Transcript: Vice President Cheney Interview by London Sun, Nov. 9
(Vice President discusses war in Afghanistan, campaign against terrorism) (4600) Following is the transcript, released by the White House, of an interview November 9 of Vice President Cheney by the London Sun: (begin transcript) THE WHITE HOUSE Office of the Press Secretary November 9, 2001 INTERVIEW OF THE VICE PRESIDENT BY CONFERENCE CALL WITH THE LONDON SUN Q: Mr. Vice President? THE VICE PRESIDENT: Yes, sir? Q: Hello -- from The London Times. Thank you for talking to me. The Northern Alliance is just claiming that they have taken Mazar-e-Sharif in Northern Afghanistan. Do you have any information that you can share with us about that? THE VICE PRESIDENT: I don't. We just finished our morning NSC meeting, and we did not have that information at that point. Apparently, what I'm seeing -- I just turned on CNN here, and their ticker is running the claim from the Northern Alliance that they are now in Mazar-e-Sharif. But I don't have any independent confirmation of that yet. Q: Would it surprise you if that were the case, though, based on your intelligence? THE VICE PRESIDENT: No, it wouldn't surprise me. I think we've made significant gains there in the last few days. I think the air campaign is bound to have an impact. The key has been to get some of our people on the ground with the units of the Northern Alliance; in this case, commanded by General Dostam. And once they're on the ground, they're able to spot targets and help our air units do a much more effective job with our precision bombing of hitting Taliban positions. And it's bound to have an impact. And that, combined with the determination and courage of the troops on the ground, I'm not surprised that we've made significant progress. I'd say at this point, I can't confirm this latest report, but if -- it's just a matter of time. Q: I'm just looking at the CNN and Dostam saying that 90 Taliban have been killed, but this is just a report. How long can the Taliban last now? I mean, if Mazar-e-Sharif has fallen, you talked about U.S. troops on the ground -- I mean, how long do you think they can last? THE VICE PRESIDENT: The Mazar-e-Sharif area, the city up there is, I guess, has got upwards of 400,000 people in it. It's a fair-sized community. It's not just a small town, obviously -- in a key strategic part of the country. Once it falls to the Northern Alliance, then that will allow you to open up a land route to Uzbekistan and begin to resupply the Northern Alliance overland, which is a significant development. Q: You have 1,000 U.S. troops in Uzbekistan at least; that's what we know publicly. Can we expect those to move into Afghanistan -- THE VICE PRESIDENT: I don't think of it so much as U.S. forces moving into Afghanistan as just opening up a route that will make it a lot easier to get equipment, supplies, ammunition and so forth in to the Northern Alliance than it has been up until now. It also, I think, threatens the Taliban hold on Northern Afghanistan. Now, their major strongholds are back in Kandahar, Kabul, to some extent Herat out to the West. But it's a significant development. I mean, it would be perceived, I think, as a significant defeat for them because they have worked hard to continually try to reinforce it in recent days as the air campaign has taken effect. And it can begin to have an effect, I would think, throughout the country in terms of the extent to which members of the Taliban and individual military leaders sort of reassess how long they want to stay affiliated with the Taliban or whether or not they want to defect, as some already have. Q: And the President's speech in Atlanta last night, he ended his speech by saying, "Let's roll." And there's all kinds of indications, quite apart from Mazar-e-Sharif, that Allied forces are ready to go in on the ground. If Mazar-e-Sharif has fallen, can we expect the move towards Kabul in the next few days or weeks? THE VICE PRESIDENT: In terms of Northern Alliance forces? Q: In terms of Northern Alliance forces assisted by yourselves and the other allies? THE VICE PRESIDENT: I wouldn't -- first of all, I can't really predict -- I don't speak for the Northern Alliance, clearly. We have been active with our air campaign in terms of striking Taliban targets outside Kabul that would need to be overcome before the Northern Alliance could take the city. And I wouldn't get into the business of commenting on prospective future U.S. force operations. That's one I'm going to stay away from. Q: Okay. Can I move on to Iraq? I mean, obviously we haven't got long. The President said last night -- and I'm quoting him, "We are beginning our effort in Afghanistan, and Afghanistan is only the beginning." And then he went on to say that where terrorist groups with global reach exist, the U.S. and its allies would destroy them. If