T3 B9 Hurley Sources For Final Report Sec 9-2 3 Of 3 Fdr- 1-18-02 Transcript- Balz-woodward Interview Of Sr Admin Offical (cheney)

This yellow "sticky" note was found on the January 18, 2002 transcript of "Interview of a Senior Administration Official by Dan Balz and Bob Woodward." when it was transferred from the files of the 9/11 Commission.

THE WHITE HOUSE Office of the Press Secretary Internal Transcript

January 18, 2002

INTERVIEW OF A SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL

BY DAN BALZ AND BOB WOODWARD

1:19 P.M. EST SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Okay, what are you guys up to, as if I didn't know, huh? Q

As if you didn't know, right.

Q

How can we get the most information from you?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Let's do ground rules. This is background, unless we specify otherwise. Anything you want to use, you can use it, but not for attribution. \

We're doing a narrative, as you may have seen. SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: If you want to quote me, you've got to come back and clear the quote. And if I say off the record at some point, obviously, then I'm going to want to do that. Q

This will be really good.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Q

I don't know about that.

We'd like to start -- I know you have this long list.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: interview. I apologize for that.

I know I've been a tough

Q The President has clearly opened this up for us, to get -- we've got close to a really good story, and if you can just kind of round it out for us, we'll have a great story. Q I wanted to start with something that's not actually on the list, but just to help us understand in that first part of September llth, as things are unfolding rapidly. There's the implementation of the COG, the continuity of government plan. Can you give us some better understanding of how that operates, who's responsible for putting it into place, what decisions \e had to make, or what were kind of triggered automatically? J

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SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Well, there are provisions that relate to the continuity of government procedures, and so forth. They're classified, for obvious reasons. To the extent that elements of it were working on the llth -- at least in terms of my perspective, the piece of it that I saw -- one, I was conscious of continuity of government in a crisis, because I'd thought about it a lot, and been involved with some of the classified programs of the past. And when I made the recommendation to the President that he stay away until we knew what the hell was going on, obviously that was one of the considerations. Beyond that, as I recall, one of the decisions that I made, I was asked whether or not we wanted to evacuate the Speaker. And I said, yes. I didn't have to say, get a helicopter, pick him up here, and pick him -- that all gets taken care of. Q

Did you have a book, sir?

Is there a master plan?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: There probably is. Q

You didn't have it?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: No, I was working off the top of my head. Q Were you also asked then, specifically, about the President Pro Temp of the Senate -SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Well, yes. That came up -I may have asked about Byrd, because we evacuated the Speaker and the President Pro Temp of the Senate had made it clear he wanted to go home, to his home. His wife's not in good health, and he wanted to be with her. And I never talked to him. Q

So he was never-evacuated out of- --

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: No. But he had made it clear he wanted to go home. I didn't worry about getting everybody taken care of. It mainly was getting some people taken care of. And the Speaker was next in line after me, and it made sense to evacuate him. And then that added the complicating factor of, what do you do with the rest of the leadership? Q

For which there really is no plan.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: the -Q

Well, they're not part of

Right, they're not part of the line.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Yes. So there are plans for congressional evacuations and so forth. I've been there in

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the past. But they don't figure specifically in the question of the presidential succession. Q And did you have to make specific decisions about other Cabinet members? SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Yes. The questions came up, as I recall, about evacuating some other Cabinet members. And in particular, I believe it was Veneman and Norton. I think it was Ann Veneman and Gayle Norton. And they were evacuated. And later that night, as I recall, toward the end of the day I called them. And they were getting to the point where they were antsy. They had been evacuated and they were in a secure location. And I think I called them and asked them to please stay there. The word came back they weren't all that happy. Q Who's responsible then for executing this in an emergency? SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I think most of it's headquartered in the Military Office in the White House. Q

Did they execute it then?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: people .

Were they doing -They were the ones moving

Q And they're also responsible for the movement of -- I mean, there's a designated list of people who, in an emergency like that, are to go into the PEOC . SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: from the site to other locations.

In the PEOC, or evacuated

Q .And the choice is one or the other? Depending on the situation, you either go into the PEOC or out, or is there a -SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: It depends on the situation, how much time you've got, what set of circumstances. And then there are various contingencies for it. As I say, in this particular case we ended up going into the PEOC, partly because we didn't have a lot of time, and evacuating the White House, in effect, telling all the staff to go. But then there's an approved list of people that would ordinarily be evacuated with the principals, so that it's not just the President or the Vice President, but you've got a core staff around you. And I made sure I had those people with me, pretty much, when I went down. Obviously, Condi Rice is included, Mary and Scooter are included; Dave Addington, my counsel. And so I had that core group with me in the PEOC. Now, you're ad hoc, to some extent. The plan never fits the contingency, if you've ever been through this. It never does.

