“You’re my number-one guy,” Trump said.
Keane, 73, a regular on Fox News and a close adviser to former vice president Dick Cheney, declined. Financial debts from taking care of his wife who had recently died made accepting impossible. In an hour-long meeting, he gave Trump a tour of the world and offered some advice.
Mr. President-elect, he said, Congress, public opinion and your cabinet will be involved with your domestic agenda. “In national security and foreign policy, this is really your lane. The world’s problems have a way of coming to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue whether you want them or not.
“Mistakes on the domestic side have a correcting mechanism. You can get a do-over. There are no do-overs” in national security. “When we make mistakes, it has huge consequences.”
He thought President Obama had been too timid in a dangerous world.
“By our actions or lack of actions, we can actually destabilize part of the world and cause enormous problems,” Keane warned.
Trump asked who he would recommend as secretary of defense.
For practical purposes, Keane said, Jim Mattis. He was the retired four-star Marine general whom Obama had sacked as central commander in the Middle East. Obama had relieved Mattis in 2013 because he was thought to be hawkish and too eager to confront Iran militarily.
“He’s a good man, Mattis. Isn’t he?” Trump said. He had heard of the general, whose nicknames were “Mad Dog” and “Chaos.”
“Yes, sir,” Keane said. “He’s a good man.” There are advantages to Mattis, he added. “He’s very current. So if we have major problems on our hands, you’ve got a guy that can roll up his sleeves on day one and get after these problems. That’s number one.
“Number two, he’s very experienced, particularly in the most volatile neighborhood in the world, in the Middle East. And he’s a very experienced combat veteran” in both Afghanistan and Iraq. “And highly regarded inside the military but also highly regarded outside.
“What’s not obvious is how thoughtful he is,” Keane said. “And how deliberate he is.”
“What do you mean?” Trump asked.
“He thinks things through. He spends time thinking through the problem.” Mattis had not married and he read books all the time. He had 7,000 books in his library. Also known as the “Warrior Monk,” he had been totally devoted to the military with more than four decades of service. He was single-minded but calm. “I have a lot of respect for him,” Keane said. “He’s a man of courage and a man of integrity.”
Back in his car, Keane punched in Mattis’s number. He explained that Trump had asked him first, and he had said no. Mattis seemed to want assurances.
“You can’t do this, Jack?” Mattis said.
“No, I can’t,” Keane said. “Jim, you can do it, can’t you?”
“Yeah, Jack,” Mattis replied.
“They seem to have their minds set on a military person to do it because of the challenges they’re facing.”
* * *
Later in November, Trump invited Mattis, 66, to Bedminster. Mattis’s quiet presence was imposing.
We have to take care of ISIS, Trump emphasized. The Islamic State had grown out of the remains of al Qaeda in Iraq and expanded brutally into Syria with the ambition of establishing and ruling as a caliphate. Trump had promised to defeat ISIS in the campaign, and the threat was growing.
Mattis looked directly at Trump. “We need to change what we are doing,” he said. “It can’t be a war of attrition. It must be a war of annihilation.”
Trump loved the concept. Perfect. He offered Mattis the job, though they agreed not to announce it right away.
Bannon considered Mattis too liberal on social policies and a globalist at heart, but the connection Trump and Mattis had made was central. Mattis was both a warrior and comforter. Bannon soon was calling him “the Secretary of Assurance” and “the moral center of gravity of the administration.”
At Bedminster, Bannon arranged to make the photo shoots of candidates being interviewed look like 10 Downing Street as Trump and visitors walked through the large door.
“It’ll be perfect,” he told Trump. “We’ll put the media across the street. And you’ll meet and greet like a British prime minister.”
The photograph that ran in many newspapers was Trump and Mattis in front of the door—Trump’s fingers joined in the air, Mattis with his perfect Marine posture, erect, the quiet general.
* * *
As a colonel, Mattis had taken the Marines into Afghanistan after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Navy captain, and SEAL for 17 years, Bob Harward had led the SEALs in.
“Hey, want to go together?” Mattis had asked Harward in 2001. In the dozen years that followed, Harward had major assignments under Mattis.
In the summer of 2013, now a vice admiral, Harward was sent to MacDill Air Force Base in Florida to become deputy central commander to Mattis. He checked into the BOQ, Bachelor Officer Quarters, worked a day, and went back to his room. All his belongings had been moved out. He was told everything had been moved to General Mattis’s house.
Harward went over to the house. He walked into the kitchen and found General Mattis there, folding Harward’s underwear.
“Sir,” Harward said, “what the fuck are you doing?”
“I did my laundry,” Mattis said. “I figured I’d do yours too.”
Harward found Mattis the most gracious, humble officer he had ever served under. Rather than introduce Harward as “my deputy,” Mattis said, “I want you to meet my co-commander.”
When Harward retired and moved to the Middle East as the chief executive of Lockheed Martin in the United Arab Emirates, he kept in touch with Mattis.
Mattis worried about the effects of the Obama administration’s failure to deter Iran.
But “if you know Jim Mattis,” Harward said, “he’s not a fan of going to war.”
* * *
In Marine lore, Iran had inflicted a wound on the Corps that had never healed and had not been answered. Iran had been behind the terrorist bombing of the Marine Barracks in Beirut in 1983. The attack killed 220 Marines, one of the largest single-day death tolls in the history of the Corps. Another 21 U.S. servicemen died, bringing the toll to 241—the largest terrorist attack against the U.S. before 9/11. Mattis had been a Marine Corps officer for 11 years and was a major.
As CentCom commander from 2010 to 2013, according to one senior aide, Mattis believed that Iran “remained the greatest threat to the United States interests in the Middle East.” He was concerned that the Israelis were going to strike the Iranian nuclear facilities and pull the United States into the conflict.
Mattis also believed the United States did not have enough military force in the region and did not have robust rules of engagement. He wrote a memo to President Obama through Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta seeking more authority to respond to Iranian provocations. He was worried that the Iranians might mine international waters and create an incident at sea that could escalate.
Tom Donilon, the national security adviser, answered Mattis. A memo, soon referred to as “the Donilon memo,” directed that under no circumstances would Mattis take any action against Iran for mining international waters unless the mine was effectively dropped in the path of a U.S. warship and presented an imminent danger to the ship. The Donilon memo would be one of the first orders Mattis rescinded when he became secretary of defense.
Mattis continued to beat the drum on Iran. He found the war plan for Iran insufficient. It was all aviation dependent; all air power. It did not have a broad joint-force plan. The plan had five strike options—first against small Iranian boats, another against ballistic missiles, another against other weapons systems and another for an invasion.
“Strike Option Five” was the plan for destroying the Iranian nuclear program.