Ny B9 Farmer Misc- Wh 2 Of 3 Fdr- 9-4-02 Charlie Gibson-abc Interview Of Cheney 467

/ THE WHITE HOUSE Office of the Press Secretary Internal Transcript

September 4, 2002

INTERVIEW OF THE VICE PRESIDENT BY CHARLIE GIBSON, ABC Mrs. Cheney's Office Dwight D. Eisenhower Executive Office Building

2:47 P.M. EDT Q Mr. Vice President, when were you first aware that day that something was up? THE VICE PRESIDENT: I was in my office, working with my speech writer, when the Secretary called in and said a plane had hit the World Trade Center. And we turned on the television set and watched then a few minutes later when the second plane hit. Q But there was no ambiguity when you got the call, it was a plane that went into the first tower? THE VICE PRESIDENT: The first one, yes. But we didn't know why. I mean, we were debating -- the weather is perfectly clear, how do you explain an accident like this? Didn't really think terrorism until the second plane hit, and then we knew it was a terrorist attack. ... .. Q

And what went through your mind at that moment?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, that — you know, that we had to get organized. That first, to start to think about continuity of government. At that point, we didn't know about the attack on Washington that was to come about 30 minutes later. But the President is down in Florida, and you've got a counterterrorism task force you've got to get together. We had no idea how big an attack it was or whether or not there were more planes at that point. It was just an immediate matter of -- Condi Rice came down to my office, Scooter Libby, who is my chief of staff, others assembled in my office. Q But I'm amazed you thought bureaucratically . I mean, your first reaction has got to be -- I mean, mine was, that confirms what happened in that first building; now we know.

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THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, then we knew it was an attack at that point. But, I mean, it wasn't -- you know, that's what you do, it's what you're -- that's the way the office works and should work, to some extent. I mean, you've got to begin to deal. Here's a problem, here's a crisis, you've got to work your way through it, you've got to deal with it. You can't allow emotion or surprise to throw you off stride. You've got to go tO work. You've got a problem to solve. You've got to figure out what happened. You've got to figure out who did it. And we've got to talk to the President. Q But this is not just one more problem, this must have struck you right away.

The enormity of

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, it grew during the day, too. I mean, you know, as you watched, as we found out the Pentagon.had been hit. And then we watched and saw the towers collapse, the north and south tower come down. That got to be a very emotional kind of moment. I mean, it built in terms of the gravity of the events. Q

Which office were you in?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I was in my West Wing office. Q

And did they come and get you out?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, I saw the second plane go in. I talked to the President on the telephone before he made his statement from Florida, shortly after his made his statement -then my agent -- one of my agents all of a sudden was standing beside me and he grabbed me and said, "Sir, we have to leave now." And it wasn't a debatable point, obviously. Put his hand on the back of my belt, grabbed me by a shoulder and sort of propelled me down the hallway. _ And what I found out later was they had received a call from the air traffic controllers at Dulles that a plane was headed for the White House. And it was at that moment that they evacuated me to the basement. Q

That was the flight that went into the Pentagon?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Went into the Pentagon. At the time it was headed for the White House and, of course, it didn't hit. But they got me down into the -- not all the way to the Presidential Emergency Operations Center, but there's a tunnel down there where we stopped, it's got glass doors on each end. There is a secure phone there, as well as a television set. And when I got there, I got on the telephone again and talked to the President for the second time.