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But you can plan and you exercise, and then when you need it, you're able to do it.

j Q

Did this work well?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Yes, I think in terms of the threat, by standards of what we'd had to actually face in the past, this was a very significant event. If you measure it against the standards of what we plan for, nuclear weapons on the Nation's Capital, this was a relatively modest affair in terms of the scale of what you had to deal with. Q When the word came that there might be a plane heading for the White House, itself, were there defensive measures readied to protect the White House, in addition to protecting the people, I mean, to do something about that plane? We know there were planes scrambled from Langley right after the -SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: You're getting into an area now where we're obviously touching on classified capabilities, that I really can't talk about. But I think it would be fair to say, the prime defense against an incoming aircraft was the CAP, the Combat Air Patrol. Q Which, as we understand it, did not get up over the city until three minutes or five minutes after the Pentagon was hit. SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Yes, it was clearly after the Pentagon was hit. And then, of course, we had the debate over whether or not -- I suppose a real test would have been if Flight 93 had come all the way on in, would the CAP have worked against 93? And in the final analysis, it turned out that the passengers took it down before it got here. So we'll never know. Q And there-was a third question, from somebody in the military about are we still authorized to shoot down -Q We were told you were asked three times about, should we engage? SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I can't remember the exact number of times. Q There was a third one as it was within -- it had been 80 miles, then 60 miles, and then it was even closer. And you • were asked a third time, do the orders still stand? And you gave a very firm, yes, they do.

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SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Yes. But again, it wasstill in a situation, fog of war, whatever you want to call it, we didn't know whether or not any of those had ever actually been executed until later on. Because we've got an incoming aircraft,

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and are we authorized to shoot it down? The answer, yes. And the plane goes away. You move on to doing other stuff, but whether it diverted, landed at another airport, or in the case of the one in Pennsylvania, was taken down by the passengers -fortunately, we never had to shoot down an aircraft, but we were prepared to do it. And the question, I suppose, will always be, could we have executed? We don't know. Q Secretary Mineta, at the other end of the table, talking to the FAA, and apparently they'd said, we're going to let the pilots -- commercial aircraft exercise their discretion. And he said, blank pilot discretion, get those goddamn planes down. And we understand your head snapped up, and you looked at him and nodded. SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: forceful.

I recall him being very

Q We didn't want you to be surprised. We have authorization to use that F-word in the newspaper. (Laughter.) But it will be out of his mouth, not yours. The questions here, does this fit with what you -- and we'd just love to go through them. Obviously, the most important thing is the Bush Doctrine. And do you remember any discussions with the President that proceeded this annunciation that there will be no distinction? SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: No, it was in his speech the very first night. I mean, it was pure George Bush. And it was there, I think, from the very beginning. At least that afternoon is when we began to talk about it. Q He had a discussion with Condi Rice, in which -because it comes from the Citadel speech, to a certain extent -and whether we should do this now. And he said, I could wait. And she essentially said, do it now, because the first words matter the most. SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL:

No, it -- he was the one

who wanted to do it, as I recall. And I certainly supported it. I'm sure others did, as well. There was never anybody who argued, you can't do that. But I think there was also a growing awareness on the part of all us especially, as we went through the week, the significance of that, that that was really a distinctive departure in U.S. policy. Q

Did you recognize it at the time?

Q

Right away you understand that --

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Yes. I can remember arguing -- it wouldn't have been -- I guess it was later on.

The

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problem with trying to hit -- trying to strike terrorists is, it's a very tough target* You're looking for individuals, or people hiding in the shadows, whereas, you can go after a state. A state's got assets, especially one that's being used as a terrorist, or supporting terrorists, a safe harbor for terrorists. It gives you -- once you've defined the problem in those terms, you've got a much broader target set to go to work. Q The question, too, there where the President says, we have made this decision, and then Powell says, this is showtime -- do you remember that? Do you have any reaction to it, or anything you might have said? We've got incomplete notes. SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Well, I can recall -again, I can't say September llth at this hour or that hour, but there was from early on in the President's mind, as we talked about this, this determination: you're with us, or you're against us. It was partly a matter here of making states choose. They couldn't, on the one hand, support terrorists, harbor terrorists, and maintain good relations with the United States, especially with the Taliban concern -- they were going to have to fish or cut bait, so to speak.

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Q Do you remember Rumsfeld's questions there, in three -he has a real style of rolling out the questions: Who are the targets? How much evidence do we need? And then saying, major strikes could take up to 60 days to put together. Do you remember that? SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Yes, I remember him cautioning us about that it would take time to get positioned. I didn't find that surprising. It's a long way from home. My own experience had been, it takes time to get forces in place, to gather the intelligence, and so forth. I .guess you've got it down here, that we didn't have an off-the-shelf sort of plan for going after the Afghans. And it wasn't clear the first day or two whether or not we were going to go hit the Taliban. That depended on their response to our demand that they cough up bin Laden. Q Were there any comparisons in your mind to ten years earlier, the Gulf crisis, that you actually did have Schwarzkopf brief that '90 10/02 plan, and it was the one that was executed. We're trying to capture the moment, of the sense of there's no -- we're in a really different situation here, where we don't have something we can say, yes, use the green one.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Well, I'm sure I thought of those days. We had the meeting up at Camp David that Saturday. It was in the exact same room where we'd had the meeting on the \y back in August of '90, around that same table. I've got I

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a picture of that meeting hanging on the wall of my house in Wyoming. And it was -- it brought back a lot of memories to be there in the same place. I was on the other side of the table, but so was the President. Q We're trying to get as good notes for that meeting as I had -- as I finally got from 10 years ago. Let's jump ahead. Take us to -- is that the Laurel Cabin where that -SENIOR ADMINISTRATION

Q

OFFICIAL:

It's Laurel.

