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/ THE WHITE HOUSE Office of the Press Secretary _.s~\l T

INTERVIEW OF THE VICE PRESIDENT BY LARRY KING OF CNN

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THE VICE President's Office

11:03 A.M. EDT Q We're at Office Building in United States, Dick President, on what's

the Dwight David Eisenhower Old Executive Washington with THE VICE PRESIDENT of the Cheney. Can you give us an update, Mr. Vice going on in New York?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, there's a continuing level of concern, obviously, about threats. We now have a large number of people in custody, detainees, and periodically as we go through this process, we learn more about the possibility of future attacks. And based on that kind of reporting, we try to be very cautious and alert people when we think there ' s reason to be \d about a particular subject or target. It's not the kind of thing where somebody came in and said, Hey, the Brooklyn Bridge is going to get hit tomorrow. It's never that detailed. It's more a matter of being concerned that there has been some planning activity in the past by the organization, and therefore a need to ratchet up the level of security on that particular installation. Q

That's why we're still on a yellow alert?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Q

Yes.

I mean, yellow's -- you know —

It's serious.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: It's serious. peacetime kind of situation.

This is not a normal,

The fact of the matter is, the more we learn, the more convinced we become about how extensive the network is, that it is a global network, that even after you destroy and disrupt their base of operations in Afghanistan, they've still got cells all over the world, any one of which is capable of moving forward and carrying out an operation. )

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Q What do -- when you said strike again -- not if they will -THE VICE PRESIDENT:

the other

day,

they will

I think it's just a matter of time.

Q What do people do with that information? What do we do, knowing that? Do we walk down the street backwards and look behind us? What do you do? THE VICE PRESIDENT: Be vigilant, you know, but be sensitive to the possibility. Obviously, some parts of the country are far more likely targets than other. Be aware of the alert system when we do put out alerts. Those are the ones, obviously, that you want to pay attention to. And in the end, what we have to do is go eliminate the terrorists. I mean, we can play defense all day long and do everything we can to protect ourselves from another attack. But in the end, in the final analysis, sooner or later somebody's likely to get through. We've seen the Israeli experience, for example -Q

If you just play defense, no one's going to score.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: That's right. And what you have to do is also go on offense. We've got to go eliminate the terrorists. And that obviously is a major part of the effort that's underway now. But it takes time. Q What about those who say you're doing all this now because of the criticism of the memo not paid attention to previously? ... _ THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, in this work, Larry, you're damned if you do, damned if you don't kind of thing. The fact is, there is reason to believe that the threat level has increased somewhat. We see more noise in the system, more reporting that leads us to be cautious here. We haven't changed our practices at all in terms of when we decide to go public and to caution people -Q

No change at all?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Q not

No change.

There's been no —

So this would have happened had nothing happened?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: If nothing had happened, if there had been the totally irresponsible charges last week, that MORE

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— 3 wouldn't have affected any of this anyway. Q You have come out against an independent investigation of all that. Today, Senator McCain came out in favor of one; so did conservative George Will. What's wrong with independent people like George Shultz, Daniel Moynihan, and others, as suggested, I think, by Will, looking into it? THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, there's going to be an independent investigation. It's already underway. It's being carried out by the oversight committees in the House and Senate, the House Intelligence and Senate Intelligence Committees -- bipartisan, one chaired by a Democrat, Bob Graham from Florida, and one by a Republican, Porter Goss. And we have already provided . over 200,000 pages of documents to those committees. We've got -- 39 members of Congress are being read in to these programs, and they'll oversee this investigation. We've got 184 people that have already been interviewed. That effort has been underway. Our concern is that if we now lay another investigation on top of that, we're just multiplying the potential sources of leaks and disclosures of information that we can't disclose. The key to our ability to defend ourselves and to take out the terrorists lies on intelligence. And we're discussing such things as the President's Daily Brief; this is the most sensitive product, if you will, of the intelligence community. It comes from our most sensitive and secret sources. If there are leaks from that document, if it's disclosed to people that it shouldn't be disclosed to, we will lose the capacity to defend ourselves against future attacks. Q

And an --

THE VICE PRESIDENT: So what we' re trying to do is make sure that -- have a good investigation. We're for that. There are a lot of lessons we'd like to learn as well, too. But there's already a good one underway by the Congress, which has the statutory and constitutional responsibility to do it. If we now start adding commissions, nobody's going to come back and shut down this one. There's not going to be just one, there will be several, and we can't afford to have several. Q Why, Mr. Vice President, have you been critical of critics? We've always had critics in America. Johnson was criticized in Vietnam; Clinton was criticized in Bosnia; Roosevelt was criticized over Pearl Harbor. What's wrong with voicing a criticism? THE VICE PRESIDENT:

Criticism's fine,

Larry.

