/ THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of the Press Secretary

_.s~\l T r

INTERVIEW OF THE VICE PRESIDENT l«f /J./J i

BY LARRY KING OF CNN '' ^ °

THE VICE President's Office

11:03 A.M. EDT
Q We're at the Dwight David Eisenhower Old Executive
Office Building in Washington with THE VICE PRESIDENT of the
United States, Dick Cheney. Can you give us an update, Mr. Vice
President, on what's going on in New York?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, there's a continuing level of
concern, obviously, about threats. We now have a large number of
people in custody, detainees, and periodically as we go through
this process, we learn more about the possibility of future
attacks. And based on that kind of reporting, we try to be very
cautious and alert people when we think there ' s reason to be
\d about a particular subject or target.
It's not the kind of thing where somebody came in and said,
Hey, the Brooklyn Bridge is going to get hit tomorrow. It's never
that detailed. It's more a matter of being concerned that there
has been some planning activity in the past by the organization,
and therefore a need to ratchet up the level of security on that
particular installation.

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

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Yes. I mean, yellow's -- you know —

Q It's serious.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: It's serious. This is not a normal,

peacetime kind of situation.

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

) MORE
000415
 - 2 -

Q What do -- when you said the other day, they will

strike again -- not if they will --
THE VICE PRESIDENT: I think it's just a matter of time.

Q What do people do with that information? What do we

do, knowing that? Do we walk down the street backwards and look
behind us? What do you do?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Be vigilant, you know, but be sensitive
to the possibility. Obviously, some parts of the country are far
more likely targets than other. Be aware of the alert system when
we do put out alerts. Those are the ones, obviously, that you
want to pay attention to.
And in the end, what we have to do is go eliminate the
terrorists. I mean, we can play defense all day long and do
everything we can to protect ourselves from another attack. But
in the end, in the final analysis, sooner or later somebody's
likely to get through. We've seen the Israeli experience, for
example --
Q If you just play defense, no one's going to score.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: That's right. And what you have to do

is also go on offense. We've got to go eliminate the terrorists.
And that obviously is a major part of the effort that's underway
now. But it takes time.
Q What about those who say you're doing all this now
because of the criticism of the memo not paid attention to
previously? ... _
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, in this work, Larry, you're damned
if you do, damned if you don't kind of thing. The fact is, there
is reason to believe that the threat level has increased somewhat.
We see more noise in the system, more reporting that leads us to
be cautious here. We haven't changed our practices at all in
terms of when we decide to go public and to caution people --
Q No change at all?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: No change. There's been no —

Q So this would have happened had nothing happened?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: If nothing had happened, if there had

not been the totally irresponsible charges last week, that

MORE

000416
 — 3 -
wouldn't have affected any of this anyway.
Q You have come out against an independent investigation
of all that. Today, Senator McCain came out in favor of one; so
did conservative George Will. What's wrong with independent
people like George Shultz, Daniel Moynihan, and others, as
suggested, I think, by Will, looking into it?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, there's going to be an independent
investigation. It's already underway. It's being carried out by
the oversight committees in the House and Senate, the House
Intelligence and Senate Intelligence Committees -- bipartisan, one
chaired by a Democrat, Bob Graham from Florida, and one by a
Republican, Porter Goss. And we have already provided . over
200,000 pages of documents to those committees. We've got -- 39
members of Congress are being read in to these programs, and
they'll oversee this investigation. We've got 184 people that
have already been interviewed. That effort has been underway.
Our concern is that if we now lay another investigation on
top of that, we're just multiplying the potential sources of leaks
and disclosures of information that we can't disclose. The key to
our ability to defend ourselves and to take out the terrorists
lies on intelligence. And we're discussing such things as the
President's Daily Brief; this is the most sensitive product, if
you will, of the intelligence community. It comes from our most
sensitive and secret sources. If there are leaks from that
document, if it's disclosed to people that it shouldn't be
disclosed to, we will lose the capacity to defend ourselves
against future attacks.
Q And an --
THE VICE PRESIDENT: So what we' re trying to do is make sure
that -- have a good investigation. We're for that. There are a
lot of lessons we'd like to learn as well, too. But there's
already a good one underway by the Congress, which has the
statutory and constitutional responsibility to do it. If we now
start adding commissions, nobody's going to come back and shut
down this one. There's not going to be just one, there will be
several, and we can't afford to have several.
Q Why, Mr. Vice President, have you been critical of
critics? We've always had critics in America. Johnson was
criticized in Vietnam; Clinton was criticized in Bosnia; Roosevelt
was criticized over Pearl Harbor. What's wrong with voicing a
criticism?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Criticism's fine, Larry. But when

MORE
000417
 - 4 -
members of Congress suggest that the President of the United
States had foreknowledge of the attack on September llth, I think
that's outrageous. That's beyond the pale. Somebody needs to say
that ain't criticism; that's a gross, outrageous political attack,
and it's totally uncalled for, unjustified. The facts don't
support it. And somebody needed to stand up and say that. And I
feel very strongly about it.

