Chaos, running rows and f-word confrontations over foreign policy are revealed in a new fly-on-the-wall documentary about the last days of the Obama White House.
Senior officials give the film unvarnished accounts of a ‘whole drama’ over how Syria was dealt with – and how there was nothing to force the Iranians to abide by their terms of the deal supposed to stop them from getting nuclear weapons.
In ‘The Final Year’ Ben Rhodes, Obama’s deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, also says that it took ‘too long’ to get the measure of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The documentary, shot by director Greg Barker and produced by Magnolia Pictures, followed Obama and his cabinet during his final 12 months in office.
Obama’s last days in the White House were filled with chaos and f-word confrontations over foreign policy, the new documentary The Final Year reveals. Pictured: (r-l) Obama, John Kerry, then Secretary of State, Samantha Power, Ambassador to the United Nations and Ben Rhodes, who are all featured in the film
The Final Year, out later this month, covers the officials in 21 countries including Cameroon, Chad, Nigeria and Japan, and highlights events such as the Syrian peace negotiations.
It also covers the Paris Climate Accord, the Iran nuclear deal and Obama’s visits to Hiroshima and Laos.
On the internal negotiations to find peace in Syria, Samantha Power, Obama’s US ambassador to the UN, says it is ‘beyond frustrating’ and ‘haunting’ that they couldn’t do more.
She says: ‘There’s no issue where my thoughts and my feelings and ideas have made such a marginal impact on desperate people.’
In a moment of exasperation she says: ‘Of course, I ask myself had I made an argument differently, I think we could have tried other things (sighs)…there’s a whole drama there’.
Obama’s Secretary of State John Kerry says: ‘Samantha will get her point of view out there as tough as anybody else.
‘We joke and commiserate at times when we’re both in the same place and don’t get what we wanted. Sometimes we have some tough arguments in this business’.
In the documentary, senior officials give accounts of how there was nothing to force the Iranians to abide by their terms of the deal supposed to stop them from getting nuclear weapons. Pictured: Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani
Obama’s national security adviser Susan Rice tries to brush off the disagreements and says they did not want ‘group think’ among the cabinet.
But on Obama’s final address to the UN, what should have been a largely ceremonial affair, Rhodes says he had a ‘huge fight’ with Power over the tone of the speech.
Power says that she and Rhodes have a ‘fundamentally different perspective’ about the world and that she thinks the 65 million refugees are a sign things are ‘going in the wrong direction’.
Rhodes says that he sided with Obama in saying this was the best moment to be alive and says that Power ‘felt that was potentially discordant with the mood’.
On Russia, Rhodes talks about one of his biggest regrets, admitting the administration took too long in figuring out Putin’s real interests.
He says: ‘The error we may have made is Putin doesn’t seem to pursue Russia’s national interests – he pursues Putin’s interests.
‘Russia’s national interests are not to have a shrinking economy and be this rogue actor.
‘I think probably we figured that out but…that was the thing that took us too long in retrospect, to separate Putin out from Russia’.
The documentary, out later this month, shows how devastated Obama’s team was, some reduced to tears, when they learned Hillary Clinton lost the presidency to Donald Trump
Ben Rhodes adds that Trump’s decision to pull the US out of the Paris Climate Accord will lead to the ‘complete isolation of the United States’. He is critical of Trump and says he is part of the ‘retrenchment forces pushing back from the other direction’ away from Democratic values
During negotiations over the Iran deal, Rhodes makes another striking admission, though it is not clear if it was just a phase during the negotiations that eventually led to the deal.
Rhodes says: ‘At a certain point the Iranians have a fairly substantial body of evidence to say that they don’t need to abide by the deal. We may lose control of it today.’
Rhodes was the subject of a New York Times profile last year that caused a storm because he boasted about setting up an ‘echo chamber’ to sell the Iran deal to the public, and claiming that he had turned the media into tools.
He is also highly controversial in the Trump White House, where Michael Wolff’s explosive Fire and Fury book revealed senior officials believe Rhodes – whose brother is president of CBS News – is a serial leaker who orchestrated attacks on the Trump administration using classified material.
‘The Final Year’, shot by director Greg Barker and produced by Magnolia Pictures, is out later this month
At one point Rhodes explodes in rage at the bombing of a humanitarian convoy in Syria, apparently by the Russians or the Syrians and says it is ‘f***ing sick’ nobody is being held accountable for it.
Rhodes is sharply critical of Trump and says he is part of the ‘retrenchment forces pushing back from the other direction’ away from Democratic values.
He says that ‘maybe this just has to happen, confront the ugly reality of it’.
Rhodes says that Trump’s decision to pull the US out of the Paris Climate Accord will lead to the ‘complete isolation of the United States’.
The last scenes of The Final Year show the heartache among Obama advisers on election night.
Thinking that Hillary Clinton would win, Power invited some women, including Gloria Steinem and former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, to watch with her in the West Wing.
Steinem says: ‘I didn’t think it would be this bad.’
Power can be seen sitting with her head in her hands, crying.
In an offhand remark she says: ‘To think of them in control of the Senate, the House and the Presidency…’
Rhodes is shown sitting alone in the darkness and is so shell-shocked he cannot even speak when asked how he feels.