T3 B11 Eop Produced Documents Vol Iii Fdr- 8-19-02 Bob Woodward Interview Of Sr Admin Official- Rice 007

A5? THE WHITE HOUSE

RECEIVED

Office of the Press Secretary (Crawford, Texas)

JUN . 7 2003 National Commission on

August

Internal Transcript

INTERVIEW OF SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL^ BY BOB WOODWARD

The Governor ' s House The Bush Ranch, Crawford, Texas 2:00 P.M. CDT

Non-Responsive Material I can tell you that the business about financing terrorism had been a part of the broader strategic picture for a long time. They had tried all the way back in the Clinton administration to do something about it. They'd had a lot of resistence from Treasury. And when -Q

And from State, I think?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: And from State. Because it's hard to do. You end up going after charities that then say they're going to sue. And so we'd actually made some progress on this before this happened.

Q

Up to the September 4th plan.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: That's right. Right. And -- but then, the President from the very beginning thought that this was likely to be one of the first things that you could do. You could start blocking assets. Q

What's the best way to talk about the September 4th plan? What was it? Because we had talked a little bit about it before, and I want to make sure I get it right.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Right. It is a national security directive -- an NSPD, National Security Presidential Directive. It's a comprehensive plan for dealing with all aspects of al Qaeda.

0

Specifically al Qaeda?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Specifically al Qaeda. It mentions other terrorism, but it's very focused on al Qaeda. It memorializes decisions that had been taken -- that the deputies recommended all the way back at the end of April about arming the Northern Alliance. The CIA had actually begun to try to_do that work. It had in it considerably more money for the CIA to run their covert -Q

$125 million to $200 million.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL^- I think it went up. George would have to give you the numbers," or I could give you the numbers. But it went to $200 million. tt had -- it was basically a plan to try to either in a short order to get the Taliban to hand them over or start trying to bring the Taliban down. Because I think the real view here was you weren't going to get at al Qaeda without getting at .the Taliban and breaking up the sanctuary. So one reason that it was pretty easy the night of the speech to talk about sanctuary was that that had been a part of the planning. It had" terrorist financing in it and a number of other things, but that was the -- so it was a national security policy directive on a comprehensive strategy to eliminate al Qaeda rather than just roll them back. So anyway, you should ask the President about this, and he was the one who came up with the idea of a scorecard that could keep everybody understanding what we were achieving and what we learned. Q number.

The 331 on the watch list, that's kind of a chilling

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Q

We had talked a little.

468

Yes, yes.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: It's post-September llth. I mean, they went back and looked at -- I think they increased the number of people on the watch list post September llth. Q Were these al Qaeda people maybe in this country or suspected of being here? SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Suspected. having terrorist links of any kind. I don't know how the watch list was put together, but that's a maybe Dale Watson or somebody could fill in. But thinking it was a big number. _

Q

Suspected of enough about question that I remember

Jumps off the page.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Yes. And, again, that's something that might be worth asking the President about. Q The Putin call, we had talked about. I want to ask him about it because -- now someone said there was a long PutinBush call on September 15th? SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: It was not a long call. That was a call just, you know, sorry this happened, if there's anything we can do to help. It was more of a check-in, condolence call. And it was not very long.

Q

Somebody said they thought that might be important.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: No, it was not -- not a very long call at all. Putin had talked to me on the llth, and this was a -- just a follow up to that. He'll remember this call and I will probably try to get the transcript for him before you talk to him. Q That would be great, real surprise for you. SENIOR ADMINISTRATION Q _

Because he -- I mean, that was a

OFFICIAL:

Yes.

And I want to get his on-the-record reaction to it.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION

OFFICIAL:

Right.

Non-Responsive Material 469

Non-Responsive Material

Q Is this the priorities, those four? Is that a fair depiction of what the strategy was at that point? SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I think the fairer portrayal for the strategy was at that point was actually what the President had approved on the 17th, that morning. The main difference here is that this plan suggested that you try to split the Taliban leadership, and people were willing to try that, but not for very long. Q And Tenet didn't think that was possible, did he, really? I mean, he was going after -- he was saying, they're the same. SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: nothing to lose. Q Next page, Cheney. the Russians to that end.

Right.

