Richard Clarke (misspelled in transcript) was the Bush administration's cybersecurity coordinator: http://news.com.com/2010-1071-993594.html He was Clinton's counter-terrorism coordinator but demoted under Bush to just cybersecurity. Here's what Clarke is doing now (and of course he has a new book out): http://ksgnotes1.harvard.edu/degreeprog/courses.nsf/aba163361f7adf748525676600686c40/0b4023202c0b1f8f85256e06000af9ee?OpenDocument http://ksgnotes1.harvard.edu/degreeprog/courses.nsf/0/4548cb72b5f5d6c985256e06000afe33?OpenDocument&ExpandSection=1 -Declan --- THE WHITE HOUSE Office of the Press Secretary _____________________________________________________________________ EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE At 8:00 p.m. EST March 21, 2004 INTERVIEW OF DEPUTY NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR STEVE HADLEY BY LESLIE STAHL, CBS, "60 MINUTES" EEOB Studio March 19, 2004 8:17 A.M. EST Q How would you describe the President's handling of the war on terrorism since 9/11? MR. HADLEY: He's obviously made the war on terrorism the centerpiece, or a centerpiece of his foreign policy. I think his great insight was really twofold: one, the notion that we had to not only take the war to the terrorists, you had to button-up and defend the homeland, but you needed to go on offense, you needed to take the war on terrorism to the enemy, to al Qaeda. And second of all, we needed to eliminate the safe havens for al Qaeda. And that's why it was so important when he said that if you harbor a terrorist, you'll be treated as a terrorist. And so it's been a combination of taking the war to the enemy and hardening up the United States. Q Dick Clark, he was the administration's top official on counter-terrorism -- in the Clinton years he was a terrorism czar. How would you describe the job he did? And him, personally, too? MR. HADLEY: Look, Dick is very dedicated, very knowledgeable about this issue. When the President came into office, one of the decisions we made was to keep Mr. Clark and his counter-terrorism group intact, bring them into the new administration -- a really unprecedented decision, very unusual when there has been a transition that involves a change of party. We did that because we knew al Qaeda was a priority, that there was a risk that we would be attacked and we wanted an experienced team to try and identify the risk, take actions to disrupt the terrorists -- and if an event, an attack were to succeed, to be an experienced crisis management team to support the President. Q Now, of course, Clinton held him over -- he came in with Reagan, stayed with the first Bush administration. Clinton kept him over, and then this President Bush kept him over. So I'm assuming -- you tell me -- that he was doing a good job? MR. HADLEY: He did. One of the things, though, we did was to give him some new guidance, and we actually asked Mr. Clark and his team to do two things. One, to continue to pursue aggressively the policy we inherited, to use all the existing authorities and resources we had to identify risks of terrorist attack, disrupt those potential attacks. So we asked him to continue to move aggressively against al Qaeda, but we also at the same time asked him to develop a more aggressive strategy against al Qaeda -- a strategy that was intended not just to roll back al Qaeda, but to eliminate al Qaeda as a threat to the United States; not simply to confine al Qaeda in its sanctuary in Afghanistan, but actually to end that sanctuary as part of the President's desire to take the fight to the enemy. So we asked him to do two things: continue to move aggressively using existing authorities and capabilities, but also to develop a new strategy that would eliminate this threat. Q Well, one of the major thrusts of Dick Clark's book is that despite his warnings -- repeatedly, from day one of the Bush administration -- of the al Qaeda threat, despite warnings from the CIA Director Tenet directly to the President, and Dick's warnings to your NSC staff and other senior officials, the President did not put terrorism and al Qaeda at the top of his list of priorities -- other things were ahead of it. MR. HADLEY: That's just not true. The President heard those warnings; the President met daily with his chief of intelligence, the Director of Central Intelligence, George Tenet and his staff; he heard through Mr. Tenet and tracked closely the intelligence we had on al Qaeda and the potential threat that al Qaeda posed. He also -- very early on Dr. Rice directed that Mr. Clark and his team prepare the more aggressive strategy that I talked about. And the President followed that work through Dr. Rice. He really wanted his senior people -- his senior intelligence official, his senior foreign policy advisor --personally engaged. Tenet was to run the intelligence side, Dr. Rice was to run the policy side, and they kept him fully informed. And at one point, the President became somewhat impatient with us, he said, I'm tired of swatting flies, where is my new strategy to eliminate al Qaeda. So the President was informed ?