you had evidence that those terrorist groups existed in Iraq, will you take military action in that country? THE VICE PRESIDENT: That's a speculative question. What I'd do is, I guess I'd want to reiterate the President's policy has been very forthright in this regard, and that is to say that what we're faced with here is a terrorist campaign that has struck hard here in the United States, that inflicted thousands of casualties on innocent Americans and many of your friends from overseas -- obviously, the U.K. suffered several hundred casualties in the World Trade Center bombing. The situation with respect to states that host or provide sanctuary for terrorists I think was captured in the President's original statements, and I think will be addressed tomorrow in his U.N. speech, when he goes up to address the General Assembly, and that is that a state that hosts terrorists and provides sanctuary for them has to accept guilt for their actions, just as much as the terrorists do. Q: But that might include Iraq, if you had intelligence to support that? THE VICE PRESIDENT: I will just leave it right where I left it. Q: Right. You talk about the U.N. meeting on Saturday. I noticed that Condoleezza Rice overnight said that the President would not be meeting Chairman Arafat. Is that definite? Is there anything that Chairman Arafat could do to change that scenario and actually bring about a meeting? THE VICE PRESIDENT: There's no plan at this stage for a meeting with Arafat. The President is going to be up there; he's got a lot of other meetings scheduled, with President Musharraf of Pakistan and so forth. But there's nothing scheduled at present with Arafat. Q: Okay. Can I ask you about the international coalition? How important is the coalition to the United States at the end of the day? Is it the means, or is it the end? I mean, is the coalition -- do you see the coalition as there to assist the U.S. in what it has to do? Or does the coalition have to exist in order for the U.S. to do what it has to do? THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, the coalition is absolutely essential, I think, in terms of our activities. There are a number of things we can do unilaterally, but in this particular kind of conflict, I think the coalition adds immeasurably to our success. When you think about what we're doing, it's not just military activity. A lot of it's also diplomatic. A lot of it involves intelligence efforts, both overt and covert. A lot of it involves, for example, coordinated activity to freeze financial assets that have gone to support the al Qaeda network. That doesn't mean, for example, that the coalition is the end of the process here. It's a means to an end, which is the defeat of international terrorism. And the coalition may shift from time to time, in terms of some nations able to do more than others, some willing to sign up to work on a particular problem, but not another. And we're happy to work with anybody who wants to work with us on it. But I think there's no question but that the coalition is vitally important. Prime Minister Blair has been a key part in helping put all that together and as a leader of the effort. Q: And obviously, pre-election last year, Tony Blair and his team were very close, politically and in many ways, to the Clinton-Gore team. And many of us have been surprised at the relationship which the Prime Minister seems to have developed with the President. How close is that relationship, in terms of personal friendliness and trust? THE VICE PRESIDENT: I think it has gotten to be very close. I have watched it -- I have watched other relationships between the U.K. and the U.S. over the years. I have worked closely, of course, when I worked with President Bush back in '89 to '93, the Gulf War was Mrs. Thatcher. John Major is a good friend. I think it has more to do with the special relationship that exists between the U.S. and the U.K. is at the heart of it. But there's no question but that these two guys have hit it off. I mean, they work very well together, talk to each other on the telephone all the time. There is, I think, a good deal of mutual respect there for what each other brings to the relationship. I know the President relies very heavily on Prime Minister Blair in terms of advice. And as I say, the leadership role he has taken in this particular circumstance where he's really stepped out and been a major leader of the international effort. Q: How important is Britain, and Tony Blair particularly -- how important has his personal support been in coming up to Congress so quickly after September the 11th and so forth? How important has that been for you yourself, and for the administration? THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, that was a very special night, when the President went up and addressed the joint session of Congress, I