By Bob Woodward and Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, February 1, 2002; A01

Sixth in a series of eight articles.

At 9:35 a.m., President Bush and his war cabinet reconvened at the White House. Some of those gathered around the conference table in the Cabinet Room did not know what to expect -- perhaps more review and discussion, even more questions or analysis.

When their meeting broke up Saturday afternoon at Camp David, Bush had not made up his mind about the options presented to him that day. But after returning to the White House Sunday, he had told national security adviser Condoleezza Rice what he wanted to do. Now he shared his decision with the other advisers.

"The purpose of this meeting is to assign tasks for the first wave of the war against terrorism," the president said, sitting at the traditional center seat on the window-side. "It starts today."

At Camp David, Bush had expressed his enthusiasm for the expansive role that CIA Director George J. Tenet proposed for his agency. Bush said he was approving all of Tenet's requests.

"I want to sign a finding today," the president said, referring to a top secret presidential intelligence order -- called a Memorandum of Notification (MON) -- that would authorize the CIA to undertake a far-reaching and unprecedented worldwide covert war against terrorism. He also approved Tenet's proposal for CIA paramilitary teams to go into Afghanistan.

"I want the CIA to be first on the ground," Bush said. The agency's six- to eight-man teams would be assigned to linking up first with the anti-Taliban opposition forces of the Northern Alliance, and then with U.S. ground troops.

On domestic security, he reiterated the change in priorities that had been outlined by Attorney General John D. Ashcroft. "The attorney general, the CIA and the FBI will assist in protecting America from further attacks," the president ordered. The new policy would stress protection of the United States -- preemption of future attacks -- instead of the traditional emphasis on investigations, gathering of evidence and prosecution.

He directed that Ashcroft complete a legislative package to submit to Congress requesting new legal authority for the FBI to track, wiretap and stop terrorists -- a project already well underway.

The Pentagon also would have a role in security. To Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, he said, "We need plans for protection of U.S. forces and installations abroad."

On the diplomatic front, Bush had resolved in his mind the debate over how to deal with the Taliban. "The secretary of state should issue an ultimatum against the Taliban today," the president said, virtually barking out orders. He added he wanted something "warning them to turn over [Osama] bin laden and his al Qaeda or they will suffer the consequences."

"If they don't comply, we'll attack them," Bush said. "Our goal is not to destroy the Taliban, but that may be the effect."

He turned to the military component. "We'll attack with missiles, bombers and boots on the ground," he said, choosing the most extensive of the three options presented to him by Gen. Henry H. Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "Let's hit them hard. We want to signal this is a change from the past. We want to cause other countries like Syria and Iran to change their views." Syria and Iran had been connected to previous terrorist attacks, going back decades.

"We want to hit as soon as possible," the president said.

The Pentagon should develop and present a detailed plan, he said, but it was clear some basic questions about the operation -- raised six days before by Rumsfeld -- had not been resolved. He repeated those questions once more:

What targets can we do, and how soon? What allied forces do we want? When? How? What's in the first wave? What's later?

Putting boots on the ground before bombing in Afghanistan would be a good idea, he said, adding, "We are going to rain holy hell on them."

Bush had vowed that the U.S. military response would not be a tentative one. He made that point again. "You've got to put lives at risk. We've got to have people on the ground."

Protocol dictated that the secretary of state speak first after the president, so Powell took the floor. He had been slightly taken aback that Bush wanted to give the Taliban an immediate ultimatum. Powell said he would need time to work on it. It was night in South Asia, about 10 hours ahead. Since the United States did not have diplomatic relations with the Taliban, any private ultimatum would have to be issued through Pakistan's government.

There were additional complications. First, Powell had to write it. Second, everyone had to understand the consequences. Powell was still deeply concerned about what might happen in Pakistan. Third, they would have to button up their embassies, talk to the allies. "I'd like an hour to think it through, whether we should delay until tomorrow morning," Powell said.

The president said he agreed, but he wanted the language to be as tough as possible. "I want to have them quaking in their boots," he said.

Discussion turned to whether bin Laden had weapons of mass destruction -- chemical, biological or nuclear. Intelligence showed that over the years he had made a substantial effort to get them, but the CIA and other intelligence agencies really didn't know -- and certainly had no proof -- that he had succeeded.

"It's a wild card that could change the dynamics in ways that could alter our calculus," Rumsfeld said, in a bit of management-speak that left some in the room shaking their heads.

Bush said he wanted a plan to stabilize Pakistan and protect it against any adverse consequences of giving such strong support to the United States.

As for Saddam Hussein, his father's nemesis, the president ended a debate that had gone on for six days. "I believe Iraq was involved, but I'm not going to strike them now," he said, adding, "I don't have the evidence at this point."