- Q When was that? Do you remember? MR. HADLEY: It was probably April or May of 2000 [sic]. We had told him -- Dr. Rice had told the President that, we are pursuing a more aggressive strategy, and he wanted to see it and he wanted us to get on with it. So he was informed, he was pushing us; al Qaeda was an important priority; the war on terror was an important priority from the very beginning of the administration. Q In the book, Dick Clark says that on January 24, 2001, four days after the inauguration, he sent a memo to your boss, Condoleezza Rice -- I'm sure you saw it -- asking for a high-level, Cabinet-level meeting to elevate everybody's alertness on the threat of al Qaeda. And he asked for that meeting repeatedly. He felt having that high-level meeting was important to get everybody's sense of awareness up. And he didn't get the meeting for nine months, and that that was an indication of where all of this was on the President's list of priorities. He said missile defense was ahead of it, other Cold War issues were ahead of it. MR. HADLEY: Mr. Clark and his team had already succeeded in elevating the concern about al Qaeda. All the National Security Council principals -- Secretary of Defense, Secretary of State, National Security Advisor -- all had extensive briefings on al Qaeda, some from Mr. Clark, some from the intelligence community, before they came into office. The President, from his first day in office, was meeting with his Director of Central Intelligence, getting intelligence briefings on terrorism and al Qaeda. So the threat was already raised. Q Well, what about the Cabinet -- MR. HADLEY: What Dick wanted was a Cabinet meeting, a meeting of the principals to launch a study. We didn't need a meeting of the principals to launch a study and develop a new strategy. Condi -- Dr. Rice directed that in the first week of the administration. Q He says not a study, he says he wanted to make all the relevant Cabinet heads conscious, aware, alert, so that if anything was happening at the lower levels it would bubble up because the senior person was going back and saying, I care about this. MR. HADLEY: They were aware. They were alert. They were sending the message that they did care. They directed that a strategy -- not a study -- be made, a strategy be developed that would eliminate al Qaeda. They turned to their deputies, the number two person in each agency -- Paul Wolfowitz for Defense, Rich Armitage for State, John McLaughlin for DCI -- they invested with those people to develop this more aggressive strategy. These were people who reported daily to the Cabinet officials -- that way they were aware, and we were aware, that the strategy we developed was consistent with the principals. So they were engaged. The President was informed. The President was aware through Dr. Rice of the strategy development that was going on. And to the extent we got guidance from him, it was, hurry up, this is a priority, get it done. Q He writes in the book that over the summer -- June, July and August -- he writes that over the summer -- June, July, August of 2001 -- there was intelligence chatter that something big was going to happen against a U.S. target. So this is leading up to 9/11. And he still says in the book that he could not get the President and other senior people to focus on this. In the Clinton years when there was this kind of chatter, the President directed everyone -- as Dick says -- to the battle stations. And that meant that whatever was going on at the lower levels was going to bubble up. But because President Bush didn't direct everybody to the battle stations when the chatter came up then, things that were down in the bowels of the Departments -- at the FBI, at the CIA -- did not bubble up. MR. HADLEY: We were at battle stations in the summer. There was intelligence reporting. It was not intelligence reporting on an attack on the United States, interestingly enough. All the chatter was of an attack, a potential al Qaeda attack overseas. There was virtually no intelligence of a specific threat to the homeland. And so all our attention during that time period was directed overseas. We were at battle stations. But, interestingly enough, the President got concerned about whether there was the possibility of an attack on the homeland. And he asked the intelligence community, look hard, see if we're missing something about a threat to the homeland. And, in addition, Dr. Rice, after talking to the President, came back in that summer period