The Secretary (5 page)

Matthew Lee, from the Associated Press, had started covering the beat under Secretary
Madeleine Albright nine years ago. With blue slanting eyes and thinning light brown
hair, he towered over the rest of us and represented a dying breed of reporter—he
smoked, he drank, and he grilled officials ruthlessly and relentlessly before cracking
jokes with them over a beer. Mark Landler, the diplomatic correspondent for the
New York Times
, was a bespectacled, conscientious father of two, recently transplanted to Washington
from Berlin. Glenn Kessler from the
Washington Post
had a round face and big dark eyes; like me, he had Dutch roots, but he had been
on the secretary’s plane for nine years and had written a book about Condoleezza Rice.
They all wore khaki trench coats. The news agencies were always present as well: the
Associated Press, Agence France-Presse, and Reuters. Their wires were the first to
grab people’s attention across the world whenever something important happened. Even
in the age of twenty-four-hour television news and Twitter, the wires had correspondents
everywhere. They were reliable and indispensable. Without them, trees could fall in
forests and no one would hear about it. The celebrity correspondents of the American
television networks had stopped traveling with Rice as the Bush administration entered
its final year. But now, Andrea Mitchell from NBC, Martha Raddatz from ABC, as well
as correspondents from CBS and CNN were all back for the Hillary-on-the-road show.

Suitcases disappeared into the black vans, and we squeezed, laptops and handbags in
hand, into the three rows of seats in each of the press vans in the back of the convoy.
The officials in the staff vans led at the front, and we set off for the forty-minute
drive to Andrews Air Force Base (AAFB) in Maryland. The base was home to Air Force
One, the plane of the president of the United States, sometimes referred to as POTUS
by people in D.C. Queens, presidents, and prime ministers flew into the United States
through AAFB, and its runways were also used by the planes carrying American distinguished
visitors, or DVs as the air force referred to them—the secretary of state, secretary
of defense, the vice president, and members of Congress. They shared a fleet of four
aging 757 Boeing planes that flew them on Special Air Missions (SAMs) around the world.

While we waited for Clinton to arrive, we spread out in the VIP lounge off the tarmac
and munched on the chewy chocolate chip cookies that were a staple of American air
force bases. When the dogs were done sniffing our carry-on bags and suitcases, the
belly of thirteen-year-old SAM started filling up with luggage, a large metal trunk
carrying gifts from the secretary for her hosts, and dozens of black cases of security
equipment.

We used an empty white paper cup with the air force golden stamp for our lottery.
This was a trip with no tickets, no boarding passes, and no assigned seating. It offered
many luxuries: someone else sorted out your visas, you never had to go through passport
control anywhere, your luggage was delivered straight to your hotel, and you mingled
in a VIP lounge with top American officials who loved to talk. But the trip also had
its downsides: the traveling press was squeezed in the back of the secretary’s reconfigured,
no-frills plane. The section had eight comfortable business-size seats and twelve
cramped coach seats. Some of the business seats went to Diplomatic Security agents
and to Caroline, Ashley, and Nick. We got whatever seats were left. The lotteries
took place only once, at the start of each trip, and they could get surprisingly emotional,
especially when there were only six “good” seats and the handwritten 9 looked like
a 6. On an eight-day trip with seven flights just like the one we were embarking on,
drawing 13 felt like being dispatched for a root canal procedure.

When it was time to board, we walked the short distance on the tarmac to the steps
up the plane. A Raven, a member of specially trained U.S. Air Force Security Forces,
who guard SAM at all times, checked our names off a list before we were allowed to
settle into our little capsule. The litany of the roll call shouted over the deafening
roar of the plane’s engines punctuated every departure at every stop.