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And at that point, urged him not to return to Washington, because it was clear then that an attack included Washington, as well. Q So it was on the basis of that third plane, the one that eventually hit the Pentagon, that you said at that point to the President, you can't come back here? THE VICE PRESIDENT: Right; we don't know what's happening. And the plane -- as I say, initially headed for the White House, but then we found out later it had hit the Pentagon. What it had done is a complete 360, circled around and came back in and hit the Pentagon. But at the time it wasn't clear -- we knew the Pentagon had been hit, it wasn't clear what had hit the Pentagon. There was still confusion in the reporting. I had the television set on there so that they knew the Pentagon had been hit. Initially, as I recall, the reports were maybe it was a helicopter because it over next to the helo pad on the west side of the building. Q When the agent put his hand on your shoulder and another one in your belt and was propelling you along, did you think -- what was going through your head? It's not often that somebody is pushing THE VICE PRESIDENT of the United States along at that pace. THE VICE PRESIDENT: No, but these guys are professionals and they train for this sort of thing and I assumed there was a good reason for it. I didn't find out really until we got downstairs that there was a plane en route to the White House. Q When you got to the PEOC, what was the -- this was unprecedented. There has never been anything like this before. What was the mood in that room? THE VICE PRESIDENT: Serious, professional. People with a lot of work to do, trying to find out what exactly had happened. Norm Mineta was there, he arrived about the same time I did. And, of course, Norm, the Secretary of Transportation, was beginning to work the problem of getting the aircraft down out of the sky. So he was in touch with the FAA. And in those early hours we had initially an estimate of six aircraft that had been hijacked, six that we couldn't account for; three that we knew that had hit. And the fourth one, of course, was the one that went in, in Pennsylvania, but that didn't happen until later. And then we had a report of one that had gone down on the Ohio-Kentucky border, but it turned out that was the flight that was the flight that hit the Pentagon. It had dropped off the radar screen and turned around and come back towards Washington.

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But, initially, it had been reported as down in Kentucky and Ohio. Q Was there any discussion at the time of getting the planes out of. the air? THE VICE PRESIDENT: You mean in terms of taking down the commercial airliners? That activity had already started. I mean, the FAA had already begun that process and Norm was there, in touch with the FAA, working with me. I had a yellow legal pad with a list of the flights on it that we thought we couldn't account for. And as I say, there were six flights. Q You had some time on your hands. You're sitting there, I gather, on a piece of paper, making the list of the tail numbers? THE VICE PRESIDENT: I had tail numbers, yes. Q

Of the flights that you didn't know where they were?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: That we couldn't account for. Or had some reason to believe they might have been hijacked. Later on, during the course of the day, there were at least another five, as I recall, international flights that were reported at one time or another as potentially hijacked victims, headed this way. One flight coming in from Korea that we scrambled jets for, over Alaska. And flights coming in from the Atlantic and so forth, that for one reason or another we had reporting that these had been taken over by hijackers. And, of course, we didn't know for sure how many there were until later in the day, after we got everything down and everything had been resolved. Q And as you account for a plane, were you literally sitting there, crossing it off? _____ THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, there was confusion over it, because obviously there were only four, not six. Confusion over tail numbers. Reports -- first reports are always wrong. When you get into a situation like that -- if you've been through one before, you know that there's a lot of bad information coming in, as well as good information. We had a report of a car bomb at the State Department. Another report that a bomb had gone off at the Washington Monument. Another report of a threat against Air Force One. So there was a steady flow of information, some of which is valid, some of which isn't. And you have to deal with a situation as best you can. Q We now know, of course, there were four planes. But there was, as you say, a lot of talk or thought that it could be a lot bigger than that, at the time. Didn't the enormity of this really astound you?

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THE VICE PRESIDENT: I think the thing, when it hit -- you know, when you really felt the gravity and the power of the moment, for me anyway it was watching that first Trade Center tower go down. It was -- I had been 10 years before, at the end of the Gulf War we had a ceremony in New York to celebrate the return of the troops. And there had been a ticker-tape parade from Wall Street, up Broadway and so forth. And there had been a dinner the night before hosted by Governor Cuomo in the World Trade Center complex for General Powell and Schwartzkopf and myself, and all of the former Medal of Honor winners in the U.S. military. It was a memorable evening, one of those things that you never forget. And as I watched that happen, watched the tower collapse, I thought of that night we'd spent up there 10 years before. Q

Change the mood in the room?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: The mood was very somber at that point. I've seen pictures of -- well, of all of us as we sat there and watched on television, as you could see that first building collapse. Q Who first raised the question of having to shoot down a civilian airliner? THE VICE PRESIDENT: It came up in a phone call with the N^_ President, that I talked with him about. And they had scrambled aircraft, put up a CAP. But we had to have rules of engagement. You had to have something that you were going to tell the pilots to do; what were they authorized to do. And I discussed that with the President. He later then also discussed it with Secretary Rumsfeld. Told him that we had to have authorization to shoot down incoming .aircraft if they didn't divert. And we talked about it. And he signed up to it and made the decision. Q

Do you know who first raised the question?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I don't. It came up in my -- in the PEOC, from one of the folks manning the communications counsels there. Q

Had you thought of it before?

