T3 B11 EOP Produced Documents Vol III Fdr- 8-19-02 Bob Woodward Interview of Sr Admin Official- Rice...

8/14/2019 T3 B11 EOP Produced Documents Vol III Fdr- 8-19-02 Bob Woodward Interview of Sr Admin Official- Rice 007

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THE WHITE HOUSEOffice of the Press Secretary

(Crawford, Texas)

A5?R E C E I V E DJUN .7 2 0 0 3

National Commission onInternal Transcript August

INTERVIEW OFSENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL

BY BOB WOODWARD

2:00 P.M. CDT

The Governor ' HouseThe Bush Ranch, Crawford, Texas

Non-Responsive MaterialI can tell you that the business about fi nanci ng terrori sm

had been a part of the broader strategic pictur e for a longtime. They had tri ed all the way back in the Clintonadministration to do something about it. They'd had a lot ofresistence from Treasury. And when --

Q And from Stat e, I think?SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: And from Sta te . Because

it's hard to do. You end up going af ter chari tie s that then saythey're going to sue. And so we'd ac tual ly made some progresson this before this happened.

Q Up to the September 4th plan.SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: That's right. Right. And

- - but then, the President from the very beginning thought thatthis was likely to be one of the fi rst things that you could do.You could sta rt blocking assets.

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


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SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Right. It is a nationalsecurity directive -- an NSPD, National Security PresidentialDirective. It's a comprehensive plan for dealing with allaspects of al Qaeda.

0 Specifically al Qaeda?SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Specifical ly al Qaeda. It

mentions other terrorism, but i t 's very focused on al Qaeda. Itmemoriali zes decisions that had been taken -- that the deputiesrecommended all the way back at the end of April about armingthe Northern All ia nce. The CIA had actual ly begun to try to_dothat work. It had in it considerably more money for the CIA torun their covert --

Q $125 milli on to $200 million.SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL^- I think it went up.

George would h ave to give you the numbers," or I could gi ve youthe numbers. But it went to $200 million. tt had -- it wasbasically a plan to try to either in a short order to get theTaliban to hand them over or start trying t o bring the Tali bandown. Because I think the real vi ew here was you weren't goingto get at al Qaeda wi th out gettin g at .the Taliban and breakingup the sanctuary. So one reason that it was pretty easy th enight of the speech to talk about sanctuary was that that hadbeen a part of the planning.

It had" terrorist finan cing in it and a number of otherthings, but that was the -- so it was a nat ion al security policydirective on a comprehensive strategy to eli min at e al Qaedarather than just roll them back.

So anyway, you should ask the President about this, and hewas th e one who came up wi th the idea of a scorecard that couldkeep everybody understanding what we were achieving and what welearned.

Q The 331 on the watch list, that's kind of a chillingnumber.SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Yes, yes.Q We had talked a little.

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SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: It's post-September llth.I mean, they went back and l ooked at -- I think they increasedth e number of people on the watch l ist post September llth.

Q Were these al Qaeda people maybe in this country orsuspected of being here?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Suspected. Suspected ofhaving terrorist links of any kind. I don't know enough abouthow the watch list was put togeth er, but th at 's a question thatmaybe Dale Watson or somebody could fil l in. But I rememberthinking it was a big number. _

Q Jumps off the page.SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Yes. And, again, that's

something that migh t be worth asking the President about.Q The Putin call, we had talked about. I want to ask

him about it because -- now someone said there was a long Putin-Bush call on September 15th?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: It was not a long call.That was a cal l just, you know, sorry th is happened, if there'sanything we can do to hel p. It was more of a ch eck-in ,condolence ca ll . And it was not very long.

Q Somebody said they th ough t that might be important.SENIOR ADMINISTRATION O FFICI AL: No, it was not -- not avery long cal l at al l . Putin had talked to me on the llth, and

this was a -- just a follow up to that. He'll remember thiscall and I wil l probably try to get the transcript for himbefore you talk to him.

Q That would be great,real surprise for you.

Because he -- I mean, that was a

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFIC IAL: Yes.Q And I want to get his on-th e-record reaction to it.

_ SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Right.

