Hagel, Obama Forged Bond Over Iraq .
By JULIAN E. BARNES, ADAM ENTOUS, SARA MURRAY and CAROL E. LEE
Chuck Hagel was the one Senate Republican willing to help Barack Obama when he needed it most—in July 2008, as Mr. Obama, then an Illinois senator, prepared to fight Sen. John McCain in the presidential election.
Mr. Hagel, at the time a GOP senator who had already fallen out of favor with Mr. McCain and other Republican Party leaders, agreed to join Mr. Obama on a tour of Iraq and Afghanistan, just weeks before the national conventions. Running against a war hero with long experience in foreign policy, Mr. Obama had never visited Afghanistan and been just once to Iraq.
In an interview with WSJ Washington Bureau Chief, Jerry Seib, Sen. Jack Reed (D., R.I.) defends the nomination of Chuck Hagel to lead the Pentagon, saying the former Nebrasksa Senator has integrity and impeccable credentials.
The overseas trip was intended to bolster Mr. Obama's foreign policy credentials and claims to bipartisanship. But through the long plane rides, cramped quarters and endless meetings, Mr. Obama came to see Mr. Hagel as a kindred spirit, as much for his beliefs as his pragmatism, said people who were there. As they relaxed in a Kuwait hotel room trading jokes and talking shop, a senior administration official said, it was obvious the two men "just kind of clicked."
Mr. Hagel's unlikely road from Republican stalwart to apostate to nominee for Secretary of Defense begins in Vietnam and takes a sharp turn at Iraq. The son of a lumberyard worker, he grew up in Ainsworth, Neb., joined the Army's Ninth Infantry Division and in 1968 served as an infantry sergeant in Vietnam. He returned a decorated combat veteran and over the years developed a measured skepticism toward war.
Mr. Obama now seeks Senate approval for Mr. Hagel, 66 years old, who went on to make a fortune early in the cellphone industry before serving two six-year terms in Washington and then stepping down.
The White House faces opposition from Republicans who see Mr. Hagel as a turncoat, a former conservative who by 2006 had become an outspoken opponent of the Iraq war.
Conservatives and some Jewish groups have accused Mr. Hagel of weak support for Israel, based, in part, on past comments calling for negotiations leading to recognition of a Palestinian state. Mr. Hagel's past comments have also called for engagement with Hamas, which the U.S. considers a terrorist group. While in the Senate, Mr. Hagel refused to sign a letter urging the European Union to also label Hamas a terrorist organization.
Pro-Israel groups also have voiced concerns over Mr. Hagel's skepticism over sanctions against Iran. Mr. Hagel has said his record has been distorted. Supporters point to his voting record on behalf of Israel and his co-sponsorship of legislation opposing Hamas. They also have argued that he hasn't opposed military action against Iran but has said the consequences of such a strike must be carefully considered.
Mr. Hagel remains a Ronald Reagan conservative, said his allies, a believer in private enterprise, small government and a powerful military. But they said he also believes the U.S. alone can't remake the world.
"He is quite willing to use power, but there is a sense, an awareness that power has its own limitations, and I think that is right," said John Hamre, the president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, who serves with Mr. Hagel on the Defense Policy Board, a nonpartisan panel that advises the Pentagon.
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.What is unclear is how Mr. Hagel's views will play out in the coming confirmation battle. Outside groups this week readied campaigns for and against Mr. Hagel, as Republicans ramped up their opposition following Monday's nomination.
"On national security issues, I would say he has changed rather significantly," Mr. McCain said in an interview, adding that he had concerns about Mr. Hagel's nomination. "I still consider him a friend and always will. I believe his service in Vietnam was very honorable. It doesn't have anything to do with the personal aspect of our relationship, it has a lot to do with our divergence on national security and the future of this country."
Looking ahead to Senate confirmation hearings, Ross Baker, a Rutgers University professor who, at one point, advised Mr. Hagel in the Senate, said that after battlefield heroics that earned Mr. Hagel two Purple Heart medals, "there's not much a United States senator can do to intimidate you."