But

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- 4 members of Congress suggest that the President of the United States had foreknowledge of the attack on September llth, I think that's outrageous. That's beyond the pale. Somebody needs to say that ain't criticism; that's a gross, outrageous political attack, and it's totally uncalled for, unjustified. The facts don't support it. And somebody needed to stand up and say that. And I feel very strongly about it. I'm perfectly prepared to have a debate. We do that all the time. But that kind of assault, implication that somehow we had prior knowledge and didn't act on it, I think, is a despicable statement. Q Is there a problem vis-a-vis FBI, CIA, investigative community? In other words, that they don't interlock, the channels don't reach each other? That there's rivalries? THE VICE PRESIDENT: Sure. There has been in the past, without question. I used to sit on the Intelligence Committee; we always were frustrated by trying to get the FBI, that came before us for some of their functions, and the CIA, that came before us as well, to work together. They didn't do it very well. It has been improved in recent years, but clearly not enough. Since September llth, we do a much more aggressive job of getting them together. We start every morning in the Oval Office, the President and I sit down with the Director of the FBI and the Director of the CIA. They have to come to report to us every morning on what we've got out there by way of threats -Q

Together.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Together. And they're doing a much better job of linking together than before. But partly here, before we can go out and sort of point the finger of blame and try to indict somebody for malfeasance prior to September llth, the FBI is now being asked to do something it didn't used to do. I mean, they were set up as a law enforcement agency. They were the guys that went in after the crime and found out who did it. Now we're asking them to perform a very different role, which is to make sure the crime never occurs. Let's find the guys, the perpetrators who have not yet violated the law, and, working with our intelligence sources overseas, head off these attacks before they can occur. It's a whole different way of looking at the world. Q

Was that agent in Arizona prophetic?

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- 5 THE VICE PRESIDENT:

Oh, I think he was.

Q So, did that get overlooked, or was it too -- someone said it would have been too cumbersome to do? THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, it's -- first of all, there are what, I think 56 field offices out there, thousands of agents writing hundreds of reports in any week. So in that volume of stuff that's being collected and generated and analyzed, to reach back now after "the fact and say, aha, this guy fingered Middle Easterners and flight schools, you know, is after the fact. We had a situation in the Gulf War. In the run-up just before Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and he had all his troops out there, everybody said he'll never invade. All the experts in the region, all the government leaders out there, they all said he's never going to invade. Well, he invaded. He took Kuwait. Afterwards, we found a guy down in the bowels of the DIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, who had written a memo saying he's going to invade. But it didn't do you any good at the time, because how do you decide you're going to go with the one guy who's saying he will when everybody else says he won't? Q

So you're in a no-win, in that sense?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, you've got to recognize what's reasonable in terms of before-the-fact analysis and proper conclusions and having the system, and what's Monday morning quarterbacking. But it's also important to recognize there were problems. There's no question about it; I would be the last to argue the system worked perfectly. There's a lot we can do to improve, and we need to know the answers to those questions the committees are asking. We're cooperating on that. Q We'll be right back with Vice President after this.

Q

Dick

Cheney

We're back with Vice President Cheney.

Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein says she contacted your office last July to urge a restructure of U.S. counter terror ism and homeland defense. According to her, "despite repeated efforts by myself and the staff, the White House didn't address my .'*:•

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- 6 request. " THE VICE PRESIDENT: I disagree with Dianne. She had a proposal; a lot of other people did, too. What was happening last summer was that we had a review underway, the President directed me to sit down and look at the reports, I think, of five different commissions that had studied this problem of how we organize for homeland security. She had one proposal; there were a dozen proposals, probably, all together, when you take all the congressional ideas as well, too. She did contact my office; she talked with one of my staff people, who informed her of the ongoing effort, that the administration wasn't yet ready to take a position on how we ought to organize for homeland defense; that we had an active effort underway -- which we did, which is what led directly on September 20th, when the President went up and made his speech, just nine days after the attack, to the appointment of Governor Ridge as head of Homeland Security, and the subsequent operations that are taking place. That all came out of that earlier work. We appreciated having her suggestion, but she wasn't the only one with ideas about organizing to deal with that problem. Q

Governor Ridge's role -- should he be Cabinet-level?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: That's a debate that will continue to rage. His role right now is as the Homeland Security Advisor to the President. As an advisor, he should not be confirmed by the Senate. He's like Condi Rice, the National Security Advisor. The President needs to have some people around him .that report directly to him and don't go to Congress. Q

Do advisors have clout?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Yes. They've got access President, and that's the ultimate clout in this town. Q

to

the

On the debate, where do you stand?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, I think we've got it organized about right for Tom Ridge at present. We are looking at other options and possibilities. We've got a major effort underway, Tom's doing a review of all of this. We could conceivably end up with everything from a Cabinet level department, a new agency, an agency in the Executive Office of the President, or an arrangement similar to what we have now. But everything's on the table at this point.

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- 7 Q

Security problems are not going to go away, are they?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: long time. Q are we?

Absolutely not.

