NY B9 Farmer Misc- WH 1 of 3 Fdr- 11-29-01 Diane Sawyer-ABC Interview of Cheney 451

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    INTERVIEW OF VICE PRESIDENT CHENEYWITH DIANE SAWYER OF ABC

    November 29, 2001

    ABCNEWS1 DIANE SAWYER Do we have intelligence now that wereally trust? In other words, do we have any intelligencethat is taking us closer to bin Laden?VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY I think so. We're getting a lotof reports now, more than we got before. The volume hasincreased. And some of them conflict, but truly what'shappened is we've narrowed the amount of space insideAfghanistan that he feels safe in.SAWYER Do you believe he's in Tora Bora?CHENEY I think he's still in Afghanistan. I think he'sprobably in that general area.SAWYER Why do you think he's still there?CHENEY Because I think he was equipped to go to groundthere. He's got what he believes to be fairly securefacilities, caves underground. It's an area he's familiarwith. He operated there back during the war against theSoviets in the '80s. He's got a large number of fighterswith him probably, a fairly secure personal security forcethat he has some degree of confidence in, and he'll have to. . . he may-try to leave, that is, he may depart for otherterritory, but that's not quite as easy as it would havebeen a few months ago. Anybody who contemplates providingsanctuary for bin Laden at this point has to keep in mindwhat happened to the Taliban when they did that.SAWYER Have we seen, those infrared sensors showed up a lotof people in any caves?

    CHENEY We followed, with our various intelligence assets,some of it's human reporting, some of it comes from imageryand so forth. We're able to follow groups moving aroundinside Afghanistan to zero in on certain facilities, wherewe've had considerable success hitting particularfacilities where we thought there were leaders of al Qaeda,and we've clearly been able to hit a number of them. But he

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    doesn't travel around with certainly the big banners saying"I'm Osama bin Laden." This is a guy who has gotten verygood at security, who's been through a lot over the yearsin terms of understanding our capability and our strengths,and so he works very hard at preserving his security, andso far he's been successful, although not fully successfulbecause we've gotten so many facilities.SAWYER We'll come back to that in a moment. Does he travelwith enough people that they hole up inside the caves?CHENEY I can't say that. Some of these caves are very deep,go back a very long way, some of them with fairly elaboratestructures, and there are a lot of them, so ... and therehave been times, I'm convinced, where he hasn't been in thecaves, where he's stayed in homes. He's moved around, and ...but it's, you know, if we knew precisely where he was, we'dgo get him. We've got a general idea, and I think, as Isay, the volume of reporting has increased as hiscircumstances have become more difficult.SAWYER Want to give us the square footage on the generalidea?CHENEY No, I can't do that really. I wouldn't want to bethat precise and be misleading.SAWYER Why not just go in and bomb the mouths of all thecaves in that region?CHENEY We have in fact done exactly that in many areas. Wehave had an active campaign under way to take out some ofthese underground facilities.SAWYER You talked about intelligence being more refinednow. What kinds of things have we learned that are new tous?CHENEY I think we can think about intelligence in thisconflict that's different. I think we've done a better jobof tying together all of our platforms of the people on theground. We clearly were very good in the Gulf War withcertain precision-guided munitions, but now we have a muchhigher percentage of our weapons are precision-guidedmunitions. And to use those effectively, you have to haveintelligence on the targets as to actually where they'relocated. We've done a much better job in terms of being

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    able to fly the Predator, for example. This whole area,unmanned area of vehicles, that we can launch, keep up forhours, and have the capacity to intercept various kinds ofsignals as well as getting visual images of what's going onthe ground and carry that by satellite back to remotelocations clear outside the theater, and let us bring tobear assets, call in airstrikes. That kind of capability ismuch more impressive than ever before. This really goes tothe area of tactical intelligence, battlefieldintelligence, and let's us apply it effectively.SAWYER And when you say we've gotten some of his keyoperatives, there was one report that we had anintelligence chief and a communications chief captured.True, not true?CHENEY I haven't been able to confirm that yet. We do infact have reporting of that, but I haven't been able toconfirm it yet.SAWYER And Sheik Rahman, known as the blind sheik, the manwho is imprisoned here in this country and who is allegedlyresponsible for bombing attempts here, we have his son?CHENEY His son. And again SAWYER Yes?CHENEY that report comes from the Northern Alliance. Ithink it's a credible report, but we don't have finalabsolute confirmation on our side yet, but I think it'sprobably fairly credible.SAWYER Well, what will be done with him? Will we ask thathe be CHENEY Well, right now he's being held by the NorthernAlliance. We have been involved. We've got people on theground who are helping interrogate and screen these folksthat are being held. We are obviously interested in peoplethat are part of the al Qaeda network, people who may haveknowledge of where bin Laden is, people who may in facthave knowledge of future terrorist attacks planned againstthe United States, but there are a lot of reasons why wewant to know what they know. And so we've got a processunder way and we've got teams actively involved in tryingto find out as much as we can from the prisoners that are

