Ny B9 Farmer Misc- Wh 1 Of 3 Fdr- 12-17-01 Woodward-balz-washington Post Interview Of Cheney 455

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THE WHITE HOUSE Office of THE VICE PRESIDENT December 17, 2001

Internal Transcript

TELEPHONE INTERVIEW OF THE VICE PRESIDENT BY BOB WOODWARD AND DAN BALZ, THE WASHINGTON POST 2:00 P.M. EST Q

I appreciate your willingness to do this.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: It's all right. As you know, I was a reluctant participant, but my leader said, do it, so here I am. Well, we're grateful for the President's intervention.

Q board.

You won't imagine what we had to do to get him on

THE VICE PRESIDENT:

I'll bet.

(Laughter.)

Okay.

Q It really is to focus, for the first 10 days, on his decision making -- the decision to go to war, you know, overall and the specific parts. And I think the first question THE VICE PRESIDENT: newspaper story?

Before we go on, is this for a

Q It is. This is for -- we're doing a series, as quickly as we can, probably early January, that will be kind of titled, "An Hour of our Choosing," from the President's speech on the cathedral on Friday the 14th. THE VICE PRESIDENT: Okay. We're going through the 20th, when he went to the Congress, joint session of Congress? Q

Right.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: So it's sort of a historic retrospective, if you will. 1 -MORE-

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Q Yes, sir. And we want to do it in depth, as much as possible. It's kind of the first cut at this. Obviously, people will be doing it forever. And the first question is THE VICE PRESIDENT: Q

And what are the ground rules?

What do you prefer, where we can learn the most?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, I don't care. I guess just so long as they are, we can do it any way you want. You want to do it on background? Q Or we could do it on the record, and then if you want to make something on background -- we will come back to Mary and Scooter THE VICE PRESIDENT:

Q about.

Okay, that's fine.

there will be nothing in here that you don't know

THE VICE PRESIDENT: All right, let's do it on the record, unless I say we're going to go to some other status. And then we'll so indicate, okay? So on the record, unless I holler otherwise. Q Thank you. What was -- in that period, you lived it and know it better than anybody, other than the President. We want to isolate the three, four or whatever main decisions he made, what were they, and how did he make them? THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, I mean, .as I think- back and look on it -- trying to get ready for the interview today, I went back and read his statements, and tried to pull together my recollections, as best I could. I guess the thing that stands out in my mind is he moved very rapidly to a couple of key conclusions. Very early on, he was talking about it's a new war, it's a war on terrorism, talking about the importance of going after those who support terrorism, not just the terrorists. I think that was in his remarks the very first night. Q

Those who harbor?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Those who harbor terrorists. A heavy emphasis on sort of the multi-dimensional approach that he wanted to take here, that we were going to marshall all of our national 2 -MORE-

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assets, if you will. It was partly military, but not just military. It also had to involve intelligence -- heavy, heavy role for intelligence, financial, diplomatic. We were going to go across the spectrum, in terms of pulling together an approach. He talked about an opportunity to change relationships, realign relationships, that this was not just in a -- it was not just the notion that -- I'm trying to think how to say it. Obviously, you're dealing with a terrible tragedy when you've had that kind of loss of life, and the importance of going after the folks who did it; but that in so doing, there was an opportunity here to rebuild relationships in the Middle East, and add another dimension to our relationships with the Russians in the war on terrorism; obviously change the relationship with respect to Pakistan. This notion of realignment was very much a part of his thinking.

Q frame or

When did that get introduced

--

do you know the time

THE VICE PRESIDENT: It's within the first day or two. We had them -- I'm trying to remember the sequence of events. We had an NSC meeting when he was on from Omaha, the afternoon of the llth. And then more meetings when he got back that night, after he addressed the nation. Q Do you remember anything about that first NSC meeting? Obviously, we're trying to put it in -- the decision making in some sort of chronology. THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, that first meeting, of course, was by the SIVITS, in the afternoon. And my recollection -- he was in Omaha.- I think Rumsfeld was at the Pentagon. I was in the PEOC. Condi was with me. Andy Card was with the President. Steve Hadley was with me, and Scooter. Mary was there. I don't think Powell was in the first hook up. I think he was still en route back from South America. And that sort of focused on the situation of the moment. And I'm sure the President would have talked about his determination to find out who did it, and to bring them to justice as quickly as possible. I think by that evening, when we got together after the speech, then Colin was back. And most of that meeting was around the table in the PEOC. I think Don came over from the Pentagon then. Q

Do you remember anything that happened there?

THE VICE PRESIDENT:

I'd like to say I do, but I can't give 3 -MORE-

you a verbatim, partly because we had so many meetings in those early days, and separate out what was discussed in one versus another. Q things

I understand.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: color.

But, as you know, when we do these You guys like direct quotes and lots of

Q Yes, exactly. (Laughter.) Was there a note-taker? I mean, is there anything that could be isolated -- like from that first NSC meeting, we have from one of the people there, President Bush saying. President Putin called me immediately because he understands if this can happen to us, it can happen to him. And that apparently is the beginning of -- he said, we have this chance to build a whole new relationship with the Russians. THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, he was talking about realignment very early on. And I would say within that first day or two. And the fact that the first call we got from overseas was from the Russians clearly had an impact and triggered, I think, some of those considerations. Q Mr. Vice President, in that first -- really, literally, that first day or 24 hours, when did he come to a decision that he did not want to do anything instantly, in other words that he was prepared to take some time to make a decision? And how did he enunciate that to people? THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, he -- from the very beginning, he talked about taking time to do it right," that he wanted good planning done. There was a sense that a lot of us had, and I'm sure that he did as well, that we didn't want just to fire off a few Cruise missiles and call it good, that that had sort of been the pattern of the past. And we were very conscious that that's not what we wanted here. And also that if we were going to go track down -- you know, early on we focused on al Qaeda and the Taliban and bin Laden. I mean, there wasn't a lot of doubt from the very first day that it was probably Osama bin Laden. It took a while to nail down some of the specifics. But once you start to look at that and think about that, then he focused very much that this could take a long time. And we had to prepare people to understand that it could take a long time. When he first started asking about military options, it was 4 -MORE-

clear that there were not a lot of prime targets that you could go hit in Afghanistan anyway, that it was going to take -- you couldn't just take something off the shelf and go for it, it was going to take time to plan it and put it together. And as we begin thinking about how you would go after the sanctuary -- in effect, it was in Afghanistan -- and then go after the Taliban and bring in the Northern Alliance and begin to marshall intelligence assets, as well as military assets, on all of this we talked about within the very first few days of the operation. Q Was it clear military action was going to be necessary? Was it clear the first day? THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, it was certainly clear by the next morning, in terms of -- you know,, you begin to think about he talked about, he gave us directions, in terms of sending an ultimatum to the Taliban. We knew they were providing sanctuary from bin Laden and his crew. Q

--

come to that conclusion?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Q

When did he come to that conclusion?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Q

Pardon?

