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THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of THE VICE PRESIDENT

Internal Transcript December 17, 2001

TELEPHONE INTERVIEW OF THE VICE PRESIDENT

BY
BOB WOODWARD AND DAN BALZ, THE WASHINGTON POST

2:00 P.M. EST

Q I appreciate your willingness to do this.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: It's all right. As you know, I was a
reluctant participant, but my leader said, do it, so here I am.
Well, we're grateful for the President's intervention.

Q You won't imagine what we had to do to get him on

board.
THE VICE PRESIDENT: I'll bet. (Laughter.) Okay.
Q It really is to focus, for the first 10 days, on his
decision making -- the decision to go to war, you know, overall
and the specific parts. And I think the first question

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Before we go on, is this for a

newspaper story?

Q It is. This is for -- we're doing a series, as

quickly as we can, probably early January, that will be kind of
titled, "An Hour of our Choosing," from the President's speech on
the cathedral on Friday the 14th.
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Okay. We're going through the 20th,
when he went to the Congress, joint session of Congress?
Q Right.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: So it's sort of a historic

retrospective, if you will.
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 Q Yes, sir. And we want to do it in depth, as much as
possible. It's kind of the first cut at this. Obviously, people
will be doing it forever. And the first question is
THE VICE PRESIDENT: And what are the ground rules?
Q What do you prefer, where we can learn the most?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, I don't care. I guess just so
long as they are, we can do it any way you want. You want to do
it on background?
Q Or we could do it on the record, and then if you want
to make something on background -- we will come back to Mary
and Scooter
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Okay, that's fine.

Q there will be nothing in here that you don't know

about.
THE VICE PRESIDENT: All right, let's do it on the record,
unless I say we're going to go to some other status. And then
we'll so indicate, okay? So on the record, unless I holler
otherwise.
Q Thank you. What was -- in that period, you lived it
and know it better than anybody, other than the President. We
want to isolate the three, four or whatever main decisions he
made, what were they, and how did he make them?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, I mean, .as I think- back and look
on it -- trying to get ready for the interview today, I went
back and read his statements, and tried to pull together my
recollections, as best I could. I guess the thing that stands
out in my mind is he moved very rapidly to a couple of key
conclusions.

Very early on, he was talking about it's a new war, it's a
war on terrorism, talking about the importance of going after
those who support terrorism, not just the terrorists. I think
that was in his remarks the very first night.
Q Those who harbor?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Those who harbor terrorists. A heavy

emphasis on sort of the multi-dimensional approach that he wanted
to take here, that we were going to marshall all of our national
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assets, if you will. It was partly military, but not just
military. It also had to involve intelligence -- heavy, heavy
role for intelligence, financial, diplomatic. We were going to
go across the spectrum, in terms of pulling together an approach.

He talked about an opportunity to change relationships,

realign relationships, that this was not just in a -- it was
not just the notion that -- I'm trying to think how to say it.
Obviously, you're dealing with a terrible tragedy when you've
had that kind of loss of life, and the importance of going after
the folks who did it; but that in so doing, there was an
opportunity here to rebuild relationships in the Middle East, and
add another dimension to our relationships with the Russians in
the war on terrorism; obviously change the relationship with
respect to Pakistan. This notion of realignment was very much a
part of his thinking.

Q When did that get introduced -- do you know the time

frame or

THE VICE PRESIDENT: It's within the first day or two. We

had them -- I'm trying to remember the sequence of events. We
had an NSC meeting when he was on from Omaha, the afternoon of
the llth. And then more meetings when he got back that night,
after he addressed the nation.

Q Do you remember anything about that first NSC meeting?

Obviously, we're trying to put it in -- the decision making in
some sort of chronology.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, that first meeting, of course,

was by the SIVITS, in the afternoon. And my recollection -- he
was in Omaha.- I think Rumsfeld was at the Pentagon. I was in
the PEOC. Condi was with me. Andy Card was with the President.
Steve Hadley was with me, and Scooter. Mary was there. I don't
think Powell was in the first hook up. I think he was still en
route back from South America. And that sort of focused on the
situation of the moment. And I'm sure the President would have
talked about his determination to find out who did it, and to
bring them to justice as quickly as possible.

I think by that evening, when we got together after the

speech, then Colin was back. And most of that meeting was around
the table in the PEOC. I think Don came over from the Pentagon
then.

Q Do you remember anything that happened there?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I'd like to say I do, but I can't give
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you a verbatim, partly because we had so many meetings in those
early days, and separate out what was discussed in one versus
another.

Q I understand. But, as you know, when we do these

things

THE VICE PRESIDENT: You guys like direct quotes and lots of
color.
Q Yes, exactly. (Laughter.) Was there a note-taker? I
mean, is there anything that could be isolated -- like from
that first NSC meeting, we have from one of the people there,
President Bush saying. President Putin called me immediately
because he understands if this can happen to us, it can happen to
him. And that apparently is the beginning of -- he said, we
have this chance to build a whole new relationship with the
Russians.
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, he was talking about realignment
very early on. And I would say within that first day or two.
And the fact that the first call we got from overseas was from
the Russians clearly had an impact and triggered, I think, some
of those considerations.
Q Mr. Vice President, in that first -- really,
literally, that first day or 24 hours, when did he come to a
decision that he did not want to do anything instantly, in other
words that he was prepared to take some time to make a decision?
And how did he enunciate that to people?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, he -- from the very beginning,
he talked about taking time to do it right," that he wanted good
planning done. There was a sense that a lot of us had, and I'm
sure that he did as well, that we didn't want just to fire off a
few Cruise missiles and call it good, that that had sort of been
the pattern of the past. And we were very conscious that that's
not what we wanted here.
And also that if we were going to go track down -- you
know, early on we focused on al Qaeda and the Taliban and bin
Laden. I mean, there wasn't a lot of doubt from the very first
day that it was probably Osama bin Laden. It took a while to
nail down some of the specifics. But once you start to look at
that and think about that, then he focused very much that this
could take a long time. And we had to prepare people to
understand that it could take a long time.