I'm perfectly prepared to have a debate. We do that all the

time. But that kind of assault, implication that somehow we had
prior knowledge and didn't act on it, I think, is a despicable
statement.
Q Is there a problem vis-a-vis FBI, CIA, investigative
community? In other words, that they don't interlock, the
channels don't reach each other? That there's rivalries?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Sure. There has been in the past,

without question. I used to sit on the Intelligence Committee; we
always were frustrated by trying to get the FBI, that came before
us for some of their functions, and the CIA, that came before us
as well, to work together. They didn't do it very well. It has
been improved in recent years, but clearly not enough.

Since September llth, we do a much more aggressive job of

getting them together. We start every morning in the Oval Office,
the President and I sit down with the Director of the FBI and the
Director of the CIA. They have to come to report to us every
morning on what we've got out there by way of threats --

Q Together.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Together. And they're doing a much

better job of linking together than before. But partly here,
before we can go out and sort of point the finger of blame and try
to indict somebody for malfeasance prior to September llth, the
FBI is now being asked to do something it didn't used to do. I
mean, they were set up as a law enforcement agency. They were the
guys that went in after the crime and found out who did it.

Now we're asking them to perform a very different role, which

is to make sure the crime never occurs. Let's find the guys, the
perpetrators who have not yet violated the law, and, working with
our intelligence sources overseas, head off these attacks before
they can occur. It's a whole different way of looking at the
world.

Q Was that agent in Arizona prophetic?

MORE
000418
 - 5 -
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Oh, I think he was.

Q So, did that get overlooked, or was it too -- someone

said it would have been too cumbersome to do?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, it's -- first of all, there are
what, I think 56 field offices out there, thousands of agents
writing hundreds of reports in any week. So in that volume of
stuff that's being collected and generated and analyzed, to reach
back now after "the fact and say, aha, this guy fingered Middle
Easterners and flight schools, you know, is after the fact.
We had a situation in the Gulf War. In the run-up just
before Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and he had all his troops out
there, everybody said he'll never invade. All the experts in the
region, all the government leaders out there, they all said he's
never going to invade.
Well, he invaded. He took Kuwait. Afterwards, we found a
guy down in the bowels of the DIA, the Defense Intelligence
Agency, who had written a memo saying he's going to invade. But
it didn't do you any good at the time, because how do you decide
you're going to go with the one guy who's saying he will when
everybody else says he won't?
Q So you're in a no-win, in that sense?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, you've got to recognize what's

reasonable in terms of before-the-fact analysis and proper
conclusions and having the system, and what's Monday morning
quarterbacking.
But it's also important to recognize there were problems.
There's no question about it; I would be the last to argue the
system worked perfectly. There's a lot we can do to improve, and
we need to know the answers to those questions the committees are
asking. We're cooperating on that.

Q We'll be right back with Vice President Dick Cheney

after this.

Q We're back with Vice President Cheney.

Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein says she contacted your

office last July to urge a restructure of U.S. counter terror ism
and homeland defense. According to her, "despite repeated efforts
by myself and the staff, the White House didn't address my