The first few days.

The first few days.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Yes, before we came to Camp David, that weekend. And we met during -- let's see, Tuesday was 9/11. That Wednesday-Thursday time frame we had meetings that included people f-rom the Agency who had expertise- in Afghanistan and who were in the operations directorate who were already beginning to be tasked and to give us views on what might be possible with the Northern Alliance and how you could go after the Taliban, if you had to. So there was a desire to prepare, but also talking with Don and talking with Chairman, then Shelton, and so forth, that it was going to take time here to do the targeting that was required to gather the intelligence required. There was always this linkage from the very beginning between the intel and the military side of the house. And I thought the President worked that very well in coming quickly to understand that you needed to tie those together if you were going to be successful here. The military had to have intelligence in order to have targets to hit.

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clear that there were not a lot of prime targets that you could go hit in Afghanistan anyway, that it was going to take -- you couldn't just take something off the shelf and go for it, it was going to take time to plan it and put it together. And as we begin thinking about how you would go after the sanctuary -- in effect, it was in Afghanistan -- and then go after the Taliban and bring in the Northern Alliance and begin to marshall intelligence assets, as well as military assets, on all of this we talked about within the very first few days of the operation. Q Was it clear military action was going to be necessary? Was it clear the first day? THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, it was certainly clear by the next morning, in terms of -- you know, you begin to think about he talked about, he gave us directions, in terms of sending an ultimatum to the Taliban. We knew they were providing sanctuary from bin Laden and his crew. Q

--

come to that conclusion?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Q

When did he come to that conclusion?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Q

Pardon?

The first few days.

The first few days.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Yes, before we came to Camp David, that weekend. And we met during -- let's see, Tuesday was 9/11. That Wednesday-Thursday time frame we had meetings that included people from the Agency who had expertise- in Afghanistan and who were in the operations directorate who were already beginning to be tasked and to give us views on what might be possible with the Northern Alliance and how you could go after the Taliban, if you had to. So there was a desire to prepare, but also talking with Don and talking with Chairman, then Shelton, and so forth, that it was going to take time here to do the targeting that was required to gather the intelligence required. There was always this linkage from the very beginning between the intel and the military side of the house. And I thought the President worked that very well in coming quickly to understand that you needed to tie those together if you were going to be successful here. The military had to have intelligence in order to have targets to hit.

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Q Sir, there was apparently on the 12th, Wednesday, or the 13th, Thursday -- the President has told people that George Tenet came in and this idea of, as you say, mating the intelligence operation with special ops and with the technology of the Predator kind of all surfaced. And the President has told people that made a big impression on him and it was one of the significant turning points in his own mind. Can you elaborate on that at all? THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, I think that's true, because what we had -- there had been -- we need to go on background at this point. There had been discussions earlier, before 9/11, on arming the Predator, on hanging the hell-fire missile on there so we could hit a target when we spotted something you might want to hit. And we were already flying the Predator over Afghanistan at that point. As I say, this is before 9/11. Q Right. administration.

That was during the first eight months of the

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Right. So we'd been thinking about it. So we were aware of Predator and Predator's capabilities by the time 9/11 rolled around and were starting to talk about how we're going to go after bin Laden and so forth. So, yes, I would say very much that those first few days we were beginning to look at how you find a guy and how you could hurt him if you did find him. Q Do you remember anything that the CIA Director said, or anybody that -- because the President has portrayed to others that this was the, ah, we've got some things we can glue together here. THE VICE PRESIDENT: I don't recall anything specific. I'm always reluctant to quote somebody else in these kinds of settings, anyway, Bob, you know that. I'm not trying to be cute here, I just don't recall specific quotes from individuals. Q But did this represent, in the minds of those of you who had been through some of these things before, a new opportunity, a different way of kind of going about things? THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, sure, I mean, it was a new capability that had never been. I mean, of course, I had been away from it for eight years, and we had used UAVs a little bit during the Gulf War, but nothing like what the Predator represented, in terms of long dwell time and sensor package that we had on board. And, of course, ultimately, then the ability to hang a couple hell-fires on it and hit a target.

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As well as -- and we're still on background here -well as, obviously, to be able to control it, hell, from Washington.

as

Q And in that first day or day and a half or two days, what was the nature of the discussion back and forth about how broad or how narrow this war on terrorism ought to be, particularly in that opening phase? I mean, when did you come to the notion that you wanted to phase this operation, this war on terrorism? THE VICE PRESIDENT: Are we back on the record now? Well, we -- I mean, when you start to talk about terrorism, there are a lot of potential targets out there. Clearly, the priority was going to be -- and the President made this clear from the very beginning -- was going to be on al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden and those folks and that organization we thought was responsible for what had happened to the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. It was going to be our top priority. But there was, really, from the very beginning, an interest as well in other elements, if you will, of the global terrorist network: the fact that'al Qaeda had cells in a lot of countries around the world was something we came to grips with in the very beginning; that there were other states that had provided sanctuary to terrorists in the past. So all of them became of interest and continue to be of interest. But the focus was clearly at the outset going to be on Afghanistan and on -- and the base that bin Laden and al Qaeda had created in Afghanistan and used to attack us. -

And.it wasn't just the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. I mean, they operated out of there against the Cole; they had operated out of there for the East Africa bombings; the Clinton administration had made a relatively ineffective effort to hit back. But this was sort of the, in a sense, the final straw in a long list of aggressions by this guy against the United States from his bases in Afghanistan. Q How much were you all influenced by what had happened during the Clinton administration, in your own thinking of THE VICE PRESIDENT: We were aware of it. I think there was a view that the U.S. response had been ineffective in the past. There was an interest, and the President made it very clear he wanted us to not make that mistake again; that when we got ready to move, he wanted it to be decisive, he wanted it to be effective, he wanted it to use all elements of our power. 7 -MORE-

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He talked about -- "boots on the ground" was a phrase that came up quite a bit; the idea somehow being that it had developed in that part of the world that the United States would launch a few Cruise missiles, because we could do that safely from several hundred miles away, but that we were reluctant to commit troops to an enterprise like this. And he wanted to make sure they understood that was not the case, and he directed the military from the very beginning to make sure that he had options that involved using U.S. forces effectively against these guys. Q And did he use the phrase "boots on the ground"? Because we've heard that before. MR. FLEISCHER: Q

Yes, he did.

