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Robert Blackwill seems like the last man you would want for a sensitive diplomatic mission. He shouts. He interrupts. He grandstands and pontificates. "He's a vain son of a bitch," says a former colleague. "Human relations are not his strong suit," says another. With his high-pitched giggle and awkward bearing, the fleshy former Harvard professor comes across in unguarded moments as eccentric and condescending. His jokes fall flat; his attempts to ingratiate just grate.
For salvaging a diplomatic train wreck, however, Blackwill, 64, may be the best there is. So a year ago, when the Bush Administration realized how much trouble it faced in postwar Iraq, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice reached out to Blackwill. Administration officials say his mission was to clean up Iraq, preferably before U.S. elections this November. Largely hidden from view, Blackwill has been the White House's eyes and ears in Iraq ever since, taking a backseat in public to proconsul Paul Bremer while wielding influence behind the scenes.
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Administration officials credit Blackwill with masterminding the U.N.'s return to the country, steering the occupation toward June 30 and brokering the formation of the interim Iraqi government with U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi. "He's not known for his people skills," says his former boss Brent Scowcroft. "But if you want talent, raw talent to get the job done, he is terrific."
With a new Iraqi government about to take office and Bremer set to exit the scene, Blackwill has emerged as the U.S.'s most powerful — and elusive — official in Iraq. Shuttling between Baghdad and Washington, he will play a key role in the coming months in such efforts as mollifying Kurdish aspirations for autonomy, returning Sunnis to the political process and overseeing the work of John Negroponte, the new U.S. ambassador to Iraq.
Yet even to the Iraqi politicians who worked with Blackwill in choosing members of the new government, he remains an unknown commodity. "He played a major role in the process," says a senior aide on the disbanded Iraqi Governing Council. "But he did it quietly, subtly. You won't find any fingerprints."
Though he shuns the spotlight, Blackwill makes his presence felt. He was Rice's boss in the first Bush Administration, working on Russia policy under then National Security Adviser Scowcroft. "We used to argue frequently," says Scowcroft, "and he'd leave the office saying 'Remember, you don't pay me to agree with you. You pay me for my opinions.'" In 2000 Rice brought Blackwill into the team of "Vulcans," who tutored President George W. Bush on foreign and national-security policy during the campaign. But though the rest of that team ended up with coveted jobs, Blackwill was cut out of the high command once Bush took office and was instead appointed ambassador to India.
In the 20 months he was in New Delhi, Blackwill became the most controversial diplomat in Indian memory. A tireless networker, he installed a round 16-seat dining table at which guests got a glimpse of the ambassador's style. One evening, according to Indian columnist Vinod Mehta, Blackwill reduced an academic nearly to tears by shouting, "Rubbish, rubbish!" in reply to her remarks and dismissed other interruptions, yelling, "I insist, I insist!" and continuing to speak. In 2002, after embassy staff members registered a slew of complaints about Blackwill's imperious manner, he was given a scathing review by the State Department's inspector general. Blackwill declined to comment on the report. He nevertheless brought the U.S. and India closer on trade and security than at any other point in history and helped prevent a war between India and Pakistan in the summer of 2002.
It was the ambassador's forceful style that appealed to the White House after the chaotic start of the occupation of Iraq. Recruited by Rice in May 2003, Blackwill left India on a Friday, attended his eldest daughter's wedding in Boston the next day, then flew to Washington and was at work on Monday. Among his first tasks was brushing back Pentagon hawks to secure White House control over running the occupation. By early 2003, when Ahmad Chalabi, the Pentagon's favored exile, tried to block the return to Baghdad of Brahimi, Blackwill cornered Chalabi in a room in one of the U.S. administrative buildings. While no one knows what words were exchanged at the meeting, Brahimi was invited back within a week and the U.S. soon cut off its support to Chalabi.
Blackwill's challenge now is to help the new government gain legitimacy and prepare the country for elections, currently scheduled for early 2005. By then, though, he hopes to have moved on. A senior Republican close to him says Blackwill's ambition is "boundless," and some Administration insiders say he could become National Security Adviser if Bush wins re-election and Rice decides to leave her post. But all of that may hinge on whether Blackwill can get Iraq safely through November.
- Massimo Calabresi