Bush said he wanted them to keep working on developing plans for military action in Iraq but indicated there would be plenty of time to do that. Everything else, though, had to be done soon.

"Start now," the president said in summary. "It's very important to move fast. This is a new way."

Shelton said it should take four days to a week to set up the airlifting of troops and supplies so they could be moved near the Afghan border. It would take longer to get the Special Forces troops in place -- so long that Rumsfeld grew frustrated at the timetable that was being outlined.

"This is chess, not checkers," Rumsfeld said. "We must be thinking beyond the first move." Now that they knew the first steps, he asked, what would be the second, third, fourth and fifth steps?

In fact, Rumsfeld thought it was more like three-dimensional chess. It reminded him of the old 25-cent game at the gas station, the one that involved a set of multiple joints and multiple handles that had to be manipulated just so to win the prize.

The people who thought they could approach this war or behave in a normal, intuitive way were going to make a mistake, he believed. What's after the 10-day bombing campaign, he wondered. What can happen that could change their minds? What were the worst things that could happen? What were the best things? Sometimes an operation could move too fast, so they had to be ready to react if things went better than they thought.

The morning after his daylong session with the war cabinet on options, Bush met at Camp David with Vice President Cheney.

"We had an extended discussion about what had transpired at the NSC meeting the day before, and where we were headed next," Cheney said in an interview. He declined to discuss the specifics of his conversation with the president.

Asked in an interview in December whom he had spoken with on Sunday about his decisions, Bush did not mention the vice president. When told that others had said he met with Cheney, Bush said, "I might have. I'll bet I did. . . . I talk to him all the time." But he offered no recollection of what had been discussed.

At 3:20 p.m. Bush arrived back at the White House and met briefly with reporters. In an off-the-cuff remark, he called the war on terrorism a "crusade" -- a characterization that was immediately criticized because of its negative connotations in the Islamic world.

About 4:30 p.m., Bush asked Rice, counselor Karen P. Hughes, press secretary Ari Fleischer and communications director Dan Bartlett to join him in his office on the second floor of the residence, known as the Treaty Room.

Bush believed that how the White House communicated its goals and thinking about the war effort would be critical to the overall success of the campaign. Communication was a key to retaining public confidence in his leadership and the campaign itself. Without that confidence, at home and abroad, he would have trouble holding together the coalition. He wanted to impress upon his communications team the enormous challenges it faced.

"I knew full well that if we could rally the American people behind a long and difficult chore, that our job would be easier," he recalled in the interview. "I am a product of the Vietnam era. I remember presidents trying to wage wars that were very unpopular, and the nation split."

Bush pointed to a portrait of Abraham Lincoln that hangs in the Oval Office. "He's on the wall, because the job of the president is to unite the nation. That's the job of the president. And I felt like, that I had the job of making sure the American people understood. They understood the severity of the attack. But I wasn't sure if they understood how long it was going to take and what a difficult process this would be."

We're going to be entering missions where U.S. military personnel will be at risk, Bush told his advisers. We need to be careful. He told Hughes she would be in charge of the communication effort. He wanted Defense and State and other agencies all operating from the same plan. Make sure the left hand knows what the right hand is doing, he said.

For nearly an hour, Bush talked about what he expected from his communications team. His advisers remember it as a mostly one-way conversation. Bush stressed the unconventional aspects of the war -- the role of law enforcement, of intelligence-sharing, of disrupting the terrorists' financial network, the role of the CIA and the fact that much of the war would be invisible. He said there would be parts of the campaign that they could not talk about. He wanted the advisers to think of ways to showcase all elements of the war they could talk about, particularly the financial piece and not just the visible portion of the military action.

This would not be a rerun of the Gulf War, he told his advisers, despite what many Americans might be expecting. As a result, a more innovative communications strategy was needed. He asked his advisers to think unconventionally about how to explain the mission, the risks and the time it might take to complete the tasks ahead.

We cannot tolerate leaks, he said insistently. Lives will be at stake. Rumsfeld and the Pentagon would talk about operations; White House officials would not. We will not be able to confirm some actions or operations. Your jobs will not be easy.

"I was very clear off the beginning," Bush said in the later interview. "This is one area of communications where I knew exactly what I needed to say. And I wanted them to understand, because their job is to be a part of the dissemination process. And that this was this: We're in for a difficult struggle; it is a new kind of war; we're facing an enemy we never faced before; it is a two-front war, initially, Afghanistan and at home. America had never been attacked before. We had to describe to the American people that we were under attack and we're going to do something about it."