But there was

We have to be willing to deal with

470

Now, is that a significant transformation from the old cold warrior who -SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Q this?

I think so.

Do you know whether the President talked to him about Or is that worth asking the President?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I think it's worth asking the President. I suspect they didn't talk about it before, because this comes up in -- I remember this comment comes up in the context of how much we had to deal with the Russians to get to the Central Asians. Because there was some thought that the Central Asians would be offended by the thought that you had to go through the Russians. Remember, this is after the Putin phone call. And I remember saying myself that, with the Uzbeks, that might~be true but, for instance, the Tajiks were thoroughly in the Russian camp and most of the Central Asians weren't going to move without the Russians. And Cheney -—

Q

But the Uzbeks were the opposite.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: alienated, that's right.

They really were

Non-Responsive Material

471

I mean, alienated.

Non-Responsive Material

Q

Where did he learn that or get that?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: We talked about it a lot. We talked about it at Camp David when we, you know, looked at that God-awful map.

Q

On the 15th?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION -OFFICIAL: On the 15th, yes. He may have even -- and we'll look at the transcript -- he ~may have even talked to Putin about that. Because Putin said, you know, we have a history with Afghanistan; we're not going back there, basically. And I'll look at the transcript. But he knew this history of Afghanistan as being very antiforeigner . Q Because it seems obvious now, but at the time it was not necessarily obvious. I mean, certainly during World War II, we weren't dropping food for the Germans or the Japanese. And - but,, you know, it bubbled up from someplace, and I want to try to pinpoint it, if that's possible. SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Yes. I mean, this is really four-score him. This was never discussed in principals, deputies, sub-deputies. This comes really from him. Q

The red cell thing --

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: And we have, by the way, had briefings on -- around this time on the possibility of drought-related starvation in different parts of Afghanistan.

472

Q And AID brought in maps and so forth and showed in the north massive starvation, drought? SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL:

Right, exactly.

Q The red cell report, I showed you the categories and so forth. Now, someone said he ordered that up and just a few days earlier, maybe at the morning briefings, kind of said, well, what are they going to hit? SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL:

Yes, he did.

Q And very much pushed Tenet, we have to come up with what are we talking about here. SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL:

Right, he did.

Q And the term -- and Tenet said something about, you know, it's a guess, it's a wag. And someone- said, you know, well, we need the best -~ SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: -- estimate that we could get, the best thinking that we could get. Q And it was -- he kind of called out there, I think from the White House, somebody said at CIA, and said, place your bets. Do you remember that? SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I"don't remember that. I remember that in the morning briefing, one of the morning briefings, a few days before this red cell of his, the President saying, you know, we can't -- basically, we can't chase everything. Because the -- what comes through now, reading over your notes, that I had really kind of forgotten, was that these early days are planning a war in Afghanistan, but it's also a lot of concern that something else is going to happen on the home front. And he -- we didn't yet have a homeland security director, so this is all being done by the deputies and by us and principals. And the President I remember saying, we can't chase everything, we're going to have to make some bets about what's likely. And I think that's the context of "make some bets.'^_ Q Okay, that's great, full origin of that.

Because then that gives me the

473

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: . But I don't think he -after it was done, I remember it being worked very hard in deputies and worked very hard. Because Steve Hadley had a group of deputies who was meeting every day, sometimes twice a day. Larry Thompson and Mike Brown and Scooter Libby and those guys. And they put together a pretty comprehensive, off the red cell, here's what you would do. And they were in touch with all these nuclear power plants and all those people to tell them, you know, you may have a problem. Q But in terms of like monuments and Disney, there isn't much you can do, is there? I mean, other people kind of said, you look at this and you realize the whole country is a potential target; is that correct? SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Yes. But that's where I think the President's thinking about making some bets -- you know, we knew they liked, spectacular and -s-eary. And so monuments -- yes, maybe they would go after -- oh, there was the thought that entertainment might be a target because fhey would hate the kind of entertainment industry because of the values issues and so, yes, so everything was a potential target. But what this really was, was an effort to begin to corral that and do some -- to do some things. Q About the Russians, about $10 million, do you remember this?