This will be with us a

On other fronts -- the hunt for Osama bin Laden.

Where

THE VICE PRESIDENT: It continues. A lot of speculation about where he is, or maybe he's dead, buried in one of those tunnels or caves in Afghanistan. We haven't heard anything from him in some considerable period of time now. Q

That tape recently was not recent?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I haven't seen the recent one, but all of the ones that have come out in the last few months are all of the kind that were probably recorded before, say, December. Q

The President's in Europe.

THE VICE PRESIDENT:

Right.

Q Where there's a lot of angry people. going to do? /

What's this trip

THE VICE PRESIDENT: It' s a very important trip. It's the sort of the culmination, now, of a year and a half's work with the Russians. He has developed a very good relationship, he and President Putin, and they're going to sign an agreement -- it_ll be a treaty, in effect — that will further limit offensive nuclear arms, as well as do a number of other things. Our relationship with Russia, I think, is probably in better shape than it's ever been, certainly in my lifetime. And there will also be work done to give Russia a new role at NATO. _Not a veto by any means, but to give them an active participation in the NATO alliance, which will make it easier this year, later tnis year, to expand NATO membership to some of those Eastern European countries that used to be part of the old Soviet Union. We're tying together, if you will, Russia into Europe and into the West. And it's good for Russia, it's good for the United States. A very significant trip in that regard. Q

What do you make of the protests?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Protests are protests. I mean, that's a strength of our democracy, is people can take to the streets and ')

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\, disagree, demonstrate. As long as they're peaceful, I think it's a sign of a healthy society. Q is away?

Do you get nervous or have anxiety when the President

THE VICE PRESIDENT: No, I really don't. Q

It's —

You don't think about it?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: No — you're aware of it, of course. We consciously avoid a situation in which we're both gone from the country out of the country at the same time. But the government continues to function. He and I are in touch frequently when, he's traveling or I'm traveling. We've got this secure videoconference system so we can have a meeting of the National Security Council if that's required. He's got Colin Powell, Condi Rice, Andy Card are all with him. I'm back here, Don Rumsfeld's here, George Tenet's here. So the government continues to function. Q

\

But you don't personally?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Personally? Fear, you know, something could happen, and --

Q

THE VICE PRESIDENT: No. I don't — you can't think about that. We've got jobs to do, and he's doing his job and I'm_doing mine' And I think it's working reasonably well. And traveling to the far corners of the globe, that's something you've got to do in the modern presidency. ... Q The question of Cuba. China doesn't have elections and has political prisoners. How is that different? Why do we talk to them and not to the other? THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, I think the sense I have is that China has made significant progress. If you go back to where China was 25 or 30 years ago, it was a very authoritarian, totalitarian state. Outsiders weren't welcome; totally isolated from the outside world. Under Deng Xiaoping and subsequent to that time, there's been a major opening up. Americans have been invited in. It's not perfect by any means. They don't run their society the way we would like. They still have a Communist Party that's still in charge. They don't have free elections. So we talk to

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- 9 them about those issues. But if you were to look at China today, you'd have to say this is a nation that has moved fairly dramatically to open up. You don't see any of that in Cuba. Cuba is, you know, where it was in 1959 when Fidel took over. Cuba also, of course, at one time Fidel Castro, back during the Cold War, did a lot to try to subvert other regimes in the hemisphere -- Che Guevara was killed trying to mount a revolution in Bolivia. They had a lot to do with the turmoil and operations in Central America. Q

So there's a distinct difference to you?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Distinct difference -- tried to .base missiles in Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis in '62. Q Two other quick things. Mideast tunnel?

Any light at the end of the

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Boy, that's a risky prediction, given that part of the world and that problem. But we are making progress. Things are better now than they were a couple of months ago. The Saudis have stepped up, and I think in an important and responsible fashion. We've got the Egyptians and the Jordanians, they're working with the Saudis. There's widespread agreement now that we need reform on the Palestinian side; even Arafat has spoken to that. And the people who've suffered more than anybody else through this whole enterprise, obviously, I think, are probably the Palestinian people. And the ultimate hope of a peaceful resolution of the conflict and a Palestinian state that is not a threat to Israel is going to be difficult to achieve. But we need to keep working at it. Q

And finally, India-Pakistan.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Q

Yes.

Worried?

Two nations

—

-- go nuclear?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Two nations, both nuclear-armed, sort of poised across the border there. A history of conflict_ and warfare. Ongoing tensions over Kashmir. And we're very actively engaged in trying to keep the lid on there. Secretary Powell has spent a lot of time on it; we had a meeting on it just this week.

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- 10 So it's an important part of the world, a dangerous part of the world. Q

Thank you, Dick.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Thanks, Larry. Q

Good seeing you.

THE VICE PRESIDENT:

Nice to see you.

Healthy?

Yes,

sir.

Q We were in the same club. Vice President Dick Cheney. Back with more Larry King Live after this.

END

11:20 A.M. EDT

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