THE VICE PRESIDENT:

No.

Q And when somebody says to you, maybe we're going to have to shoot down a civilian airliner -- what do you think? THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, it was a clear-cut decision. President made the decision, as I talked to him about it.

The

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Obviously, I thought it was a good decision, too. It was more a matter that -- it didn't make any sense to put up a combat air patrol over the city, but then not give them instructions or direction as to how to proceed. My own background in the Defense Department, you always have rules of engagement any time you deploy forces. You can send one guy to Ecuador, he's got rules of engagement. I mean, you always -- that's just part of the drill. And so it wasn't strange or unusual by any means to do that, but it was clear that -- you know, the significance of saying to a pilot, an Air Force pilot, Air National Guard, that you are authorized to shoot down that plane full of Americans. It's an order that had never been given before. The President made that decision. Q I was going to say, do you know of any instance ever when a military pilot or a military force was given the order to perhaps have to kill a large number of American civilians? THE VICE PRESIDENT: I can't think of any right offhand. It's a historic first, as far as I know. Q

Never happened before?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I can't say that it never happened before, but I -- not that I know of. I suppose you'd have to go back to the Civil War to find an equivalent period of time, a whole different set of circumstances. Q So who said to Rumsfeld, the order has to go out to those pilots to take down a plane? THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, the request had come in, I don't know, perhaps from the commander of the unit. I just know the President talked to me about it. -I know, he subsequently also talked to Rumsfeld about it. And he had another conversation about it, I believe, once he got to Offutt, with the head of the North American Air Defense Command. Q At the time that decision was made, did you know the United 93 was headed for Washington? THE VICE PRESIDENT: There were reports of incoming aircraft headed for Washington. There was a report of one coming in, as I recall, some 80 miles out, was the way it was phrased. I couldn't give you the exact sequencing and timing and which report came in when. Eventually, of course, we never fired on any aircraft. Q But you knew at the time that order went out that there was a plane that was a threat?

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THE VICE PRESIDENT: But I can't in my own mind, Charlie, I can't hook up and say, we've got a plane coming in, we need authorization to act against that aircraft. I mean, because it was a flurry of activity. I'd had the conversation with the President. We had reports during the course of the morning of aircraft coming in, and I do remember one coming in, supposedly, about 80 miles out over Pennsylvania. But we had others reported coming in, as well, and they would land -- it would be resolved one way or the other. And we never got a report back that anybody had fired on any aircraft. So I never knew until later, really, what had happened to the plane in Pennsylvania. Q

That's a very sobering decision --

THE VICE PRESIDENT:

It is.

Q — that has to be made, to say, you have authorization to shoot down a civilian airliner. THE VICE PRESIDENT:

That's right.

Q When it was made, and when the word went out that that could happen, was there a moment of sobriety in the room? Was there a moment of pause? Was the momentousness of that noted in any way? THE VICE PRESIDENT: The whole morning was a moment of sobriety. I mean, this was serious business from the outset. And I remember the conversation with the President and the communication with the individual who was talking with me, seeking authorization, who was part of the PEOC staff. Q Do you remember your own thoughts, as to what you were thinking? THE VICE PRESIDENT: Yes, that this was a very difficult, difficult proposition, but it had to be done. Once that airliner was hijacked, taken over by terrorists -- we'd seen what had happened to the World Trade Center -- it became a weapon aimed at the United States. And it was extraordinarily unfortunate that there were American civilians on board. But the way I thought about it, and I think the way the President thought about it -- at least this is the way it occurred to me was, if we had been able to intercept the planes before they hit the World Trade Center, would we? And the answer was, absolutely, yes, given the scale of the threat and the damage and the destruction and the lives lost. So in any sort of -- it sounds cold to say it, but in any sort of analysis, the relative cost versus what's saved, it's a clear-cut decision.