Non-Responsive Material

474

Non-Respoi isive Material

41 Pages Omitted

475

Non-Responsive Material

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: You know, we set up for -first of all, the secretaries can call the President any time, and they ought to be able to. Making sure that all the information was there in a way that it could inform tTie process is important, but what we did was to say that Rumsfeld had a daily, phone call with the President. And I usually sat in on that phone call. Q When did that start? Because there were some -- there was some grumbling, and kind of, what's the information channel here? ~ ~ SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: That started -- that started pretty shortly after the war started.

Q

After October 7th, or after 9/11, or --

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Well, there was no daily phone call after 9/11, because we were meeting all the time. There really wasn't a need for one.

Non-Responsive Material

476

Non-Responsive Material

477

Non-Responsive Material

478

Non-Responsive Material

Q In the first month after 9/11, there was intelligence that this may lead to Iraq, this may lead to Iran. And apparently Tenet told the President, when we're all done with this, we may find Iranian mood music, and Iraqi mood music. Have you ever heard that? SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: that, yes. Q

He said something like

And the President said, we'll follow it where it takes

us . SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Q

Yes.

And that that was --

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: And that was all he wanted to say about it. He has a remarkable way of not getting

479

distracted or diverted. And there was all kind of stuff in and around who was responsible and the whole white paper thing, and all that. We knew it was al Qaeda. And from that point, that's what he was focused on.

Non-Responsive Material

Q— And before 9/11, one of the really interesting things I came across, which I wish I had known when I was writing for the paper, because I would have written for the paper, that there were 34 instances of chatter picked up in the summer

480

before 9/11 that were very much like, zero hour is coming, the party starts tomorrow. SENIOR ADMINISTRATION it after?

OFFICIAL:

But it was after -- wasn't

Q

A couple of them were translated after, but apparently stuff that was coming in all summer was -SENIOR ADMINISTRATION so it was not -Q

OFFICIAL:

So you can't differentiate.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Q_

But it was every day, and

You can't differentiate.

Is that --

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION

OFFICIAL:

You can't differentiate.

Q Does that sound right, that not literally every day, but every day or so there would -- or every couple of days there would be something in the BBB that would say, we heard so and so. SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: It was more -- I'm trying to remember now. There was clearly a lot of chatter, but it diecl down in late -- mid to late August. It's really June and July that is lots and lots of chatter. But the only thing you could connect it to were things abroad. A lot of stuff about what might happen abroad, a lot of embassy concerns, a lot of troop concerns. And then the only one that was really clear was Genoa.

Q-

That was really --

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION Q

And that was specific

OFFICIAL

Right.

Very specific.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION Q

OFFICIAL:

Aimed at the --

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL:

481

At the leaders.

Q And in one of the meetings the President had with foreign leaders, he said, they're still trying to kill me. And I have the date and the leader, I'm sorry I didn't bring it. And someone said, there was just a flood of threats directed at him personally. SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: at him personally.

Q

A lot of threats

directed

Will he talk about that in these --

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Yes, he might. You want me to add that to the list of things that I prep him for? Q

Yes, and see what --

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: What do you want me to -of those things you want me to ask him jabout -Q Well, I think the ones that -- I mean that one specifically, about Tony Blair on the 7th, what was that about, about did -- if he has something to say about the Saudis, but it's not critical, where they're trying to -- where he told one of the leaders, this is during that perioci, he said, they're still trying to kill me. We go on. Someone said there were astronomical number of --

Non-Responsive Material

Q It was -- then the other general thing -- I know, there was one thing I wanted to ask you. The NSPD that was signed on this, October 25th, outlined for the goals, objectives and strategy for the global war on terrorism. Annex -SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: That was the -- it was basically the September 4th document. Q

Annex A is A f g h a n i s t a n .

482

Annex B is

w h a t , worldwide?

/*^»

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: be a list of other organizations.

Q

Other terrorists.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION

Q

I think Annex B may just

OFFICIAL:

Yes, but I'll check.

Hezbollah, something like that?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL:

Right.

Q Because that's the one kind of formal document during this period? SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL:

Q

Yes. _ There are a couple.

What else?

SENIORrADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: There's that. There's also -- the President -- we did memorialize the President's _ decisions on that September 17th. But it's nothing surprising.