When he first started asking about military options, it was

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clear that there were not a lot of prime targets that you could
go hit in Afghanistan anyway, that it was going to take -- you
couldn't just take something off the shelf and go for it, it was
going to take time to plan it and put it together. And as we
begin thinking about how you would go after the sanctuary -- in
effect, it was in Afghanistan -- and then go after the Taliban
and bring in the Northern Alliance and begin to marshall
intelligence assets, as well as military assets, on all of this
we talked about within the very first few days of the operation.
Q Was it clear military action was going to be necessary?
Was it clear the first day?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, it was certainly clear by the
next morning, in terms of -- you know,, you begin to think about
he talked about, he gave us directions, in terms of sending
an ultimatum to the Taliban. We knew they were providing
sanctuary from bin Laden and his crew.
Q -- come to that conclusion?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Pardon?

Q When did he come to that conclusion?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: The first few days.
Q The first few days.
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Yes, before we came to Camp David, that
weekend. And we met during -- let's see, Tuesday was 9/11.
That Wednesday-Thursday time frame we had meetings that included
people f-rom the Agency who had expertise- in Afghanistan and who
were in the operations directorate who were already beginning to
be tasked and to give us views on what might be possible with the
Northern Alliance and how you could go after the Taliban, if you
had to.
So there was a desire to prepare, but also talking with Don
and talking with Chairman, then Shelton, and so forth, that it
was going to take time here to do the targeting that was required
to gather the intelligence required. There was always this
linkage from the very beginning between the intel and the
military side of the house. And I thought the President worked
that very well in coming quickly to understand that you needed to
tie those together if you were going to be successful here. The
military had to have intelligence in order to have targets to
hit.

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clear that there were not a lot of prime targets that you could
go hit in Afghanistan anyway, that it was going to take -- you
couldn't just take something off the shelf and go for it, it was
going to take time to plan it and put it together. And as we
begin thinking about how you would go after the sanctuary -- in
effect, it was in Afghanistan -- and then go after the Taliban
and bring in the Northern Alliance and begin to marshall
intelligence assets, as well as military assets, on all of this
we talked about within the very first few days of the operation.
Q Was it clear military action was going to be necessary?
Was it clear the first day?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, it was certainly clear by the

next morning, in terms of -- you know, you begin to think about
he talked about, he gave us directions, in terms of sending
an ultimatum to the Taliban. We knew they were providing
sanctuary from bin Laden and his crew.
Q -- come to that conclusion?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Pardon?

Q When did he come to that conclusion?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: The first few days.

Q The first few days.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Yes, before we came to Camp David, that

weekend. And we met during -- let's see, Tuesday was 9/11.
That Wednesday-Thursday time frame we had meetings that included
people from the Agency who had expertise- in Afghanistan and who
were in the operations directorate who were already beginning to
be tasked and to give us views on what might be possible with the
Northern Alliance and how you could go after the Taliban, if you
had to.
So there was a desire to prepare, but also talking with Don
and talking with Chairman, then Shelton, and so forth, that it
was going to take time here to do the targeting that was required
to gather the intelligence required. There was always this
linkage from the very beginning between the intel and the
military side of the house. And I thought the President worked
that very well in coming quickly to understand that you needed to
tie those together if you were going to be successful here. The
military had to have intelligence in order to have targets to
hit.

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 Q Sir, there was apparently on the 12th, Wednesday, or
the 13th, Thursday -- the President has told people that George
Tenet came in and this idea of, as you say, mating the
intelligence operation with special ops and with the technology
of the Predator kind of all surfaced. And the President has told
people that made a big impression on him and it was one of the
significant turning points in his own mind. Can you elaborate on
that at all?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, I think that's true, because what
we had -- there had been -- we need to go on background at
this point. There had been discussions earlier, before 9/11, on
arming the Predator, on hanging the hell-fire missile on there so
we could hit a target when we spotted something you might want to
hit. And we were already flying the Predator over Afghanistan at
that point. As I say, this is before 9/11.
Q Right. That was during the first eight months of the
administration.
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Right. So we'd been thinking about it.
So we were aware of Predator and Predator's capabilities by the
time 9/11 rolled around and were starting to talk about how we're
going to go after bin Laden and so forth. So, yes, I would say
very much that those first few days we were beginning to look at
how you find a guy and how you could hurt him if you did find
him.
Q Do you remember anything that the CIA Director said, or
anybody that -- because the President has portrayed to others
that this was the, ah, we've got some things we can glue together
here.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I don't recall anything specific. I'm

always reluctant to quote somebody else in these kinds of
settings, anyway, Bob, you know that. I'm not trying to be cute
here, I just don't recall specific quotes from individuals.

Q But did this represent, in the minds of those of you

who had been through some of these things before, a new
opportunity, a different way of kind of going about things?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, sure, I mean, it was a new

capability that had never been. I mean, of course, I had been
away from it for eight years, and we had used UAVs a little bit
during the Gulf War, but nothing like what the Predator
represented, in terms of long dwell time and sensor package that
we had on board. And, of course, ultimately, then the ability to
hang a couple hell-fires on it and hit a target.
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 As well as -- and we're still on background here -- as
well as, obviously, to be able to control it, hell, from
Washington.
Q And in that first day or day and a half or two days,
what was the nature of the discussion back and forth about how
broad or how narrow this war on terrorism ought to be,
particularly in that opening phase? I mean, when did you come to
the notion that you wanted to phase this operation, this war on
terrorism?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Are we back on the record now? Well,
we -- I mean, when you start to talk about terrorism, there are
a lot of potential targets out there. Clearly, the priority was
going to be -- and the President made this clear from the very
beginning -- was going to be on al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden
and those folks and that organization we thought was responsible
for what had happened to the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
It was going to be our top priority.
But there was, really, from the very beginning, an interest
as well in other elements, if you will, of the global terrorist
network: the fact that'al Qaeda had cells in a lot of countries
around the world was something we came to grips with in the very
beginning; that there were other states that had provided
sanctuary to terrorists in the past. So all of them became of
interest and continue to be of interest. But the focus was
clearly at the outset going to be on Afghanistan and on -- and
the base that bin Laden and al Qaeda had created in Afghanistan
and used to attack us.
- And.it wasn't just the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
I mean, they operated out of there against the Cole; they had
operated out of there for the East Africa bombings; the Clinton
administration had made a relatively ineffective effort to hit
back. But this was sort of the, in a sense, the final straw in a
long list of aggressions by this guy against the United States
from his bases in Afghanistan.
Q How much were you all influenced by what had happened
during the Clinton administration, in your own thinking of
THE VICE PRESIDENT: We were aware of it. I think there was
a view that the U.S. response had been ineffective in the past.
There was an interest, and the President made it very clear he
wanted us to not make that mistake again; that when we got ready
to move, he wanted it to be decisive, he wanted it to be
effective, he wanted it to use all elements of our power.
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 He talked about -- "boots on the ground" was a phrase that
came up quite a bit; the idea somehow being that it had developed
in that part of the world that the United States would launch a
few Cruise missiles, because we could do that safely from several
hundred miles away, but that we were reluctant to commit troops
to an enterprise like this. And he wanted to make sure they
understood that was not the case, and he directed the military
from the very beginning to make sure that he had options that
involved using U.S. forces effectively against these guys.
Q And did he use the phrase "boots on the ground"?
Because we've heard that before.
MR. FLEISCHER: Yes, he did.