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    being captured, as well as, for example, going into thesesites where we've found papers, laboratories, evidence of! the kinds of activities that they've been engaged in. All

    of that intelligence is very valuable to us.SAWYER But will you be pushing to bring him here?CHENEY I'm not that concerned about bringing him here. Iwould like to know, obviously I think all of us wouldinvolved in the effort, like to know what he knows aboutthe al Qaeda operation and especially, of course, we'reinterested in people who have knowledge about pendingoperations or plans for future operations. That's veryimportant to us.SAWYER Might he be the first of the military tribunals?CHENEY The president will have to make that decisionclearly. The tribunals have been established. We've gotwork under way in the Justice Department and in the DefenseDepartment to write the rules and regulations that willcover them. The president will make a decision on eachcase, but clearly a high-ranking al Qaeda official captured

    -^ in Afghanistan, who's been involved in the organization isI exactly the kind of individual that the tribunals wereestablished for.

    SAWYER I think a lot of people who have watched you overthe years and who know you have wondered ... and not todebate historically what happened with closed and secrettribunals, and not to debate its international consequenceor anything else, but they simply wonder, as you watch thishappening ... and I think just today there is a report thatwe're now going to use visa leverage in order to get peopleto give up information about people around them, whichagain causes another degree of at least watchfulness amongcivil rights group. Anything at all about this give youpause?CHENEY Well, I think anybody, Diane, who has gone back andlooked at history, and who understands the nature of thethreat we face today and the kind of problem we're all of asudden up against as of Sept. 11 would conclude, as thepresident did, as I have, as the attorney general has, thisis a perfectly reasonable and responsible way to go.Military tribunals are well established in American

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    they were used in the Mexican War, they were used duringthe Civil War by Lincoln and to try Lincoln's assassins,they were used by FDR during World War II.SAWYER But the U.S. has opposed them, for instance, withLori Berenson.CHENEY Well, again, you've got to remember what thepresident specified here. People are not discriminatingbetween the kind of military tribunal that the presidenthad spelled out in his order that he wants established andthe kinds of activities that have taken place elsewhere.The fact of the matter is the president has saidspecifically they will apply to terrorists. It mentions alQaeda, for example, in the area of jurisdiction; secondly,they are not to be Americans. They will be non-U.S.citizens; they will have engaged in or plotted in orprovided support and sustenance for those who planned theterrorist activities against the United States. The peopleassigned to this will be directed by the president. He willmake the decision on each case. They are to be guaranteed afull and fair trial. They are to be granted counsel, andthey are to be handled in a humane way. All of this isspelled out in the executive order. So there is nothingextraordinary or unusual about this given our history. Anda couple of other important points to keep in mind heretoo. If we do business as usual before Sept. 11, clearly,what we were doing was inadequate to guard against the kindof thing that happened at the World Trade Center or thePentagon. We have to be very aggressive if we're going tointercept, if we're going to disrupt,_,xf we're going toprevent future attacks against the United States. We alsoneed to be able to protect and preserve sources ofintelligence. One of the prime reasons for doing this isthat it will allow us to use intelligence information thatwe couldn't use in a regular court proceeding in order tobring these people to justice and, at the same time, beable to protect the sources of information. One of thereasons bin Laden is so good today with his security isbecause he's gone to school on it. He's learned fromprevious leaks, and previous disclosures in the press, andprevious disclosures in trials how we operate, and he thenadjusts his style of operation and we then lose access toinformation about what he's doing. Here, we've got theopportunity, using these military tribunals, giving peoplefull and fair trials, and represented by counsel to proceedto bring them to justice and, at the same time safeguard