And was that on the llth or the 12th, first?

MR. FLEISCHER: I would put it within that very first week, 12th, 13th, 14th, along in there. Q And was the feeling that -- you said the previous administration's response had been so ineffective. We understand there was very much the feeling that the previous administration's response has been so weak that it had wound up being almost provocative. THE VICE PRESIDENT: Oh, I think so. It certainly didn't deter them from further action, obviously. I mean, part of what Q Tell us about that, because that's really important. We understand there was very much a sense -that it was so weak, it was provocative. I'm repeating myself. THE VICE PRESIDENT: I think it was. That clearly was the sense that I felt as we talked about it, and the President clearly believed that as well. I mean, partly what happened here in a broader context, not just in terms of how the Clinton administration responded and how we wanted to respond there's a question of leadership that sort of pervades the sole exercise and your ability to put together a coalition and to mobilize Arab -- friendly Arab governments in the region who had been -- there had been a strain on a lot of those relationships prior to 9/11, because of the continued Intifada and difficulty of getting anything going between the Israelis and the Palestinians, to get these governments to stand up and sign up and commit resources and allow us to have access and the kind of cooperation that was required here.

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Sort of the most important consideration for them was, this guy means business, this President is serious. He's going to follow through. And the President conveyed that from the very beginning. He wanted to put together a coalition, he wanted to mobilize international opinion, but if we had to, we would go it alone. It was going to happen. We were going to do it. And other nations had a choice: they could either get on board or else, but they were going to have to choose whether they were with us or they were with the bad guys. Q He was clear from the beginning that while -- help us understand this issue of building a coalition. Because in a one sense, building a coalition can tie your hands, and it sounds as though what his view was, we're going to develop what we -- and sell it to the rest of the world, rather than have others in the coalition kind of dictating this term or that term, or some other element of it. THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, yes. I mean, the coalition was something you needed in order to try to move forward and make progress here. But the objective is not to maintain the coalition, the objective is to defeat terrorism. Plus, but also, the President understood better than most that you build a coalition not by pleading with others to join the coalition, but rather by demonstrating leadership, and getting out front and making decisions and moving aggressively. And other people respect that, so our friends and allies around the world were only too quick to sign on. We had this parade of people that hasn't stopped yet-. - Foreign leaders who want to come to Washington to be seen with the President of the United States, talking about terrorism. You had the first-ever unanimous conclusion in NATO to invoke Article V, never before been done in history. President Musharraf in Pakistan took some very bold and aggressive steps at the request of the President, because the President asked him to do it, and he did it. So strength builds coalitions, not hand-wringing and supplication and pleading. Q And you believe that that had been the approach of the previous administration? THE VICE PRESIDENT:

Can we go on background at this point? 9 -MORE-

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10 (Laughter.) Yes, I've -- obviously, on background -- I obviously believe the last administration was totally ineffective in dealing with these kinds of problems. And the record is there for anybody to see. I mean, we spent a lot of time looking at and thinking about it, but they never could seem to come to grips with trying to figure out how to use force. And Bill Clinton, time after time after time, when there were terrorist attacks -- whether it was at the World Trade Center in '93 or Khobar Towers or the East Africa bombing or Mogadishu in '93 -- you know, the response was always weak and ineffective and nondecisive. And there might be a few shots fired, but then that was the end of it. I think we reached the point where there were very few nations in the world that feared the United States, or even respected our determination to defend our interests. Q

Why don't you say that on the record, sir?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: the record. Q

All right, what the hell.

Put it on

We're not going to make a headline out of

THE VICE PRESIDENT:

Put it on the record.

Q

Okay.

Q

We would like to be able to quote you in the piece.

THE VICE PRESIDENT:

All right.

Q Great. Good. One element of the willingness to use force and to put boots on the ground is the willingness to take casualties, which, as you know, over the '90s, Americans have gotten used to the idea of war without casualties. How much what was the President's sort of attitude, what did he say about that in those early days about his own willingness to take those consequences and to move ahead? THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, he was very precise. He said we have to be prepared to take casualties. And then he reminded us that we had already suffered thousands of casualties on day one, right here at home. The first casualty in the war wasn't somebody that was going to be killed in Afghanistan, it was thousands of people who were killed at the World Trade Center in New York. 10 -MORE-

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11 Q Mr. Vice President, can you give us an idea of your relationship with Bush in this? I know you're not going to talk about your counsel and so forth, but were you able to -- like, there is a critical point at Camp David where he asks everyone in the afternoon of the 15th to lay out what they think he ought to do, and then he says he's going to go think about it. And on the time line, the next thing we have is him calling Dr. Rice in and saying, this is what I want to do, 11 or 12 things. Did you have a conversation with him, you know, in that period from the end of Saturday night to Sunday morning? Or is there some way to tell how you two were working together? There's a lot of myth and supposition about it. And I know you're not going to talk about it, but give us a THE VICE PRESIDENT: We had a meeting the next morning. I spent the night -- a lot of the Cabinet went back Saturday night, after the meeting. I over-nighted up here, and then did the "Meet the Press" interview with Tim Russert the next morning, just down the road here. And that morning the President called me, and we got together, and spent some time together, talking about all this stuff. Q

Is this before or after "Meet the Press"?

THE VICE PRESIDENT:

Q

And can you

--

I think it was before, yes. how long was that?