Q And was that on the llth or the 12th, first?

MR. FLEISCHER: I would put it within that very first week,
12th, 13th, 14th, along in there.
Q And was the feeling that -- you said the previous
administration's response had been so ineffective. We understand
there was very much the feeling that the previous
administration's response has been so weak that it had wound up
being almost provocative.
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Oh, I think so. It certainly didn't
deter them from further action, obviously. I mean, part of
what

Q Tell us about that, because that's really important.

We understand there was very much a sense -that it was so weak, it
was provocative. I'm repeating myself.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I think it was. That clearly was the

sense that I felt as we talked about it, and the President
clearly believed that as well. I mean, partly what happened here
in a broader context, not just in terms of how the Clinton
administration responded and how we wanted to respond
there's a question of leadership that sort of pervades the sole
exercise and your ability to put together a coalition and to
mobilize Arab -- friendly Arab governments in the region who
had been -- there had been a strain on a lot of those
relationships prior to 9/11, because of the continued Intifada
and difficulty of getting anything going between the Israelis and
the Palestinians, to get these governments to stand up and sign
up and commit resources and allow us to have access and the kind
of cooperation that was required here.
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 Sort of the most important consideration for them was, this
guy means business, this President is serious. He's going to
follow through. And the President conveyed that from the very
beginning.
He wanted to put together a coalition, he wanted to mobilize
international opinion, but if we had to, we would go it alone.
It was going to happen. We were going to do it. And other
nations had a choice: they could either get on board or else,
but they were going to have to choose whether they were with us
or they were with the bad guys.
Q He was clear from the beginning that while -- help us
understand this issue of building a coalition. Because in a one
sense, building a coalition can tie your hands, and it sounds as
though what his view was, we're going to develop what we -- and
sell it to the rest of the world, rather than have others in the
coalition kind of dictating this term or that term, or some other
element of it.
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, yes. I mean, the coalition was
something you needed in order to try to move forward and make
progress here. But the objective is not to maintain the
coalition, the objective is to defeat terrorism. Plus, but also,
the President understood better than most that you build a
coalition not by pleading with others to join the coalition, but
rather by demonstrating leadership, and getting out front and
making decisions and moving aggressively.
And other people respect that, so our friends and allies
around the world were only too quick to sign on. We had this
parade of people that hasn't stopped yet-. - Foreign leaders who
want to come to Washington to be seen with the President of the
United States, talking about terrorism.
You had the first-ever unanimous conclusion in NATO to
invoke Article V, never before been done in history. President
Musharraf in Pakistan took some very bold and aggressive steps at
the request of the President, because the President asked him to
do it, and he did it.
So strength builds coalitions, not hand-wringing and
supplication and pleading.
Q And you believe that that had been the approach of the
previous administration?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Can we go on background at this point?
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(Laughter.) Yes, I've -- obviously, on background -- I
obviously believe the last administration was totally ineffective
in dealing with these kinds of problems. And the record is there
for anybody to see. I mean, we spent a lot of time looking at
and thinking about it, but they never could seem to come to grips
with trying to figure out how to use force.
And Bill Clinton, time after time after time, when there
were terrorist attacks -- whether it was at the World Trade
Center in '93 or Khobar Towers or the East Africa bombing or
Mogadishu in '93 -- you know, the response was always weak and
ineffective and nondecisive. And there might be a few shots
fired, but then that was the end of it.

I think we reached the point where there were very few

nations in the world that feared the United States, or even
respected our determination to defend our interests.

Q Why don't you say that on the record, sir?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: All right, what the hell. Put it on

the record.
Q We're not going to make a headline out of
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Put it on the record.

Q Okay.

Q We would like to be able to quote you in the piece.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: All right.

Q Great. Good. One element of the willingness to use
force and to put boots on the ground is the willingness to take
casualties, which, as you know, over the '90s, Americans have
gotten used to the idea of war without casualties. How much
what was the President's sort of attitude, what did he say about
that in those early days about his own willingness to take those
consequences and to move ahead?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, he was very precise. He said we

have to be prepared to take casualties. And then he reminded us
that we had already suffered thousands of casualties on day one,
right here at home. The first casualty in the war wasn't
somebody that was going to be killed in Afghanistan, it was
thousands of people who were killed at the World Trade Center in
New York.

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Q Mr. Vice President, can you give us an idea of your
relationship with Bush in this? I know you're not going to talk
about your counsel and so forth, but were you able to -- like,
there is a critical point at Camp David where he asks everyone in
the afternoon of the 15th to lay out what they think he ought to
do, and then he says he's going to go think about it. And on the
time line, the next thing we have is him calling Dr. Rice in and
saying, this is what I want to do, 11 or 12 things.
Did you have a conversation with him, you know, in that
period from the end of Saturday night to Sunday morning? Or is
there some way to tell how you two were working together?
There's a lot of myth and supposition about it. And I know
you're not going to talk about it, but give us a
THE VICE PRESIDENT: We had a meeting the next morning. I
spent the night -- a lot of the Cabinet went back Saturday
night, after the meeting. I over-nighted up here, and then did
the "Meet the Press" interview with Tim Russert the next morning,
just down the road here. And that morning the President called
me, and we got together, and spent some time together, talking
about all this stuff.
Q Is this before or after "Meet the Press"?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: I think it was before, yes.