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    those very important elements of national securityinformation.SAWYER So you fully, wholeheartedly, without reservationssupport all of this, the visas, all of it?CHENEY Absolutely. Think about the visa thing now. All ofthe terrorists who attacked us on Sept. 11 came in onvisas. They all entered the country legally. Three of themhad overstayed their visas, were in violation at the timeof the attack, but we've been a very generous and very opensociety, and we need to look at our visa system, in termsof seeing whether or not there are things there we can doto tighten up, to make it impossible for terrorists to doto us what they did on Sept. 11. I'm a little bit concernedhere that what happens is we get farther and farther awayfrom Sept. 11, people forget the horror of what occurred onthat day, forget the thousands of men and women andchildren who, innocent Americans, who were killed andslaughtered by these individuals who came to this countrywith one specific purpose in mind, and that was to killAmericans, and we have to guard against that. This is a setof circumstances unlike any we've ever faced. There arehistorical analogies in terms of the authority thepresident is wielding here, but it is perfectly consistentwith past practices. It has been approved by the SupremeCourt. There is every reason in the world why this is anappropriate way to go to deal with the unique circumstanceswe now find ourselves faced with. These people are notgoing to be mistreated. They are going to be treated likethe unlawful combatants that they are.SAWYER You have worked with President Bush, father and son.Give me one difference in the two of them in wartime.CHENEY One difference of the two of them in wartime. Well,they're each ... they're very much separate individuals interms of, I suppose I work with them so closely that I seeenormous differences, and just in terms of their, they arevery much different kinds of individuals.SAWYER What's the big difference?CHENEY Well, President Bush that I work with now is verymuch ... he's very orderly and organized in terms of the wayhe goes about things. He thinks in terms of tasks and

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    assignments, and I suppose it's partly it's his businessschool training and background.SAWYER And the former president?CHENEY I think of Number 41, as we referred to him, theformer president was more oriented toward personalities,for example. He knew all of these people he dealt witharound the world, met them when he was ambassador to theUnited Nations, or when he was representative in China orwhen he was vice president. So he tended to think ofpersonal relationships and grab the telephone and deal withthese individuals. This is just a different style ofoperation. They both did the other thing. President Bushtoday is very good and spends a lot of time on the phonewith the leaders, other world leaders, a great relationshipthat he's developed, for example, with President Putin. Buthe tends to function more as a manager, as an executive,and his father I think was somebody who had these great setof relationships around the world, and they both were veryeffective in their own way.SAWYER President Bush has now said that when he said wanteddead or alive, Mrs. Bush not only winced, but basicallywent up to him and said, "Bushie, are you going to gethim?" And backed him off. Did you wince?CHENEY No, I didn't wince. I think that was appropriate.SAWYER Has Mrs. Cheney ever came up to you yes?CHENEY She has.SAWYER And what does she say? What did she come up to you CHENEY Well, this is a relationship that goes back some 37years now, and there have been occasions too numerous tocount when I received good advice from my bride about whatI should and shouldn't say.SAWYER You won't give us one?CHENEY No, I won't give one.SAWYER I guess we'll have to call her.CHENEY All right. 000141

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    SAWYER I want to ask one quick question about this. As youknow, people are fascinated and they certainly understandthe security precautions, but they are fascinated with thisidea of you going into what is colloquially called thecave.CHENEY The cave, yeah.SAWYER Especially when the president said earlier this weekthe two of you had breakfasttogether, it was like everyone went CHENEY Oh my gosh.SAWYER They were together in the same room.CHENEY Right.SAWYER I know this sounds like - like I don't know - RobinLeach or something, or one of those magazines, but we'rejust trying to get a visual sense of what it's like whenyou're there. Are there places to sleep? Are there somebody said to me, "Does Mrs. Cheney come there?" I mean,people are imagining you in some CHENEY [Inaudible]SAWYER Some Quonset hut someplace.CHENEY Well, it's ... first of all, the reason for it is,given the nature of the threat we're faced with now - itused to be that presidential security, the concern was overa nut with a gun, an individual act that was aimed at thepresident. Now we're faced with a situation where thegovernment itself may be the target, the White House, as wethink probably was the case on September the llth. And interms of our responsibility for the continuity ofgovernment, to ensure the succession of the presidency, webelieve that we need to spend a certain amount of time notin the same location, at different locations. That's reallywhat it's about. When the president's on the road, I'musually in the White House. When he's in the White House,I'm usually at the place, sometimes it's traveling.Sometimes it's just what we describe as our nondisclosedsecure location.

