James Thompson Interviews Condoleezza Rice

thank you Mr chairman Dr Rice um first thank you for your service to this nation and this President I think it can fairly be described by all whether they agree with you or not on various issues as devoted to the interests of the president and the country and all Americans I believe appreciate that thank you also for um finally making it here I know there was a struggle over constitutional principles I don't think your appearance today signals any retreat by the president from the notion that the Congress should not be allowed to hail presidential AIDS down to the capital and question them we are not the Congress we are not a congressional committee that's why you gave us the pdbs and so we appreciate your appearance and we appreciate the decision of the president to allow you to appear to not just answer our questions because you've done that for five hours in private but to answer the questions of Americans who are watching you today I'm going to go through my questions um some of which have been tossed out because my brothers and sisters asked them before me as quickly as I can because we have to depart and I I would appreciate it if you would go through your answers as quickly as you could but be fair to yourself I don't believe in beating dead horses but there's a bunch of lame ones running around here today let's see if we can't finally push him out the door uh please describe to us your relationship with Dick Clark because I think that bears on the context of this well let's just take the first question he said he gave you a plan you said he didn't give you a plan it's clear that what he did give you was a memo that had attached to it not only the denda plan or whatever you want to describe denda as but a December 2000 strategy paper was this something that you were supposed to act on or was this a a compilation of what had been pending at the time the Clinton administration had left office but had not been acted on or was this something he tried to get acted on by the Clinton Administration and they didn't act on it what was it how did he describe it to you what did you understand it to be what I understood it to be was a series of um decisions near-term decisions that had were p end ing from the Clinton Administration things like uh whether to arm the USCS I'm sorry whether to to give further counter tear or support to the USCS whether to arm the Northern Alliance a whole set of uh of specific issues that needed decision and we made those decisions prior to the strategy being developed he also uh had attached the Dinda plan which is my understanding was developed in 1998 never adopted and in fact uh had some ideas I said dick take the IDE ideas that you've put in this think piece take the ideas that you've that were there in the Dinda plan put it together into a strategy not to roll back Al-Qaeda which had been the goal of the uh the Clinton uh of the of what Dick Clark wrote to us but rather to eliminate this uh this threat and he was to put that strategy together but uh by no means did he ask me to act on a plan he gave us a series of of ideas we acted on those and then he gave me some papers that had a number of ideas more questions than answers about how we might get better cooperation for instance from Pakistan we took those ideas we gave him the opportunity to write a comprehensive strategy I'd like to follow up in one of commissioner romer's questions uh the principal meetings um with all due respect to the principles cabinet officers of the president of the United States Senate confirmed the notion that when principles gather the heavens open and the truth pours forth is to borrow the phrase of one of my fellow Commissioners a little bit of hoie I think isn't it a fact that when principles Gather in principal's meeting they bring their staffs with them don't they line the walls don't they talk to each other doesn't the staff speak up a absolutely well actually when you have principals meetings they really uh sometimes are to tell for the principles to say what their staff's have said right uh have told them to say I I just have to say we may simply disagree on this I I with some of the Commissioners I do not believe that there was a lack of high level attention the president was paying attention to this how much higher level can you get the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense and the attorney general and the line officers are responsible for responding to the information that they were given and they were responding the problem is that the United States was effective ly blind to what was about to happen into it and you cannot depend on the chance that some principal might find out something in order to prevent an attack that's why the structural changes that are being talked about here are so important what you say in uh your statement before us today on page two um reminds me that terrorism had a different face in the 20th century than it does today and I just want to be sure I understand the attitude of the Bush Administration because you reference the latan and the Nazis and all these state sponsored terrorist activities when we know today that the real threat is from either Rogue States Iran North Korea or from stateless terrorist organizations Al-Qaeda Hezbollah hmas does the Bush Administration get this difference we certainly understand fully that uh there are groups uh networks that are operating out there the only thing I would say is that uh they are much more effective when they can count on a state either to sponsor them or to uh protect them or to acques in uh their activities that's why the policy that we uh developed was so insistent on sanctuaries being taken away from them you do have to take away their territory when they can get states to cooperate with them or when they can get states to acques in their in their being on their territory um they're much more effective the coal why didn't the Bush Administration respond to the coal I think secretary rumel has perhaps said it best um we really thought that the coal um incident was uh was passed that you didn't want to respond uh Tit for Tat as I've said there is strategic response and there's tactical response and just responding to another attack in an insufficient way we thought would actually probably embolden the terrorists they'd been em and by everything else that had been done to them and that the the best course was to uh look ahead uh to a more aggressive strategy