Q And can you -- how long was that? And just the two
of you?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Yes, just the two of us.
Q And if we'd been there -- which we wish you had
invited us -- what would be a way to characterize -- a full
discussion of options, whatever?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: We had an extended discussion about
what had transpired at the NSC meeting the day before, and where
we were headed next. But as I say, it was a private
conversation. It's something we do periodically. The reason I'm
here, or one of the reasons I'm here, obviously, is he seeks my
advice and counsel. He does that with a lot of people. But I
always offer it up privately. And he can accept it or reject it.
And it's advice for him, though; I don't talk about it.
Q Can you give us a sense of how the Camp David meeting
moved the ball forward from where you had been as of, let's say
Friday, when he gave his speech at the Cathedral, and went off to
New York? Obviously, some important decisions, broadly done, had
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already been made. What did Camp David do to move the ball
forward?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well -- yes, I guess the thing —
as I think back on it now, because we were already -- before we
got to Camp David, we were already off and running, with respect
to the focus on Afghanistan and the Taliban, and mobilizing our
intel and military assets. The President had already given
guidance on all of those areas.
But Camp David was a chance -- I mean, all of that took
place as earlier meetings, 30 minutes here, an hour there. It's
in the midst of the immediate aftermath of the attack on 9/11.
There are a lot of other things going on, the President visiting
the President, the President going to New York, and so forth.
Camp David was the first time we really had a chance to come
together for several hours and focus on the strategy, to exchange
views with one another; for the President to have an opportunity
to sort of get everybody in the room, around the table, for an
extended discussion about all of these issues. So it was -- in
part, it was a review of what we'd already decided; but then part
of it, obviously, was as I say, sort of getting everybody focused
and thinking in terms of where we were headed, going down the
road — sort of getting everybody, I guess, and sort of working
off the same sheet of music.
Q And so would it be fair to say that before that meeting
it essentially it had been decided that the first phase of this
was going to be Afghanistan, and the issues of Iraq and other
terrorist countries was going to be down the road at some point?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: I would say that before we got to Camp
David the first priority had already been established. It's
clearly al Qaeda, bin Laden, Afghanistan. What additional steps
we would take, or might be taken, I think were some of the things
we talked about then, sort of the sequencing we talked about at
Camp David.
Maybe a discussion, to some extent, of what the focus ought
to be here at the outset, and what the President reaffirmed out
of -- partly, I think out of the meetings that weekend was that
he clearly wanted to focus, first and foremost, on Afghanistan
and bin Laden, but that he had a continuing interest in all of
the other elements, as well, too, and a reinforcement of the
notion that this is going to be a long campaign; it might, in
fact, be sort of the single most important thing we did as an
administration and we might spend the next several years on it.
And if we were going to get it right, first and foremost, we were
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going after the Afghan problem.
Q There has been a lot written and speculated on about
that weekend, that there was a pretty healthy airing of a debate
about how broadly to go or what to do about Iraq. Can you give
us some sense of how extended that discussion was and how
vigorous that debate was?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: I'm reluctant to get into specifics.
What I would say is there was a wide range of views presented to
the President and he had the benefit of a free-flowing
discussion. But I think for me to get into who recommended what
or anything like that will inhibit the next discussion. I don't
want to do that. But he clearly -- he had the benefit of •
hearing the best advise from a very able and talented group, and
out of that came sort of the basic, overall thrust of the policy,

Q Why do you think he came down where he came down?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Because he thinks it's the right thing
to do.
Q Can you give us your view -- I mean, did it make
sense to put Iraq and other things off? I mean, would it have
been at all feasible to launch some military attack
simultaneously?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: I support whole-heartedly the decisions
the President made. (Laughter.)
Q Give us a sense at that time, in the planning stage, of
how complicated, how dangerous and how difficult just the first
phase looked -- in other words, to go after al Qaeda and to try
to dislodge the Taliban.
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, there's another whole theme you
guys may come back to here in terms of what we do here at home to
defend ourselves during this period of time. I wouldn't
clearly, we're focused here on what we're going to do offensively
and that was a very important component. But what was unique, in
part, about this period of time is we're also having to deal with
the fact that there may well be other attacks similar to what
happened on 9/11, or perhaps even worse. And that's a dimension
you obviously don't want to overlook, in terms of trying to
portray what we're dealing with as we move forward here.
But coming back to your question on how tough a problem
Afghanistan was going to be -- obviously, we didn't know for
sure how fast things would move. I think there was a high degree
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of confidence that we could do enormous damage to the Taliban

once we got started. It was the combination of the lack of a
target-rich environment, if you will, from the standpoint of our
air capabilities, coupled with our need to lead you in the
direction of marrying up your intel with your military, as I
mentioned before, and getting people on the ground to be able to
find targets and feed targets to the air aspects of it. That
sort of basic strategic approach was there from the very
beginning.
How long the Taliban could hold out; at what point the
Northern Alliance could begin to move; how effective the Northern
Alliance would be militarily once they did move -- those were
questions that we couldn't really answer. We had some guesses.
We had advice from the Agency, who had a fair amount of
experience out of there, going back to the '80s, who the players
were and how good they were and what some of the relationships
were and what some of the ingredients were here in terms of sort
of the internal dynamics, if you will, of the Northern Alliance
and what their relationship was between the Northern Alliance and
the southern Pashtun tribes and the Taliban. All the
intricacies, if you will, of Afghan politics played in all of
this, too.
But we did not know -- I don't think there was ever any
doubt -- and certainly never any doubt in my mind, and I don't
believe in the President's mind -- that we would prevail here.
There was a real question about timing, how long would it take,
how soon would something decisive happen, such as the fall of a
major city.

Q Were there any estimates at the time?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Not really.

Q Was there any projection of how long the thing might

take?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: No, nobody could say, well, in 30 days

it will be over, or 10 days. I mean, there was the possibility
that it would have taken longer and that you'd get into the
winter; that it would be difficult for the Northern Alliance to
operate then, and that part of the country they're based in is
some of the roughest terrain and the winters are harshest and
most difficult. And how they would move or would be willing to
move were questions that couldn't be answered at the outset.

