A4*

WHITE HOUSE
he Press Secretary
January. 18, 2002

DR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL
; AND BOB WOODWARD

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.
Q 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: I--don't know about that.
Q We'd like to start -- I know you have this long list.
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I know I've been a tough
interview. I apologize for that.
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
»i you've had to make, or what were kind of triggered automatically?

000298
 THE WHITE HOUSE
\e 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.
Q 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: I don't know about that.
Q We'd like to start -- I know you have this long list.
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I know I've been a tough
interview. I apologize for that.
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

000298
 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: Well, they're not part of
the —
Q 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

000299
 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? Were they doing --
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: They were the ones moving
people.
^ 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: In the PEOC, or evacuated
from the site to other locations.
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
\, if you've ever been through this. It never does.
> .-)§;*
3 000300
 But you can plan and you exercise, and then when you need it,
you're able to do it.
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
-\-
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.
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Yes. But again, it was-
still 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
\d until later on. Because we've got an incoming aircraft,
*
6 O 030' I
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: I recall him being very
forceful.
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

009302
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.
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
Saturday back in August of '90, around that same table. I've got
o o e > 3 a'S
00030,3
 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 OFFICIAL: It's Laurel.

Q 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?
}
000304
 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: Eleven years.
Q Eleven years. Yes, sir. How -- is there a sense, this
is harder than the Gulf crisis?
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?
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,

000305
 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
1 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. That would help us.
Q Paul Wolfowiiz -- -•- -
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,
I the way to get a broad coalition is to be focused on the World

000306
 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: I've been worn harder than
he has, though.
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.
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 Israeli-
Palestinian problems, the peace process, lack of progress, and

000307
 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. Prosecution rather
than prevention was the phrase we used.
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 --
v Q That we've got task forces here, and we're
i 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.

) 000308
n
 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 lith, 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? I
0003'09
12
 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: I don't recall that.
Q 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?
'I SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I don't disagree with that.

000310
13
 Q What's your reaction to that? I mean, that's the chief
diplomat's argument of --
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: I don't recall that. It's
possible --

000311
14
 Q Any other arguments you made?
i SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Let's see, talked about how
important it was to focus on defense. I don't remember --
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: September 13th?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Right, it's a Saturday, so
I'm at Camp David.
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
\.

000312
15
 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 ISI --
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
\y practical person. And the idea of going this war again,
F

16 000313
 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.
But we did not rely heavily. It was nice, for example, and
valuable, the contributions that were made by the Uzbeks and the
Paks. But to suggest somehow that he would have pulled back or
pursued a less aggressive course without coalition partners, I
don't think so.
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.
"I

000314
17
 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: I don't recall. I mean,
did I say "right on"?
Q Power to the people. (Laughter.)
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: "Great" or "let's go," but
I don't have any specifics.
Q But you were delighted to hear that?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Absolutely.
Q 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
\n decided?
 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.
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 --
Q What was your interpretation of it?
Q When Don asks a question like that, do you --

000316
19
 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: I don't know. Ask him.
You have to talk to him.
Q 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?

000317
20
 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: The main thing was I didn't
want to be in the hall.
Q 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: I have a picture someplace
sitting in this office watching.
Q 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
name bin Laden in the speech. And we asked him about it and he

000318
21
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: Yes, I said you have to
mention bin Laden.
Q 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: Yes, I know him.

Q 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: He is a piece of work.
(Laughter.)
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: Well, he's a can-do guy. I
don't want to blow his cover --
Q 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 --

22
000319
 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 : Here ' s a guy who works at a
stand-up desk. (Laughter.)
Q He was impatient to get the Pentagon to come up with
unconventional ways of going about this, right? I mean, that was
000320
23
 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 —
0 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.
o 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-IVs, 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 ot
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,
s 000321
24
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 2:23 P.M. EST

000322
25