And it's a big -- what were the differences in your

mind? SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: It's a big — it was built during the Nixon days. When I first went up there in '69, Holly was the biggest cabin. It's relatively small. There was a Nixon Cabinet meeting up there at one point, and it was crowded. Laurel was built during the Nixon years, and it's a big -there's a great big conference room, with a big table in the middle of it. It's bigger than the Cabinet table here. Then off to the side is a presidential office, a small office, but the one that he uses when he's up there. And then out from that, there's sort of a big living room area, a big fireplace. Off to the side is the mess and the dining room, and so forth. It's a nice conference facility, when he goes up there, and where he entertains and has meetings and so forth. What was different? In '90 you had -- it was a different kind of a target. It was Iraq. And there had been a lot of planning done on Iraq, even then, as is standard in the military. So you can go pull off a 10-002. And then had forces that crossed an international border, they were occupying Kuwait. It was, sort of, in some respects, a conventional military crisis. So I could take Schwarzkopf up there, as we did, and some of the key commanders in the CENTCOM unit, and have Norm there to brief the NSC, in effect, on what kinds of forces we could get into the area, how long it would take us to get there, what we could possibly do with them, various and sundry alternatives. That was already there, grab it off the shelf and go. Here in Afghanistan, we didn't have that. And again, we're dealing with, first of all, terrorism; secondly, we were pretty confident it's al Qaeda and bin Laden; third, we're pretty confident they've operated out of Afghanistan against -- we don't have absolute proof yet, though we're pretty confident. We don't know how the Taliban's going to respond. It's conceivable they'll cough him up as soon as we demand it, and you're never going to have to go in there. Q

Did you think that was a realistic possibility?

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SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Remote, but a possibility. You didn't know until you ask -- demanded -- whether or not that would actually happen. So it's understandable that there was not sort of the off-the-shelf kind of capability there. Remember, Afghanistan had been fought over for 20 years. There really wasn't a lot left by way of conventional military -Q So as you were there that Saturday, it turns out -September 15th of last year, 10 years after the Gulf crisis, which was -- was there a sense of, we've got a harder problem mow? SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Q Eleven years. Yes, sir. is harder than the Gulf crisis?

Eleven years.

How -- is there a sense, this

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: No, there wasn't that sense. In some respects, thinking back on them, comparing the two experiences, I can remember at the time of the Gulf crisis, the President came back down that weekend after Camp David, stepped out of the helicopter, and said, this aggression will not stand. And it sort of took everybody's breath away. Q

I was on the lawn when he did that.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Everybody sort of sucked in, oh, my gosh, maybe we're going to war. Here, there wasn't any doubt. We were going to go after him. And the determination of the President -- we could debate, as we did, about what our strategy ought to be, and how we go about it and so forth. We clearly were going to go get these guys, come hell or high water. So there was, I think, more of a sense of determination and a debate over how you're going to do it, what your tactics might be, what your overall strategy might be. But there wasn't any question we were going to go do it. ... Q

And how did you asses the --

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Whereas — again, I hark back to 11 years before, when we met up there that Saturday. There were doubts about whether or not we could even get troops into Saudi Arabia. We weren't even sure we were going to be able to deploy forces. Q How did you weigh the risks of the kind of response that you guys were contemplating?

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SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: How did we weigh the risk? Well, the big -- one of the big concerns I had was further attacks against us. I mean, the risks were that they would get through our defenses again, as they just had, that thousands of additional Americans might die, be put at risk. But if anything,

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that was a spurred action. You didn't think of it in terms of, if we act, there are the following risk. It was more a matter of, it we don't act, we'll get hit again. The only way that -- you had to work on defenses here at home, but that was not sufficient, that you had to go on offense and eliminate the terrorists, if you were going to successfully defend against the threat. So it wasn't, what are the risks of military action; it was, what are the risks if we don't act? It's a different setting than we had in 1990. Q

Were you able to read through this?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL:

I skimmed over it, yes.

Q Did you have -- was there any point where you can -- I mean, we've got pretty good -- I guess we wanted to kind of get this issue of Iraq straight. On the bottom of page two, it's the afternoon NSC meeting on the 12th. Rumsfeld asks about the need to address Iraq, as well as bin Laden. Do you remember that? That was the first time I think it came up. Q

Or did it come up in the morning, as well?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: You're on the 12th here now? I don't remember that much of a discussion about it on the ^•••••%. 12th. I can't say it wasn't. It was much more pronounced, I | think that weekend up at Camp David. It's where we sort of '—-•* really zeroed in on the question of Iraq. There were different -- it wasn't just focused on Iraq. Q

Tell us how that unfolded.

Q

At Camp David, that's right.

Q

Paul Wolfowitz --

That would help us. •-- -

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Still on background. Q

Yes, sir.

This is all on background.

