washingtonpost.com
Rumsfeld's Flying Circus
When It Comes to Going Fast, Far and Frequently, The Defense Secretary Is Way Out Front
Powell's vice is he would rather stay home and work on his old cars.
By Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, May 3, 2003; Page C01
ON THE DEFENSE SECRETARY'S PLANE -- Somewhere between the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, time, place and date all become almost irrelevant.
But if it's Wednesday, it must be Baghdad here on Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's victory tour of the Persian Gulf and Afghanistan this week, a seven-country, seven-day, 15,300-mile whirlwind that took official U.S. government travel to the edge of combat operations.
Even under normal circumstances, traveling with Rumsfeld is a grueling affair. At 70, he still shows the stamina and tenacity he demonstrated as a wrestler at Princeton, often scheduling meetings in two or three countries per day before flying through the night to visit two or three more countries the next.
Indeed, once seated in the rear compartments of his blue-and-white Boeing 757 with "United States of America" emblazoned across the fuselage, aides, military officers, security guards, communications specialists and journalists all have entered a bubble that is remarkable in its efficiency and withering in pace, and very different from the way ordinary people travel abroad.
Much like traveling with the president, there is no waiting in line at passport control, no carrying luggage or fighting traffic, no checking into hotels or arguing with taxi drivers. Planes land and motorcades whisk Rumsfeld and his entourage to four-star hotels. (Rooms are assigned in advance with keys in the doors.)
Everything is tightly scripted by Rumsfeld's scheduling machine, making it possible for a man who controls the world's largest fleet of aircraft to travel the world -- and maintain high-level military-to-military relations -- at warp speed.
While Rumsfeld meets with ministers, generals and emirs, journalists and others inside his bubble can accompany him to a half-dozen countries without ever speaking to a local.
But for the journalists onboard, the mission is not about mixing with the locals, it's about covering Rumsfeld, a man who reached rock star status during the war in Afghanistan and has since soared even higher in popularity among many Americans for the audacious Iraq war plan he dreamed up with Gen. Tommy R. Franks.
"Rumsfeld is extremely accessible on these trips," says John McWethy, a veteran ABC News correspondent covering the trip. "You're getting face time all the time. It isn't always substantive or even informative, but it's very important for what we do for a living to have at him several times a day."
McWethy is a bubble veteran, having traveled with five secretaries of defense and three secretaries of state. He finds some similarities between Rumsfeld and the man he considers the master of official travel, former secretary of state James A. Baker.
"Baker's travel was no nonsense, no tourism, no shopping," McWethy said. "In that regard, they're quite similar. But Baker traveled much, much, much more. Baker's strategy was, even though we were a superpower, it was extremely important for him to show up on the other guy's soil. It didn't matter how small the other guy's country was, he went to them."
Rumsfeld's last trip abroad was in February, when he went to Germany. This Persian Gulf tour left Andrews Air Force Base a week ago in early-morning drizzle. Reporters mustered at 5 a.m. to have their cars checked by bomb-sniffing dogs before they were allowed to proceed to the VIP air terminal.
Rumsfeld pulled up on the tarmac in his government sedan shortly before the scheduled 7 a.m. takeoff and, a few minutes later, walked to the rear of the plane to chat with the 17 members of the media selected by his chief of public affairs, Victoria Clarke, to accompany him. He was wearing a blue blazer, a pinstripe shirt open at the collar, khaki pants and brown suede shoes.
The first leg of the trip, to Shannon, Ireland, for refueling, featured the movie "Drumline" and Rumsfeld's first briefing in his cabin in the front of the aircraft, a room just big enough for a sofa bed, a desk and two leather captain's chairs. He talked mostly about what he was expecting to do the next day when he was scheduled to meet with President Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan after a morning stop in the United Arab Emirates, an important Gulf ally.
Then the trouble started. Landing in Shannon, Rumsfeld's plane developed a perforated brake pad. A 30-minute window for filing stories based on his briefing turned into a seven-hour delay. The trip had suddenly gone from tight efficiency to hurry-up-and-wait.
There was talk of busing everyone to nearby hotels until a C-141 transport could be flown in from Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany. But ultimately a brake pad was moved from another wheel to replace the perforated one. Rumsfeld departed Shannon at 2:25 a.m. for Abu Dhabi, a 3,800-mile flight. Afghanistan, however, had been scratched and moved to the end of the trip.
Once in Abu Dhabi, Rumsfeld swapped his 757 for a giant C-17 transport plane, as he often does "in theater," Pentagonese for areas with higher threat levels and less developed airports. But no sooner did the C-17 pull up to the red carpet laid out for Rumsfeld on the tarmac than it developed hydraulic problems.