Q If we can go to September the llth for a moment. The

day, itself, down in the PEOC. We understand one of the things
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that happened there, before 10:00 a.m., was somebody from the
military came in and said, Mr. Vice President, there's a plane 80
miles out, there's a fighter in the area. Should we engage? Do
you recall that?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: I couldn't put a time on it, but, yes,
I was asked that specific question. And it came up not once, but
more than once. I mean, there were other reports during the
course of the morning of incoming aircraft that were unidentified
and potentially hostile.
Q And you replied yes, is that correct?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: That's correct.
Q To engage it?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Correct.
Q And tell us what -- you had worked out with the
President the rules of engagement, or with Don Rumsfeld. What
was the state of -- you know, what could be done at that point?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, what had happened -- I'm trying
to recall the sequence now. I had -- I'm just trying to go
back. I was in my office when the planes hit. They called
my secretary called in and told me a plane had hit. I turned on
the tube, watched that, saw the second plane hit as it happened.
I talked to the President on the phone about his first
statement. He made the statement -- I've got a copy of it here
in front of me, about 9:30 a.m. that morning, from Florida. That
was his first statement on the subject.
Q Terrorism will not stand.
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Right, and that it was an apparent act
of terrorism. And about 9:32 a.m., the Secret Service grabbed me
and rushed me to the basement, to the shelter. They took me down
to -- let's go on background here just for a minute. They get
sensitive when you talk too much about how they operate.
They took me down — there's a tunnel from under the West
Wing that ultimately gets you to the PEOC, the Presidential
Emergency Operations Center. But that's quite a ways to get to
that; it takes a while to get there. And when they grabbed me,
this was based on this report, that it was American 77 -- we
didn't know what it was at the time -- but was headed for the
White House, a report that came in from the comptrollers at
Dulles. And they rushed me down and stopped -- there's an
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"-„

S interim spot where we stopped in the tunnel where they can seal
off both ends of the tunnel, and that's the most immediate
shelter that's available from the West Wing.
We got there, there was a TV set in there and a telephone.
And when we got there, I had them get to the President and place
a call to the President. It would have been the second call I
made to him that day. While I was waiting to get through to him,
because he was -- by this point, he was en route to the airport
in Florida -- a TV set in there and the report came in that the
Pentagon had been hit.
Q That was 9:40 a.m., I think. Is that correct?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: I don't know; whenever it was
broadcast. But the broadcast came over CNN, one of the news
channels, that the Pentagon had been hit, and I suppose they
started showing footage of it.
After all of that, then I talked to him on the telephone,
and that's where I urged him to delay his return, that I believed
we were a target.
He'd said in his statement at 9:30 a.m. that he was getting
""\y to come straight back to Washington. So it was after that
I that I talked with him and urged him to delay his return, because
we didn't know -- thought we had been targeted by then,
obviously.
And in that conversation, or it must have been when I first
arrived in the PEOC a few minutes later, that I was informed
that -- -
Q Can I stop you one second? You were in the tunnel for
that other call?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: A tunnel -- first call to him, second
call to him -- this is the call urging him not to come back,
was from the tunnel.
Q Okay, thank you.
THE VICE PRESIDENT: And then into the PEOC. And in the
PEOC, when I talked to him next was when I talked to him, I
believe, about the question of rules of engagement for the CAP.
I'd been informed that the CAP was up; Rumsfeld or somebody had
already put the Combat Air Patrol up. But that we needed -- it
didn't do any good to put the CAP up there unless we gave them
instructions to operate. And this all went back to my time as

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Secretary of Defense, that we needed to tell them whether or not

they were authorized to shoot if the plane wouldn't divert. And
he signed off on that concept.
Based on that, when I was asked a few minutes later if they
were authorized to engage, I said, yes. Now, later on, he spent
time with Rumsfeld and with Eberhart out at NORAD formalizing the
rules of engagement, that he had a separate conversation with Don
later on to nail down more precisely what the rules of engagement
would be for the Combat Air Patrol.
I had this conversation with him early on, on the telephone,
that he signed off on that.
Q -- said, basically, try to warn the plane, but if
they don't heed the warning and they have hostile intent, shoot
them?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: If you can't get them to divert, as a
last resort, then you're authorized to take them out.
Q And so you authorized that about -- when they told
you there's a plane 80 miles out, apparently this was the
Pennsylvania
THE VICE PRESIDENT: It might have been. I never knew for
sure what plane, whether or not we ever had the Pennsylvania
plane on Washington radar. There were various planes
remember, when we got down -- when I got into the PEOC, we
still had, I think, hundreds of airplanes in the air -- maybe
thousands. Somebody can check. There were a couple of thousand,
I guess, in the air when this all started.
And Norm Mineta was there with me, and had given the order
to go ahead and get everything landed, down. But that took a
couple hours to happen. And we had about six airplanes that we
thought were problems. It turns out there were only four. But
for a long time there, we thought we had six domestic flights
that were problems. And then later on in the day we had, as I
recall, five different times when we got word that there were
international flights coming in that were potential problems
where they were transponding the wrong code or, for one reason
or another, there was reason to believe they might be hostile.
Q How many times did you authorize, remind them they were
authorized to engage if necessary?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: It came up two or three times that
morning where -- but, again, there was -- I never got any
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immediate feedback saying, okay, we just shot down an airplane.

Q Right.
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Instead, what had happened would be the
plane is down or it's no longer a factor. I think in every case,
with the exception of the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania,
obviously, planes landed, were diverted to other airports, no
longer were a problem. But things were moving so fast, you
didn't know exactly how each one of those got resolved; you just
knew they got resolved because we didn't get hit.

As I say, the plane in Pennsylvania, we had a couple of

reports of plane crashes. We had the one in Pennsylvania. This
is later on in the morning, after it had gone down. We also had
a report of a crash near Camp David, which turned out to be
false, and another report of a crashed plane down on the Ohio-
Kentucky border that, for a long time, we couldn't confirm. And
in the end, turned out to be a false report.

My guess is, it was the result of American 77 turning off

its transponder and turning around to head back to Washington.
And when they turned off their transponder, I think the air
traffic controller out there thought they had lost it, that it
had gone in.

Q But there was a moment or a period of several minutes

when it was possible that you had essentially authorized the
shooting down of that United Flight 93. Is that

THE VICE PRESIDENT: With the approval of the President,

yes

Q What did you -- how long was that period, and what
did you think?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, it was sometime after -- I

don't remember, an hour, two hours later, that we got final
confirmation that we never had fired on anything. So I didn't
know for sure until then. I couldn't tell you exactly when, It
was some period of time afterwards that we got word back I
think from Don or from the Pentagon that we had not actually
had to shoot -- fire on any plane.

Q What did you think? I mean, here

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I was relieved.