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Tom and Chuck Hagel in Vietnam in 1968.
.Family members said they believed that Mr. Hagel would find a career in politics ever since he was elected high school class president. He returned home from Vietnam to first work as a reporter for a radio station and then a news-talk anchor, according to the 2006 biography, "Chuck Hagel: Moving Forward."
"I was very Republican, very conservative," said Mr. Hagel in the book.
In 1971, he began working for a Nebraska congressman and six years later moved to the Firestone Co., where he was a lobbyist helping the firm grapple with reported radial tire failures.
In 1980, Mr. Hagel joined Ronald Reagan's presidential campaign and after Mr. Reagan's victory was appointed deputy administrator of the Veterans Administration. He left the following year to pursue business interests with friends, according to his biography.
Mr. Hagel sold his 1979 Buick and cashed life insurance policies to help form Vanguard Cellular Systems.
In those pioneering days, Mr. Hagel was consumed by cellphone technology. "We were talking about Dick Tracy stuff," he said in the 2006 biography. "It will be no wires. It will be video. It will be everything."
Mr. Hagel in demonstrations entertained skeptical onlookers by putting a shoe to his ear and talking, said those who knew him at the time.
Vanguard received Federal Communications Commission licenses to operate cellphone systems in Maine, New York, South Carolina, Florida and elsewhere. In 1998, the company agreed to be acquired by AT&T T -0.29%for an estimated $1.5 billion.
.Mr. Hagel's share of the proceeds made him a millionaire and afforded a pursuit of elected office. He defeated then-Nebraska Gov. Ben Nelson in a 1996 Senate race, arriving in Washington as a pro-business, Midwestern Republican.
Mr. Hagel's early record was solidly conservative. He voted to authorize NATO military operations against Serbia in 1999 and, in 2001, backed President George W. Bush's tax cuts.
But rifts between Mr. Hagel and his party emerged after he endorsed Mr. McCain over Mr. Bush in 2000, against the wishes of party elders. Mr. Hagel returned to the fold in 2002 with a vote to authorize war in Iraq, which he came to regret.
"It all comes down to the fact that we were asked to vote on a resolution based on half truths, untruths, and wishful thinking," Mr. Hagel wrote in his 2008 book, "America: Our Next Chapter." He said his vote was intended to authorize military force as a last resort, but Mr. Bush had failed to "exhaust all diplomatic efforts."
As years passed Mr. Hagel came to see the conflict as unwinnable—not unlike the Vietnam War—and he began openly criticizing the Bush administration. In a 2006 newspaper opinion piece, he called for a troop withdrawal in Iraq, a major break with the GOP's leadership.
His views on Iraq had roots in his Vietnam experience, said Bob Kerrey, also a former Nebraska senator and Vietnam veteran.
Mr. Hagel has described the war as "ill-conceived, poorly prosecuted, and unsuccessful." He had served side-by-side in the Mekong Delta with his brother Tom, at different points, saving each other's lives. In March 1968, recalled Tom Hagel, a Claymore mine that had been hanging from a tree detonated above their patrol and "everything was chaos."
"My brother was behind me, I turned around and looked at him," Tom Hagel said. "He was on his back with blood spurting out of his chest." He applied bandages to stop the bleeding.
After returning to combat, the brothers were both wounded a month later when their armored personnel carrier, under attack, hit a mine. Riding in the turret of the vehicle, Tom Hagel was knocked unconscious. Chuck Hagel, badly burned, threw his brother off the damaged vehicle and dragged him to safety.
"From that day on, I was a changed person," Chuck Hagel wrote in his book. "I made myself a promise that if I ever got out of that place and was ever in a position to do something about war, so horrible, so filled with suffering, I would do whatever I could to stop it. I have never forgotten that promise."
Tom Hagel, but not his brother, returned home convinced that U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War was ill-advised. They would fight about it during Christmas and Thanksgiving gatherings, until their mother forbade the discussion.