Q

It's just that list, the CIA meets on the ground.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Exactly, exactly. " But this is the -- the genesis of this document, as I said, is that we come in, we want to do something more about al Qaeda. And -JDick Clark has this list of things that he thinks might work. Some of them are good ideas, _some of them are not. The deputies start working them, and the one that we adopted pretty quickly that he had -- that the Clinton people had decided not to do was to arm the Northern Alliance. That got done pretty quickly. Q

And that was because the State Department objected?

"SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Q

Yes.

Madeleine, specifically?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Apparently, apparently, because they were not very nice people. Q

Oh, because of the human rights?

Oh, yes.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: And there were influences, you know, were the Iranians influencing them. Look, this was not a --

483

Q Oh, the Iranians were giving them lots of money, as were the Russians and the Indians. SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: So this is not an easy decision. I don't mean to suggest that this was a slam dunk. But Armitage, who was representing State in the Defense "-- in the deputies did not object, and so he went back, checked with Powell, Powell didn't object, so now the State objection was removed. And in April, the deputies told the CIA to go and put together an operational plan for arming the Northern Alliance and for several other things. We were going to --

Q

There were five of them --

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Right, right. Eventually decided by when not to, that actually they were in pretty good shape, that the authorities were there, decided about the funding level that would go irrtro the next budget cycle, put in place -- the key became Pakistan, and relations with Pakistan and Uzbekistan, because we didn't have any relations with Pakistan and Uzbekistan, you know, the kind of non-proliferation

Q I think.

CIA had an agreement with Uzbekistan on the Predator,

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION Q

OFFICIAL:

Right.

Started in mid 2000.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: But Uzbekistan had been pushing for more support against the IMU. And again, there had been concerns in the Clinton administration about Uzbekistan, and its record. And Pakistan we were isolated from, because of the non-proliferation decisions. So another thing that's in this NSPD is we really have to change the nature of the relationship with Pakistan, we have to start offering them some carrots, not just sticks. Q This is the final one in October, this is the draft in September? SENIOR ADMINISTRATION-OFFICIAL: The origin is, this thing gets picked up out of deputies. They put it into a draft NSPD in July. It goes -- it's supposed to go to principals in August, but we don't have enough principals around, so it goes

484

to principals in September. The principals had discussed it a couple times. It goes to principals in September. They sign off on it. It goes on my desk to go to the President for signature on September 10th. The document that he signed on October 26th -- when September llth happened, we pulled it back to look at it, to see if it was still applicable to what we were going to do, decided it was still the basic strategy that we wanted to pursue, and it's basically that document that gets signed in on October 26th. Q Twenty fifth. SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Twenty fifth, right. I sent a cover note on top of it, I remember, that said to the principals, this is the document that you signed on September 4th. We've now reviewed it, your deputies agree that this document is still relevant_and should guide our policy on the gTbbal war on terrorism. We accelerated several time lines, a couple of things like that, but basically it's the same document that gets signed by the President.

0

And it's called PEARL, it's a code word?

What is

that? SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Q

It's just a compartment.

Is that still operative, or is that --

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL:

Can't go there.

Q Can't go there, okay. I don't want to -- I left it out of some stories, because of Danny Pearl. I thought we used that, and people would look at that and some nut would say, see, they're really -- he really is working for them. SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Q

Oh, exactly.

Oh, my.

Is that a coincidence?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL:

Total coincidence.

Q It was already -- I had it done, I was all set, and then I looked at that, and I said, wait a minute, because this was right --

485

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: coincidence.

Total coincidence, total

n Total coincidence, okay. What about -- and this — the last thing I want to ask the President and ask you is -- and s !s critical, to get some not over the top, but realistic 'of what each member of the war cabinet has contributed to him for him in this whole kind of - it's interesting, !t s 1 Q'days fro; September llth until December 20th when Dan and I interviewed him that first time. And I want to do - this is going to be Bush at war, the first 100 days. - SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL:

w

I'll ask him.

n But that's - what exactly does Powell offer what does Cheney offer, what do you offer, what does Tenet offer, wh" doL Ldy Card - I -an, he speaks up at these .eatings often and will say things like, this isn't clear for the Present. That's kind of, maybe with some specifics because some o? the people who sit in these meetings say, sometimes it looks like it's two against one, Cheney and Rumsfeld against Pofe 1 Id not a personal, but you'know, ^they look Jt ^ -rid differently, they had totally different minds, all three of them And I think sometimes Powell complains about that kind of -- not as, you "know, it's awful, but that's the world - is that -- if I sat there for every one, would it be SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: No, no. It would cross up Lore than you might think. Don and the Vice President would disagree more than you might think. I can think of one very important specific instance in which Colin and Don were on the same side and changed the course of something. That was on the whole Geneva Convention business.