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Q Is this the priorities, those four? Is that a fairdepiction of what the strategy was at that point?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I think the fairerportrayal for the strategy was at that point was actually whatthe President had approved on the 17th, that morning. The maindifference here is that this plan suggested that you try tosplit the Taliban leadership, and people were wil li ng to trythat, but not for very long.

Q And Tenet didn't think that was possible, did he,really? I mean, he was going after -- he was saying, they'rethe same.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Right. But there wasnothing to lose.

Q Next page, Cheney. We have to be willing to deal withthe Russians to that end.

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Now, is that a sig nifi cant transformation from the old coldwarrior who --

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL : I think so.Q Do you know whether the President talked to him aboutthis? Or is that worth asking the President?SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I think it's worth asking

the President. I suspect they didn't talk about it before,because this comes up in - - I remember this comment comes up inthe context of how much we had to deal with the Russians to getto the Central Asians . Because there was some thought that theCentral Asians would be offended by the thought that you had togo through the Russia ns. Remember, this is after the Putinphone call.

And I remember saying myself that, wit h the Uzbeks, thatmight~be true bu t, for inst ance, the Tajiks were thoroughly inthe Russian camp and most of the Central Asians weren't going tomove without the Russians. And Cheney - -

Q But the Uzbeks were the opposite. I mean, ali en ate d.SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: They really were

alienated, that's right.


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Q Where did he learn that or get that?SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: We talked about it a lot.

We t alked about it at Camp David when we, you know, looked atthat God-awful map.Q On the 15th?SENIOR ADMINISTRATION -OFFICIAL: On the 15th, yes. He may

have even -- and we'll look at the transcript -- he ~may haveeven talked to Putin about that. Because Putin said, you know,we have a history wit h Afghanistan; we're not going back there,basically. And I'll look at the transcript.

But he knew t his hist ory of Afghanistan as being very anti-foreigner.

Q Because it seems obvious now, but at the ti me it wasnot necessarily obvious. I mean, cert ainly durin g World War II,we weren't dropping food for the Germans or the Japanese. And -- but,, you know, it bubbled up from someplace, and I want to tryto pinpoint it, if that's possible.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Yes. I mean, this isreally four-score him. This was never discussed in principals,deputies, sub-deputies. This comes really from him.

Q The red cell thing --SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: And we have, by the way,

had briefin gs on -- around this t ime on the poss ibil ity ofdrought-related starvation in different parts of Afghanistan.

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Q And AID brought in maps and so forth and showed in thenorth massive starvation, drought?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Right, exactly.Q The red cell report, I showed you the categories and

so forth. Now, someone said he ordered that up and just a fewdays earlier, maybe at the morning brie fing s, kind of said,well, what are they going to hit?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Yes, he did.Q And very much pushed Tenet, we have to come up with

what are we talking about here.SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Right, he did.

Q And the term -- and Tenet said something about, youknow, it' s a guess, it 's a wag. And someone- said , you know,well, we need the best --

~SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: -- estimate that we couldget, the best thinking that we could get.

Q And it was -- he kind of called out there, I thinkfrom the White House, somebody said at CIA, and said, place yourbets. Do you remember that?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I"don't remember that. Iremember that in the morning briefing, one of the morningbriefings, a few days before this red cell of his, the Presidentsaying, you know, we can't -- basically, we can't chaseeverything. Because the -- what comes through now, reading overyour notes, that I had really kind of fo rgo tte n, was that theseearly days are planning a war in Af gh an is ta n, but it's also alot of concern t hat something else is goi ng to happen on thehome front.

And he - - we didn't yet have a homeland security direct or,so this is all being done by the deputies and by us andprincipals. And the Preside nt I remember saying, we can't chaseeverything, we're going to have to make some bets about wha t'slikely. And I think that's the context of "mak e some bets.'^_

Q Okay, that 's great,full origin of that.

Because then that gives me the

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SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: . But I don't think he --after it was done, I remember it being worked very hard indeputies and worked very hard . Because Steve Hadley had a groupof deputies who was meeting every day, sometimes twice a day.Larry Thompson and Mike Brown and Scooter Libby and those guys.And they put together a pretty comprehensive, off the red cell,here's what you would do. And they were in touch with all thesenuclear power plant s and all those peop le to tell them, youknow, you may have a problem.

