As people filed out of the room, Biden pulled Denis and me into a smaller, adjacent room and closed the door. He looked genuinely pained. “You fellas really think he should do this?” “I do,” Denis said. I agreed, and repeated my point about Obama’s always having said he would go into Pakistan to get bin Laden. “Well,” Biden said, “I’m just trying to give him a little space.” I believed that—Biden sometimes took strident positions in meetings to widen the spectrum of views and options available to Obama. He also worked hard to understand Obama’s mind. “You’ve always got his back,” McDonough
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