and directed Mr. Clark to pull together all the domestic agencies to make sure that we were prepared in the event that, despite the absence of an intelligence warning, there was the likelihood of an attack on the homeland. And at that point, various alerts went out, from the Federal Aviation Administration to the FBI, saying, the intelligence suggests a threat overseas, we don't want to be caught unprepared, we don't want to rule out the possibility of a threat to the homeland and, therefore, preparatory steps need to be made. So the President put us on battle stations. He worked through Dr. Rice, who was in daily phone conversations with her colleagues -- Secretary Powell, Secretary Rumsfeld, Director Tenet -- and she was giving guidance to Dick Clark as to what we needed to do in that period. Q Now, he's the top terrorism official in this administration at that point. He says you didn't go to battle stations. He says you didn't. In fact, it's a big criticism in the book. MR. HADLEY: Well, I think that's just wrong. And the interesting thing about it is that he was being given guidance and direction, he was very active during that period. The President -- Q No, he says that, but he says -- he says he was active and he did the very things you say, but he says you didn't go to battle stations and it's a big criticism in the book. MR. HADLEY: I don't know what more we could have done in that period of time. We were getting the intelligence, we were directing the intelligence agencies to try and identify threats not only overseas, here at home. A series of actions was taken to prepare our forces overseas for a potential attack, to lock down our embassies, to give warnings to Americans overseas about the risk of attack, and, again, the steps that, actually, Dr. Rice directed in consultation with the President to try and increase our preparedness here at home. So I just -- I can't -- Q He says -- MR. HADLEY: -- for every perception we have, we were at battle stations trying to prepare for the possibility of an attack. Q He says battle stations means the Cabinet meets every day on that issue -- that's what Clinton did and he says that's what should have been done. MR. HADLEY: In some sense, it was better, because Dr. Rice was on the phone, not just every day but, if necessary, every hour with his Cabinet -- with her Cabinet officials that are on the National Security Council. You know, one of the problems is you don't want to substitute -- Q With the Cabinet-level? MR. HADLEY: -- you don't want to substitute meetings for action. And in that phase, we were in an active mode, taking intelligence, reacting to intelligence; giving direction to the State Department to do things overseas with embassies, to the Defense Department to do things overseas with forces. We didn't need formal meetings, we had a mechanism for action. And that was -- Dr. Rice was the coordinator on the policy side, she was in real-time communication with Secretary Powell, Secretary Rumsfeld; and George Tenet was working the issue hard on the intelligence side. Remember, this is a President who manages through his line managers, through those individuals who the Congress of the United States has confirmed to be responsible for state, defense and intelligence. The National Security Council staff is a staff function. But these are the line managers that are responsible for doing the things necessary to defend the country, and Dr. Rice, at the President's direction, was working directly with them in real-time during this period of the summer. Q Okay, now we go up to 9/11, we've had the tragic attack. Dick Clark says that one day later, 9/12, the President pulls him aside and says, I want you to go find this link between 9/11 and Iraq. And according to the book, Dick Clark says, there isn't a link. And the President, in effect, says, go out, look again and find one. MR. HADLEY: Well, we've tried to find evidence of an incident that would meet the description of Mr. Clark and so far, quite frankly, I haven't seen it. Let me put in -- Q Well, it was just a communication between the two, according to the book. MR. HADLEY: I'm not sure that that happened. The point, I think, is that of course the President was trying to find out who caused 9/11, that's what you would expect him to do. And he couldn't rule out the possibility that it might have been Iraq, and he asked for the intelligence that we had on a possible link between Iraq and 9/11. On or about the 15th of September, the President convened his Cabinet ministers out at Camp David. And the question on the table was what to do in response to the 9/11 attack. And at that time, the President was advised that there was no intelligence that would link Iraq to the 9/11 attack. And at that meeting, therefore, despite suggestions from