John Lehman Interviews William Cohen

this one is live the uh the question I have is in in uh the testimony of a number of the witnesses we've had and of course in Mr Clark's book uh your Pentagon comes in uh for a lot of criticism for basically along two lines the most important of which uh is that uh Whenever there was uh an opportunity and request for options when the president requested options and so forth uh the only thing the Joint Chiefs could come up with uh the Pentagon could come up with was either lob a few cruise missiles or the Normandy invasion and uh I recall the the debates over the creation of the Special Operations Command in which I was initially skeptical and uh became a strong Advocate as you laid out the case very well for that legislation which was to provide a president with something in between a much more discriminating set of options uh between uh the kind of things that came out of the Chiefs all those decades which is either launch an alpha strike from the carriers send in the 101 Airborne uh or carpet bomb with B-52s and yet uh it it seems that uh every time time that the request was made for some set of options at least this is the testimony we have uh the alternative was always given well we can't we can't invade Afghanistan Congress will never do it so the only thing we have is to fire a few cruise missiles and clearly as Senator kery was suggesting there are lots of potential discreet options in between like putting uh specialized Special Operations forces uh on the ground now this is before yes it takes 13,000 today and they can't find him but before before the war in Afghanistan there was a lot of he was much more accessible so there were options but somehow the Special Operations Command either did not because it was as our staff pointed out uh a supporting rather than a supported command uh or because not much has changed after all these years with the new Operations Command did not come up with discrete options uh why was that and is is Mr Clark's criticism a valid one well first I would take issue with the fact that the Joint Chiefs of Staff can only go from B1 bombers or cruise missiles or the Normandy invasion if you look at what took place in both Bosnia and Kosovo uh Special Forces played a key role over there uh in terms of some of these operations jck was always on tap to do whatever was reasonable to do uh I would uh have to place my judgment a call in terms of do I believe that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs former commander of special uh forces command uh is in a better position to make a judgment about the feasibility of this than perhaps Mr Clark now I had to make that kind of a call uh was Richard Clark in a better position say this has a greater chance of success or general Shelton I indicated that I relied upon the senior military adviser to me the president of the National Security team I have no reason to in any way ever doubt that he was very straight with me and was not trying to um rig the system so you only had one of two options but rather I think he always felt we are prepared to take action uh to put uh Special Forces on the ground if there is a reasonable opportunity to achieve the mission to do anything less than that to put those young people at risk with the enormity of the task of that country that size with that many caves with by the way the support of the Taliban and not the support of Pakistan uh I'd have to question whether or not that was reasonable to do so I did and I supported the the chairman saying this doesn't make a good deal of sense in terms of putting those those young men's lives at risk when the potential for success is very limited if not to Minimus uh you'll be pleased to know that he's even harsher on the cia's capability and in these kinds of uh I mean everybody can be critical of you can criticize the agency criticize DOD the real issue is uh what action do we got take from here where are the fault lines where does Fault lie if you think that we were um IR responsible in not putting a small unit into Afghanistan when you had virtually no support activities for example I mentioned those uh those operations in Kosovo they had incredible intelligence support just tens of miles away now you're going to put a small unit of Special Forces into Afghanistan where there is no uh intelligence support miles away but thousands of miles away uh what do you do in terms of search and rescue this is something I know you were concerned about certainly a sector of the Navy what about Cesar if we lose one of our Pilots or lose one of our people you got to S send in search and rescue well uh how about refuelers for the uh C130 gunships Etc all of those factors are involved on the part of military planning do you just put uh special forces in and say we know how good you are go do the job and good luck the answer is no you you try to make sure you protect them as much as you can and measure the probability of success against the risk that they are um put at that that brings me to the point of my of these questions really uh many witnesses of have criticized CIA for really not having the the capability for uh covert operations and special operations and yet they've been called upon to do them on the other hand the Pentagon has been criticized because they don't want to do them uh and so I guess the question that has arisen in our minds is uh perhaps there should be a straightforward assignment of the counterterrorism mission to a to Socom uh and not pretend that CIA can do it with civilians and not leave uh leave the uh the Special Operations Command as just a supporting uh operation to the sinks who are not likely to have the kind of focus for doing this that uh that so what would you think of that kind of Reform well actually I think that secretary Rumsfeld may be in the process of recommending that I think he may see the use of Special Forces uh in a way that achieves that kind of central more centralized role than being a support element and being a more centered player in terms of Special Forces designed to go out and kill or capture uh a number of the the terrorist groups uh I will also offer um another comment if I can in this um war on terror it's my own personal judgment that the war on terror is for the most part not going to be on the battlefield I really believe that ultimately aside from Iraq which is a big aside but aside from Iraq I believe the war has to be waged by the sharing of information on a almost a global basis uh again I pointed my opening statement that we're all at risk now we have to start sharing information and it's going to require good police work sort of what the Brits did by knocking down the door and finding a group of people with ryson in their possession uh uh sharing that kind of information in covert operations police work special forces and ultimately finally a military option but I think that that's really what's going to be required for the war against Terror and I think special forces are being charged with a a higher level of activity is probably warranted one final question uh another line of criticism uh uh from a fair number of our Witnesses has been that in uh making decisions and recommendations from commanders uh for action of this type that there has been a huge growth in the role of General counsels shall we say uh epitomized by The centcom General Counsel refusing to or advising the the snc that he could not shoot at uh Omar because that would violate the uh the assassination order uh just as a phenomenal well I I know that didn't happen on your watch but the just as an issue it seems to us time and time again we see in interviews and queries that that everyone seems to be afraid to move in the policy level and particularly in the Pentagon without having a uh cya Memo from the the legal council um I was not aware of any uh inhibition or prohibition against uh the Pentagon taking action and directed against Usama Bin Laden or anyone else uh there was uh no no question in my mind that the both the agency and the and the military had complete authority to take whatever lethal action was necessary I never saw anything that would have inhibited that thank you