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Q There were two F-16s out of Selfridge Air National Guard Base near Detroit, scrambled to find United Flight 93. you know they had no weapons? THE VICE PRESIDENT: No. I'd never heard that before.

Did

I just heard that the other day.

Q Was there any discussion of the fact that maybe they would have to ram that airplane to bring it down? THE VICE PRESIDENT:

If there was, I wasn't a party to it.

Q Did you have any thoughts at the time as to what the target of that airplane might be? THE VICE PRESIDENT: Washington. I thought probably White House or Capitol. Those were the two targets that stood out in my mind. The Pentagon had already been hit. But -- and we found out later, and I'm trying to be clear here in terms of what I knew then and what I learned later -- we learned later from interviewing people who were detained, al Qaeda members reporting, from some of them that said the fourth plane was intended for the White House. Q Pfc-~:v"x I —--•

It's fairly a sobering thought.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: It is, indeed. And it was -- you know, you hark back to what those men and women did on that aircraft to challenge the terrorists. Q When you heard the plane was down, without a shot being fired at it, do you remember what you said? THE VICE PRESIDENT: Something about an act of heroism, that we'd just witnessed an act of heroism. ... . Q

You thought at the time probably --

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Q

Yes.

Thought somebody --

-- those passengers had done something --

THE VICE PRESIDENT:

-- somebody had taken it down, yes.

Q Was there any talk in the PEOC about the fact that they may be trying to decapitate the United States government?

^ 'j V. J

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Certainly that was a thought that had occurred to me, and I assume others as well, too. By the time you've had the World Trade Center hit, you've had the threat against Air Force One, you've had the Pentagon hit, you've got another aircraft that was headed for Washington that never arrived, you're very much thinking in terms of the continuity of

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the government. And that's in part why, number one, I urged the President not.to return until we could find out what was going on. It was important that we not bunch up in Washington. Secondly, we arranged for the evacuation of the congressional leadership, especially Denny Hastert, the Speaker, who was in the line of succession for the Presidency after me. Third, there were questions of Cabinet members, and we got some Cabinet members relocated to secure facilities outside Washington, also people who were in the line of succession, to make sure that whatever was going on -- and we didn't know at that stage what the scale of the attack was -- whatever was going on, that the government of the United States would survive. And part of that is just training that some of us have been involved in over the years. It goes back to the Cold War. Q

Did the thought occur to you, they're trying to kill

me? THE VICE PRESIDENT: You think of it in -Q

I didn't think of it in personal terms.

You're THE VICE PRESIDENT of the United States.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I know, but you don't think of it in personal terms, Charlie, you really don't. You've got a job to do. And you think about it in terms of the institutions, the Constitution, responsibilities, the government. I don't know that I talked to anybody, any of our senior people that day who thought about it in purely personal terms. Q It was late in the afternoon by the time the President got to Offutt Air Force Base and you were able to set up a teleconference among everybody. But in retrospect, did the communications work, or did it take a long time -- too long -- to get everybody "that was necessary to consult with hooked up together? THE VICE PRESIDENT: No, I think -- I mean, you can always go back and find problems. Any time you go through one of these events, you learn lessons from it. We had a problem in the PEOC because we had multiple television screens, including the closed circuit system to Omaha, for example, but we could only get one sound system. If you had a TV station turned in, if you were listening to ABC, you couldn't get anything else. Those kinds of problems get resolved.