some that Iraq might be a target of response to 9/11, the President decided that he was not going to do that -- he was going to focus on al Qaeda, and he was going to focus on Afghanistan. And he made that judgment because, in part, there was no evidence linking Iraq to 9/11. Subsequent to that -- Q Yes, but -- MR. HADLEY: -- over the subsequent weeks, we obviously wanted to make sure that there was no late emerging evidence that would link al Qaeda with the 9/11 attacks -- sorry, the 9/11 attack with Iraq. And the reason we did that, of course, was because if some evidence emerged that Iraq was behind the 9/11 attack, then that might change the decision that the President made, which was not to take action against Iraq. So we were worried about, and watching to make sure that our intelligence judgment is right, so that the policy decision that the President made, based on that intelligence, didn't need to be re-looked at. And in those subsequent weeks, no evidence emerged linking Iraq to 9/11, and therefore the President stood by his decision. The response to 9/11 was going to be against al Qaeda and to eliminate the sanctuary of al Qaeda in Afghanistan. Q Okay, let's go back and do a little parsing out. According to Dick Clark, when the President asked him to go look at it again, the link between 9/11 and Iraq, Clark said, we've already looked at it and there is no link; we've done that. And the President, according to Dick, was kind of angry, and according to Dick, in effect said, go find me the link; that's the wrong answer. And then he says he sent a memo again, after he did look again, saying, there is no link. And you bounced the memo back to him that said, in effect -- these may not be the exact words, but in effect -- that's the wrong answer, that there's no link; look yet again. MR. HADLEY: That's just not true, just not true. First, we cannot find evidence that this conversation between Mr. Clark and the President ever occurred. Q Now can I interrupt you for one second? We have done our own work on that, ourselves. And we have two sources who tell us, independently of Dick Clark, that there was this encounter. One of them was an actual witness. MR. HADLEY: I stand on what I said. A notion that the President met with Mr. Clark in the Situation Room on September 12th, I just can't confirm that by what we know about the President's movements that night. But the point I think we're missing in this is, of course the President wanted to know if there was any evidence linking Iraq to 9/11. The President could not rule out any potential source, wanted the best intelligence he can -- he could get to find out who was responsible for this terrible act. On September 15th at Camp David he gets a report. Everything indicates it's al Qaeda, nothing indicates it's Iraq. And he takes a decision on that point not to go after Iraq. The response to 9/11 is going to be al Qaeda and Afghanistan. And off course, after that, when Dick Clark comes forward with a memo, saying there is no link, which is what the President had already been told, I asked him to go back -- not, wrong answer, I asked him to go back and check it again, a week or two later, to make sure there was no new emerging evidence. Because it would have been unfortunate, indeed, if the President had said, we're not going to go after Iraq as a result of 9/11, we're only going to go after Afghanistan, and two weeks later evidence emerged that Iraq was involved. That's what I was asking him to do, to make sure. This is not a trivial decision, to use military force a country -- against a country on the basis that they're responsible for 9/11. You don't want to be wrong. Q Here's the -- here's what's in Dick's book, as you read it -- that the administration did decide to go into Afghanistan, but they wanted to go to Iraq as the second step, and they were almost desperate to get some evidence so that they could do Iraq, because that's what they wanted to do. MR. HADLEY: That's just not true, that's just not true. Were we concerned about Iraq during -- once the administration came into office? Of course we were. Iraq had been a problem for 12 years, it had been the subject of 16 resolutions, it was under a sanctions regime that was falling apart, it was shooting at our pilots. Of course we were concerned about Iraq and needed an Iraq strategy. But 9/11, the evidence was that Iraq was not involved, and, therefore, the President was focused on Afghanistan, focused on al Qaeda. And as you recall, activities with respect to Iraq don't occur until over a year later. Q But of course the impression, the impression that the President gave and other officials gave, the impression was that there was a link. MR. HADLEY: I don't agree with that. I don't think he gave that impression. Obviously, what