Q We have notes of it, and we've talked to the participants. SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I think they're -- a lot of us were interested in Iraq within the context of this latest threat. I think probably, and I guess I would describe it that there were -- it was more a matter of timing, with some arguing that we ought to go after Iraq immediately, at the same time we went after the al Qaeda; and others arguing -- I suppose, probably at the other end of the spectrum would be somebody arguing, don't mess with Iraq, that we need a broad coalition, \e way to get a broad coalition is to be focused on the World

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Trade Center, the Pentagon, al Qaeda, bin Laden and Afghanistan. And I think for some, as I say, it really was a question of timing. Q What was your feeling about it? When it got down to -apparently you were the last -- when the President asked at Camp David for your recommendations. He went to Powell, Rumsfeld -SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: We did the morning session, we took some time off, came back in the afternoon, and did sort of a wrap-up session. Q Tell us what you said, if you would. We have versions of it, and there's no better version than yours. SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Well, Scooter was there. He probably has a better memory of it. He's younger than I am. His mind is not as mushy as mine. (Laughter.) Q

He doesn't look younger.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: he has, though.

I've been worn harder than

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I'm trying to remember some of the things we talked about. Rumsfeld and Powell had spoken before I did, and maybe Tenet. I tried not to repeat stuff that had already been said. I remember talking about NGOs. One of the things I was concerned about was that we -- I'd asked for, earlier, sort of a rundown from the agency on what they could do on NGOs, and that had been part of their brief on what their capabilities were. But I wasn't very happy with it, frankly. I thought they underestimated the role of non-government organizations. It was the logistics network that supported the terrorists. Q

You turned out to be right on that, by the way.

Very

much. SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: We've got in the habit over the years, these are charitable organizations, and there may be a little hanky-panky. The fact of the matter is that the bin Laden mode of operation was to use all that crap. They burrow their way in and take advantage of our transportation system and all these other things out there, and the NGOs are their logistics.

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I talked about that I thought this was an opportunity, as well, from the standpoint of our situation, our circumstances in the Middle East; that prior to September llth, there were serious strains on the relationship between the United States and some of our friends in the Arab world, in particular the Saudis, to some extent the Egyptians, that centered around the IsraeliPalestinian problems, the peace process, lack of progress, and

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that the relationship had, in fact, gotten seriously strained with the Saudis prior to that time, but that this offered the opportunity for us to rebuild some of those relationships, because of what we were going to have to go do, in terms of taking on the terrorist threat. I'm trying to recall what else we talked about. I was concerned about making certain what we're going enough to defend ourselves, but that we had to get very aggressive on the home front, in terms of protecting against another attack. We could not ignore the very real possibility that we'd be hit again. Q Was it your belief that the Justice Department and the FBI were too focused on sort of gathering and protecting evidence, as opposed to aggressively preventing? SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Sure. than prevention was the phrase we used.

Prosecution rather

Q And at Camp David, apparently, the FBI Director Mueller still seemed to be in a prosecution mode, some people have said, that it was -Q When he talked right at the beginning of the morning meeting, he was the first off the block apparently -"••'••• \ I

That we've got task forces here, and we're investigating the flights and the hijackers and SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: We didn't know about Moussaoui yet, I don't think. What it looks like is Moussaoui was the 20th hijacker, and we had him in custody a month before the event. Q

What's your reaction to that?

Honestly, on background.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Clearly, the mind-set at that stage was law enforcement, what kind of case do we have against him? You can't go look at his computer unless you've got a FISA (ph). You can't get a FISA unless you've got evidence that he's an agent of a foreign power. But it's not just the Bureau's fault. That's the way the whole system's organized. It's prosecution, not prevention. Q It's really pathetic, isn't it? You're a direct person. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but if you line all that up, they had a case file on Moussaoui that thick -- I've seen it -- before 9/11. That -- we've both seen it. That thick. They were asking the Agency, the CIA and NSA to run phone traces on him, and so forth. They were trying to get into his computer, and they couldn't get this.

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SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: And they didn't have enough information to get the warrant they needed to go do what needed to be done. And you know, as long as Moussaoui wasn't talking, it was going to be hard to find out about what was about to happen. But, viewed now with the benefit of hindsight, if we'd had a preventionist mind-set, instead of a prosecution mind-set, we might have done a better job of ferreting out what he was involved in now. And that's all I'll say, that's the benefit of hindsight. Q You made this point repeatedly from September llth forward. By the time you got to Camp David and were still making that point, did you still feel that there was not the responsiveness within the government necessary to get to -SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I can't put a time frame on it, but I think it would be fair to say that, during this period, starting from 9/11, that we repeatedly -- I expressed that we, Scooter and I and others, work the problem in a number of areas. We had to get people to begin thinking in different ways about what we had to do. That came up in the public health area, dealing with biological warfare and bioterrorism. And we went and sat down with the Public Health Service, the folks over at HHS, and asked what precautions they had taken with respect to anthrax or smallpox or some of the other possible scenarios that are around. And they would say, well, we've got that all taken care of. We've planned for it, we've got the four units we can move in no time, and we have plenty of serum and vaccine. And you start asking questions and peeling back the layers, and it was totally inadequate to the nature of the threat that we now faced. And it wasn't -- I didn't expect them prior to September llth to be in the same mind-set as we were after September llth. But after September llth, there was no excuse for old think, or still being locked into the past in terms of how we would respond to a terrorist event, how we would deal with contingencies. And partly what I did was, I frequently chat with the organization to force people to go back and look at some of these type of questions that we hadn't up until that time thought about, such as what happens if you take the FBI out of the prosecution mind-set where they are worried primarily about preservation of evidence, and move them over into the prevention mind-set where you are trying to prevent the next attack, not convict somebody from the last attack? Q

When did they get the word on that, do you think?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: They're working on it. Q

Still, huh?