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    SAWYER And how should we imagine it? What should we CHENEY Well, you should think of it as a facility wherethere is a high degree of personal security, where thereare good communications, where I'm able to go on and do mywork. I always have my staff with me, a portion of it. Wedivide up the duties so they don't have to go all the time.They've got other responsibilities, families and so forth.But where I'm in constant touch with the White House, haveseveral video conferences a day with my own staff, withNSC, or Connie Rice, Colin Powell, Don Rumsfeld, and withthe president. We always begin every day with the samesequence of meetings. If we're both in the White House wedo them together in the Oval Office. If we're separated, wedo them over the video conference. So it's - it works verywell. Everybody's adjusted to it.SAWYER You just spend the night there comfortably?CHENEY Sure, oh yeah. And the main purpose of it is againto make certain that we don't allow ourselves into asituation where we both could become a target. That doesn'tmean we will always be apart, but it does mean that onthose occasions when we do get together, we don't announceit. So it's more a matter of being unpredictable.SAWYER And when will you know when to stop doing this, whenit's OK to stop doing this?CHENEY We still have sufficient concerns about the threatto the United States that it's very important that wecontinue to be cautious and exercise due regard for thesuccession of the presidency. The Ramadan, for example, isa period that we're in the midst of right now, that hasspecial significance in the Muslim world.SAWYER Do you envision it for the rest of the presidency?CHENEY I can't predict that. I didn't envision Sept. 11. Wedo know that Osama bin Laden and his organization havesought to acquire nuclear weapons, that they were trying toacquire biological and chemical weapons. We know that theyhave already launched very serious attacks against theUnited States and may well do so again. It's entirelypossible, assuming we're successful at getting bin Laden,that the al Qaeda network, an organization would still bein place. They're in some 50 or 60 countries around the

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    world. And it may be some considerable period of time here^--, before we can relax and say that there's no longer a threat^] to the United States.

    SAWYER Well, I'm going to sit this down in just a minute,but I've got to ask, do you watch Saturday Night Live?CHENEY I do.

    SAWYER Do you really?CHENEY I &L#051; but actually what happens is I usuallyfall asleep before it comes on, because I tend up early andgo to bed early, but SAWYER Do you have a favorite?CHENEY I loved the one where I was in the cave in Kandahar,Afghanistan. I thought that was superb. I enjoyed the showvery much, and he's got it down. He's doing pretty well.He's not there yet, but he's doing well in terms of hisimpersonations.

    , . SAWYER You mean the bionic heart, the whole thing?*)_ CHENEY The bionic heart, the coffee maker and where he was

    in effect a one-man Afghani wrecking crew, as I recall. Ithought it was pretty good.SAWYER And speaking of hearts, how are you feeling?CHENEY Good."SAWYER And do people does your staff bring you the Cheneyjokes of the day?CHENEY And if they don't, my daughters do.SAWYER Do they really?CHENEY Sure.SAWYER Do you have a personal favorite?CHENEY Well, the tape of the Saturday Night Live.

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    CHENEY That's the main one that comes to mind. I thinkthere ' s a bunch .SAWYER Saddam. As we know, the president just saidbasically that there will be consequences if he does notlet the United Nations, the UNSCOM group in to inspect. Hisanswer is we will not permit it. Going on, an Iraqispokesman said anyone who thinks Iraq can accept an, anarrogant and unilateral will of this party or that ismistaken. So the lines have been drawn, and the Germans, atthe very least, have said wait a minute, don't go there,and the exact quote I believe for the foreign minister is:"All European nations would view a widening of the conflictwith greater skepticism and that ' s putting itdiplomatically." My question is will the United States goin and blast Saddam Hussein if he does not let inspectiongroups in, and will we do it alone, and so what is the restof the allies say no?CHENEY The president was very clear, the other day, Diane,when he was asked about Saddam, that we believe he shouldin fact allow inspectors back in. That's what the U.N.Security Council has called for. He kicked 'em out aboutthree years ago. The Clinton administration basicallydidn't respond at that point. There's several things tokeep in mind about Iraq and about the Iraqis. We know thathe was developing nuclear weapons, and that in 1981, forexample, when the Israelis struck the Osirik [ph] reactorthey dealt a major blow to his program. We know, in 1991,at the time of the_Gulf War, that he also was gettingclose, once again, to acquiring nuclear weapons. We know hehas developed biological and chemical agents. He's usedthem, not only on his own people but also on the Iraniansduring the Iran-Iraq War. That thousands and thousands ofpeople have died at the hands of Saddam Hussein and hisweapons of mass destruction already. That's history.There's every reason to believe, since he kicked out theinspectors, that he did that specifically because he wantedto develop further his capabilities in this area, so-calledbiological, chemical agents and nuclear weapons. The reasonthose inspectors were called for in the first place, and heagreed to them at the end of the Gulf War, that was one ofthe conditions for moving forward, was to make certain, toreassure the world that he was not developing these kindsof capabilities again. Now I don't think it takes a geniusto figure out that this guy is clearly, continues to be a

