- No televised testimony has been so eagerly awaited in
Washington's corridors of power since Monica Lewinsky was questioned about
her relationship with Bill Clinton. And while the witness who will raise
her hand before the cameras on Thursday and swear to tell the truth and
nothing but could hardly be more different from Monica, in one respect
they are similar: her evidence, too, has the potential to cripple a
president.
-
- Condoleezza Rice is America's first woman National
Security
Adviser - the official whose job it is to interpret and inform the
President
on all aspects of US foreign policy and security. George Bush's confidante
on everything connected with "abroad", she is variously described
as a "lightning brain" and a "ferocious intellect";
the most frequently heard description is "brilliant".
-
- This week, however, Dr Rice - who has followed the first
woman Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, in choosing to use her
academic
title in her government job - faces one of the most testing days of her
career. She has been called before the commission investigating the 11
September terrorist attacks to respond to a battery of damaging charges
levelled by the former White House counter-terrorism chief Richard Clarke.
She will need all her intellectual resources to parry them, and a good
deal of political skill.
-
- Mr Clarke's central accusation is that the Bush
administration
misread the threats facing the United States before 11 September. This,
he claimed, was because officials ignored what their predecessors from
the Clinton administration had told them about terrorism, because they
were stuck in a cold-war mentality that saw long-range missiles and rogue
states as the most immediate danger, and because they were completely,
and mistakenly, fixated on Iraq. Directly and indirectly, Mr Clarke was
particularly critical of Ms Rice, who - he suggested - appeared not to
have heard of al-Qa'ida when he first briefed her, and had never taken
the threat from terrorists, as opposed to states, seriously enough.
-
- Given the shock that Americans still feel from 11
September,
the changes levelled by Mr Clarke were harmful enough in themselves. But
in a few short sentences, Mr Clarke had also done what no one had dared
to do, probably since Dr Rice's student days: he had publicly dared to
challenge her competence and her professional reputation. This was
dangerous
territory for Mr Clarke, as it would be for any American. Dr Rice is the
highest-ranking woman and the highest-ranking black official in the US.
She has enjoyed a glowing press for most of her life; since her name was
first mooted as a possible member of Mr Bush's campaign team four years
ago, she has been untouchable.
-
- As Dr Rice well understood, however, the territory was,
if anything, more dangerous for her. An ultra-discreet individual who does
not place herself gratuitously in the public eye, she took to the airwaves
last weekend to defend herself, appearing on every television talk show
in sight to insist that she had nothing to hide. She had unusually waspish
words for her accuser, too. Rebutting his charge that she appeared not
to know anything about al-Qa'ida, she said: "I find it peculiar that
Dick Clarke is sitting there reading my body language. I didn't know he
was good at that, too." For a moment, Dr Rice's ultra-cool demeanour
seemed to have left her. We can perhaps look forward to more of this robust
bitchiness on Thursday. But the woman now known the world over as Condi
will have to be very careful.
-
- Throughout her career, Dr Rice has cultivated an image
of extreme diligence, bordering on perfectionism, which she combines with
an air of sometimes infuriating self-belief. She rarely allows the personal
to intrude on the professional. She keeps out of the gossip columns and
seems to have no private life at all, unless you count the weekends that
she spends with the Bush family - fishing and sailing off the coast of
Maine, at Camp David, or at the Bush family ranch in Texas. Now 49, she
lives alone in a flat that she bought soon after her appointment as
National
Security Adviser in the exclusive Watergate development. She is
occasionally
spotted dining in one of the restaurants there with Madeleine Albright
or other colleagues from the political or academic Èlite.
-
- The path that took Condoleezza Rice to the White House
from her childhood in Birmingham, Alabama, in the segregated south is the
stuff of American legend. Ambitious parents invested all their own hopes
in her. She started piano lessons at three and gave her first recital at
four. Something of a child prodigy, she reached close to concert soloist
standard before concluding that she was no Mozart - she would have to
"practise
and practise and still wouldn't be extraordinary" - and ditching the
idea of a professional career. As well as school lessons, she attended
French and Spanish classes, and rose before dawn to practise her
ice-skating
at the rink.
-
- Not everywhere was so tranquil. Outside their relatively
prosperous suburb, racist violence cost the life of one of her kindergarten
friends when a church was fire-bombed. When she was 11, her parents moved
first to the quieter town of Tuscaloosa, and then to Denver. She has hinted
that it was initially harder for her at school in the whiteness and
spaciousness
of Denver than in the black schools of the south. Still, she completed
school two years early and went on to the local university. Rather than
study music, as she had intended, she transferred to politics and Russian.
By coincidence, her tutor and inspiration there was Josef Korbel, the
father
of Madeleine Albright.