Q in that period of some doubt now, even though it

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was several hours, we understand that because you didn't get a
report something had been shot down, you thought that it probably
had not. But that there was a period where you had this, if you
will, weight of responsibility on your shoulders and head that
you had given the final authorization to shoot down a civilian
airliner.
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, it was -- I mean, he thought of
it as, obviously, a very significant action. You're asking
American pilots to fly a fire on a commercial airliner full of
civilians. On the other hand, you had directly in front of me
what had happened to the World Trade Center, and a clear
understanding that once the plane was hijacked, it was a weapon;
and that if you had had the opportunity to fire on the planes
that hit the World Trade Center in light of what had happened,
would you have done it, and there was no doubt in my mind but
what you would have.
I mean, it seemed to me it was a clear-cut, painful, but
nonetheless clear-cut proposition. And I didn't agonize over it.
The President made the decision quickly and decisively. Again,
it goes back to the question, what's the purpose of the Combat
Air Patrol if you're not going to use it, if you're not going to
authorize them to defend the city

And there was also developing by this time a sense that we

were targeted. We had had the threat on Air Force One. We had
had a report the State Department had been hit by a car bomb, it
turned out to be false. A report the Pentagon had been hit,
initially by a helicopter. It of course later turned out to be
American 77. That was true. A report that the Washington
Monument had been blown up, but it turned out to be false. So
you had a lot of information coming in — _ -

Q Wasn't there something about a plane heading for Air

Force Two, out at

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Air Force One.

Q Just Air Force One?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Yes.

Q And was there a report that a plane was headed for the
President's ranch in Crawford?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: At one point we had a report on a low

flying, high speed approach to the President's ranch at Crawford.

19 _
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Q And when it was confirmed that the United plane had
crashed, and not been shot down, you had the immediate sense that
there was heroism on board that plane, that had brought it down?
What prompted that in your own mind?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, the fact that it had crashed.

Again, as I say, we were looking for six aircraft that had been
hijacked, and there were only four. I could account by that time
for three but, clearly, there were others out there. And the
fact that it had crashed, I immediately thought that somebody had
crashed it.
Q Somebody there said -- quoted you as saying, Mr. Vice
President, I think an act of heroism occurred on that plane.-
THE VICE PRESIDENT: That sounds correct, yes.

Q And was -- just in terms of the overall, you have all

these reports coming in. As you know from your Defense days that
generally the first reports are exaggerated or flat wrong. But
also, on another level, it looked like maybe this was an effort
to decapitate the American political leadership.
THE VICE PRESIDENT: That's correct.
\ Tell us what you were thinking. And going back to your
continuity of government thought, what you determined might be
going on, and what you had to do.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, as soon as it became clear that

they were hitting Washington, as well as New York -- and that
really happened, you know, with the first report that a plane was
headed for the White House. The thought, immediately cropped up
that Washington is going to be hit, or is being hit. And as I
say, that's when I urged the President to delay his return. It
was important to preserve -- if you spent time thinking about
these things, as I had over the years, and going back to my
involvement when the Ford administration or during my time on the
Intel Committee during the Reagan years, or as Secretary of
Defense, continuity of government is something you work on, and
you're very conscious of.

And of course we had done a lot of planning over the years,

and exercises, and so forth, on the question of how you preserve
the Constitutional government of the United States in the midst
of an all out nuclear attack. And the key, from the standpoint
of the Presidency, is the Presidential line of succession.

So what we did -- the question came up a couple times

20
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during the course of the day. One was on evacuating the Speaker,
which we did. Another -- at one point I was asked about
evacuating the Cabinet, not all of them, obviously. But, again,
I gave instructions that some Cabinet members should also be
moved to safe and secure locations. Rumsfeld was at the
Pentagon. Powell was en route back from South America. At one
point John Ashcroft was airborne, and he came back into
Washington. The question was, where should he go? By then we
had -- we'd distributed potential successors pretty widely. So
I thought he ought to go to the Justice Department. It was
those kinds of decisions, but always being aware that we had to
make sure we had a President, or someone who could take over as
President, should something happen to him.
Q So you thought for a moment, this could be a moment
where somebody is literally trying to do -- take out the
leadership.
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Right.

Q How long a period was that?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, most of the day.

i Q And how many of those -- were you working off a

checklist, based on the planning that had been done, of kind of
what you do, and where you put people, and in what order? Or
were you having to sort of make those decisions on the fly,
amidst all the reports coming in?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, it's more on the fly. I knew —
my job as Vice President is to think about those things, and as
I say, making sure the President is. safe-was first and foremost.
That's why the first thing I did after I'd heard a plane was
headed for the White House, as soon as they quit running me into
the shelter, was call the President and say, don't come back for
now; please stay away until we can find out what's happening.

And after me, of course, after THE VICE PRESIDENT comes the
Speaker and the President Pro Tern. And I was informed the
President Pro Tern had wanted to go home, to his home in
Washington, left the Hill, and again was dispersed to some
extent. And the question was on the Speaker. And so we
evacuated the Speaker. So we had number one and number three
relatively safe at that point. And the backup, of course, were
other Cabinet members.
So I didn't have to think about it very long. I mean, there
are certain established procedures, locales that people can be
21
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moved to under those circumstances. The discussion I had with

the President, for example, about where he should go -- I
recommended Offutt because it was obviously secure, a military
base, SAC headquarters, great communications worldwide, a place
where he'd be plugged in with our military forces and able to
operate from a very secure environment. So that's why he went to
Offutt in the first place.
But, I mean, those are things you just do based on
experience and having been involved in thinking about these
issues over the years. I didn't have a checklist.
The other thing, of course, once you've got the Speaker
relocated, then you've got to be sensitive to the other members
of the leadership in the Congress. Even though they're not
successors, you have to be sensitive to the need to treat other
leaders appropriately. So we also, eventually, evacuated all of
them to the same location. And then I had a couple of
conversations during the course of the day -- on two different
occasions I called and briefed to the congressional leadership on
sort of where we were. The President directed me to do that. I
called them at his direction and made sure they knew what we were
up to and what was going on.
Then they called and asked when they could return, and I
told them when the President had made his decision to come back,
and gave them the time, and they came back about the same time.
It was about -- what -- 6:00 p.m., 7:00 p.m. that night.
Q We we're told at one point you said to the
congressional leadership who were getting antsy about wanting to
get out of there, we control the helicopters, so you have to sort
of — (laughter.) -•- -
THE VICE PRESIDENT: I can't imagine I would have said
anything like that. (Laughter.) Is that what they say?
Q Wasn't Senator Nickles getting a little antsy?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: I don't recall any one particular
member getting antsy.
Q Saying that they're an independent branch of government
and, you know, why should we do what the executive branch tells
us.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, I don't recall that, but I know

