t3 b16 dos-dod statements on terrorism 2 of 2 fdr- 6-26-03 albion notes and quotes from rice...

8/14/2019 T3 B16 DOS-DOD Statements on Terrorism 2 of 2 Fdr- 6-26-03 Albion Notes and Quotes From Rice Transcripts

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NSC 03000832Interview o f Dr. Condoleezza Rice by Bob Woodward (o n deep background)October 24, 2001 (70mins.)

(368) Rice: "WejTgdJr^the late, summer [of IQQl^-beetvA^orking on countertermrism andworkingon al Qaeda, and working on trying to get serious about going after al Qaeda. And so, theprincipals and the President had a base of knowledge about this organization that probablythree months earlier we wouldn't have had, because we'd been through this drill of how werewe going to deal with al Qaeda. It was a major threat. We knew that they had done theembassy bombings, suspected they had done the Cole. We'd been through a summer wherethere was a lot of noise in the system."

Rice comments that Tenet had been very concerned about chatter, and it looked like an attackwould occur abroad. "And, in fact, what we did was to button up abroad pretty effectively."Eg. mentions the Genoa G8, where a lot of security precautions had been taken; a couple ofwarnings about the President's security, one very serious. "And so we had done a lot abroad.One of the things that struck me is that the protocols for what you do abroad are prettyclear..."

Rice: "So the only point I'm making is that everybody was kind of on the same page about alQaeda, having come out of this review that had been done."

(369) Woodward asks Rice if there was an action plan pending from this reviewRice respondsthat there was. "There was an action plan that probably would have been dated September

10th." States that it was a directive that would have gone to the President if not for 9-11. "Sopeople were working the problem, and so there was a common basic knowledge about alQaeda."

(373) Rice says Bush was thinking of amilitary response to 9-11 from the start: "...the President, I

think, never even considered that he wouldn't at some point use military force." Noconsideration of negotiation with the Taliban.

(378) Rice (on recognition early on that this was a worldwide problem): "...because we had a

database about al Qaeda, everybody knew it was worldwide. I think it wasn't until theintelligence briefing the next morning [9-15] by George that we actually knew it was 60countries. I mean, that was news to people. But that it was widespreadI mean, we'd beendealing with it in the Philippines because of the kidnappings of those people. So we knewthat this organization was worldwide."

(379) Rice re. Discussion at 9-15 War cabinet meeting, Camp David: "The financial piece wasunderway [Rice says she thinks this had already been gotten underway at one of the earlier

meetings]. The diplomatic piece was underway. And everybody was starting to think whatPage 1 of 2

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kind of military options would we have. But that necessitated a really thorough look at theregion. And I remember that we had a big map out in front of us, and everyone looking atAfghanistan and thinking, Afghanistan, it's justAfghanistan, great. Because not a placethat brings up a lot of confidence in people."And then starting to put the pieces in placewhat did this mean for the Central Asians?What would it mean for the Russians? The kind of instability in the region. And then a lot offocus on Pakistan, that you couldn't do any of this without Pakistan, and that this was goingto be extremely difficult for Musharraf and for Pakistan." Notes that it was out of thismeeting that focus began to be put on how to strengthen the US relationship w/ Musharraf&Pakistanthat demands on Pakistan had to be put gently: "...because this is a region that ifPakistan goes bad, you have unleashed a whole other set of demons."Re. Taliban: discussants concluded that, though unlikely, it was worth trying to think of away to turn the Taliban on al Qaeda.

(380)Rice: "...by the end of that Camp David meeting, I think there was consensus that you hadphases to this and we're going to concentrate on al Qaeda and the Taliban/.. .There was alsoagreement that you wanted to have other phases. Not necessarily Iraq, but other phases; thatthis wasn't going to be a war on al Qaeda and the Taliban, this was a war on terrorism."

(383)Rice, re. Iraq: ".. .1 don't want to leave you with the impression.. .that Iraq fell off the applecart. I mean, the President has said many, many time, Iraq is a problem. It was a problembefore September 11th, it's a problem after September 11th. We want to see whether or not, infact, there is a connection." Responding to question about whether the evidence is there yet,".. .1think you don't have to link Iraq to September 11th to say Iraq is a threat to Americaninterests and security. If we were doing any kind of normal investigations, like the Cole, forinstance, we wouldn't yet be drawing conclusions about who was involved. It tookwhata year to do the Cole. It took almost two years to do the embassy bombings. So this is on afast track. But trying to draw connections a month and a half after just isn't possible. Thatwork is still going on."