And just the two

of you? THE VICE PRESIDENT: Yes, just the two of us. Q And if we'd been there -- which we wish you had invited us -- what would be a way to characterize -- a full discussion of options, whatever? THE VICE PRESIDENT: We had an extended discussion about what had transpired at the NSC meeting the day before, and where we were headed next. But as I say, it was a private conversation. It's something we do periodically. The reason I'm here, or one of the reasons I'm here, obviously, is he seeks my advice and counsel. He does that with a lot of people. But I always offer it up privately. And he can accept it or reject it. And it's advice for him, though; I don't talk about it. Q Can you give us a sense of how the Camp David meeting moved the ball forward from where you had been as of, let's say Friday, when he gave his speech at the Cathedral, and went off to New York? Obviously, some important decisions, broadly done, had 11 -MORE-

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already been made. forward?

What did Camp David do to move the ball

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well -- yes, I guess the thing — as I think back on it now, because we were already -- before we got to Camp David, we were already off and running, with respect to the focus on Afghanistan and the Taliban, and mobilizing our intel and military assets. The President had already given guidance on all of those areas. But Camp David was a chance -- I mean, all of that took place as earlier meetings, 30 minutes here, an hour there. It's in the midst of the immediate aftermath of the attack on 9/11. There are a lot of other things going on, the President visiting the President, the President going to New York, and so forth. Camp David was the first time we really had a chance to come together for several hours and focus on the strategy, to exchange views with one another; for the President to have an opportunity to sort of get everybody in the room, around the table, for an extended discussion about all of these issues. So it was -- in part, it was a review of what we'd already decided; but then part of it, obviously, was as I say, sort of getting everybody focused and thinking in terms of where we were headed, going down the road — sort of getting everybody, I guess, and sort of working off the same sheet of music. Q And so would it be fair to say that before that meeting it essentially it had been decided that the first phase of this was going to be Afghanistan, and the issues of Iraq and other terrorist countries was going to be down the road at some point? THE VICE PRESIDENT: I would say that before we got to Camp David the first priority had already been established. It's clearly al Qaeda, bin Laden, Afghanistan. What additional steps we would take, or might be taken, I think were some of the things we talked about then, sort of the sequencing we talked about at Camp David. Maybe a discussion, to some extent, of what the focus ought to be here at the outset, and what the President reaffirmed out of -- partly, I think out of the meetings that weekend was that he clearly wanted to focus, first and foremost, on Afghanistan and bin Laden, but that he had a continuing interest in all of the other elements, as well, too, and a reinforcement of the notion that this is going to be a long campaign; it might, in fact, be sort of the single most important thing we did as an administration and we might spend the next several years on it. And if we were going to get it right, first and foremost, we were 12 -MORE-

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13 going after the Afghan problem. Q There has been a lot written and speculated on about that weekend, that there was a pretty healthy airing of a debate about how broadly to go or what to do about Iraq. Can you give us some sense of how extended that discussion was and how vigorous that debate was? THE VICE PRESIDENT: I'm reluctant to get into specifics. What I would say is there was a wide range of views presented to the President and he had the benefit of a free-flowing discussion. But I think for me to get into who recommended what or anything like that will inhibit the next discussion. I don't want to do that. But he clearly -- he had the benefit of • hearing the best advise from a very able and talented group, and out of that came sort of the basic, overall thrust of the policy,

Q

Why do you think he came down where he came down?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: to do.

Because he thinks it's the right thing

Q Can you give us your view -- I mean, did it make sense to put Iraq and other things off? I mean, would it have been at all feasible to launch some military attack simultaneously? THE VICE PRESIDENT: I support whole-heartedly the decisions the President made. (Laughter.) Q Give us a sense at that time, in the planning stage, of how complicated, how dangerous and how difficult just the first phase looked -- in other words, to go after al Qaeda and to try to dislodge the Taliban. THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, there's another whole theme you guys may come back to here in terms of what we do here at home to defend ourselves during this period of time. I wouldn't clearly, we're focused here on what we're going to do offensively and that was a very important component. But what was unique, in part, about this period of time is we're also having to deal with the fact that there may well be other attacks similar to what happened on 9/11, or perhaps even worse. And that's a dimension you obviously don't want to overlook, in terms of trying to portray what we're dealing with as we move forward here. But coming back to your question on how tough a problem Afghanistan was going to be -- obviously, we didn't know for sure how fast things would move. I think there was a high degree 13 -MORE-

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of confidence that we could do enormous damage to the Taliban once we got started. It was the combination of the lack of a target-rich environment, if you will, from the standpoint of our air capabilities, coupled with our need to lead you in the direction of marrying up your intel with your military, as I mentioned before, and getting people on the ground to be able to find targets and feed targets to the air aspects of it. That sort of basic strategic approach was there from the very beginning. How long the Taliban could hold out; at what point the Northern Alliance could begin to move; how effective the Northern Alliance would be militarily once they did move -- those were questions that we couldn't really answer. We had some guesses. We had advice from the Agency, who had a fair amount of experience out of there, going back to the '80s, who the players were and how good they were and what some of the relationships were and what some of the ingredients were here in terms of sort of the internal dynamics, if you will, of the Northern Alliance and what their relationship was between the Northern Alliance and the southern Pashtun tribes and the Taliban. All the intricacies, if you will, of Afghan politics played in all of this, too. But we did not know -- I don't think there was ever doubt -- and certainly never any doubt in my mind, and I believe in the President's mind -- that we would prevail There was a real question about timing, how long would it how soon would something decisive happen, such as the fall major city. Q

Were there any estimates at the time?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Q

any don't here. take, of a

Not really.

Was there any projection of how long the thing might

take? THE VICE PRESIDENT: No, nobody could say, well, in 30 days it will be over, or 10 days. I mean, there was the possibility that it would have taken longer and that you'd get into the winter; that it would be difficult for the Northern Alliance to operate then, and that part of the country they're based in is some of the roughest terrain and the winters are harshest and most difficult. And how they would move or would be willing to move were questions that couldn't be answered at the outset. Q If we can go to September the llth for a moment. The day, itself, down in the PEOC. We understand one of the things 14 -MORE-

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15 that happened there, before 10:00 a.m., was somebody from the military came in and said, Mr. Vice President, there's a plane 80 miles out, there's a fighter in the area. Should we engage? Do you recall that? THE VICE PRESIDENT: I couldn't put a time on it, but, yes, I was asked that specific question. And it came up not once, but more than once. I mean, there were other reports during the course of the morning of incoming aircraft that were unidentified and potentially hostile. Q

And you replied yes, is that correct?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Q

That's correct.