On our seats, we found red tin boxes with heart-shaped ginger crisps, “hand rolled
with love” by Mrs. Hanes in her factory of Moravian cookies somewhere in North Carolina.
The air force wanted to mark Hillary’s first trip with a special gesture. From my
seat, I could see the activity farther up the plane, beyond the lavatory that marked
the Line of Death—an imaginary barrier between us, mere mortal journalists, and the
officials who had started to pore over the big white binders of documents that had
traveled over from the vault on the seventh floor in one of the staff vans, intently
guarded by the two young Foreign Service officers. The vault was known as the Line,
once an actual physical line of desks where classified policy papers and statements
were edited, improved, and passed up the chain until final approval. The Line now
snaked through computers, into BlackBerries, and out of printers, but the line officers’
job remained unchanged—they produced all the background information documents, talking
points, and briefing notes that the secretary and her team needed. For trips, it was
all gathered into the trip Book, with a big, red “CLASSIFIED” stamp across the front,
just above the seal of the secretary of state. The Book was the reason we were not
allowed beyond the lavatory without explicit permission. Instead, we waited for visits
back to our quarters on the plane.

Hillary had emerged from her private cabin and was chatting to her staff in the front
section, a conference-like area where four big leather seats, for her closest aides,
faced each other on either side of the aisle. She then stopped in the middle section,
with three rows of seats reserved for officials from the State Department, the NSC,
and the Pentagon officials who accompanied her, and of course Fred and his agents.
Then she crossed the Line of Death.

“Hello, everyone, nice to see you,” Clinton began. She asked us if we were excited
about the trip and then introduced Jake and Huma, who had walked down with her along
with a few of her other aides. It was our first opportunity to meet the new team of
the secretary, or “S,” the department’s abbreviation. I didn’t know what to make of
Jake. On paper he was impressive: a Yale graduate, Rhodes scholar, Supreme Court clerk.
But he just looked so young. Was he really helping to shape American foreign policy?
Would the future of my home country, Lebanon, be affected by his thoughts and advice?

Huma, Hillary’s deputy chief of staff at the State Department, had first worked for
her as an intern in the White House in 1996. Over the years, Hillary had taken Huma
under her wing. In the small Senate office and then on the grueling primary campaign
trail, the two women had developed an increasingly tight bond. Born in Kalamazoo,
Michigan, to an Indian father and Pakistani mother, Huma had moved to Saudi Arabia
with her family at the age of two and returned to the United States to attend George
Washington University in D.C. During the campaign, as Hillary’s traveling chief of
staff, Huma had an almost mythical reputation for her unflappable calm and endless
energy, her cool manners and impeccably styled jet-black hair, and, perhaps most of
all, for her wardrobe full of designer clothes, including those from her personal
friend Oscar de la Renta.

Huma was probably the coolest thing on the secretary’s plane, which lacked all the
high-tech gadgetry and plush feel of Air Force One. The blue and gray leather seats
were from another era, the walls had taken on a gray tinge, and the tiny overhead
screens creaked loudly whenever they opened up for the start of in-flight entertainment.
We did get toothpaste, mouthwash, shaving cream, combs, and antacids in the lavatory.
But the plane was not modern or impressive enough to reflect American power. But at
least the secretary of state had a plane at her disposal, which was more than most
foreign ministers around the world could say.

What mattered was that we were on the same plane as her, and this was worth the bill
our news organizations had to foot to get us a seat on those trips. On presidential
travels, only a handful of reporters fly on board Air Force One; the rest of the press
follow in a separate plane and rarely see the president while on the road. We were,
at all times, in a Bubble with Clinton, from the plane to the motorcade, to our hotel,
to the next event or meeting, back to the motorcade, back onto SAM. It limited our
ability to connect with the countries we visited but it was priceless access to the
heart of the U.S. foreign policy machine.

And here was Clinton, standing in the aisle of our section. For twenty minutes, she
answered our questions about the impact of the financial crisis on America’s relationship
with Asia, questions about how she would address the human rights agenda in China,
and questions about North Korea’s nuclear program. She said she wanted to listen more
than talk, but mostly she wanted to make clear to us that the Obama administration
was reaching out to the world, to Asia—not only to suit-wearing officials sitting
in ministries but to people as well.