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NSC 03000834Interview o f National Security Advisor, Condoleeza Rice by Scott Pelley, CBSAugust 2, 2002 (25mins.)(401-2) Rice: "It wasn't very long [after the WTC was hit] before I thought al Qaeda, because we had

gone through a fairly extensive review of policy toward al Qaeda. I think George Tenet had,in February.. .talked about the threat of al Qaeda to the United States. And the fact that it wasbig and spectacular said to me this is probably al Qaeda."(407)Rice: "We had done a lot of work on terrorism, on how these people were supportingthemselves. We knew that Afghanistan was the center of their operations, and we knew thatthey were being harbored in a number of places. And so the line that appears in the

President's statement from the Oval that night [9-11], that says not just the terrorists, butthose who harbor them, came out of what had been a pretty intensive discussion, over severalmonths, about how to really deal with international terrorism."(408)Rice: "The President had heard of al Qaeda. We'd been tracking them and looking at them.Several times he'd said, when presented with evidence that al Qaeda might strike here, mightstrike theremostly overseas, by the way; almost all of the information was that al Qaedawas preparing to strike American interests overseas, as they had done before./ But as he heardthat information, the President said, youknow, I'm tired of swatting at flies. I need a strategyto eliminate these guys. That he had done in the spring. So he knew al Qaeda, and we allknew what we were going to have to do.

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NSC 03000836Interview o f National Security Advisor, Condoleeza Rice by Terry M o r o n of ABCAugust 6, 2002

(434)Rice: "I really do believe that we did what we could. That given that we're human beings,given the experiences that we had, have had, given the information that we had, we acted hithe way that we thought best for the country. I don't believe that anything that could havebeen done in those months running up to September 11th would have forestalled this attack."Re. al-Q base in Afghanistan: ".. .frankly, it would have been very hard to take that basedown in the way that we did before September 11th.""...this administration, and I believe everybody who dealt with al Qaeda before us did whatwe could to try and protect the American people."

NSC 03000838Interview o f National Security Advisor, Condoleeza Rice by Jim Angle of Fo x NewsAugust 7, 2002

(456) Rice, re. al-Q threat: "We had been working hard on some ideas, many of which had beenaround since '98 or '99, that we wanted to pursue to see if we could more energetically

destroy this group." Notes the difficulties of dealing with Afghanistan, Pakistan (w/ whomUS relations were at a low-point, since aid & assistance had been cut off due tononproliferation non-compliance), Uzebekistan (w/ whom the US had no developedrelationship).

(457)Rice notes the advantages of having a good relationship w/ Russia, who encouraged USpresence in Central Asia. "And so, there were a lot of pieces that fell into place afterSeptember 11th, but they were well in train before September 11th, largely in theserelationships that we were beginning to build so that we could draw on them."Re. Genoa plot: "...we still believe that, together with the Italians, we either disrupted it ormade it so difficult for the securitywithin the security environment that they couldn't pull itoff."

(458)Rice on US intell on al-Q: "....we knew not as much about al Qaeda inside America. Andthere are a lot of reason [sic.] for that, that go to our culture and our history and our openness,and out institutions. We haven't had to think about an existential threat to the United Statessince 1812, and so it's not surprising that we would have had borders and immigration andcustoms spread across the bureaucracy, that we would never have allowed relations betweenthe FBI and the CIA to develop in the way that we're not allowing them to develop. Thesewere choices that America's made in the context of no threat to the American homeland."

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NSC 03000839Interview of Senior Administration Official [Dr. Rice] by Bob Woo dwardAugust 7, 2002

Re. post-9-11 response(463) Rice (context unknown): "The period before September 11th, when we were trying to figure away to enhance the strategy toward al Qaeda and trying to figure a way to get more

aggressive had revealed exactly this problem. The nonproliferation policy toward Pakistanmeant that we had no relationship with Pakistan./...we had no incentives for Pakistan toplay."

(464) Rice notes also the lack of relationship w/ Uzbekistanand others: "The problem waywehad^no relationships. And the work that we did in the lead-up, the work that was embodiedin that September 4th document [reference to this not covered in material received herebut

see below] was to try.. .to address that problem. Because if you were going to have a morerobust strategy toward Afghanistan,you could not do it on the fly. You had tojiaverelationships with Pakistan, you^hadtojiave^ relationship with Uzbekistan. Youlxmld notatm.Ae^NortKern Alliance by dropping..weapons on them in the north of the country. Youhad to haveT'glatkmsnips to do that."