The trip, for the second day running, looked snakebit, but the crisis was resolved quickly. The C-17, an aircraft designed to haul helicopters and armored vehicles, lifted off for the short flight to Doha, Qatar, the Rummy bubble rattling around in its vast cargo hold.
First stop Monday morning was Camp As Sayliyah outside Doha, Iraq war headquarters of the U.S. Central Command, where Rumsfeld held a "town hall" meeting with troops. Later, the secretary held a 3 p.m. news conference back at the hotel, followed by an off-the-record dinner with his traveling press at the Ritz-Carlton.
The next day, it was on to Saudi Arabia. In the motorcade to the airport, one reporter actually asked another, "What day is this?" The first stop was Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia for another meeting with troops. Then it was on to Riyadh, the capital, where Rumsfeld met with Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz, the country's minister of defense and aviation, at his palace, sumptuous lunch included.
Rumsfeld's motorcade then headed back to the airport for the short flight to Kuwait City, where yet another motorcade took the entourage to guest quarters at the royal family's palace -- and yet another lavish meal.
If Rumsfeld's Iraq war plan was all about speed, the same could be said for his trip to Iraq on Wednesday. Waiting at the airport in Kuwait City were three MC-130 Combat Talons, Special Operations aircraft typically used to insert commandos into dangerous spots on the battlefield.
Far from the business-class luxury of Rumsfeld's 757 or even the boxy utility of the C-17, the smaller MC-130s come equipped with web seating and long steel cables to which commandos hook their parachute lines.
After a quick stop in the southern Iraqi city of Basra, the three planes swooped low and flew the final 30 miles to Baghdad International Airport at just 500 feet off the ground to avoid surface-to-air missiles. The turbulence was intense.
One plane was carrying the media, including a pool camera crew for the networks and a still photographer for the wire services. Another was Rumsfeld's plane and a third MC-130 was a decoy. All three were equipped with chafe and flares and electronic countermeasures to ward off SAM attacks.
Once on the ground, Rumsfeld's bubble was enveloped by an even larger and more secure bubble controlled by U.S. combat forces based at the airport. Instead of black sedans and Chevy Suburbans, the motorcade assembled to take Rumsfeld from the airport to Saddam Hussein's Abu Gharyb palace nearby consisted of Humvees and armored Humvees with mounted machine guns. It also featured its own close air support -- OH-58 Kiowa Warrior helicopters flying low along both flanks.
These military escorts were not taking Rumsfeld anywhere near downtown, where at least two neighborhoods were still considered hostile "red zones." Even so, the convoy's lead vehicle was fired upon three times, a fact Rumsfeld learned only later.
Living conditions at Abu Gharyb, one of Hussein's main palaces, had taken a turn for the worse. U.S. warplanes had hit a rear wing and one of several bridges across a moat with satellite-guided bombs in the opening days of the war, knocking out all electricity and plumbing. But Rumsfeld's aides were nonetheless delighted to be eating MREs in a marble dining room big enough to seat 100 people.
By the time Rumsfeld flew back to Kuwait City, having met with commanders at the palace, visited a power plant and addressed troops during a meeting at the airport, he had spent nine hours in Iraq, one of his longer stays of the trip.
The next morning, after brief talks with the Kuwaitis, Rumsfeld finally departed for Kabul, back aboard the C-17, for more meetings with troops and consultations with Karzai.
After flying for four hours from Kuwait to spend four hours on the ground in Kabul, Rumsfeld flew 4 1/2 hours to Incirlik air base in Turkey. There, with only a one-hour layover, he switched back to the comfort of his 757 for a direct flight to London. After some consultation, the movie selected for this leg was "Daredevil," which most on the plane soon agreed was the worst movie ever viewed on a Rumsfeld trip.
In London, heading down the homestretch with very little sleep, Rumsfeld met yesterday with Prime Minister Tony Blair, Secretary of State for Defense Geoffrey Hoon and King Abdullah of Jordan before flying back to Andrews, arriving at 5:30 p.m. The final tally: an afternoon in Abu Dhabi, a day in Qatar, seven hours in Saudi Arabia, nine hours in Iraq, four hours in Afghanistan and 10 hours in London.
Once on the ground at Andrews, everyone on the plane got their passports back for the first time in a week, filled with arrival and departure stamps. Rumsfeld was whisked away in a Lincoln Navigator as members of his party waited on the tarmac for their bags to come off the airplane.
Alas, once Rumsfeld had departed, the bubble burst, and everyone had to carry his own suitcase and drive home on the Beltway, without any security vehicles to fend off traffic.
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