the President talked about was a link between Iraq and al Qaeda -- Q Which he always mentioned right in conjunction with 9/11. MR. HADLEY: -- and that is true. That is true, there was a link. Q Well, he'd be talking about 9/11, and then he would say, Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. And that link has never been proved. MR. HADLEY: Sure. Because we learned something about -- from 9/11. We learned on 9/11 the United States was vulnerable to attack by terrorist groups. We also learned from 9/11 that al Qaeda, in Afghanistan, was looking and trying to acquire weapons of mass destruction. And that put us on notice of a real serious danger, of countries like Iraq, which were both involved in supporting terror and seeking weapons of mass destruction. And the concern that a place like Iraq would be the location where those two things would come together, terrorists and weapons of mass destruction, which would make the potential damage -- which would make the actual damage of 9/11 pale in comparison. So what 9/11 taught us was -- taught the President, was that he needed to deal with states like Iraq, Iran and North Korea, where there was a coincidence of support for terror and efforts to get weapons of mass destruction. And so that became an agenda for the President, and you can -- as you know, we have pursued different but aggressive policies with respect to all three. Because 9/11 awakened us to the danger that those situations could present. That's the link between 9/11 and Iraq. Q A major part of Dick Clark's criticism is that by going into Iraq, the President and the administration distracted themselves from the war on terrorism and al Qaeda, took resources away, and actually, he says, hurt the war on terrorism. And it's a huge point in his book. MR. HADLEY: It's not correct. Iraq, as the President has said, is at the center in the war on terror. What's the war on terror about? It's really about three things. It's going after the terrorists, disrupting their operations, capturing and killing those who are involved in terror. That's step one. Step two is denying them the sanctuaries from which they acquire funds, acquire recruits and train them. And, three, it is to change the environment in the Middle East, which at this point makes it a good recruiting ground for terror. Iraq makes a contribution to all three. It was a potential, because of its support for terror and because of its efforts to get weapons of mass destruction, it was a potential source of weapons of mass destruction for terrorists. That has been eliminated. There were terrorists involved in Iraq, supported by Iraq. Zarqawi, which we hear a lot about now, was active in Iraq before we took military action there. We have narrowed the ground available to al Qaeda and to the terrorists. Their sanctuary in Afghanistan is gone, their sanctuary in Iraq is gone. Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are now allies on the war on terror. So Iraq has contributed in that way to narrowing the sanctuaries available to terrorists. And, finally, if we can help the Iraqi people build a free, democratic society in Iraq, that will be an example for the region and the Middle East and will support those in the Middle East who want to bring democracy and freedom to their own societies. And it's democracy and freedom, and the hope and optimism that that will bring that is the real long-term solution to the situation of despair, which makes the Middle East, in some sense, a breeding ground for terror. So Iraq is central to the war on terror. Q In the book, Dick Clark says that the administration botched the response to Afghanistan, that you didn't go in soon enough and you didn't put enough muscle in. MR. HADLEY: Nine-eleven occurred. Within a month, we were engaged in Afghanistan. And six weeks thereafter, Afghanistan had been liberated from the Taliban. That's no mean feat. We did it by making common cause with the tribal organizations in Afghanistan and convincing the Afghan people that we were the liberators, and that the real outsiders were the al Qaeda. You know, as the Russians and the British have learned, Afghanistan is a place that is very allergic to outsiders. And one of the, I think, great triumphs of our military activity was that we did it with a small footprint, in alliance with tribes and others within Afghanistan who were liberating their own country, and throwing out the true outsiders, which were al Qaeda. And we did it in record time. So I think, to the contrary, we moved quickly, we had a strategy which engaged the bulk of the population on our side, and we liberated the country in record time. Q He says that special forces should have gone in immediately after Osama bin Laden, and they didn't, they went and hooked up with the, you