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SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: They're better than they were, sure. But periodically, you still sort of catch those old habits. Another thing with the Bureau, the Bureau is a decentralized organization. They place a lot of authority out in various agents all over the country. But a good counterterrorist organization needs a central control, central database, central management. It's just a whole -Q Sir, back to Camp David. On the bottom of page 4 there, there is a point at which the President made the point that the biggest beneficiary of this war on terrorism will be Israel. Do you remember that, and reaction to that? Apparently, he has repeated that a number of times. SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Q

I don't recall that.

He has said it before, has he not?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Yes, I think a lot of people felt that way. Q Do you agree. Does that look like this could be -we're not trying to put you at odds with the President. We are trying to understand your assessment of where this might be going. SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Well, I mean, that's one consideration. I think that is accurate. I think that Israel would benefit from any effort that reduces the overall level of terrorism in the world. They are one of the prime targets of terrorist activities. Clearly it's not the only ramification of it, but it's clearly one. Q And then continuing with question 11 down there, this is the afternoon session -SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Where are we now? Q This is the afternoon session, top of page 5. This is what Powell apparently said, according to -- this has to do with Iraq. All the coalition partners are with you, but they will go away if you hit Iraq with what they might see as a pretext. You get something pinning it on Iraq, great. Let's put it out and kick the -- gee, somebody put in parentheses there another one of those words — at the right time. But let's get Afghanistan now. If we do that, we will have increased our ability to go after Iraq if we could prove it. Does that -- do you recall that argument? SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL:

I don't disagree with that.

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Q What's your reaction to that? diplomat's argument of --

I mean, that's the chief

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: You're asking me to do something I never do, which is put myself in a position where this is the advice -Q

The President has said --

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I know, the President has given everybody -- you got to him, Bob. (Laughter.) I was very interested and am still interested in a broad campaign against terror and those who have supported terror,and the whole question, for example, of the access of terrorists to WMD, et cetera. But I basically shared the judgment that we ought to focus on Afghanistan and al Qaeda, that that had to be our first priority. Q For the same reason, that it would rupture a coalition right at the beginning, or for another reason? SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: No, because I thought that the first efforts had to focus on those people who had done to us what was done to us on September llth. That had to be the first priority. at didn't mean there weren't other places out there where we were going to have to go work; clearly, there were. The President had already defined this as a broad war against terror worldwide. But for me, it was a question of priorities and timing, and I felt we ought to focus on Afghanistan. Q

And you said that, apparently --

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL:

I did.

Q But that you -- apparently, you expressed as much as anyone deep, deep concern about Iraq, and that it may lead to them in terms -- there may be a connection somewhere down the road. We've got to deal with Saddam at some point, we can't just let this drift off on the ether. SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL:

Right.

Q And that you -- was there some argument made that, as an old -- former Secretary of Defense, that you can't have two wars under the same CINC, in the same theater? In other words, if we went after Iraq simultaneously, General Franks would have two theaters to operate in, and that that would be something that you shouldn't do? SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: possible --

I don't recall that.

It's

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Q

Any other arguments you made?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Let's see, talked about how important it was to focus on defense. I don't remember -SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I'm at Camp David.

September 13th? Right, it's a Saturday, so

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: The homeland defense was a big -- financial, diplomatic. I think you were interested in -SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: The emphasis on all facets of the campaign, that is the emphasis on not only the military -we clearly already were moving in the direction of a heavy involvement in intelligence -- but political and diplomatic, ' financial, had to be an engaged effort. Q That morning, once Tenet and Shelton and Rumsfeld had sort of gone through their options and ideas, there was this free-form discussion that occurred about lots of different aspects of this. One of them had to do with the vulnerability of Pakistan. And some people, I think Dr. Rice being one, expect this kind of nightmare scenario of in one way or another, we set something in motion and the Taliban are weakened, al Qaeda takes over then, this spreads into Pakistan and then the terrorists have access to the Pakistani nuclear weapons. How concerned were you about that issue, and how did you see that as a possibility of unfolding as you began a military campaign in Afghanistan? SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I don't recall so much a concern, at least in my mind, about the Taliban moving into Pakistan, or the al Qaeda moving into Pakistan, so much as the danger to the government of Pakistan itself from internal forces, from some of the same. And there was a debate during this period of time about how strong the fundamentalists were inside Pakistan. I can recall a session at one point maybe that we -- I remember being on the Truman balcony with the President and Bandar -SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Friday, the day before Camp David. SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: And we asked Bandar about his assessment of the fundamentalists inside Pakistan. Was it a relatively large percentage of the population or a relatively small percentage of the population. And he was very confident it was fairly small, and he cited past election statistics and talked in terms of 8 to 10 percent as opposed to 30 or 40 percent.