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But, in fact, with respect to the chain of command, with respect to the President's ability to control events, I think we maintained the integrity of that system from the very beginning. From the moment he was informed in Florida of what had happened, his travel to Air Force One, while he was on Air Force One, he and I were in touch several times during the day. He spent a lot

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of time talking to Rumsfeld and others, and so the chain of command was there. It was established from the President to the Secretary of Defense, is the way it goes, and then down to whatever combatant commander might be involved. And that always worked. Your ability to get all of your other senior advisors together, that takes a little longer. Colin Powell was in Latin America, as I recall. Colin was on his way back. John Ashcroft flew back in during the course of the event. So you had different people different places and locations, but modern communications -- the President was always in command of _ the assets he needed to be in command of in order to do his job as President. Q Remember the first time you heard the words "bin Laden" that day? THE VICE PRESIDENT: evening . Q

My recollection is that it came up that

Not until then?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: It may have come up sooner than that, but what I recall is -- we had an NSC meeting, in effect, after the President went on nationwide television when he returned to the White House. And my recollection is that al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, the possibility that this was an attack from them was discussed that evening. Q

There wasn't any discussion prior to then of who was doing this to us? THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, asked. I don't recall his name coming up before that. I could been other people talking about conversation .

there might have been questions or the name of the organization be wrong, the;re may well have it and I just wasn't party to the

Q Were you fully confident by the time the President came back to Washington that it was safe for him to come back? THE VICE PRESIDENT: I recommended that he come back when he did. And once he was in Omaha, by then we're late in the afternoon, we've got virtually all of the aircraft down, we're pretty well confident we know the extent of the threat and we know we didn't have six domestic flights, we had four. We know that foreign flights coming in, all those had been resolved. Q Was there anywhere in your mind still about another kind of attack at that point? THE VICE PRESIDENT:

Not really.

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Q

So you felt there was an all-clear by then?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, I couldn't say all clear. I mean, the Secret Service didn't want him to come back. But I felt at that point -- there are tradeoffs involved here. And first of all, he really wanted to come back. I don't know that you could have kept him away. He wanted to come back first thing that morning. I gave him the best advice I could, and then he had to make the decision, as he did. But by the time he got to Offutt in Omaha, and we had meetings, and he asked me then what I thought, and I said I think it's okay to come on back. Q When you first saw the President that day, when hear rived back -- and he came to the PEOC at that point? THE VICE PRESIDENT:

Yes.

Q Can you describe what he was like? like, what his countenance was like?

What his mood was

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, for all of us it was somber. had been a very emotional day. Q

It

Was he angry?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Determined, I would say, would be the way I'd describe it. He had -Q

Were you angry?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Oh, yes. I think we were -- I can remember lifting off that night, after his. speech -and after our NSC meetings. My wife and I went out on the South Lawn, we got on one of the white-tops, helicopter, and lifted off to a secure location. And I remember as we flew out over the city, you could look down and see the Pentagon, and the smoke rising from the ruins in the Pentagon. And it was a subject that clearly generated anger -- that you wanted to find out who had done it, and you wanted to make certain it never happened again. But the President was very determined, very decisive, very committed that this was going to be the number one priority of his Presidency, was to make certain that we did in fact wrap-up whoever had done this to us. Q When he came back, and the discussions of the speech ensued, was there any question, any uncertainty, about whether we were at war, should be?

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THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, he used the word during the course of the day, that we were at war. My recollection is that we left it out of the speech that night. He used it again the next day, and it became fairly standard after that. I think -I'm speculating, but my recollection is he was concerned about that his speech that night needed in part to be reassuring to the American people -- you know, the government is up, it's running, it's functioning. We've suffered a grievous blow here, but we'll recover from it and we'll get whoever did this to us. And it was that kind of, I think, sort of calm reassurance, but determination, that he wanted to convey. And my recollection is we didn't use "war" in that speech, but I have to go back and check. Q

You've served a lot of Presidents.

THE VICE PRESIDENT:

I have.

Q You've been in a lot of security briefings. Have you ever thought, in all the time in Washington, about the possibility of a commercial plane being used as a weapon? THE VICE PRESIDENT: No. I mean, we think about it all the time now. But at the time - - a t the time that it happened, no, I hadn't. Q

Had you ever heard anybody suggest it --

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Q

No.