Q But in terms of like monume nts and Disney, there isn'tmuch you can do, is there? I mean, ot her peop le kind of said ,you look at this and you realize the whole country is apotential target; is that correct?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Yes. But that's where Ithink the President's thinking about making some bets -- youknow, we knew they liked, spectacular and -s-eary. And somonuments -- yes, maybe they would go aft e r -- oh, there was thethought that entertainment might be a target because fhey wouldhate the kind of enterta inment industry because of the valuesissues and so, yes, so everything was a po te nt ia l target. Butwhat this really was, was an ef for t to begin to corral that anddo some -- to do some things.

Q About the Russians, about $10 million, do you rememberthis?


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SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: You know, we set up for --first of all, the secretaries can call the President any time,and they ought to be able to. Maki ng sure that all theinformation was there in a way that it could inform tTie processis im portant, but what we did was to say that Rums feld had adaily, phone call wi th the President. And I usually sat in onthat phone call.Q When did that start? Because there were some -- therewas some grumbling, and kind of, what's the information channelhere? ~ ~

SENIOR ADMINISTRAT ION OFFICIAL: T hat started -- thatstarted pretty shortly af te r the war started.

Q After October 7th, or after 9/11, or --SENIOR ADMINISTRAT ION OFFICIAL: Well, there was no daily

phone call afte r 9/11, because we were meeti ng all the tim e.There really wasn't a need for one.


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Q In the first month after 9/11 , there was intelligencethat this may lead to Iraq, this may lead to Iran. Andapparently Tenet told the President, when we're all done withthis, we may find Iranian mood m usic, and Iraqi mood music.Have you ever heard that?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFI CIA L: He said something likethat, yes.

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

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Yes.Q And that that was --SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: And that was all he wanted

to say about it. He has a remarkable way of not getting

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distracted or diverted. And there was all kind of stuff in andaround who was responsible and the whole w hite paper thing, andall that. We knew it was al Qaeda. And from that point , that'swhat he was focused on.


Q And before 9/11, one of the really interesting thingsI came acros s, which I wish I had known when I was writ ing forthe paper, because I would have writ ten for the paper, thatthere were 34 instances of chatter picked up in the summer

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before 9/11that were very much like, zero ho ur is coming, theparty starts tomorrow.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: But it was after -- wasn'tit after?

Q A couple of them were translated after, but apparentlystuff that was coming in all summer was --SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: But it was every day,and

so it was not --Q So you can't differentiate.SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: You can't differentiate.Q_ Is that --SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: You can't differentiate.Q Does that sound r igh t, that not lite rall y every day,

but every day or so there would -- or every couple of days therewould be something in the BBB that would say,we heard so andso.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFI CIAL: It was more -- I'm tryingto remember now. There was clearly a lot of chatter, but itdiecl down in late -- mid to late August. It'sreally June andJuly that is lots and lots of chatter. But the only thing youcould connect it to were things abroad. A lot of stuff aboutwhat migh t happen abroad, a lot of embassy concerns, a lot oftroop concerns. And then the only one that was really clear wasGenoa.

Q - That was really --SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: And that was specificQ Very specific.SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIALQ Aimed at the --

Right.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: At the leaders.

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Q And in one of the meet ings the President had withforeign leaders, he said, they're still trying to kill me. AndI have the date and the leader, I'm sorry I didn't bring it.And someone said, there was just a flood of threats directed athim personally.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: A lot of threats directedat him personally.Q Will he talk about that in these --SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Yes, he might. You want

me to add that to the list of things that I prep him for?Q Yes, and see what --SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: What do you want me to --

of those thin gs you want me to ask him jabout --Q Well, I think the ones that -- I mean that one

specifically, about Tony Bl air on the 7th, what was that about,about did -- if he has something to say about the Saudis, butit's not critical, where they're trying to -- where he told oneof the leaders, this is during that perioci, he said, they'restill trying to kill me. We go on. Someone said there wereastronomical number of --


Q It was -- then the other general thing -- I know,there was one thing I wanted to ask you. The NSPD that wassigned on this, October 2 5th, outli ned for the goals, objectivesand strategy for the global war on terrorism. Annex --

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: That was the -- it wasbasically the September 4th document.

Q Annex A is Afghanistan. Annex B is what, worldwide?

