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After several such rattling incidents, I asked Clark, who had been such an agreeable deputy to me at the State Department, what was going on. Clark, drained of his old good fellowship, gave me a cryptic answer. "You've won a lot of battles in this Administration, Al," he said, "but you'd better understand that from now on it's going to be the President's foreign policy."
By the time we returned to Washington from Europe on Friday, June 11, Habib was shuttling between Damascus, Tel Aviv and Beirut, and urgently needed new instructions. I called Clark and told him that I would draft Habib's instructions and send them over the next day for the President's approval. Clark then told me he would immediately "Datafax" the paper to Camp David, where the President was resting. That evening Clark phoned and reported that the President had seen the draft instructions but had not approved them, judging that the issues were of such import that there should be a formal NSC meeting two days later.
It hardly seemed possible to me that the President really meant to delay for two days, inasmuch as the point at issue involved a war that was daily claiming hundreds of lives. Clark assured me that this was, hi fact, the President's decision. Astonished, I phoned Reagan at Camp David and explained that Habib was already en route to Damascus to keep an appointment with Syrian President Assad; he simply could not wait. When Reagan responded, I detected a note of puzzlement in his voice. He knew nothing about the instructions to Habib, and I gained the impression that he had not even received them.
There was nothing in the instructions, I reiterated, that departed substantively from the positions prepared for him while we were in Europe. Reagan remained detached, friendly and still clearly a bit puzzled by my call. "That's all right, Al, don't worry," he said at last. I hung up and sent Habib his instructions without the President's formal approval. I tried to call Clark to inform him but was informed that he had retired for the night.
Next morning, Clark, with vexation in his voice, told me he would have to report my actions to the President. I invited him to do so and asked for an appointment with Reagan. I felt that the end had come. When we met on Monday, June 14, in the Oval Office, Reagan was hi a troubled mood, his usual sunny countenance drawn into a worried frown. We were alone. "Al," he asked, "what would you do if you were a general and one of your lower commanders went around you and acted on his own?"
"I'd fire him, Mr. President," I replied. "No, no, I didn't mean that," Reagan said. "But this mustn't happen again. We just can't have a situation where you send messages on your own that are a matter for my decision."
I related the details of my encounter with Clark. I told Reagan that I believed the cease-fire he had proposed in Lebanon had been delayed, and loss of life needlessly continued, as a result of the petty maneuvering by his staff. As he listened, the President's frown deepened. "Mr. President," I said, "I want you to understand what's going on around you. I simply can no longer operate in this atmosphere. It's too dangerous. It doesn't serve your purposes; it doesn't serve the