0

Well they were on the same side.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Yes. Totally misreported. They were on the same side on that issue, because Don ™as reflecting the military's longstanding adherence to the Geneva Convention. And it had kind of gotten done in the lawyers group. Q

Yes, that's right.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: And the principals really hadn't looked at it. And when it came to the principals - so no I don't think you would see that, that lineup.

486

r

Q

It wouldn't be --

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Right. The other thing is, about these principals, is that it's actually sometimes -- I think I've said this -- hard to get them to disagree sometimes.

Q

Yes, and you seem to get the President out of the

room. SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Yes, they will believe that they are agreeing, when they're not. They get into a kind of problem solving mode that can sometimes get in the way of clarity. But no, I don't think you would see that if you were a fly on the wall. Q

What I'm more interested in is --

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL:

Is how does he -- yes.

Q . What do you -- as I said to you the other day, I not understand what you do, and soon the world will. But it's not - it takes some work to, you know, what is the process here. SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL:

Yes.

Non-Responsive Material

487

Non-Responsive Material

488

Non-Responsive Material

489

Non-Responsive Material

Q But he had -- Tenet was a product of the Clinton era. Does the President realize that? Because he had a chance to get bin Laden killed, if he was willing to go in and say to President Clinton, you know, we can ambush him. We had the -~those trackers that were going around following him. And the rules were, we don't do that. And Tenet never crossed that divide in the Clinton era. SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I don't, you know, I don't know really anything about George's relationships in that period of time. I know that the President believes, particularly in war time, that he has to be aggressive, and that he imparts that to everybody, including to the Agency. And he has -- the President has high standards of accountability, but he's never going to cut and rum from somebody because a mistake was made, or because -- and I think that's extremely important. Q He told Dan and myself that in December. Do you remember when he told people, he said, you go out and make your decisions, do the best you can, and if it becomes a crapper, I'll be behind you. SENIOR ADMINISTRATION

OFFICIAL:

Very early.

Q Do you remember that moment, or -- because that's the biggest blessing an agency or department head can get. SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: It was really very early, Bob. I don't remember -- it was probably the first NSC, because it was -- he did say it to the NSC. He said it to George separately, but I don't remember exactly when. But it was very early, it was very early.

490

t

Q Were you at the briefing when Tenet and Babbitt, the DDO, before the inauguration in Blair House, gave a kind of, this is the world and this is the good, the bad and the ugly? SENIOR ADMINISTRATION

OFFICIAL:

Yes, I was.

Q And they talked about bin Laden, and that he was a tremendous threat. SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Q

Yes, they did.

Put it in context.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: In context. I mean, a lot of other things got talked about, too. It was not -- one would not have read from that briefing that this was the number one threat against the United States. There were a lot of threats that were briefed. But this one was briefed. Q But it wasn't -- it's like you said, you got a threehour briefing on North Korea, and one and a half hour on terrorism or al Qaeda. SENIOR ADMINISTRATION Q

OFFICIAL:

Right.

So if I had been there --

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: If you had been there taking notes, you would have said, wow, this is something you_ really need to pay attention to, but you -Q

It's one of five or ten --

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Q

One of three, I would say.

One of three, the other two being --

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: WMD and proliferation concerns, and then actually -- I'm trying to remember if it was that briefing -- kind of North Korea, but China, you know, the rise of Chinese power. Q

Just thinking in these global terms, aren't they?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Right, yes. There's a lot -- but that briefing from had a lot in it. It wasn't --

491

Q

What was the President's reaction?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I think by then this was kind of expected. I don't think there were any really surprises in that briefing that he related to me. Q

No big secrets --

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL:

No big secrets, right.