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/* SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL:

be a list of other organizations.I think Annex B may just

Q Other terrorists.SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Yes, but I'll check.Q Hezbollah, something like that?SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Right.Q Because that's the one kind of formal document during

this period?SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Yes. _ There are a couple.Q What else?SENIORrADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: There's that. There'salso -- the President -- we did memorialize the President's _

decisions on that September 17th. But i t ' s nothing surprising.Q It's just that list, the CIA meets on the ground.SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Exactly, exactly. " But

this is the -- the genesis of this document, as I said, is thatwe come in, we want to do something more about al Qaeda. And-JDick Clark has this list of things that he thinks might work.Some of them are good ideas, _some of them are not. Th e deputiesstart working them, and the one that we adopted pretty quicklythat he had -- that the Clinton people had decided not to do wasto arm the Northern Alliance. That got done pretty quickly.

Q And that was because the State Department objected?"SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Yes.Q Madeleine, specifically?SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Apparently, apparently,

because they were not very nice people.Q Oh, because of the human rights? Oh, yes.SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: And there were influences,

you know, were the Iranians influencing them. Look, this wasnot a --

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Q Oh, the Iranians were giving them lots of money, aswere the Russians and the Indians.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: So this is not an easydecision. I don't mean to suggest that this was a slam dunk.But Armitage, who was representing State in the Defense "-- inthe deputies did not object, and so he went back, checked withPowell, Powell didn't object, so now the State objection wasremoved. And in April, the deputies told the CIA to go and puttogether an operational plan for arming the Northern Allianceand for several other things. We were going to --

Q There were five of them --SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Righ t, right. Eventually

decided by when not to, that actually they were in pretty goodshape, that the authorities were there, decided about thefunding level that would go irrtro the next budget cycle, put inplace -- the key became Pakistan, and relations with Pakistanand Uzbekistan, because we didn't have any relations withPakistan and Uzbekistan, you know, the kind of non- prol iferatio n

QI think.

CIA had an agreement with Uzbekistan on the Predator,

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Ri gh t.Q Started in mid 2000.SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: But Uzbekistan had been

pushing for more support against the IMU. And aga in , there hadbeen concerns in the Clinton admi nistr ation about Uzbe kista n,and its record. And Pakistan we were isolated from , because ofthe non-proliferation decisions. So another thing that's inthis NSPD is we really have to change the nature of therelationship with Pakistan, we have to start offer ing them somecarrots, not just sticks.

Q ThisSeptember?

is the final one in October, this is the draft in

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION-OFFICIAL: The origin is, this thinggets picked up out of deputies. They put it into a draft NSPDin July. It goes -- it's supposed to go to principals inAugust, but we don't have enough prin cipa ls around, so it goes

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to principals in September. The principals had discussed it acouple times. It goes to principals in September. They signoff on it. It goes on my desk to go to the President forsignature on September 10th.

The document that he signed on October 26th -- whenSeptember llth happened, we pulled it back to look at it, to seeif it was still applicable to what we were going to do, decidedit was still the basic strategy that we wanted to pursue, andit's basically that document that gets signed in on October26th.

Q Twenty fifth. -SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Twenty fifth, right. I

sent a cover not e on top of it, I remember, th at said to theprincipals, this is the document that you signed on September4th. We've now reviewed it, your deputies agree that thisdocument is still relevant_and should guide our policy on thegTbbal war on terrorism. We accelerated several time lines, acouple of things like that, but basically it' s the same documentthat gets signed by the President.

0 And it's called PEARL, it's a code word? What isthat?SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: It's just a compartment.Q Is that still operative, or is that --SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Can't go there.Q Can't go there, okay. I don't want to -- I left it

out of some stories, because of Danny Pearl. I thought we usedthat, and people would look at that and some nut would say, see,they're really -- he really is working for them.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Oh, exactly. Oh, my.Q Is that a coincidence?SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Total coincid ence.Q It was already -- I had it done, I was all set, and

then I looked at that, and I said, wait a minute, because thiswas right --

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Total coincidence, total

w

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL:coincidence.

n Total coincidence, okay. What about -- and this the last thing I want to ask the President and ask you is -- and

s !s critical, to get some not over the top, but realistic'of what each member of the war cabinet has contributed to

him for him in this whole kind of - it's interesting, !t s1 Q'days fro; September llth until December 20th when Dan and Iinterviewed him that first time. And I want to do - this isgoing to be Bush at war, the first 100 days.

- SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I'll ask him.n But that's - what exactly does Powell offer what

does Cheney offer, what do you offer, what does Tenet offer,wh" doL Ldy Card - I -an, he speaks up at these .eatingsoften and will say things like, this isn't clear for thePresent. That's kind of, maybe with some specifics becausesome o? the people who sit in these meetings say, sometimes itlooks like it's two against one, Cheney and Rumsfeld againstPofe 1 Id not a personal, butyou'know, ^they look Jt -riddifferently, they had totally different minds, all three ofthem And I think sometimes Powell complains about that kindof -- not as, you "know, it's awful, but that's the world - isthat -- if I sat there for every one, would it be

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: No, no. It would cross upLore than you might think. Don and the Vice President woulddisagree more than you might think. I can think of one veryimportant specific instance in which Colin and Don were on thesame side and changed the course of something. That was on thewhole Geneva Convention business.

0 Well they were on the same side.SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Yes. Totally misreported.

They were on the same side on that issue, because Don asreflecting the military's longstanding adherence to the GenevaConvention. And it had kind of gotten done in the lawyersgroup.

Q Yes, that's right.SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: And the principals really

hadn't looked at it. And when it came to the principals - sono I don't think you would see that, that lineup.

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Q It wouldn't be --SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Right. The other thing

is, about these principals, is that it's actually sometimes -- Ithink I've said this -- hard to get them to disagree sometimes.

Q Yes, and you seem to get the President out of theroom.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Yes, they will believethat they are agreeing, when they're not. They get into a kindof problem solving mode that can sometimes get in the way ofclarity.

But no, I don't think you would see that if you were a flyon the wall.

Q What I'm more interested in is --SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Is how does he -- yes.Q . What do you -- as I said to you the other day, I not

understand what you do, and soon the world will. But it's not -- it takes some work to, you know, what is the process here.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Yes.


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Q But he had -- Tenet was a product of the Clinton era.Does the President realize that? Because he had a chance to getbin Laden killed, if he was willing to go in and say toPresident Clinton, you know, we can ambush him. We had the --

~those trackers that were going around following him. And therules were, we don't do that. And Tenet never crossed thatdivide in the Clinton era.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I don't, you know, I don'tknow really anything about George's relationships in that periodof time. I know that the President believes, particularly inwar time, that he has to be aggressive, and that he imparts thatto everybody, including to the Agency. And he has -- thePresident has high standards of accountability, but he's nevergoing to cut and rum from somebody because a mistake was made,or because -- and I think that's extremely important.

Q He told Dan and myself that in December. Do youremember when he told people, he said, you go out and make yourdecisions, do the best you can, and if it becomes a crapper,I'll be behind you.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Very early.Q Do you remember that moment, or -- because that's the

biggest blessing an agency or department head can get.SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: It was really very early,

Bob. I don't remember -- it was probably the first NSC, becauseit was -- he did say it to the NSC. He said it to Georgeseparately, but I don't remember exactly when. But it was veryearly, it was very early.

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

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

tremendous threat.SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Yes, they did.Q Put it in context.SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: In context. I mean, a lot

of other things got talked about, too. It was not -- one wouldnot have read from that briefing that this was the number onethreat against the United States. There were a lot of threatsthat were briefed. But this one was briefed.

Q But it wasn't -- it' s like you said, you got a three-hour briefing on North Korea, and one and a half hour onterrorism or al Qaeda.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Right.Q So if I had been there --SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: If you had been there

taking notes, you would have said, wow, this is something you_really need to pay attention to, but you --

Q It's one of five or ten --SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: One of three, I would say.Q One of three, the other two being --SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: WMD and proliferation

concerns, and then actually -- I'm trying to remember if it wasthat briefing -- kind of North Korea, but Chin a, you know, therise of Chinese power.

Q Just thinking in these global terms, aren't they?SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Right, yes. There's a lot

-- but that briefing from had a lot in it. It wasn't --

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Q What was the President's reaction?SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I think by then this was

kind of expected. I don't think there were any really surprisesin that briefi ng that he related to me.