To engage it?

THE VICE PRESIDENT:

Correct.

Q And tell us what -- you had worked out with the President the rules of engagement, or with Don Rumsfeld. What was the state of -- you know, what could be done at that point? THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, what had happened -- I'm trying to recall the sequence now. I had -- I'm just trying to go back. I was in my office when the planes hit. They called my secretary called in and told me a plane had hit. I turned on the tube, watched that, saw the second plane hit as it happened. I talked to the President on the phone about his first statement. He made the statement -- I've got a copy of it here in front of me, about 9:30 a.m. that morning, from Florida. That was his first statement on the subject. Q

Terrorism will not stand.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Right, and that it was an apparent act of terrorism. And about 9:32 a.m., the Secret Service grabbed me and rushed me to the basement, to the shelter. They took me down to -- let's go on background here just for a minute. They get sensitive when you talk too much about how they operate. They took me down — there's a tunnel from under the West Wing that ultimately gets you to the PEOC, the Presidential Emergency Operations Center. But that's quite a ways to get to that; it takes a while to get there. And when they grabbed me, this was based on this report, that it was American 77 -- we didn't know what it was at the time -- but was headed for the White House, a report that came in from the comptrollers at Dulles. And they rushed me down and stopped -- there's an 15 -MORE-

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16 "-„

S

interim spot where we stopped in the tunnel where they can seal off both ends of the tunnel, and that's the most immediate shelter that's available from the West Wing. We got there, there was a TV set in there and a telephone. And when we got there, I had them get to the President and place a call to the President. It would have been the second call I made to him that day. While I was waiting to get through to him, because he was -- by this point, he was en route to the airport in Florida -- a TV set in there and the report came in that the Pentagon had been hit. Q

That was 9:40 a.m., I think.

Is that correct?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I don't know; whenever it was broadcast. But the broadcast came over CNN, one of the news channels, that the Pentagon had been hit, and I suppose they started showing footage of it. After all of that, then I talked to him on the telephone, and that's where I urged him to delay his return, that I believed we were a target. He'd said in his statement at 9:30 a.m. that he was getting ""\y to come straight back to Washington. So it was after that I that I talked with him and urged him to delay his return, because we didn't know -- thought we had been targeted by then, obviously. And in that conversation, or it must have been when I first arrived in the PEOC a few minutes later, that I was informed that -- Q Can I stop you one second? that other call?

You were in the tunnel for

THE VICE PRESIDENT: A tunnel -- first call to him, second call to him -- this is the call urging him not to come back, was from the tunnel. Q

Okay, thank you.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: And then into the PEOC. And in the PEOC, when I talked to him next was when I talked to him, I believe, about the question of rules of engagement for the CAP. I'd been informed that the CAP was up; Rumsfeld or somebody had already put the Combat Air Patrol up. But that we needed -- it didn't do any good to put the CAP up there unless we gave them instructions to operate. And this all went back to my time as J

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Secretary of Defense, that we needed to tell them whether or not they were authorized to shoot if the plane wouldn't divert. And he signed off on that concept. Based on that, when I was asked a few minutes later if they were authorized to engage, I said, yes. Now, later on, he spent time with Rumsfeld and with Eberhart out at NORAD formalizing the rules of engagement, that he had a separate conversation with Don later on to nail down more precisely what the rules of engagement would be for the Combat Air Patrol. I had this conversation with him early on, on the telephone, that he signed off on that. Q -- said, basically, try to warn the plane, but if they don't heed the warning and they have hostile intent, shoot them? THE VICE PRESIDENT: If you can't get them to divert, as a last resort, then you're authorized to take them out. Q And so you authorized that about -- when they told you there's a plane 80 miles out, apparently this was the Pennsylvania THE VICE PRESIDENT: It might have been. I never knew for sure what plane, whether or not we ever had the Pennsylvania plane on Washington radar. There were various planes remember, when we got down -- when I got into the PEOC, we still had, I think, hundreds of airplanes in the air -- maybe thousands. Somebody can check. There were a couple of thousand, I guess, in the air when this all started. And Norm Mineta was there with me, and had given the order to go ahead and get everything landed, down. But that took a couple hours to happen. And we had about six airplanes that we thought were problems. It turns out there were only four. But for a long time there, we thought we had six domestic flights that were problems. And then later on in the day we had, as I recall, five different times when we got word that there were international flights coming in that were potential problems where they were transponding the wrong code or, for one reason or another, there was reason to believe they might be hostile. Q How many times did you authorize, remind them they were authorized to engage if necessary? THE VICE PRESIDENT: It came up two or three times that morning where -- but, again, there was -- I never got any 17 -MORE-

18 immediate feedback saying, okay, we just shot down an airplane. Q

Right.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Instead, what had happened would be the plane is down or it's no longer a factor. I think in every case, with the exception of the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania, obviously, planes landed, were diverted to other airports, no longer were a problem. But things were moving so fast, you didn't know exactly how each one of those got resolved; you just knew they got resolved because we didn't get hit. As I say, the plane in Pennsylvania, we had a couple of reports of plane crashes. We had the one in Pennsylvania. This is later on in the morning, after it had gone down. We also had a report of a crash near Camp David, which turned out to be false, and another report of a crashed plane down on the OhioKentucky border that, for a long time, we couldn't confirm. And in the end, turned out to be a false report. My guess is, it was the result of American 77 turning off its transponder and turning around to head back to Washington. And when they turned off their transponder, I think the air traffic controller out there thought they had lost it, that it had gone in. Q But there was a moment or a period of several minutes when it was possible that you had essentially authorized the shooting down of that United Flight 93. Is that THE VICE PRESIDENT:

With the approval of the President,

yes

Q What did you did you think?