Q And he then said, I want to speak with Tenet alone, or something like that. Is that when he asked him to kind of stay on, or -SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: No. In fact, it was --"he didn't ask him to stay on, he -- some month or so basically said to George, you know, you're my guy until I tell you that you're not, but basically everybody __is my guy until I tell them that you're not. So in other words, he was saying to George, you're no different than -- I'm treating you now no differently you than I'm treating anybody else. I can get rid of any of these guys any time, including you. I'm not -- you're not on probation somehow.

Q

I see.

But he was on probation for a while?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION address it.

Q

OFFICIAL:

I think he just didn't

It was kind of a tryout.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: comfortable with him.

Yes, I think he had to get

Q. The President told people, I'm going to kind of try him out, and see how it works out. SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL:

Right, see how he works.

Non-Responsive Material

492

Non-Responsive Material

493

Non-Responsive Material

Q But it's baffling, isn't it? And it's that moment you're talking about, it's so beautiful, it's got this history, and it's almost unimaginable that it might go up until you remember September llth. SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: September llth, that's right, and until- you remember that the plane that didn't make it.

494

Q And so, is it possible that the one thing missing in all of this, the one, if there is another attack, particularly a big one, or things go south in some way, that you will look back and say, the President under-mobilized the country for this, that we should have done more? SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I don't think that there is more that you can do and remain America. Q You don't? I have one idea somebody mentioned. Seeing the whole -- we have 11,000 FBI agents and 180,000 Marines. Why not take the people, or some of them, from the Marines, the Navy, who are intelligence experts and security experts, and make them TDY to the FBI, and say, now go -- it's going to be clumsy at first, but we're going to send these 200 people to National Airport, and we're going to take somebody who is an experienced colonel and put him in charge, and beef up security here, jnake it smart. SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Guard in the airports for a while. Q

You know, we did have the

But that was a -- that's show.

~

.SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I think that you have to try to do this smart. And it's a fine line. You know a couple of days after the attack, we started getting -- Larry Lindsey starting getting reports that factories in Canada -- or in Detroit couTdn't make cars because factories in Canada couldn't get the parts across the border, because we tightened border security so much. You have to worry about the unintended consequences, as well, of going all the way over on the security side, so that you can't keep commerce moving, and people can't move, and people can't travel. You have to accept some risk. But, boy, there's an awful lot that's being done, and an awful lot that people are trying to do. Q

Understand that --

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: is under-mobilized. Q

I don't think the country

You don't?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL:

495

No.

0 Did you consider further mobilization, further measures? SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: mobilized .

For a while we were more

Q Yes, but I mean even more than we were? SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: We tried to do what we thought was smart, what might actually have an impact. And I've said to Tom Ridge several times, you know, right now we're doing a lot of this by brut force. One day, the technologies will come along and so forth. But there's only so much you can do. But people are flat out. The FBI's flat out, the intelligence agencies are flat out. It's -Q Just as a distant observer of this, I think the one thing you could get, if we're hit again, people are going to say we didn't do enough. It's just like this problem of 9/11. You know, who could have -- they say that was the warning sign and we should have -- could you take 200 Marines with an experienced intelligence colonel and send them to National Airport and for them to do something useful? Because my impression of airport security, it's all brut force. It's all random. It's not smart. That you have people who are not experienced, but there are colonels who are intelligence officers who, yes, they're dealing with tactical intelligence on a beach, but are smart enough to say, you~now have National Airport. You're going to not be in charge but you're going to help. Go in there. Do the same in the White House, do the same in, you know, in the Pentagon. The Pentagon is so vulnerable still. You go over and do interviews and you see the planes flying by. SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I know. But again, there is only so much you can do and keep life at a level that is acceptably normal. Nobody -- the best thing that's happened, probably, is that people are so aware. Do you know all the stuff that has been foiled by people being aware? You know, the Reid shoe bomber was just people being aware.

Q

Yes.

Yes.

496

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: So there's a tremendous amount going on and it will get better over time. But you constantly are trying to balance some sense of normalcy with -

Non-Responsive Material

497

Non-Responsive Material

498

Non-Responsive Material

END

P . M . CDT

499

4:40