The International Herald Tribune has a fascinating look at the headaches/near-heart-attacks that the Secret Service endured in securing Bush’s visit to Pakistan. It also includes a particularly insightful comparison to Bill Clinton’s 2000 trip. This may go a ways in providing an answer to a post on The Acorn a few days ago that posited some notions that I found a bit far-fetched.
How did it happen that the president spent a night in Pakistan, the assumed haven of Osama bin Laden and one of the one most dangerous countries in the world?
The short answer is that Pakistan’s president, General Pervez Musharraf, insisted. The long answer is a tale about the nightmare scenarios of the Secret Service and the calculated risks of presidential travel…The fuzziness [of the travel plans to Pakistan] was to keep terrorists guessing about the timing of motorcades and the arrival of Air Force One, basic precautions passed down from a cloak-and-dagger trip that President Bill Clinton made to Pakistan in 2000 that had the Secret Service in an uproar. Six years later, accounts of the trip from former Clinton administration officials are far more harrowing than was known at the time.
“In the preparations for the 2000 visit, the service dug its heels in, repeatedly confronting the top NSC officials with horror scenarios,” Benjamin and Simon write. “There was danger to Air Force One from ground fire. No one trusted the Pakistani military to keep travel routes in the country secret or secure. The service said it could not perform its mission: It could not protect the president. In a meeting with Clinton, Larry Cockell, the head of the presidential detail, told him so.”
Clinton overruled the Secret Service, although he decided that his daughter, Chelsea, who was to accompany him to India on the same trip, should not make the stop in Pakistan. Clinton ended up slipping into Islamabad for less than six hours on a small military jet owned by the CIA while an Air Force One decoy flew in to draw a possible attack. It was a dramatic and, for Musharraf, embarrassing difference to the five previous days that Clinton had spent out in the relatively open in India. [Link]
Very cool. I would love a job planning out stuff like this. Especially after watching 24 last week. I like seeing gutsy calls where the President overrules his bodyguards at his own peril.
The article also mentions that Musharraf wanted Bush to make up for the sins of his predecessor:
For Bush’s trip, Pakistanis say, Musharraf was adamant that there would be less of a contrast with India, Pakistan’s archrival in the region. “Musharraf had to have the overnight stay, primarily to offset the snub that Clinton had given him,” said Hussain Haqqani, a former adviser to three Pakistani prime ministers and an associate professor of international relations at Boston University. “This had to be something better. If Bush stayed the night, it was a signal that he trusted Musharraf and Pakistan a lot more.”
Bush, like Clinton, made the political calculation that he could not visit India without visiting Pakistan, and that it was critical to maintain good relations with a country, however problematic, that is at the center of the battle against terrorism. “It was the proper call and a gutsy one,” said Strobe Talbott, who was Clinton’s deputy secretary of state. [Link]
The Acorn wondered why it seemed as if Musharraf was snubbing Bush:
Neither Gen Musharraf nor Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz turned up to greet President Bush at Chaklala air base near Islamabad. Unless it was due to those extra-ordinary security measures Musharraf’s is something of a diplomatic slight. The snub becomes even more glaring considering President Bush’s decision to press on with his Pakistan trip after the attack on the US consulate in Karachi that claimed the life of an American foreign service officer.
I think Nitin got it right in the second sentence. The rest of the Tribune article makes it even clearer.
See related post: Three-ring circus
