now) ex-Vice President Pence during a meeting with members of the Republican Study Committee at Pence’s residence in Crystal City, Virginia. Pence, who appeared to be angling to “be in the game for 2024,” waxed nostalgic for his days in the House when not a single Republican voted for Obama’s stimulus package at the tail end of the Great Recession in 2009. Pence urged everyone to again be united in opposition to Biden’s rescue plan. Pence advised the Republicans to “reclaim our mantle on spending,” while failing to note the hypocrisy of Republicans “all but abandoning fiscal conservatism” under Trump.

In one scene, Biden gets tough with Vladimir Putin, who attempts to deny Biden’s accusation that Russia was behind the poisoning of its own opposition leader Alexey Navalny, as well as cyberattacks and interference in the 2020 U.S. presidential election (to help Trump). We hear Biden tell of another meeting with Putin, where Biden says, “Mr. Prime Minister, I’m looking into your eyes and I don’t’ think you have a soul.”  To which Putin replies (through an interpreter), “We understand one another.”

We see that Biden is uncomfortable living at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, preferring to spend time with his family back in Delaware. He never visited the Presidential residence once during his eight years as Vice President. Although Biden has nothing but good words for the White House staff, he tells his aides and friends that it is too much like a “fancy hotel,” or staying in someone else’s house.

So, should you read this book? The scenes are not arranged in anything resembling a normal story plotline. There is no analysis, but rather a finely detailed compilation of raw data. This is a “just the facts” presentation, in which the reader is free to draw his or her own conclusions. Only about a third of the book deals directly with the events of January 6th (the main reason I wanted to read it). The book is definitely a treasure mine for historians—someone else who will spend the effort to place these vignettes in their proper context and conduct an analysis. It is also a good read for news junkies who are looking for the inside scoop “rest of the story” that the mainstream media generally doesn’t cover.

Although the books seems to segue back to a more politics-as-usual vibe in the latter part, Woodward ends the book with the warning: “Peril remains.”