Don pretty well. They do not have any -- well, I'm sure they
probably think the helicopters belong to them. (Laughter.)
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Q Your on-the-record answer is?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: No comment. (Laughter.) No, no, I
don't want to do that. No, I don't recall any conflict. If
there was some, it didn't come to me.
Q Let me ask this critical question -- kind of the
context before September llth. As you look back -- Dan talked
to one of the congressional leaders who said, you know, you can't
pin what happened on September llth, you can't blame George Tenet
or the FBI. Blame goes around. And this person said, you know,
in a way all of us failed. Do you look back and say, gee, in
that eight months we were in government, maybe we should have
done more offensively to get bin Laden?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, I don't. One of the things
that's been, I think, remarkable about the period since 9/11 is
there have not been a lot of recriminations. And that's partly,
I think, part of the testimony to the President's leadership
style. It would have been easy to sort of fall into the trap of
looking for scapegoats. He insisted that not happen. I can
recall him specifically making it clear he did not want that to
occur.
That's crucial in terms of being able to pull together a
team. If you're going to get people to work together
effectively, if folks are worried about their jobs or about who
is going to land on their head next, to criticize them in the
press or in front of the Congress, then they're not focusing on
the task at hand, which is winning the war against terrorism.
Q Fair enough. But in that
THE VICE PRESIDENT: The President was very good about
giving that direction and guidance.
Q Yes, sir. But in the eight months you people were in
office, we understand that there were -- there was intelligence
a good number of times that seemed reliable -- oh, bin Laden is
here in Afghanistan, and so forth. And I just wonder, looking
back in your introspective way, you say, I wish we had done more,
and that maybe we should have.
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, what 9/11 provided, clearly, was
a justification for a very robust response that the American
people and I think the rest of the world understands. Most of
the rest of the world. And I'm not sure if you'd gone and done
that in June or July that there would have been the kind of
support that there was by the time we did do it in September and
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—-„

I October.
Q But was there in that June, July, August period, when
you were beginning to deal more intensively with terrorism and
looking at that, any discussion that said, it would be nice to be
able to do something, but we need a pretext? In other words
THE VICE PRESIDENT: No. No, what you had -- we obviously
were tracking and receiving intelligence reports, tracking threat
levels, very much aware of the possibility that there was going
to be some kind of an attack someplace. But a lot of that was
focused on U.S. interest outside the United States, forces
deployed overseas, on those kinds of targets; never the
specificity that would have allowed you to anticipate what
actually happened.
Q You had good intelligence, though, about where bin
Laden was quite frequently during that period?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Where he was? We had good reason to
believe he was in Afghanistan. It was hard to be much more
specific than that. I don't recall being told, he's -- we
didn't have any GPS coordinates that I'm aware of.
'"'r"-\ You didn't during that period?
—" THE VICE PRESIDENT: Not that I'm aware of, Bob.
Q Could we ask you, as we get to the end of this, you had
raised it earlier, the issue of homeland security. In the period
just before the President's speech to Congress, you guys put
together the plan to bring Tom Ridge in. Can you give us a
little bit of background on how that developed and how quickly it
came together, and what were the main elements that you were
concerned about?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, the President had asked me in the

spring to take a look at that whole area of homeland defense, not
so much to reinvent the wheel, but to go review -- there had
been a number of studies and commissions done, looking at the
question of the threat. Jim Gilmore, for example, and General
Klapper had done a congressional study that stretched back a
couple of years. There was the Hart-Redman operation, CSIAS had
done one on the homeland defense.

What I'd done is put together a small staff and we'd started
reviewing the various recommendations from those panels, in terms
of identifying issues that needed to be resolved, and so forth.
And after 9/11, then we sped it up and I got the group together

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') and told them I wanted their recommendations fast; to zero in,
first and foremost, on the question of how we ought to structure
ourselves, from a governmental standpoint, to deal with these
issues.
What that produced was the recommendation I took to the
President on establishing the Office of Homeland Security, which
we did. He and I talked about a number of possible candidates
for the office, and he settled quickly on Tom Ridge as somebody
that we both thought would be ideal for the job, if he'd take it.
The President called him, got him in. We had him in Andy Card's
office. Andy and I sat down and talked with him, and I think
as I recall, that was the morning the President gave his speech
to Congress -- or the morning before, maybe. And over the-
course of about 48 hours, we closed the deal. The President was
very persuasive.
Q Mr. Vice President, when did you first take that
recommendation to the President?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, it was at --

Q Was that after Camp David?

-^ THE VICE PRESIDENT: Yes, it was after Camp David, as I
I recall. It was as we were putting together the address to
•"'•'' Congress. We thought it was important to have in there some
indication of what we were prepared to do as a government, in
terms of making the U.S. a tougher target, and finding ways to
improve our overall capacity to defend against attacks here at
home. The heart of that effort was to get somebody like Tom in,
who could take on that responsibility and run it. And that's how
it basically all ended up in the President's speech. -
Q Mr. Vice President, as I review the notes here, and so
forth, obviously there's a lot more we need to get. I'm going to
talk to -- Anna and I are going to talk to Scooter Libby again.
Does he had any notes? I noticed at one point you said, it was
at 9:32 a.m. that you went down to the tunnel. Do you have some
sort of time line there?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: The Secret Service had kept a time line
of stuff that had happened during the course of that day. And I
talked to one of your competitors a week or two ago. I asked
when they moved me to the basement, and it was 9:32 a.m. was the
time they gave me.

Q Do you have any other times that are specific?

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THE VICE PRESIDENT: Just the stuff you've seen, when the
first plane hit the North Tower, the South Tower -- you know,
when the Towers went down, that kind of stuff.
Q As I look at the notes here, as we said, we're trying
to focus on the President's decision to go to war. Obviously,
it's unknown and somewhat dramatic, though you're relaying his
decision to engage this plane, if necessary -- the Pennsylvania
plane. I wonder if we shouldn't just do a separate story on
that, because it's one of those things that from 30 years of
doing this, is going to get a lot of attention. And I hate to do
a story -- I don't know how Dan feels about this, about
President Bush that a lot of attention goes to Vice President
Cheney.
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, and you shouldn't. I mean, it's
his decision. He's the guy who has got to make that call. It's
not the kind of thing where I can act or would act unilaterally.
I mean, the nice thing about being Vice President is on the
really tough ones, you can take to the President.