--

how long was that period, and what

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, it was sometime after -- I don't remember, an hour, two hours later, that we got final confirmation that we never had fired on anything. So I didn't know for sure until then. I couldn't tell you exactly when, It I was some period of time afterwards that we got word back think from Don or from the Pentagon that we had not actually had to shoot -- fire on any plane. Q

What did you think?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Q

I mean, here

I was relieved.

in that period of some doubt now, even though it 18 -MORE-

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19 was several hours, we understand that because you didn't get a report something had been shot down, you thought that it probably had not. But that there was a period where you had this, if you will, weight of responsibility on your shoulders and head that you had given the final authorization to shoot down a civilian airliner. THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, it was -- I mean, he thought of it as, obviously, a very significant action. You're asking American pilots to fly a fire on a commercial airliner full of civilians. On the other hand, you had directly in front of me what had happened to the World Trade Center, and a clear understanding that once the plane was hijacked, it was a weapon; and that if you had had the opportunity to fire on the planes that hit the World Trade Center in light of what had happened, would you have done it, and there was no doubt in my mind but what you would have. I mean, it seemed to me it was a clear-cut, painful, but nonetheless clear-cut proposition. And I didn't agonize over it. The President made the decision quickly and decisively. Again, it goes back to the question, what's the purpose of the Combat Air Patrol if you're not going to use it, if you're not going to authorize them to defend the city And there was also developing by this time a sense that we were targeted. We had had the threat on Air Force One. We had had a report the State Department had been hit by a car bomb, it turned out to be false. A report the Pentagon had been hit, initially by a helicopter. It of course later turned out to be American 77. That was true. A report that the Washington Monument had been blown up, but it turned out to be false. So you had a lot of information coming in — _ Q Wasn't there something about a plane heading for Air Force Two, out at THE VICE PRESIDENT: Q

Air Force One.

Just Air Force One?

THE VICE PRESIDENT:

Yes.

Q And was there a report that a plane was headed for the President's ranch in Crawford? THE VICE PRESIDENT: At one point we had a report on a low flying, high speed approach to the President's ranch at Crawford.

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20 Q And when it was confirmed that the United plane had crashed, and not been shot down, you had the immediate sense that there was heroism on board that plane, that had brought it down? What prompted that in your own mind? THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, the fact that it had crashed. Again, as I say, we were looking for six aircraft that had been hijacked, and there were only four. I could account by that time for three but, clearly, there were others out there. And the fact that it had crashed, I immediately thought that somebody had crashed it. Q Somebody there said -- quoted you as saying, Mr. Vice President, I think an act of heroism occurred on that plane.THE VICE PRESIDENT:

That sounds correct, yes.

Q And was -- just in terms of the overall, you have all these reports coming in. As you know from your Defense days that generally the first reports are exaggerated or flat wrong. But also, on another level, it looked like maybe this was an effort to decapitate the American political leadership. \

THE VICE PRESIDENT: That's correct. Tell us what you were thinking. And going back to your continuity of government thought, what you determined might be going on, and what you had to do. THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, as soon as it became clear that they were hitting Washington, as well as New York -- and that really happened, you know, with the first report that a plane was headed for the White House. The thought, immediately cropped up that Washington is going to be hit, or is being hit. And as I say, that's when I urged the President to delay his return. It was important to preserve -- if you spent time thinking about these things, as I had over the years, and going back to my involvement when the Ford administration or during my time on the Intel Committee during the Reagan years, or as Secretary of Defense, continuity of government is something you work on, and you're very conscious of. And of course we had done a lot of planning over the years, and exercises, and so forth, on the question of how you preserve the Constitutional government of the United States in the midst of an all out nuclear attack. And the key, from the standpoint of the Presidency, is the Presidential line of succession. So what we did

J

--

the question came up a couple times 20 -MORE-

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21 during the course of the day. One was on evacuating the Speaker, which we did. Another -- at one point I was asked about evacuating the Cabinet, not all of them, obviously. But, again, I gave instructions that some Cabinet members should also be moved to safe and secure locations. Rumsfeld was at the Pentagon. Powell was en route back from South America. At one point John Ashcroft was airborne, and he came back into Washington. The question was, where should he go? By then we had -- we'd distributed potential successors pretty widely. So I thought he ought to go to the Justice Department. It was those kinds of decisions, but always being aware that we had to make sure we had a President, or someone who could take over as President, should something happen to him. Q So you thought for a moment, this could be a moment where somebody is literally trying to do -- take out the leadership. THE VICE PRESIDENT: Right. Q

How long a period was that?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, most of the day.

i

Q And how many of those -- were you working off a checklist, based on the planning that had been done, of kind of what you do, and where you put people, and in what order? Or were you having to sort of make those decisions on the fly, amidst all the reports coming in? THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, it's more on the fly. I knew — my job as Vice President is to think about those things, and as I say, making sure the President is. safe-was first and foremost. That's why the first thing I did after I'd heard a plane was headed for the White House, as soon as they quit running me into the shelter, was call the President and say, don't come back for now; please stay away until we can find out what's happening. And after me, of course, after THE VICE PRESIDENT comes the Speaker and the President Pro Tern. And I was informed the President Pro Tern had wanted to go home, to his home in Washington, left the Hill, and again was dispersed to some extent. And the question was on the Speaker. And so we evacuated the Speaker. So we had number one and number three relatively safe at that point. And the backup, of course, were other Cabinet members. So I didn't have to think about it very long. I mean, there are certain established procedures, locales that people can be 21 -MORE-

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moved to under those circumstances. The discussion I had with the President, for example, about where he should go -- I recommended Offutt because it was obviously secure, a military base, SAC headquarters, great communications worldwide, a place where he'd be plugged in with our military forces and able to operate from a very secure environment. So that's why he went to Offutt in the first place. But, I mean, those are things you just do based on experience and having been involved in thinking about these issues over the years. I didn't have a checklist. The other thing, of course, once you've got the Speaker relocated, then you've got to be sensitive to the other members of the leadership in the Congress. Even though they're not successors, you have to be sensitive to the need to treat other leaders appropriately. So we also, eventually, evacuated all of them to the same location. And then I had a couple of conversations during the course of the day -- on two different occasions I called and briefed to the congressional leadership on sort of where we were. The President directed me to do that. I called them at his direction and made sure they knew what we were up to and what was going on. Then they called and asked when they could return, and I told them when the President had made his decision to come back, and gave them the time, and they came back about the same time. It was about -- what -- 6:00 p.m., 7:00 p.m. that night. Q We we're told at one point you said to the congressional leadership who were getting antsy about wanting to get out of there, we control the helicopters, so you have to sort of — (laughter.) -•- THE VICE PRESIDENT: I can't imagine I would have said anything like that. (Laughter.) Is that what they say? Q

Wasn't Senator Nickles getting a little antsy?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: member getting antsy.