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    significant potential problem for the region, for theUnited States, for everybody with, with interests in thearea, and for the president to say that he thinks thoseinspectors should be readmitted, I think is a perfectlyreasonable policy statement for him to make.SAWYER And will we go in and blast them alone CHENEY I would not, I would not want to speculate on, onwhat the future might hold, but we do think that theappropriate thing for him to do is to comply with the U.N.Security Council resolutions, and allow those inspectors tocome back in.SAWYER And will allies' reservations stop us from doinganything?CHENEY I, I will simply leave it where it's at. Thepresident's made it clear what U.S. policy is on, in thisregard, and we'll continue to work with our friends in theregion and with our allies and with members of thecoalition to address not only those problems, but othersthat are bound to arise as well.SAWYER I want to play a tape of something you said, and I

    i f f want to make sure that I get to, to the economy and onequestion on Congress. But you, in talking about theintelligence and the ability to refine it, I think a lot ofpeople wonder what it means, now, in terms of the highstate of alert we're supposed to be on in terms ofAmerica's safety. And I there are so many people who havesaid to me, I remember when the vice president saidsomething that made me stop and think, "Oh, no, Iunderstand where we are now, " and I'm just gonna play itfor you, if I can work the machine, which of course isnever certain with me.SAWYER As I say, it was a moment that made so many peoplestop and think and pause. Ifthere were one thing you could say, right now, to Americansabout this future of casualties, here at home, andoverseas, what would it be?CHENEY Well, that we're doing everything we can both tosort of harden the target here at home, to make it tougherfor the terrorist who comes to launch an attack against the

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    United States, and military tribunals are a part of that, atougher visa system is a part of that.SAWYER And does the intelligence enable us to make adistinction now between what is a real threat and what is athreat we've got to worry about, even though we can'tconfirm it?CHENEY Intelligence is, is fuzzy. Sometimes it's fairlyprecise; sometimes it's a threat focused overseas,sometimes here. It's never, almost never the kind that saidon, you know, on Jan. 13, at 4 o'clock in the afternoon, atthe corner of Constitution Avenue and 8th Street inWashington, D.C., the following will happen. It's never,never that precise. But our intelligence is, is good, itmay not be perfect, though, and I guess the other, the keyrequirement and, and the best response I can give to peoplewho are legitimately concerned is that a good offense isthe best defense. That at the heart of our success, interms of being able to avoid further attacks against theUnited States is to go get the "bad guys," for us to go,aggressively take down the al Qaeda network, wrap up Osamabin Laden and punish those states that provide sanctuary toterrorists, on the grounds that they are just as guilty ofthose acts as are the terrorists themselves. So anaggressive U.S. posture overseas I think is exactly theright place to be and as well as doing everything we canhere, at home, to, to make it tougher for the terrorists tooperate in our society.SAWYER But It's been a while since we'.ve had one of thoseheightened state of alert. Everybody should keep your eyespeeled at every second. It's been a while.CHENEY Well, you ... these are difficult calls to make interms of when you tell everybody, you know, let's ...everybody be concerned because we've got a new threat, andyou want people to focus on it. You don't want to do thatso often that it becomes routine, that people don't focuson it when it happens. Hopefully people are still very muchaware that the world changed on Sept. 11, that we arevulnerable as a society, that we do need to be aware ofwhat's going on around us, that we do need to reportsuspicious people to the proper authorities, and I thinkwe're getting much more of that than we have before.