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Q

But did you find that completely credible?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: It was different than what we were getting from a lot of other sources. And the concern was, in part, we were going to try to get Musharraf to sever his ties to the Taliban. The Taliban had been put in business -certainly had been strongly supported by 1ST -Q

Really created by ISI in a way, don't you think?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Strong support, a lot of support there. Historic ties. The Pakistan government -Pakistan had a lot invested in the Taliban -- (inaudible) -which he did. But one of the concerns was the extent to which this would make him vulnerable in his own country. And he took some steps to deal with that. He replaced the head of the ISID. He changed out some -Q

Why did he replace him?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I don't know the details. He wanted his own man in there. So there was this element of concern and we did talk about it, about the possibility that there might be -- that we had to be aware of the possibility that we could end up with a change in the regime in Pakistan. And, of course, that would involve a change in who controlled the Pakistan nukes. SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Actually, I think the Bandar meeting was later. I think it was Monday -Q Yes, the 18th, Chirac -- there is a picture we have of all of you smoking cigars except you. SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: You're not going to run a picture of the cigar smokers, are you? (Laughter.) Q

We don't have any control over what our photo editors

do. Q A very important question for us in understanding the President, which you could help us with, is if you go through these notes there will be moments like somebody will say, well, certain countries aren't going to support us. And the President will say, well, we're America, we'll go it alone if necessary. And it's kind of a theme that comes up a number of times. Now, one of your colleagues in the war council, if we can call you the war council, says that the President says these things and it's kind of a visceral emotional reaction, yeah, we will go it alone. But then when it gets down to deciding, he's a very practical person. And the idea of going this war again,

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just even in Afghanistan alone, in a practical sense, you couldn't do it. You had to have coalition partners. You had to be able to get in to Pakistan. And that the President has an operational governor on himself. Though, rhetorically, he may go out and say, you know -- or in these meetings say, look, we'll go it alone if necessary. And I think Secretary of State Powell is sitting there saying, going it alone? And Rumsfeld is saying, let's see, going it alone, if we can't set up bases here and so forth. Understand the question? You, more than anyone, know whether that's -SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I really believe if we had had to go it alone, we would have. We would not have said, okay, we're not going to do it, or we're going to trim our sails, or we're going to rely only on diplomacy. I take him -- I think he was -- I always took him absolutely seriously, if we have to, we'll go it alone. Would we like to be able to operate out of Pakistan? Sure. But we didn't limit ourselves to just wanting to work there. And we did not fly a lot of combat missions out of Pakistan. We flew a lot of stuff out of the Gulf, Whitman Air Force Base in Missouri, Diego Garcia. But we needed combat search and rescue for our guys, and part of that was based in Pakistan, part of it was based in Uzbekistan. "V

But we did not rely heavily. It was nice, for example, valuable, the contributions that were made by the Uzbeks and Paks. But to suggest somehow that he would have pulled back pursued a less aggressive course without coalition partners, don't think so.

and the or I

Q Do you think beyond the enunciation of the so-called Bush Doctrine on the night of September llth, there was anything in specific that the President said, particularly in those first meetings on September -12th or 13th, that" was defining in the ~~ shaping of the policy that flowed from that? Or was the Bush Doctrine itself that set the tone from which all else had to flow? SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Well, the Bush Doctrine was very important as a concrete sort of expansion of policy which, in effect says, the United States reserves the right to take action against a state that harbors terrorists. And I wouldn't underestimate the importance of that. I guess the other sense I have is that he clearly -- it was this absolute determination from the very beginning; we're going to get these guys. It wasn't "maybe" or "let's call a meeting of the U.N. Security Council," "let's get a resolution passed," "let's send diplomatic notes around the world" -- we're going to get these guys.

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Q

That was expressed to you on September llth?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Absolutely. And that's different than some of the other presidential crises I've been involved in. The decision that needs to be made is, okay, how do we do it? Not, should we do it? And I have always had just this strong -- you asked me sort of my impression of what he was working off of. That was right at the top of the list. And the other -- I guess the other point I would make is this sense that this might well be the most important thing he does as President, that there is no more important task that he is likely to face during his time in office than getting this war on terror right. Q And that was expressed as early as his NSC meeting from Offutt that afternoon. SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Yes, and again that night back here in the PEOC . Q What did you think? What was your reaction to that? Did you say -- when he said, we're going to kick their asses, did you say, "Right on, Mr. President?" We only have his end of the conversation on that . SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: did I say "right on"? Q

Power to the people.

"Great" or "let's go," but

But you were delighted to hear that?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Q

I mean,

(Laughter.)

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I don't have any specifics. Q

I don't recall.

Absolutely.

You were -- that this is what --

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Yes, I was sitting here watching the planes collide and bodies fall, and I was -- like everybody else. But when he went up to New York on Friday, to the World Trade Center and grab the bullhorn, there was this national outpouring of "let's go get them." Q From the end of the Camp David meeting to the Monday morning, when he calls everyone in and says, I've called this meeting to issue orders, kind of an op order, how did he decide, do you think? Really help us with that, if you would. Or had it been decided?