Q No big secrets --SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: No big secrets, right.Q And he then said, I want to speak with Tenet alone, or

something like that. Is that when he asked him to kind of stayon, or --

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: No. In fact, it was --"hedidn't ask him to stay on, he -- some month or so basically saidto George, you know, you're my guy until I tell you that you'renot, but basically everybody _ _ i s my guy until I tell them thatyou're not. So in other words, he was saying to George, you'reno differen t than -- I'm treating you now no di ffer ent ly youthan I'm treating anybody else. I can get rid of any of theseguys any time, including you. I'm not -- you're not onprobation somehow.

Q I see. But he was on probation for a whil e?SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL:

address it.I think he just didn' t

Q It was kind of a tryout.SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Yes, I think he had to get

comfortable with him.Q . The President told people, I'm going to kind of try

him out, and see how it works out.SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Ri gh t, see how he works.


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Q But it's baffling, isn't it? And it's that momentyou're talking about, it's so beau tif ul, it 's got this history,and it' s almost unimaginable that it might go up until youremember September llth.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: September llth, that'sright, and until- you remember that the plane that didn't makeit.

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Q And so, is it possible that the one thing missing inall of this, the one, if there is another a tta ck, particula rly abig one, or th ing s go south in some way, that you will look backand say, the President under-mobilized the country for this,that we should ha ve done more?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I don't think th at thereis more tha t you can do and remain America.

Q You don't? I have one idea somebody men tio ned.Seeing the who le -- we ha ve 11,000 FBI ag ents a nd 180,000Marines. Why not take the people, or some of them, from theMarines, the Navy, who are intelligence experts and securityexperts, and make them TDY to the FBI, and say, now go -- it'sgoing to be clumsy at first, but we're going to send these 200people to National Airport, and we're going to take somebody whois an experienced colonel and put him in cha rge, and beef upsecurity here, jnake it smart.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: You know, we did have theGuard in the airports for a while.

Q But that was a -- that's show. ~.SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I th ink that you have to

try to do this smart. And it'sa fine line. You know a coupleof days after the attack, we started gettin g -- Larry Lindseystarting getting reports that factories in Canada -- or inDetroit couTdn't make cars because fa cto ries in Canada couldn'tget the parts across the border, because we tightened bordersecurity so much. You ha ve to worry a bout the unin tend edconsequences, as well, of going all the way over on the securityside, so that you can't keep commerce moving, and people can'tmove, and people can't travel. You ha ve to accept some risk.But, boy, there's an awful lot that's being done, and an awfullot tha t people are trying to do.

Q Understand that --SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I don't think the country

is under-mobilized.Q You don't?SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: No.

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0 Did you consider further mobilization, furthermeasures?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL:mobilized . For a while we were more

Q Yes, but I mean even more than we were?SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: We tried to do what wethought was smart, what might actually have an impact. And I've

said to Tom Ridge several times, you know, right now we're doinga lot of this by brut force. One day, the technologies willcome along and so forth. But there's only so much you can do.

But people are flat out. The FBI's flat out, theintelligence agencies are flat out. It's --

Q Just as a dis tan t observer of this, I think the onething you could get , if we're hit again , people are going to saywe didn't do enough. It's just like this problem of 9/11. Youknow, who could have -- they say that was the warning sign andwe should have -- could you take 200 Marines with an experiencedintelligence colonel and send them to National Air port and forthem to do something useful?

Because my impression of airport security, it's all brutforce. It's all random. It's not smart. That you have peoplewho are not experienced, but there are colonels who areintelligence offic ers who, yes, they're dealing with tacticalintelligence on a beach, but are smart enough to say, you~nowhave National Airport. You're going to not be in charge butyou're going to help. Go in there. Do the same in the WhiteHouse, do the same in, you know, in the Pentagon.

The Pentagon is so vulnerable still. You go over and dointerviews and you see the planes flying by.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I know. But again , thereis only so much you can do and keep life at a level that isacceptably normal. Nobody -- the best thing that's happened,probably, is that people are so aware. Do you know all thestuff that has been f oiled by people being aware? You know, theReid shoe bomber was just people being aware.

Q Yes. Yes.

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SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: So there's a tremendousamount going on and it will get better over tim e. But youconstantly are trying to balance some sense of normalcy with -


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