“We do see Asia as part of America’s future,” Clinton told us. “We are both a transatlantic
and a transpacific power. And part of what I hope we can do is better understand and
create the kind of future that will benefit both Asians and Americans.”

She spoke in a slow, deliberate tone, with little inflection, sounding like the briefing
notes she must have been reading in preparation for the trip. There was no smiling;
this was serious diplomacy. She seemed to be treading carefully (Jake was listening
intently from behind her). She was dealing with a group of foreign policy junkies
who were going to dissect her every word.

For more than two decades, Hillary had had a checkered relationship with the American
media. She had been hailed and demonized, scrutinized and lauded. She had never known
what was coming and understandably kept her guard fairly high, encased in a protective
shell. She related comfortably to individual reporters, and she could grow to trust
a traveling press corps accompanying her on the campaign trail. She had once even
phoned the partner of a reporter who was stuck on the road with her on Valentine’s
Day to apologize. But she looked at us and saw a faceless group of hacks of indeterminate
nature and unknown intentions.

Finally, the grilling was over. Hillary walked up front to the conference area and
relaxed, surrounded by people she knew were on her side. Rice, who was much warmer
and gracious in person than she appeared on television, was still very reserved and
had spent most of her time in her private cabin. But Hillary was curious about other
human beings and enjoyed chitchat. She sat down in one of the empty seats as the air
force flight attendants started to serve refreshments. From then on, the seat would
be kept free for her on every trip and became known as the “Hillary seat.” Shocked
staffers, who had been on S trips before, fidgeted nervously, uncertain about the
protocol.

“Why does she want to know my name?” one of them thought. She had never before had
to explain to a secretary of state where she was from, whether she had a family, or
what her career path had been like so far. The real shock came later, when Hillary
remembered her name.

Jake hungrily finished the lunch of spaghetti, meatballs, and salad, one of the few
proper meals he’d had in weeks. Back at the State Department, he had been at his desk
from eight in the morning until well past midnight every day, charting out the contours
of his job and trying to work through the reams of paperwork that the bureaucracy
of the department seemed to produce every second. Lunch and dinner were courtesy of
the vending machine down the hall, a healthy combination of Cheetos and Doritos and
Pop-Tarts, washed down with a Diet Dr. Pepper. He drove everyone in the Building slightly
mad as he scrutinized every word on every single piece of paper, every policy talking
point, every memo destined to reach Clinton, until he felt it was perfect. The already
lengthy clearance process for documents became a few hours longer under Jake’s hand.
Only months later would he come to accept that even in the capital of the world’s
superpower, sometimes “good enough” had to suffice.

But in those first few months and especially on this trip, everything still had to
be perfect. This was Hillary Clinton’s debut on the world stage as secretary of state,
her latest incarnation. All those papers were going into the trip Book, a version
of which awaited the secretary in her private cabin. The Book contained an extra layer
of classified documents about issues beyond the focus of the trip and copies of all
the speeches and public statements she would be making. These statements were crafted
by Lissa Muscatine, the speechwriter.

Every evening in Washington, Clinton also received a daily Book, a cordovan leather
binder with all the briefing material required to prepare for the following day.

Preparing the first Book for Clinton, line officers had asked how she liked her information
presented to her—some officials like oral reports; others preferred bullet-point briefings.
Some needed it all condensed into the basics. Hillary wanted all the details, all
the angles, all the background. She was a voracious reader and could extract what
she needed from the tome and let the rest lie in the back of her mind to inform her
general approach to a subject. Her instincts honed as a lawyer had also taught her
to stay nimbly ahead of the brief—whatever question came her way, she wanted to have
an answer. But mostly she wanted to have all the information in front of her so she
could slowly learn to transform the pile of dry diplomatic statements into lively
sentences that matched her personality and sounded like something she would actually
say, something that her audience outside of government buildings would understand.