Q No, but I think what Bob is saying is that you were

there in the chair, because the President was in transit, and you
were the one who was asked the question. I mean, I think our
view is that this is a very interesting stand-alone moment in a
much, much larger story that we're trying to tell. And I think
it would behoove everybody, if it's okay with you, if that were
done before the rest of this package comes together, because we
obviously have a lot of other interviews, including the
President, to do the main story of how he came to the decision to
watch the country on the war on terrorism, whereas this is a
snapshot of a singular moment in the drama of the day of
September llth. --- -

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, I'd prefer to honor the ground

rules we've established. You know, if you wanted to do a sidebar
when you do the main story on something like that, obviously,
that's fine by me. But I mean, the basis upon which we proceeded
here was this was going to cover the President on the llth to the
20th, and that's my preference for how we keep it.

Q I certainly agree. I mean, Mary will know about this.

It's such an electric thing, that it's going to get a lot of
attention even

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, it's not like it's a secret. I

mean, we talked about it that Sunday after it happened.

But you said that there had been kind of a general

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authorization. And that's the view -- after talking to Scooter

on Friday, I checked the clips very carefully, and so did Dan,
and this is a new element that, in the overall, is not that
significant. But you know how Washington works. And I'm just
saying if we get it out before the series, it will then kind of
dissipate when the series runs at the end of the month or in
early January. And that would -- journalistically, I think
that's in our interest and in terms of the goal of this, I would
argue it's in yours. But you're the boss.
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Yes, I would like to proceed in
accordance with the ground rules we have established, Bob. As
you're aware, I'm sensitive about how we proceed here, and

Q I understand.
THE VICE PRESIDENT: And that would be my preference.

Q And you don't think anybody else knows about this?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Knows about what?
Q About what you did in answering the question, should we
engage, and said yes?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Oh, that's already out there.

Q Well, now, when I looked at the "Meet The Press," it
was only that you had talked to the President about the
authorization

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Right.

Q for rules of engagement, but not the specifics about a

plane thought to be the United
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, that's a misinterpretation of
what you and I just said. Because when we talked, it was -- I
did not have the -- as I say, I never knew whether or not we
had picked up on the United Flight 93; I still don't to this day,
in terms of having a plane 80 miles out. You would have to go
back. I don't know when the timing was of that report, and we
had several reports of incoming aircraft, none of which ever
arrived in Washington.

Now, whether or not one of those was United 93, I just don't
know. There may be somebody who is an air traffic controller who
has the radar records or something could figure that out.

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But what I did have was the conversation with the President
on the rules of engagement for the aircraft, where he agreed they
could, in fact, fire on an airplane if they couldn't get it to
divert. And when I was asked two or three occasions if, in fact,
the CAP was authorized to fire, based on the fact that I already
had this conversation with him, I gave him the order that they
could, in fact, do so.
Q Right. But these were specific instances. And as best
we can tell from the records, sir, that was United Flight 93,
because it was 80 miles out, and then I think at one point, maybe
60 miles out; and then the report was that it was down and it
turned out to be that one.
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, I don't know that. You know more
than I do then.
Q Never is the case. (Laughter.) Anything else we
should know?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: No, sir. Well, yes, I mean there are
I'm sure there are a lot of other things you should know.
(Laughter.)
Q Well, help us, then.
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, I guess I'm just -- I'm looking
at some notes I made here earlier, getting ready for the call.
We talked about marrying up intelligence in the military, about
the broad-gaged, multi-faceted approach, opportunity to realign
I'm just looking at my notes here.
The work with Musharraf -- I guess -Scooter and I talked
about something that I know he mentioned to you, this -- the
things that didn't happen, the train wrecks that didn't occur, in
terms of the way things can run off the rails, I thought was a
useful way, in part, to think about this.
Q What, that Pakistan is
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Yes, that the President could have made
a decision, for example, that Pakistan is shaky, and if we go
hard in Afghanistan, we could create problems for the Paks
and, therefore, that ought to dictate a softer approach to going
after the Taliban. And the President didn't go for any of that.
He clearly went for, let's go get Musharraf, get him on board;
did that very early on. And that laid the predicate in part, and
helped, obviously, when we just finally mounted the effort
against the Taliban.
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Q You concurred with that analysis of

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Yes. I mean, I thought it was

absolutely the right thing to do . I guess -- pardon?
Q Sir, that at a couple of these meetings you emphasized
that it was important to be sensitive to the position of the
Pakistanis, though?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Sure.

Q They were, in a sense, the most important piece of

this, in terms of building the coalition.
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Yes. And the President saw it, again,
as an opportunity to rebuild our relationship with Pakistan
and has worked at that very assiduously, in terms of the missions
he's sent out there, phone calls with Musharraf, meetings at the
U.N. I think it's one of the positive things that sort of
reinforces this concept of this trend that there was the
opportunity here for some basic realignments that have been very
positive.
Q People have said about your friend, Don Rumsfeld, that
he, in these early days, in the first week, was told by the
President, see what military planning can be done. But when
initially asked, what can we do now, he said, not much
effectively; that he was very much the view, you can't start this
in the first few days of the first week, in a military operation.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, let's go on background at this

point. Yes, Don was very honest and forthright, as^you would
expect him to be. The military always has plans on the shelf for
various contingencies. But the plans they had on the shelf, with
respect to Afghanistan, had to some extent been I think probably
shaped by what they'd been asked to do during the Clinton
administration .

And it took some time to develop the targeting information

that allowed us to put together an effective plan for how to
proceed. And Don was very honest with the President, from the
very beginning. If he had ordered up an air strike the very
first day, there wasn't that much you could go hit. You had to
work at it, to figure out how you could apply air power to
achieve your objectives, and that's what they did.

MS. MATALIN: Okay, Mr. Vice President, you actually have to

go to another meeting.

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THE VICE PRESIDENT: Okay.

MS. MATALIN: Boys, you all right?

Q Yes, thank you. And thank you for the extra time. Do
you do a transcript of this, to e-mail to us, Mary?

MS. MATALIN: Sure.

Q Thank you, sir.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: All right, good to talk to you.

Q We'll come back to you.
THE VICE PRESIDENT: All right.

Q Thank you.

END 3:15 P . M . EST

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