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SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I can't say that he decided at 11:00 a.m. or 3:00 p.m. I think what he did was, by then he had had several days to think about it. We had had an enormous amount of information provided; we had had a lot of discussion at the Camp David sessions. He is an orderly decision-maker. He takes in information in terms of thinking about what he wants to decide and then he makes decisions. He doesn't look back, he doesn't agonize over it. I don't know whether he laid awake at night worrying about it. Ordinarily, he doesn't. He is decisive in terms of deciding what he wants to do and he'll go do it. He entertains a wide variety of views. Everybody gets to make their case or their presentation. But then -- I've seen him do it a lot of other times. He may think about it for a day or two, but -- I compare this, for example, to the decision that he made prior to September llth, this whole issue of stem cells. That was one he spent a lot of time on, wasn't really comfortable with it until he worked it a lot. It was sort of a new area for him, so he talked to a lot of experts, got a lot of bioethicists and medical types and doctors and various political figures. And that was one he took and he worked over a long period of time and then made his decision.

I —

;

This was much quicker, of great significance, but in terms of the process it went through, I think in part because we had a team in place, and I think one of the really significant features of this administration and the way he works is the team he has put together and how we work together. This is true. A lot of experience. Q Sir, at Camp David, when Rumsfeld asked -- I just realized we skipped over that -- is this' a good time to hit Iraq, because we have a big buildup of forces, there's not much to attack in Afghanistan, we need to deal with Iraq, would this be an opportunity -Q

That's the morning session.

Q That's the morning session, I'm sorry, that's right, at Camp David. Is he arguing in his Rumsfeld-like way that we should do Iraq, or is he posing a question? SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: You know Rumsfeld well enough to know he's not subtle. (Laughter.) I don't want to quote what somebody else said. But --

1

Q

What was your interpretation of it?

Q

When Don asks a question like that, do you --

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SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I think Don was pretty aggressive in terms of when to address the Iraq question -Q

Right there, at that simultaneous --

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: You have to talk to him. Q

I don't know.

Ask him.

Yes, we have.

Q One of the interesting things the President said in the interview with us was that he was very conscious of the fact that around the table were people who had been through the Gulf War, and that he did not want that experience in that war to sort of shape the decision-making. And he said this in the context of Iraq. Did he express that? It doesn't -- from everything we know, it doesn't sound like he expressed it at Camp David. SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I have heard it from him. I can't say that it was at Camp David. Q

But that may have been something he shared with you?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Yes. And it's the kind of thing where -- you know, you don't want to get all geared up to fight the last war. That was the last war. This is a different set of circumstances. We make decisions now based upon what your requirements and strategic considerations are now, not something that happened 10 years ago that may or may not be relevant. Q Do you also think that it had anything to do with the idea that there may still be, in the minds of some people, that there was unfinished business from the Gulf War because of Saddam, and that, therefore, there was a higher priority put on that because of that kind of personal feeling" of dissatisfaction that some of the people that have gone through it might have, and that he didn't want to get caught up in that agenda? SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I don't — I am sure he would not want to get caught up in that agenda. But I don't think anybody is really that fixated on Iraq because of 10 or 11 years ago. You look at Iraq today, because of Saddam Hussein's power, because he has spent a lot of time and energy developing weapons of mass destruction, because he has used it in the past, et cetera -- there are a lot of reasons to focus on Iraq without harking back to something that happened a decade ago. Q And the President's speech on the 20th, were you -- you were off at your secure location. You watched it from your secure location, is that right?

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SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I actually watched it from right here. That's a tip, Bob. (Laughter.) Q

That's a big scoop.

Q

This must be a pretty secure location.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: want to be in the hall. Q

The main thing was I didn't

Hide in plain sight.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Yes. But I called Senator Byrd that day and asked him to fill in for me as the President Pro Tern, and I have to say he was delighted. Q

So you watched it from this office?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: sitting in this office watching. Q

I have a picture someplace

What was your reaction to that speech?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Fantastic speech. Q Why? I mean, what -- everybody gave it good reviews. But what was so important about that moment and why do you think it was a good speech? SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Well, it was a defining moment for his administration, for the country. It was the first opportunity after the events of -- there had been a lot of things that had happened, but this is one of those special moments. When the President goes into the Chamber of the House and addresses a joint session of Congress, the_ world is watching, and he has an opportunity to articulate and explain what's happening -- explain what's happened and make sense of it for the American people, and explain what we're going to do about it, how we're going to respond to it. And it's like -- the closest I had seen before was I guess I always remember being on the floor as Secretary of Defense when President Bush went up after the Gulf War, went up a few days after the war and sort of wrapped it up. Before the war, it wasn't that unified. Afterwards, it was, again, a terribly emotional moment with the entire country behind him. Probably analogous, Roosevelt, December llth, after Pearl Harbor. That kind of moment. And I think partly, too, it was the sense the President had captured it so well in his connection, if you will, with the country. •

Q In that speech, Rumsfeld didn't want the President to \e bin Laden in the speech. And we asked him about it and he

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said that he just didn't think you should focus on one individual. And there was a big debate about that at the last moment, and Karen Hughes talked to you. Do you recall that and do you recall what you said? SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: mention bin Laden. Q

Yes, I said you have to

Why?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Because the American people believed, correctly, that he was the mastermind of the attack. And we could talk all we wanted about the broader concepts of a global war on terror, and in the final analysis, this was at least in part about getting the guys who had done to us what they did on September llth. But it wasn't credible not to mention him. In terms of making that connection with the American people and having them understand what we were doing and why we were doing, it was very important to have. Q Do you remember down in the Situation Room on the second day -- so it's September 13th -- Tenet brought the CIA guys in and the counter-terrorist guy -SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Q

Yes, I know him.