"Almost always it would start off as an argument, and then, maybe after a couple beers, fists started flying," said Tom Hagel.
Years later, after listening to tapes of former President Lyndon B. Johnson saying in private conversations that while he didn't think the war could be won, he wouldn't end it, Tom Hagel said his brother changed his mind on Vietnam.
Chuck Hagel declined to be interviewed for this article.
"He would make certain, if we go to war, it will be our last option," said Tom Hagel. "But on the other hand anyone who thinks he is a pacifist is a fool. If he was directed to conduct a war, he would go full throttle, no doubt about it."
Mr. Hagel's outspoken stance on the Iraq war caused a split with Mr. McCain. The Arizona senator had been one of Mr. Hagel's few remaining Republican allies until the debate in January 2007 over sending more troops to Iraq. Mr. McCain was the surge's loudest Senate supporter. Mr. Hagel called it "the most dangerous foreign policy blunder in this country since Vietnam."
Mr. McCain said Mr. Hagel was profoundly wrong to oppose the Iraq surge and has never acknowledged that error.
"Sen. Hagel became more and more strident and outspoken about his opposition to the surge, but it wasn't just the surge, it was sanctions on Iran, it was many of the public statements he made that were harshly critical of President Bush," Mr. McCain said.
Richard Burt, a former ambassador to Germany under Ronald Reagan, said GOP criticism of Mr. Hagel reflects divisions within the Republican foreign policy establishment. Mr. Hagel was a throwback to a conservative foreign policy advocated by former President Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, he said, "where you aren't trying to remake the world as the liberal interventionists and the neo-cons want to do. Chuck Hagel is a realist."
As Mr. Hagel pulled away from the GOP, he drew closer to Senate Democrats, including Mr. Obama, then-Sen. Joe Biden and Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island.
Mr. Obama met Mr. Hagel in 2004, shortly after Mr. Obama joined the Senate. Mr. Hagel's aides asked whether Mr. Obama would be interested in co-sponsoring an immigration bill. Mr. Obama declined, preferring that his first ambitious legislation focus on Illinois.
Mr. Obama served with Mr. Hagel on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, alongside Mr. Biden and Mr. Kerry, now the president's nominee for Secretary of State. As a junior senator, Mr. Obama mostly listened.
"Hagel's questions in these hearings were sharp, they were insightful," said a senior administration official. "That is what drew Sen. Obama."
The connection led Mr. Obama to invite Mr. Hagel on the 2008 trip to Iraq and Afghanistan. Mr. Obama, who had been criticized during the presidential campaign for not making more visits to U.S. war zones, sought both the perspective of a military veteran, said people close to the president, as well as the political benefit of a Republican on the trip.
While Sen. Hagel took no sides in the 2008 race, the trip for many Republicans was a de facto endorsement that gave Mr. Obama the appearance of bipartisan support.
Mr. Obama's overseas trip was unusually small, made up of a few staff members accompanying Mr. Obama, Mr. Hagel and Mr. Reed. The three senators met with President Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan and toured Iraq. They shuttled on military aircraft from Basra, the heart of the Shiite south, to Baghdad and the Anbar province. Gen. David Petraeus, then the top U.S. commander in Iraq, gave a private helicopter tour of the war zone.
Messrs. Hagel and Obama found they shared similar analytical approaches over the course of the trip, said current and former officials, particularly in assessing war-zone strategy. A State Department cable summarizing the meeting with Mr. Karzai described Mr. Hagel and Mr. Obama as pressing the Afghan leader on corruption, drugs and the influence of Iran. During the meetings, Mr. Reed said, Mr. Hagel and Mr. Obama "had a natural rapport."
At a stop in Kuwait, Messrs. Obama and Hagel ran into each other in a hotel suite used for secure communication. Mr. Hagel was still in his travel clothes; Mr. Obama in his workout gear. They talked more than an hour, seated face to face in hotel chairs. "It was a very personal conversation, just between the two of them," recalled one observer. "It was two men at ease."