"I also had the responsibility to show resolve. I had to show the American people the resolve of a commander in chief that was going to do whatever it took to win. No yielding. No equivocation. No, you know, lawyering this thing to death, that we're after 'em. And that was not only for domestic, for the people at home to see. It was also vitally important for the rest of the world to watch. These guys were watching my every move. And it's very important for them to come in this Oval Office, which they did, on a regular basis, and me look them in the eye and say, 'You're either with us or you're against us.' "

Twice during the meeting with his communications team, Bush was interrupted for calls with foreign leaders, including one with Mexican President Vicente Fox, whose ranch he had visited shortly after taking office. As the two ranchers spoke, Bush slipped into the vernacular of the Old West to reveal his feelings about finding and capturing bin Laden. "Wanted dead or alive. That's how I feel," Bush said.

When Bush finished meeting with the members of his communications team, he excused them and turned to Rice and asked her to stay behind. "I know what I want to do and I'm going to do it tomorrow at the NSC," he told her when they were alone. He then outlined the orders he wanted to issue.

There was no real discussion as the two sat in the Treaty Room, just Bush dictating a list of actions he would order the next morning.

Before the meeting ended, Bush made one other point to Rice, which encapsulated the tension they all had been dealing with since the attacks.

The American people will give us time, he told her. They will be patient enough. Still, he knew patience had its limits. He could not go on indefinitely issuing brave warnings to the terrorists and then not act. He told Rice he needed to know how long it might take before they could go to war; he had to prepare the public for what was coming.

The president said he was caught between his determination to show people that he was going to do something, and avoiding something premature that would make the United States look ineffectual. Above all, he did not want the response to appear weak.

Rice jotted his orders down, and returned to her office to draw up a one-page summary of 11 items. It was a war plan on a single sheet of paper.

After meeting with his war cabinet, the president went to the Pentagon. He had been scheduled to visit Fort Bragg, home of the Special Forces and the Delta teams, to watch a demonstration of commando tactics. But the trip to North Carolina had been canceled because it could signal the direction his war plans were taking.

Rumsfeld still wanted the president to have a detailed briefing. Special operations were going to be enormously important, he was sure, so a two-star general was sent from the Special Operations Command to brief the president.

Rice and Frank Miller, the senior NSC staffer for defense, went with the president to the Pentagon. Before the briefing, Miller reviewed the classified slide presentation prepared for Bush and got a big surprise.

One slide about special operations in Afghanistan said: Thinking Outside the Box -- Poisoning Food Supply. Miller was shocked and showed it to Rice. The United States doesn't know how to do this, Miller reminded her, and we're not allowed. It would effectively be a chemical or biological attack -- clearly banned by treaties that the United States had signed, including the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention.

Rice took the slide to Rumsfeld. "This slide is not going to be shown to the president of the United States," she said.

Rumsfeld agreed. "You're right," he said.

Pentagon officials said later that their own internal review had caught the offending slide and that it never would have been shown to the president or to Rumsfeld.

At the briefing, Pentagon officials outlined for Bush how the Special Forces teams were organized, what they did and how quickly they could move. They also explained the special units of the various services, such as the Navy SEAL teams.

Afterward, the president went to the entrance to the Joint Staff corridor of the Pentagon to address some reservists, some of the 35,000 who were being called up, and answered questions from reporters.

"Do you want bin Laden dead?" one asked.

"There's an old poster out West," the president said, recalling what he had told the Mexican president privately in their phone conversation the day before, "as I recall, that said, 'Wanted Dead or Alive.' "

The president said in December he used the expression to let the public know where he was heading. He knew that later in the day he was to sign a document authorizing covert and overt action designed to capture or kill bin Laden.

"A lot of times you get out here and you know something is going to happen or you're thinking about something. And you get asked a question and it just, it pops out. I'm not very guarded in that sense sometimes. . . . It was a little bit of bravado, but it was also an understanding that in self-defense of America, that I had made that decision in self-defense of America that 'Dead or Alive,' that it's legal."

Later in the afternoon at the White House, the president was presented with two documents to sign. One was a Memorandum of Notification modifying a finding that President Ronald Reagan had signed on May 12, 1986 authorizing counterterrorist operations.

The memorandum was about 10 pages long with two appendices, and it authorized all the steps proposed by Tenet at Camp David to destroy bin Laden and his network. The CIA was now empowered to disrupt the al Qaeda network and other global terrorist networks on a worldwide scale, using lethal covert action to try to keep the role of the United States hidden.

The finding also authorized the CIA to operate freely and fully in Afghanistan with its own paramilitary teams, case officers and the newly armed Predator, an unmanned airborne drone that could provide rich video surveillance and fire missiles if necessary. The Hellfire missiles were the latest covert action tool.

The second document, 2 1/2 pages long, consisted of the orders and action steps to the war cabinet and agencies that Bush had presented earlier that morning. The orders called for actions including financial pressure, diplomatic action, military planning and covert action. It was classified TOP SECRET.

In the middle of the third page the president scribbled in his distinctive longhand, "George W. Bush."

Staff researcher Jeff Himmelman contributed to this report.