-- as a possibility?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I guess the only place I'd seen it was in a Tom Clancy novel. Tom wrote a piece .-- I know Tom Clancy, and he wrote a book years ago around the theme of a 747 crashing into the Capitol building at the State of the Union address. And that's the only time. It had never come up, never sort of registered in my mind. And that was fiction. Q

And did you think it as wild, speculative

fiction?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: At the time, sure. I don't now. But it' s also one of the reasons why we always have somebody in the line of succession not in the Capitol building on that night, in case somebody should try to decapitate the federal government. Q family? wife.

When during the day did you have time to think about

THE VICE PRESIDENT: And --

Well, I had —

Lynne was with me, my

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Q

Did you call the girls?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I didn't talk to them, but she checked on them through the Secret Service. And she'd been -- I think she'd been in touch with them by telephone. I didn't talk to them directly until that night, and they had been moved -- one daughter and granddaughters had been moved to the same location we went to. And our other daughter was out of town, in Colorado. Q Did she report back, Mrs. Cheney, report back to you during the day -THE VICE PRESIDENT: Q

-- about how the girls were?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Q

You'd have to ask her.

She didn't tell you?

THE VICE PRESIDENT:

Q

-- and said everybody's fine.

And what were they asking about dad?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Q

Reported back --

No.

Did that not worry you?

Their worry about you?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, I'm — I mean, it's — you know, you obviously -- anybody is concerned about their family under those kinds of circumstances. But I knew Lynne could take care of it. And my job was such that I didn't -- I didn't have a lot of time to spend on personal matters. You know, you've got a job to do. ..You're THE VICE PRESIDENT of the United States. I happened to be here when the attack took place; the President happened to be in Florida. But, you know, you've got things you've got to do. Partly it's a matter of working with everybody else. It's easy -- if the person in the center of the room, the guy on the telephone, sounds frenetic or panicky, that that immediately spreads. And so you don't want that to happen. And it's important to be calm, objective, to get the best out of other people and to not let emotion detract from what you have to do. Q Did you talk yourself through that during the day? "I've got to be calm, I've got to be reassuring, or others will" — THE VICE PRESIDENT: It's just automatic. No, it's just automatic. It was for me, anyway. But you know, part of that

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goes with experience, having watched crises before from the Oval Office. \

A lot was made, after that day,of the fact that you

spent a considerable time in a secure location. you still spend there?

How much time do

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, what we do is we schedule, to make certain that we don't bunch up not a matter where the President and I are never we're very conscious of the importance of making don't overdo it.

look at the too much. It's together, but certain that we

And there are special occasions when we do get together at a public event. But if you look at his schedule and my schedule -August, for example, out of the 30-some days in August, we were together maybe two days in that time. Q But we're in a world now where the terrorist threat is going to be constant. THE VICE PRESIDENT:

Right.

Q It's omnipresent, and it probably will never go away. Are we now in a world where we're always going to have to be circumspect about THE VICE PRESIDENT and the President being together? J

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I think so. I mean, you may remember back when the President went to Congress, to address the Congress, the Saturday -- or the Friday, I guess it was -- it was right after, it was the 20th. It was after the attack; the attack was the llth, this was the 20th, September. I .badly wanted to be there that night. A historic moment, to sit in the chair with the Speaker, behind the President as he addressed the Congress and the country. And I couldn't do_it. It was the right decision to make, was not to put us both in the same location at that point. What's new is that in the old days, the threat to the President was some nut with a gun, one guy. Now, you've got a situation in which somebody could, a terrorist group or organization, could legitimately plot and plan to decapitate the federal government, to take out the whole rank of senior leadership, and in so doing create devastation, obviously, and chaos in the United States. It's important we not let that happen, so we have to take extra precautions now that we didn't take before. Security is tighter, more people involved in it, much more aware of my schedule and his schedule and how often we overlap, and making certain that there's always somebody who's in the line of

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succession who's not sitting in the Cabinet Room or the Capitol building at particular moments, so there's always somebody out there who can in fact take over and run the government, should that become necessary. END

3:15 P . M . EDT

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