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    SAWYER But have there been events where you thought aboutgoing out and saying that and decided, no, in this case CHENEY Now we've had, we've never really come down off thealert, in a sense, at least from our perspective. We put itout there and, and it needs to continue to be there. Nowwhat you get is this continued sort of sequence ofreporting. A lot of it never comes to pass. Sometimes it's,it's phony. People do it for whatever reason. Sometimesit's a disgruntled spouse makes a charge against a husband.That in fact happened within the last couple of months.Sometimes it's somebody who's looking for something andtrying to gain money, you know, by selling information. Werun all of these to ground, lots of them turn out to befalse, but some of them obviously are true. Sometimesthey'll specify a particular period of time whensomething's expected to happen, and because of actionswe've taken, because we have gotten very aggressive withlaw enforcement, because we are out there rounding upsuspects and holding people for questioning and so forth,we're able to disrupt the operations, so they're, they'renot able to carry through on, on their plans. But we haveto very much keep in mind that this, this is not, by anymeans, ended. As well as things have gone in Afghanistan,it's just the beginning. We really have a large worldwidenetwork of thousands of those terrorists who have gonethrough those training camps who have been taught all kindsof practices that are potentially damaging to the UnitedStates, and you'll find them in Malaysia, and Indonesia,and throughout the Middle East, and Europe, and we had someobviously here in the United States. ._SAWYER Holiday season particularly more frightening or it'sthe same?CHENEY I don't know. I can't - I'd like to be able to sayto everybody that you can relax at 3 o'clock next Tuesday.I can't say that. We continue to do everything we can tosafeguard against another attack, but people do have toremain alert, they do have to be sensitive to what's goingon around them and use caution.SAWYER On the economy, 400,000 jobs lost, the biggest in 22years, I think I read. If you're just talking to them, withwhat percentage of certainty can you say to them, if youget your economic stimulus package that this economy willturn around by when?

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    CHENEY I think, based on the economists I talk with, youhave to recognize the source of the information, but wefully expect to recover next year. We had a slowdown ofagain about a year ago, last September of 2000, that tippedover into a recession in March of this year, now, accordingto the experts and was dealt a severe blow by the events ofSept. 11. But I think we are on the way to recovery. We'rebeginning to see signs of that. The unemployment claims andso forth have dropped off, our first week unemploymentclaims. There's some anecdotal evidence out there thatthings are beginning to turn around. But I think thestimulus package is essential. What the president has askedfor is the kind of relief that will stimulate investment, .and growth, and the creation of new jobs, and we thinkthat's vital. We need to take care of those people who havebeen laid off through unemployment compensation, perhapsextending, adding additional weeks during which they candraw benefits and doing some of those things .as well too.But I'm confident the U.S. economy is the strongest in theworld. It's a remarkable, resilient entity, and we aregoing to do very, very well in the future, but we've got toget through these next few months, and the best way to dothat is with the stimulus package the president has askedfor, and the House has passed. Congress needs to act. Thereis work under way between the Senate and the Houseleadership. The president and I had breakfast with some ofthe members yesterday, and hopefully they can get a processput in place that will give[?] us results [?].SAWYER Do you want to light a fire under them? Are youfrustrated?CHENEY I am, but I'm also I've learned over the yearsthat in the midst of delicate negotiations, probably not agood time to strike a match.SAWYER And are you willing to leave the second, thirdleadership behind? Are you willing to leave Armey and DeLaybehind if they stick to the corporate tax cut that thepresident wants?CHENEY They'll be very much a part of the discussions andnegotiations. I think the bill that the House passed is apretty good bill. It's embodied a lot of what we asked for,and I think, in the end, if it's going to fly, it's goingto require a coming together of both House and Senate, both

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    parties' leadership on both sides if we're going to get agood bill.SAWYER I know I have to let you go, but I've got onequestion that occurred to me. It's such a silly question,but I'm going to ask it anyway. So Mrs. Bush calls him"Bushie." Is she the only one who calls him Bushie? Justchecking.CHENEY She is the only one who would, would use that term.I've never heard it used by anybody else, and I think forgood reason. The president responds very favorably whenLaura refers to him in those terms, but the rest of uswould not use that phrase, I don't believe.SAWYER And what does Mrs. Cheney call you?CHENEY I'll never tell.SAWYER Fair enough. As we head into the Christmas season,just thinking about you and Christmas, is there a song,carol you love the most? Is there something that most meansChristmas to you?CHENEY When I think of Christmas, I think of home, inWyoming, the mountains, a family practice for years that wego to Jackson Hole where we have a home, and the familycomes together. We ski, we spend several days together, andthat's it's the Wyoming Christmas I guess that's alwaysforemost in my mind when I think about that time of year.SAWYER Dreaming of the horizon way out there.CHENEY Well, the mountains. We're at the foot of theTetons, and it's the prettiest valley in the world, and weget to spend Christmas there, so that's always a veryspecial time for the family.SAWYER Thank you, Mr. Vice President.

    CHENEY Thank you, Diane.

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