I don't recall any one particular

Q Saying that they're an independent branch of government and, you know, why should we do what the executive branch tells us. THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, I don't recall that, but I know Don pretty well. They do not have any -- well, I'm sure they probably think the helicopters belong to them. (Laughter.) 22 -MORE-

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23 Q

Your on-the-record answer is?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: No comment. (Laughter.) No, no, I don't want to do that. No, I don't recall any conflict. If there was some, it didn't come to me. Q Let me ask this critical question -- kind of the context before September llth. As you look back -- Dan talked to one of the congressional leaders who said, you know, you can't pin what happened on September llth, you can't blame George Tenet or the FBI. Blame goes around. And this person said, you know, in a way all of us failed. Do you look back and say, gee, in that eight months we were in government, maybe we should have done more offensively to get bin Laden? THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, I don't. One of the things that's been, I think, remarkable about the period since 9/11 is there have not been a lot of recriminations. And that's partly, I think, part of the testimony to the President's leadership style. It would have been easy to sort of fall into the trap of looking for scapegoats. He insisted that not happen. I can recall him specifically making it clear he did not want that to occur. That's crucial in terms of being able to pull together a team. If you're going to get people to work together effectively, if folks are worried about their jobs or about who is going to land on their head next, to criticize them in the press or in front of the Congress, then they're not focusing on the task at hand, which is winning the war against terrorism. Q

Fair enough.

But in that

THE VICE PRESIDENT: The President was very good about giving that direction and guidance. Q Yes, sir. But in the eight months you people were in office, we understand that there were -- there was intelligence a good number of times that seemed reliable -- oh, bin Laden is here in Afghanistan, and so forth. And I just wonder, looking back in your introspective way, you say, I wish we had done more, and that maybe we should have. THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, what 9/11 provided, clearly, was a justification for a very robust response that the American people and I think the rest of the world understands. Most of the rest of the world. And I'm not sure if you'd gone and done that in June or July that there would have been the kind of support that there was by the time we did do it in September and 23 -MORE-

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I

October. Q But was there in that June, July, August period, when you were beginning to deal more intensively with terrorism and looking at that, any discussion that said, it would be nice to be able to do something, but we need a pretext? In other words THE VICE PRESIDENT: No. No, what you had -- we obviously were tracking and receiving intelligence reports, tracking threat levels, very much aware of the possibility that there was going to be some kind of an attack someplace. But a lot of that was focused on U.S. interest outside the United States, forces deployed overseas, on those kinds of targets; never the specificity that would have allowed you to anticipate what actually happened. Q You had good intelligence, though, about where bin Laden was quite frequently during that period? THE VICE PRESIDENT: Where he was? We had good reason to believe he was in Afghanistan. It was hard to be much more specific than that. I don't recall being told, he's -- we didn't have any GPS coordinates that I'm aware of.

'"'r"-\

You didn't during that period?

—"

THE VICE PRESIDENT:

Not that I'm aware of, Bob.

Q Could we ask you, as we get to the end of this, you had raised it earlier, the issue of homeland security. In the period just before the President's speech to Congress, you guys put together the plan to bring Tom Ridge in. Can you give us a little bit of background on how that developed and how quickly it came together, and what were the main elements that you were concerned about? THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, the President had asked me in the spring to take a look at that whole area of homeland defense, not so much to reinvent the wheel, but to go review -- there had been a number of studies and commissions done, looking at the question of the threat. Jim Gilmore, for example, and General Klapper had done a congressional study that stretched back a couple of years. There was the Hart-Redman operation, CSIAS had done one on the homeland defense. What I'd done is put together a small staff and we'd started reviewing the various recommendations from those panels, in terms of identifying issues that needed to be resolved, and so forth. And after 9/11, then we sped it up and I got the group together )

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and told them I wanted their recommendations fast; to zero in, first and foremost, on the question of how we ought to structure ourselves, from a governmental standpoint, to deal with these issues. What that produced was the recommendation I took to the President on establishing the Office of Homeland Security, which we did. He and I talked about a number of possible candidates for the office, and he settled quickly on Tom Ridge as somebody that we both thought would be ideal for the job, if he'd take it. The President called him, got him in. We had him in Andy Card's office. Andy and I sat down and talked with him, and I think as I recall, that was the morning the President gave his speech to Congress -- or the morning before, maybe. And over thecourse of about 48 hours, we closed the deal. The President was very persuasive. Q Mr. Vice President, when did you first take that recommendation to the President? THE VICE PRESIDENT:

Q -^ I •"'•''

Well, it was at

--

Was that after Camp David?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Yes, it was after Camp David, as I recall. It was as we were putting together the address to Congress. We thought it was important to have in there some indication of what we were prepared to do as a government, in terms of making the U.S. a tougher target, and finding ways to improve our overall capacity to defend against attacks here at home. The heart of that effort was to get somebody like Tom in, who could take on that responsibility and run it. And that's how it basically all ended up in the President's speech. Q Mr. Vice President, as I review the notes here, and so forth, obviously there's a lot more we need to get. I'm going to talk to -- Anna and I are going to talk to Scooter Libby again. Does he had any notes? I noticed at one point you said, it was at 9:32 a.m. that you went down to the tunnel. Do you have some sort of time line there? THE VICE PRESIDENT: The Secret Service had kept a time line of stuff that had happened during the course of that day. And I talked to one of your competitors a week or two ago. I asked when they moved me to the basement, and it was 9:32 a.m. was the time they gave me. Q

)

Do you have any other times that are specific?