Is this the 12th or the 13th?

Q I think it's the 13th. I think it's the second time. And he gets up there and says, you know, there are going to be flies on their eyeballs, they're going to be dead. Do you remember that? SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: (Laughter.)

He is a piece of work.

Q Tell us what you remember of that, because it was apparently very optimistic. We're going to do this in a week, we're going to do that in a week -Q

Optimistic, animated --

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: don't want to blow his cover -Q

Well, he's a can-do guy.

I

No, no, he doesn't have cover, so we can use his name.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I've met him before in some of my dealings with the Agency. But he came in with this great self-confidence, this great sense of, okay, here's what we're going to do -- boom, boom, boom, boom. Q

Actually got up, animated, they're going to be dead --

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SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Well, he's, shall we say, blunt when he speaks and represents himself. Q

Did you believe it?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Well, I took it with a grain of salt. But I was glad we had somebody who was really energized and aggressive. Q What impact do you think that had on the President and his thinking at that point? SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I think I came away with the belief that the Agency was better equipped to deal with this than what we might have expected, partly because of the past, experience in Afghanistan. Although a lot of the guys from the old program were no longer around, there was an institutional memory, set of relationships there, and that the Agency had a significant contribution, I think. They could do more for us here than they could some other places around the world. Q And, in fact, in a way, kind of laid out the architecture for the campaign, didn't they? SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Laid out the architecture for the campaign, and had a lot to contribute, and stuff ready to go in relatively short order. Whereas, on the military side, it was going to take longer. We didn't have a lot of good targets. Then as this evolved, it got to the point where we had to get the intel side married up with the operational side so we could develop targets. Q Did you ever talk to Rumsfeld, who was expressing and expressed to us that he didn't -- the President did -- that he felt some frustration, that, you know, kind of this 9/11 happens and the CIA has a plan and has been working there for four years, and he's without a plan and subject to the tyranny of distance to Afghanistan. Did you ever talk to Rumsfeld and say, don't worry, Don, you know, I know how these things take time? Or was there any -SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I think Don was -- I don't know if "frustration" is the right word. Impatient, maybe. But that's what I -Q

He was impatient to get the --

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: stand-up desk. (Laughter.)

Here's a guy who works at a

Q He was impatient to get the Pentagon to come up with unconventional ways of going about this, right? I mean, that was

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part of it. That the mind-set was more traditional and that this was an untraditional -SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Sure, and remember he had -- Hugh Shelton was still Chairman at the outset. And he came up through the Special Forces side of the Army. And they did a good job in relatively short order. Remember here, less than a month later was October 7th, we're beginning operations. And that was a hell of an accomplishment. I know how long it takes to move forces and make plans and develop targets and so forth, and -Q Apparently by the morning of the 21st, the morning after the speech, General Franks was here to talk about here is the opening wave of how this thing would unfold. Q But didn't Tenet ask for a delay because he thought they could do -- his guys could do more on the ground in terms of setting up relationships and possible targets? SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Ask for a delay, well, I don't recall it in those terms. It's possible. Q If you wait another week, I think, or two, we're going to really be -SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Well, what Don had, and by the time we're finally getting to the 21st, and so we're seeing plans develop, then they've been able to go in and look at sort of a conventional look at what's available to the Taliban air force, MIG-17s, 21 -- and be able to pick out the various nodes. But it's a relatively short target list and you were going to be able to work your way through it fairly fast. And the real question was what new targets could be developed and how would you develop those. And that obviously ultimately involved people on the ground -- the CIA teams, the Special Forces teams -- to generate more targets in the direction we moved in. And the frustration in part, I think, initially was getting our people on the ground so they could do that. And we had -you had to manage the problem of working with the Northern Alliance, being very careful how you did that because the jealousies among the various factions of the Northern Alliance. Weather, getting into Uzbekistan, because we had to stage out of Uzbekistan to get our Special Forces, A-Teams in on the ground. Then negotiating through that whole process. And that took longer than we would have liked. I guess the other thing, at least initially when we talked about delays, was the question of how hard do you hit the Taliban at the outset. And we were still in the mode of demanding they turn over al Qaeda and bin Laden and not knowing for sure whether or not they were prepared to do that. There was some question about whether or not if we went in and hammered the Taliban,

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would the tribes in the south, Pashtun and so forth, oppose any effort we made once we got in there; how this was going to play out in terms of the internal dynamics between the Northern Alliance and the other elements in there. So you had all these issues to work. And it takes time. It doesn't happen overnight. But it went -- when you look at it, look back on it and reflect on it, it worked very well. It went faster than most people thought it would go, and was enormously successful as a military/intelligence campaign. Q Do you recall in those first -- from the night of September llth to the morning of September 17th, any sort of false steps, or as you look back, you were sort of heading down even for a short time the wrong road, or there were any mistakes you think you guys made or things you would have done differently now? There was so much happening all in that short amount of time. SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I can't think of anything right offhand. There is always a certain amount of noise in the system when you do something like that. Different meetings, going various places and so forth. But if you look at what came up to the President, the decisions he made, the way we executed, it would be pretty hard to improve on it. Q

Okay, thank you, very much. END

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