-
- Condoleezza returned to Denver for her doctorate - on
relations between the Soviet and Czech military - before being snapped
up for a lectureship at Stanford, the prestigious private university in
California where she has spent her entire academic career. Stanford was
then the powerhouse of Soviet and related studies, and Dr Rice
distinguished
herself with awards for her teaching and research. She was later to return
as provost, the top administrator, and bring the then cash-strapped
institution
back to solvency.
-
- Dr Rice's Washington career began almost by chance in
1988, when she caught the attention of the then national security adviser,
Brent Scowcroft, at a seminar. He professed amazement that such a
"slip
of a girl" had asked so perspicacious a question. The following year,
when George Bush became president, he invited her to join the National
Security Council. As the main adviser on policy towards the Eastern Bloc,
she helped to steer the administration's non-interventionist policy through
one of the greatest geo-political shifts of the 20th century.
-
- After only two years, however, she returned to Stanford,
citing a desire for more "balance" in her life, after the
all-consuming
agenda in Washington. She later dismissed reports that she had returned
to "seek a husband and start a family". If that was the reason,
it did not happen.
-
- She was never enamoured of Washington, but her friendship
with the Bush family endured. And when George W Bush quizzed her about
foreign policy during visits to Maine and Texas, they developed a rapport.
He praised her for setting out complex policy issues in ways he could
understand.
The trust he invested in her gave her considerable authority when he
recruited
her to his campaign team in 2000 and then, after he was elected, as his
National Security Adviser.
-
- As a supremely well-qualified black woman in the front
line of a Republican campaign that was preaching "compassionate
conservatism"
and social inclusiveness, she was a huge asset. And in her convention
speech
- one of her first political speeches - she gave a rare glimpse of how
far she and her family had come. "Grandaddy Rice", she said,
was a poor farmer's son in the cotton fields, who had enquired how he could
get an education. He took a scholarship conditional upon becoming a
Presbyterian
minister.
-
- But she also outlined the philosophy of self-improvement
and self-reliance that had driven her to achieve and, after a brief
flirtation
with the Democrats, led her to become a Republican. "I found a
party,"
she said, "that sees me as an individual, not as part of a group...
In America, with education and hard work, it really does not matter where
you come from - it matters where you are going."
-
- All this is what she calls her "American
story".
But there is another aspect of Dr Rice's biography that is not mentioned.
Aged 10, when the US passed its landmark desegregation laws, at college
during the dawn of the women's movement, she was of an age to ride the
crest of every social wave. Her decision to specialise in Russia and the
Soviet Union was inspired. She was a woman and black and a Soviet
specialist
at a time when all were in demand. Before becoming National Security
Adviser,
she had acquired a string of directorships, including the oil company
Chevron,
and was well on the way to becoming a wealthy woman.
-
- A closer look at her CV, however, raises questions. As
an undergraduate, she fell short of the very top grade at a non-Ivy League
university. Her first book (of her thesis) received neutral to withering
reviews, in terms that suggested she was unable to sift facts from
propaganda.
Her subsequent, better-reviewed books have all been co-authored. As provost
of Stanford, she was criticised for her abrupt management style and for
not supporting "affirmative action" for minorities, even though
she had benefited from the policy herself.
-
- When she was tipped for the NSC, a few tentative voices
asked whether her narrow specialisation in a country and a system that
no longer existed was the best preparation for her new role. And while
she is always praised as a "quick study" with an admirable grasp
of detail, you will not hear words such as vision, perspicacity or
flair.
-
- All these are the reasons why Dr Rice is suddenly
vulnerable
- and with her, the President who so trusts her. Richard Clarke's essential
criticism - that she was not up to the job - hit home because it exposed
weaknesses that have lain just beneath the surface of a dazzling career.
She presents the case for her defence on Thursday.
-
- A life in brief
-
- Born: 14 November 1954, in Birmingham, Alabama to the
Rev John Rice, a Presbyterian pastor and college principal, and Angelena
Rice, nÈe Ray, teacher.
-
- Family: Single, no children.
-
- Education: University of Denver, BA in political science
(1974); University of Notre Dame, MA (1975); University of Denver, PhD
in international studies (1981).
-
- Career: Lecturer, Stanford University (1981-1993);
seconded
to National Security Council (1989-91); Provost, Stanford University
(1993-99);
National Security Adviser (2001- ).
-
- Interests: Concert-standard pianist, opera lover,
American
football and baseball enthusiast.
-
- She says...: "When the Founding Fathers said 'we
the people', they did not mean me. My ancestors were three-fifths of a
man."
-
- They say...: "Condi was raised first and foremost
to be a lady." - Colin Powell
-
- "If you look behind her, the ground is littered
with the bodies of those who underestimated her." - Richard Armitage,
Deputy Secretary of State
-
- © 2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd
http://news.independent.co.uk/people/profiles/story.jsp?story=507832
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