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26 THE VICE PRESIDENT: Just the stuff you've seen, when the first plane hit the North Tower, the South Tower -- you know, when the Towers went down, that kind of stuff. Q As I look at the notes here, as we said, we're trying to focus on the President's decision to go to war. Obviously, it's unknown and somewhat dramatic, though you're relaying his decision to engage this plane, if necessary -- the Pennsylvania plane. I wonder if we shouldn't just do a separate story on that, because it's one of those things that from 30 years of doing this, is going to get a lot of attention. And I hate to do a story -- I don't know how Dan feels about this, about President Bush that a lot of attention goes to Vice President Cheney. THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, and you shouldn't. I mean, it's his decision. He's the guy who has got to make that call. It's not the kind of thing where I can act or would act unilaterally. I mean, the nice thing about being Vice President is on the really tough ones, you can take to the President. Q No, but I think what Bob is saying is that you were there in the chair, because the President was in transit, and you were the one who was asked the question. I mean, I think our view is that this is a very interesting stand-alone moment in a much, much larger story that we're trying to tell. And I think it would behoove everybody, if it's okay with you, if that were done before the rest of this package comes together, because we obviously have a lot of other interviews, including the President, to do the main story of how he came to the decision to watch the country on the war on terrorism, whereas this is a snapshot of a singular moment in the drama of the day of September llth. --- THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, I'd prefer to honor the ground rules we've established. You know, if you wanted to do a sidebar when you do the main story on something like that, obviously, that's fine by me. But I mean, the basis upon which we proceeded here was this was going to cover the President on the llth to the 20th, and that's my preference for how we keep it. Q I certainly agree. I mean, Mary will know about this. It's such an electric thing, that it's going to get a lot of attention even THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, it's not like it's a secret. mean, we talked about it that Sunday after it happened. But you said that there had been kind of a general 26 -MORE-

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authorization. And that's the view -- after talking to Scooter on Friday, I checked the clips very carefully, and so did Dan, and this is a new element that, in the overall, is not that significant. But you know how Washington works. And I'm just saying if we get it out before the series, it will then kind of dissipate when the series runs at the end of the month or in early January. And that would -- journalistically, I think that's in our interest and in terms of the goal of this, I would argue it's in yours. But you're the boss. THE VICE PRESIDENT: Yes, I would like to proceed in accordance with the ground rules we have established, Bob. you're aware, I'm sensitive about how we proceed here, and Q

I understand.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Q

As

And that would be my preference.

And you don't think anybody else knows about this?

THE VICE PRESIDENT:

Knows about what?

Q About what you did in answering the question, should we engage, and said yes? THE VICE PRESIDENT: Oh, that's already out there. Q Well, now, when I looked at the "Meet The Press," it was only that you had talked to the President about the authorization THE VICE PRESIDENT:

Right.

Q for rules of engagement, but not the specifics about a plane thought to be the United THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, that's a misinterpretation of what you and I just said. Because when we talked, it was -- I did not have the -- as I say, I never knew whether or not we had picked up on the United Flight 93; I still don't to this day, in terms of having a plane 80 miles out. You would have to go back. I don't know when the timing was of that report, and we had several reports of incoming aircraft, none of which ever arrived in Washington. Now, whether or not one of those was United 93, I just don't know. There may be somebody who is an air traffic controller who has the radar records or something could figure that out.

2v

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But what I did have was the conversation with the President on the rules of engagement for the aircraft, where he agreed they could, in fact, fire on an airplane if they couldn't get it to divert. And when I was asked two or three occasions if, in fact, the CAP was authorized to fire, based on the fact that I already had this conversation with him, I gave him the order that they could, in fact, do so. Q Right. But these were specific instances. And as best we can tell from the records, sir, that was United Flight 93, because it was 80 miles out, and then I think at one point, maybe 60 miles out; and then the report was that it was down and it turned out to be that one. THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, I don't know that. than I do then. Q Never is the case. should know?

(Laughter.)

You know more

Anything else we

THE VICE PRESIDENT: No, sir. Well, yes, I mean there are I'm sure there are a lot of other things you should know. (Laughter.) Q

Well, help us, then.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, I guess I'm just -- I'm looking at some notes I made here earlier, getting ready for the call. We talked about marrying up intelligence in the military, about the broad-gaged, multi-faceted approach, opportunity to realign I'm just looking at my notes here. The work with Musharraf -- I guess -Scooter and I talked about something that I know he mentioned to you, this -- the things that didn't happen, the train wrecks that didn't occur, in terms of the way things can run off the rails, I thought was a useful way, in part, to think about this. Q

What, that Pakistan is

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Yes, that the President could have made a decision, for example, that Pakistan is shaky, and if we go hard in Afghanistan, we could create problems for the Paks and, therefore, that ought to dictate a softer approach to going after the Taliban. And the President didn't go for any of that. He clearly went for, let's go get Musharraf, get him on board; did that very early on. And that laid the predicate in part, and helped, obviously, when we just finally mounted the effort against the Taliban. "\8 J

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29 Q

You concurred with that analysis of

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Yes. I mean, I thought it was absolutely the right thing to do . I guess -- pardon? Q Sir, that at a couple of these meetings you emphasized that it was important to be sensitive to the position of the Pakistanis, though? THE VICE PRESIDENT:

Sure.

Q

They were, in a sense, the most important piece of this, in terms of building the coalition. THE VICE PRESIDENT: Yes. And the President saw it, again, as an opportunity to rebuild our relationship with Pakistan and has worked at that very assiduously, in terms of the missions he's sent out there, phone calls with Musharraf, meetings at the U.N. I think it's one of the positive things that sort of reinforces this concept of this trend that there was the opportunity here for some basic realignments that have been very positive. Q People have said about your friend, Don Rumsfeld, that he, in these early days, in the first week, was told by the President, see what military planning can be done. But when initially asked, what can we do now, he said, not much effectively; that he was very much the view, you can't start this in the first few days of the first week, in a military operation. THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, let's go on background at this point. Yes, Don was very honest and forthright, as^you would expect him to be. The military always has plans on the shelf for various contingencies. But the plans they had on the shelf, with respect to Afghanistan, had to some extent been I think probably shaped by what they'd been asked to do during the Clinton administration . And it took some time to develop the targeting information that allowed us to put together an effective plan for how to proceed. And Don was very honest with the President, from the very beginning. If he had ordered up an air strike the very first day, there wasn't that much you could go hit. You had to work at it, to figure out how you could apply air power to achieve your objectives, and that's what they did. MS. MATALIN: Okay, Mr. Vice President, you actually have to go to another meeting.

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30 THE VICE PRESIDENT: MS. MATALIN:

Okay.

Boys, you all right?

Q Yes, thank you. And thank you for the extra time. you do a transcript of this, to e-mail to us, Mary? MS. MATALIN: Q

Sure.

Thank you, sir.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Q

All right, good to talk to you.

We'll come back to you.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Q

Do

All right.

Thank you. END

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