.'*:• MORE
000419
 - 6 -
request. "
THE VICE PRESIDENT: I disagree with Dianne. She had a
proposal; a lot of other people did, too. What was happening last
summer was that we had a review underway, the President directed
me to sit down and look at the reports, I think, of five different
commissions that had studied this problem of how we organize for
homeland security. She had one proposal; there were a dozen
proposals, probably, all together, when you take all the
congressional ideas as well, too.
She did contact my office; she talked with one of my staff
people, who informed her of the ongoing effort, that the
administration wasn't yet ready to take a position on how we ought
to organize for homeland defense; that we had an active effort
underway -- which we did, which is what led directly on September
20th, when the President went up and made his speech, just nine
days after the attack, to the appointment of Governor Ridge as
head of Homeland Security, and the subsequent operations that are
taking place. That all came out of that earlier work.
We appreciated having her suggestion, but she wasn't the only
one with ideas about organizing to deal with that problem.
Q Governor Ridge's role -- should he be Cabinet-level?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: That's a debate that will continue to
rage. His role right now is as the Homeland Security Advisor to
the President. As an advisor, he should not be confirmed by the
Senate. He's like Condi Rice, the National Security Advisor. The
President needs to have some people around him .that report
directly to him and don't go to Congress.
Q Do advisors have clout?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Yes. They've got access to the
President, and that's the ultimate clout in this town.
Q On the debate, where do you stand?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, I think we've got it organized
about right for Tom Ridge at present. We are looking at other
options and possibilities. We've got a major effort underway,
Tom's doing a review of all of this. We could conceivably end up
with everything from a Cabinet level department, a new agency, an
agency in the Executive Office of the President, or an arrangement
similar to what we have now. But everything's on the table at
this point.

MORE
000420
 - 7 -
Q Security problems are not going to go away, are they?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Absolutely not. This will be with us a

long time.
Q On other fronts -- the hunt for Osama bin Laden. Where
are we?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: It continues. A lot of speculation
about where he is, or maybe he's dead, buried in one of those
tunnels or caves in Afghanistan. We haven't heard anything from
him in some considerable period of time now.

Q That tape recently was not recent?

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

Q The President's in Europe.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Right.

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

Q What do you make of the protests?

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

') MORE
000421
\, disagree, demonstrate. As long as they're peaceful, I
think it's a sign of a healthy society.
Q Do you get nervous or have anxiety when the President
is away?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: No, I really don't. It's —

Q You don't think about it?

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

Q But you don't personally?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Personally?

\ Q Fear, you know, something could happen, and --

THE VICE PRESIDENT: No. I don't — you can't think about

that. We've got jobs to do, and he's doing his job and I'm_doing
mine' And I think it's working reasonably well. And traveling to
the far corners of the globe, that's something you've got to do in
the modern presidency. ... - -
Q The question of Cuba. China doesn't have elections and
has political prisoners. How is that different? Why do we talk
to them and not to the other?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, I think the sense I have is that
China has made significant progress. If you go back to where
China was 25 or 30 years ago, it was a very authoritarian,
totalitarian state. Outsiders weren't welcome; totally isolated
from the outside world. Under Deng Xiaoping and subsequent to
that time, there's been a major opening up. Americans have been
invited in.
It's not perfect by any means. They don't run their society
the way we would like. They still have a Communist Party that's
still in charge. They don't have free elections. So we talk to

} 000422 MORE
 - 9 -
them about those issues. But if you were to look at China today,
you'd have to say this is a nation that has moved fairly
dramatically to open up.
You don't see any of that in Cuba. Cuba is, you know, where
it was in 1959 when Fidel took over. Cuba also, of course, at one
time Fidel Castro, back during the Cold War, did a lot to try to
subvert other regimes in the hemisphere -- Che Guevara was killed
trying to mount a revolution in Bolivia. They had a lot to do
with the turmoil and operations in Central America.
Q So there's a distinct difference to you?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Distinct difference -- tried to .base

missiles in Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis in '62.
Q Two other quick things. Any light at the end of the
Mideast tunnel?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Boy, that's a risky prediction, given
that part of the world and that problem. But we are making
progress. Things are better now than they were a couple of months
ago.
The Saudis have stepped up, and I think in an important and
responsible fashion. We've got the Egyptians and the Jordanians,
they're working with the Saudis. There's widespread agreement now
that we need reform on the Palestinian side; even Arafat has
spoken to that.
And the people who've suffered more than anybody else through
this whole enterprise, obviously, I think, are probably the
Palestinian people. And the ultimate hope of a peaceful
resolution of the conflict and a Palestinian state that is not a
threat to Israel is going to be difficult to achieve. But we need
to keep working at it.
Q And finally, India-Pakistan. Worried?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Yes. Two nations —

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

) 000423 MORE
 - 10 -
So it's an important part of the world, a dangerous part of
the world.
Q Thank you, Dick.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Thanks, Larry. Nice to see you.

Q Good seeing you. Healthy?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Yes, sir.

Q We were in the same club. Vice President Dick Cheney.

Back with more Larry King Live after this.
END 11:20 A.M. EDT

000424 MORE