know, national -- with the Afghanis first, and that it was a mistake not to just go right for Osama bin Laden. MR. HADLEY: Of course they linked up with the Afghans first. The Afghans were -- again, the whole theory was to get the Afghans to take ownership of the effort to overthrow the Taliban and expel al Qaeda. We had Special Forces with all those Afghan units. The Afghan units, again, knew the people, knew the terrain, were a very effective way against going after the Taliban and al Qaeda. And remember what we got. We were able to strip away the protection the Taliban afforded to al Qaeda. We captured or killed hundreds of al Qaeda operatives in the country. And remember, today, over two-thirds of the leadership of al Qaeda has either been killed or captured. So we've made dramatic progress against al Qaeda. Q One final. Dick Clark worked for Reagan, Bush "One," Clinton, and now here. He has a track record. Why do you think a man with that kind of knowledge and with those credentials, would be so completely critical of the way this administration has handled the war on terrorism? And he is, he was very critical. MR. HADLEY: Well, I don't know. I have not read Dick's book. I don't know what he says about this administration. I don't know what he said about the prior administration, which again, was in office and dealing with this problem for eight years. We were in office dealing with this problem for 230 days. I don't know what Dick's critique is, is involved. Obviously, he has views. We gave him an opportunity in this administration to come forward with some ideas that had been not adopted in the prior administration. We adopted a number of them. We also gave him a chance to participate with this President in developing a more aggressive strategy with respect to al Qaeda. And I think at the time when he left us, the conversations I had with him was that he was pleased with the leadership provided by the President. So, Leslie -- Q He did? MR. HADLEY: -- you've had a chance to talk to him. This is a question, really, you need to ask him, not me. Q He did tell you he was pleased when he left? MR. HADLEY: My belief was that he appreciated the leadership that the President had provided, and that he felt, in the end, that a lot of things he had been recommending had been adopted by this President. But what I would say is that the contribution of this President was he went much further than anything than was ever suggested by Mr. Clark. Mr. Clark was talking about arming Predator, supporting the Northern Alliance, doing more with Uzbekistan. Useful measures, but measures that by themselves, or even in conjunction, were not going to eliminate al Qaeda, were not going to eliminate Afghanistan as a safe-haven for terror. That was something that President Bush brought to the party, the direction he gave. And Mr. Clark had an opportunity to participate in that. And I would have thought that was actually a dream come true for Mr. Clark. Q Do you at all question the timing of this book? MR. HADLEY: Leslie, you've been in Washington a long time. That's a question that you're probably better positioned to answer than me. It's a question you can put to Mr. Clark; it's not a question for me. * * * * * Q So there was Intel chatter that came up over the summer, in the months before 9/11. And according to Dick, the President still didn't make this enough of a priority. MR. HADLEY: There was Intel chatter. It was about threats overseas. We were very concerned about it. We did go to battle stations. We both tried to mine the intelligence, to find out what was the nature of the threat, and to take action to deal with it -- with our forces overseas, with our embassies overseas, putting people on alert, putting people on notice. But, remember, in this period of time, all that chatter was about threats overseas, not to the homeland. During that period, of course, we were developing a more aggressive strategy to eliminate al Qaeda, to deny it safe havens. The President was aware of that. That work had been launched in the first week of the administration. Dr. Rice kept the President advised of the progress of that work. And at one point he indicated a certain amount of impatience, in April or May of 2001, saying, I'm tired of swatting flies, where's my strategy? So the President was engaged, was informed, and was pushing us to get on with the more aggressive strategy he wanted -- a strategy that wouldn't just roll back al Qaeda, but would eliminate al Qaeda and end its sanctuaries in Afghanistan and elsewhere. END 8:49 A.M. EST _______________________________________________ Politech mailing list Archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Moderated by Declan McCullagh (http://www.mccullagh.org/)
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