against them um I still believe to this day that the al-Qaeda were prepared for um a response to the coal and that um as some of the intelligence suggested bin Len was um intending to show that he yet survived another one and that it might have been counterproductive I've got to say say that answer bothers me a little bit because of where it logically leads and that is and I don't like whatif questions but this is a what if question what if in March of 2001 under your administration alqaeda had blown up another US Destroyer what would you have done and what would that have been TI fortat I don't know what we would have done but I do think that uh we were were moving to a different concept that said that you had to hold at risk ask what they cared about not just try and punish them not just try to go after Bin Laden I would like to think that we might have come to an an effective response I think that in the context of War when you're at war with somebody it's not an issue of of every battle or every Skirmish it's an issue of can you do strategic damage to this organization and we were thinking much more along the lines of of strategic damage well I'm I'm going to sound like my brother Carrie which terrifies me somewhat but but blowing up our destroyers is an act of war against us is it not I mean how long would that have to go on before we would respond with an act of War we've had several acts of War uh committed against us and um I think the we believed that uh responding kind of tit fortat uh probably with inadequate military options because uh for all the plans that might have been looked at by the Pentagon or on the the uh shelf they were not connected to a political policy that was going to to change the the circumstances of al-Qaeda uh in Taliban uh and the Taliban and therefore the relationship to Pakistan uh look it can be debated as to uh whether or not one should have responded to the coal I think that we really believed that an inadequate response was simply going to embolden them and I think you've heard that from secretary Rell as well and uh I believe we felt very strongly that way I'll tell you what I find remarkable uh one word that hasn't been mentioned once today yet we've talked about structural changes to the FBI and the CIA and cooperation and Congress the Congress has to change the structure of the FBI the Congress has to appropriate funds to fight terrorism where was the Congress well I think that the when I made the comment that uh the country was not on war footing that didn't just mean the executive branch was not on war footing uh the the fact is that many of the big changes that quite frankly again we were not going to be able to make in 230 three days um some of those big changes do require uh congressional action the Congress cooperated after September 11th with the president to come up with the Patriot Act which does give to the FBI and the CIA and other intelligence agencies the kind of ability legal ability to share between them that was simply not there before you cannot depend on the chance that something might fall out of a tree you cannot depend on the chance that a very good uh Customs agent who's doing her job with her colleagues out in the state of Washington is going to catch somebody coming across the border of the United States with bomb making materials to be the uh the incident that'll lead you that leads you to be able to uh to respond adequately this is hard because again we have to be right 100% of the time they only have to be right once but the structural changes that we've made since 911 and the structural changes that we may have to continue to make give us a better chance uh and in that fight uh against the terrorist I read this week uh an interview in Newsweek with your predecessor Mr binski um he seemed to be saying that there is a danger that we can obsess about Al-Qaeda and lose sight of of equal dangers for example the the rise of a nuclear State Iran in the Middle East and their apparent connection to Hezbollah and Hamas which may uh forecast even more bitter fighting as we're now learning in Iraq or the ability of hez balah or Hamas to attack us on our soil within the United States in the same way alq Qaeda did are we keeping an eye on that we are keeping an eye and working actively um with the International Community on Iran and their nuclear Ambitions I think that one thing that the global war terrorism has allowed us to do is to not just focus on Al-Qaeda because we have enlisted countries around the world saying that uh terrorism is Terrorism is terrorism in other words you can't fight Al-Qaeda and hug Hezbollah or hug Hamas that we've uh actually uh started to delegitimize terrorism in a way that it was not before we don't make a distinction between different kinds of terrorism and we're therefore United with the countries of the world to fight all kinds of terrorism terrorism is never and a a an appropriate a Justified response uh just because of political uh difficulties so yes we are keeping an eye on it but it speaks to the point that uh we an Administration the United States Administration cannot focus just on one thing what the war on terrorism has done is it's given us an organizing principle that allows us to think about terrorism to think about weapons of mass destruction to think about the links between them and to form a united front uh across the world uh to to try and win this war last simple question if we come forward with sweeping recommendations for change in how our law enforcement and intelligence agencies operate to meet the new challenges of our time not the 20th century or the 19th century challenges we've faced in the past and if the president of the United States agrees with them can you assure us that he will fight with all the Vigor he has to get them acted I can assure you that if the uh president agrees with the the recommendations and I think we'll want to take a hard look at the recommendations we're going to fight because the the real lesson of September 11th is that uh the country was not properly structured to deal with the threat that had been gathering for a long period of time I think we're better structured today than we ever have been we've made a lot of progress but we want to hear what further progress we can make and because this President considers His Highest calling to protect and defend the people of the United States of America he'll fight for any changes that he feels necessary thank you Dr R thank you