Jaime Gorelick Interviews William Cohen

commissioner gelik Mr secretary thank you for your uh your testimony today I it is quite impressive as always uh very thoughtful and Broad gauged um I have been troubled about something that perhaps you can help on um you were in these meetings where the various um possibilities of getting Usama Bin Laden um were discussed we now have huge and selective leaks coming from various levels of the CIA who were saying we really had them we had great intelligence we could have gotten him and the policy makers overruled us at the same time you have Sandy Berger and I think yourself and others saying no the director of CIA told us the intelligence was not good enough and he was not recommending going forward and that leaves us in a very peculiar position um either the the people below George tenant um didn't know what was happening above his level or at his level or he was telling them one thing and telling you another or maybe there's some third possibility but um this is a an important issue for us to understand did we have it did we not have it was it good was it not good and and and how could there be this this dispute on something so fundamental and I would just like your view on this there are 23,000 people who work at the Pentagon um secretary Layman probably knows from his own experience uh how disconcerting that can be in terms of trying to maintain control uh and to maintain the flow of information coming up through the department of the Navy or um the Department of Defense uh there are three there were 3,000 people um on the office of secretary defense staff that we tried to reduce by a third that was one of my goals in taking the office itself but 2,000 people in the office of sector defense I can assure you there are people inside the Pentagon who say If Only They had listened to me uh if only this memo had gotten to the boss we would have taken the following action and I think uh all policy makers have to come to the following conclusion you are judged by the people that you appoint you pick the best people you can you rely upon the judgment if you find that you have to question their credibility of their judgment you get rid of them U but the notion that somehow there's somebody down in the in the bows uh that has a different view or has submitted a different analysis that if only had gotten to the right people would have made a difference I think you have to take that into account uh but if the C if if the director of Central Intelligence says we don't have it then you have to rely upon that if he says we do have it you rely upon that as well saying okay under these circumstances we take the following action if the chairman of the Joint Chiefs comes to me and says I recommend the following you have to rely upon that unless you doubt his actions I'll give you an example uh the chairman of the Joint Chiefs I selected him for that position because of he he was the commander of a Special Operations Command for that specific reason I wanted to have more emphasis placed upon Special Forces than we had placed in the past I saw what he did and I put this in my written testimony I saw what he did in BOS and Kosovo we had some operation called the piff Wicks these were persons who had been indicted for war crimes and they were so-called snatch operations I saw some of the plans that were put into effect to grab certain people I saw chairman Shelton say don't do it that way here's a better way here's how you're really going to make this thing successful so I came to see how he operated and to rely upon his judgment and if I had any doubts uh that he was giving me the straight information which I never had uh then I would have been I would have der in my duty uh and not calling him on it so I think you have to take it into account one of the challenges that this commission faces all of us face how do we have better vertical integration you've had information about what took place in some of the field offices in the FBI information that didn't get put up the line didn't get shared horizontally how do we construct a system that allows for better vertical information of intelligence and then horizontal cross fertilization or sharing that information tough job you've got different cultures you've got different sources and methods and standards but it has to be done now it'll never deal with the issue that you're raising now if someone at whatever level second third fourth level down says I have a better idea or I have information it's just not getting to the right people you will always have that problem but you have to rely upon the Judgment um of the people that you appoint but you were convinced that the director of Central Intelligence in these instances said to you and your fellow policy makers we don't have it on every occasion uh he mentioned he said that exactly he would come in initially uh because he was getting some raw information saying I think we're going to have it uh that we do have it and then he would go back and he would refine it uh and uh after again we were prepared to take action and say we don't think so to his credit I mean this is not a fault of uh George this is to his credit saying let's be as sure as we can if we're going to kill people innocent people as well as carrying out this operation let's be as sure as we can that we've got the right target the right information and minimize if we can killing uh innocent people that's his job and I think he did it well thank