(465) Rice: "...the problem was the military had no infrastructure. I mean, youknow, the

American military doesn't just show up and start bombing. It has to have bases." Notes alsoneed for overflight rights. "...1was very sympathetic to the Pentagon, because this was avery tough nut:no infrastructure, no targets that made any sense whatsoever, a President whowas determined not to do something that looked just like he was doing it for show. Youknow, the constraints on what they were being asked to do were pretty bad."

NSC 03000840Interview of Senior Administration Official [Dr. Rice] by Bob Wo odwardAugust 19, 2002 (2hrs. 40mins)

(467) Rice: ".. .the business about financing terrorism had been a part of the broader strategic

picture for a long time. They had tried all the way back in the Clinton administration to dosomething about it. They'd had a lot of resistance from Treasury/.. .And from State. Becauseit's hard to do. You end up going after charities that then say they're going to sue. And sowe'd actually made some progress on this before this happened [ie. pre-9-4 plan].

(468) Rice describes September 4th 2001 plan (an NSPD) as a comprehensive plan for rolling back

al-Q specifically. "It memorializes decisions that had been takenthat the deputiesPage 1 of 3Created by A. AlbionJune 26, 2003


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recommended all the way back at the end of April about arming the Northern Alliance. The \AhadactualCIA to run their covert [actions]." Says this sum"went up to" $200 million. "...it was /basically a plan to try to either in a short order to get the Taliban to hand them over or start 'trying to bring the Taliban down. Because I think the real view here was you weren't goingto get al Qaeda without getting at the Taliban and breaking up the sanctuary." Also includedterrorist financing.

(475) Re. Saudi cooperation (esp. after 9-11): "There is a lot of mythology. I would say that on a

S g a j f i L f l f J ^ O ' it's at least an eight-and-a-half, and in this period, maybe even higher. They'vebeen pretty good." ~ ~ ~ ~ " - J

(483) Rice talks about the background to NSPD-9: "...the [idea] that we adopted pretty quickly that-

he had.. .that the Clinton people had decided not to do was to arm the Northern Alliance. /That got done pretty quickly." Rice clarifies that it was the Clinton State Dept. that hadobjected to thisspecifically Albright"apparently because they [Northern Alliance] were /not very nice people", ie. a human rights issue; also skeptical of Iranian influence. * ~ ~ w

(484) Rice (re. arming Northern Alliance: "So this is not an easy decision. I don't mean to suggest

that this was a slam dunk.. .the deputies did not object so he [Armitage] went back, checkedwith Powell, Powell didn't object, so now the State objection was removed. And in April[2001] the deputies told the CIA to go and put together an operational plan for arming theNorthern Alliance and for several other things."

Rice mentions that the key to this plan was seen as relations w/ Pakistan & Uzbekistan:> Uzbekistan: Rice notes that CIA had an agreement w/Uzbekistan on the Predator,starting in mid-2000; but Uzbekistan had been pushing for more support against the IMU,

and Clinton administration had concerns about compliance due to their HR record.> Pakistan: Rice notes that the US was isolated from Pakistan, due to nonproliferation

concerns, and that the NSPD was focused on changing the nature of this relationship: "wehave to start offering them some carrots, not just sticks."

(485) Rice comments that when document approved by the principals 9-10 came up for Bush's

signature 10-25, "we pulled it back to look at it, to see if it was still applicable to what wewere going to do, decided it was still the basic strategy that we wanted to pursue, and it'sbasically that document that gets signed in on October 26th [sic.]./., .1sent a cover note on topof it, I remember, that said to the principals, this is the document that you signed onSeptember 4th. We've now reviewed it, your deputies agree that this document is stillrelevant and should guide our policy on the global war on terrorism. We accelerated severaltime lines.. .but basically it's the same document that gets signed by the President."

Rice confirms NSPD-9 is compartmentalized as PEARL.

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(491) Rice, re. Tenet briefing during the transition periodhow much did he talk about the threat

from UBL/al-Q?: "...a lot of other things got talked about, too. It was notone would nothave read from that briefing that this was the number one threat against the United States.There were a lot of threats that were briefed." Rice confirms that they received a 3 hourbriefing onNorth Korea, and a \V i hour briefing on al Qaeda; other subjects covered were:WMD and proliferation, China

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t3 b16 dos-dod statements on terrorism 2 of 2 fdr- 6-26-03 albion notes and quotes from rice...

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