think partly because of, sort of the event that it commemorated, that, in effect, you were trying to deal with these attacks of September 11th. I can't think of another time when a leader of a foreign nation participated the way the Prime Minister did that night, being there to witness the event and share in it. It was something we all deeply appreciated. And one of the things that his active role in all of this has helped remind everybody is that this really was an assault not just on the United States, but they hit the World Trade Center -- that of the thousands of people killed, hundreds of them were from overseas, many of them Muslim. Some 80 nations lost people in the World Trade Center, and the international dimension of the threat and of what's required by way of a response, I think, was captured very much by the Prime Minister's role. I guess the other thing I'd mention is that we've had close cooperation over the years, for a long, long time. We see it in the military arena, with the contribution of the British military forces. And we see it in the intelligence arena, with a very close working relationship in those matters. I mean, it's -- when the balloon goes up, that relationship often comes into play, and it certainly has in this case. Q: How important to you are the British intelligence agencies? THE VICE PRESIDENT: Very important. Q: I'll just ask a few questions about bin Laden. How -- do you know where he is? THE VICE PRESIDENT: I can't talk about that. Q: Do you think -- do you expect him to survive the winter? THE VICE PRESIDENT: I don't want to get into speculating about where he might be, or -- that would be -- you've got to ask, but it would be inappropriate for me to respond. Q: Okay. But you're very confident, looking at how the military action is progressing, that you're on course to achieve the aim that you set out after the 11th of September? THE VICE PRESIDENT: Right. I'm comfortable that we're making significant progress, especially if this report is correct this morning. But even apart from that, I think you can see that we've done enormous damage to the Taliban in terms of their military assets and capabilities. I think we've done a great deal around the world to disrupt the al Qaeda organization and network, and to get at their financial assets and resources. A lot of good, cooperative efforts with the security services of various countries. I think all of that is beginning to pay off, as well, too. But the other point I would make here is that the President is, from the standpoint of the United States, is absolutely determined to prevail in this case, and that we're prepared to do whatever we have to do to see to it that we destroy the al Qaeda network and Osama bin Laden. And since the Taliban refused to turn him over and have, in fact, provided sanctuary for him over the years as he has launched attack after attack on the United States or our forces overseas, that they, too, obviously, are going to suffer a similar fate. Q: I know that every morning you look at a threat matrix, and I know you've looked at that today. Do you expect Britain to be a target of al Qaeda terrorism? Would you expect that to happen at some stage? THE VICE PRESIDENT: It's certainly possible. I wouldn't want to make a hard and fast prediction because I don't know. But I assume that Osama bin Laden is well aware of the effort being made by Britain alongside the United States, the leaders in this international effort, obviously. And the possibility exists that at some point he will try to launch some kind of an attack on the U.K. Q: What kind of attack? THE VICE PRESIDENT: Who knows? I couldn't predict. We didn't -- we were unable to predict what happened on September 11th, and the situation, though, with respect to this kind of threat, obviously, is there is -- that it presents us with a new dimension of the problem that we have to deal with. When you're dealing with the Cold War and you had adversaries, you could deter them from aggression by threatening what they valued, their homeland, which we did throughout the Cold War. Here, you're dealing with somebody who doesn't have anything they value. Deterrence doesn't work. Negotiations don't work. The only way to deal with it is to destroy them, and the quicker the better. Q: The U.S. is quite clearly, and the President is quite clearly determined to see this through. People talk about the public relations battle, and people talk about the public relations battle being lost certainly in Europe, to a degree here, and even in the U.S. Does that concern you? Or is this just a situation where you will continue to achieve your objectives no matter what anybody thinks? THE VICE PRESIDENT: I would -- I guess I would respond in two ways. First of all, we're absolutely determined to achieve our objective, and the President is prepared. If it takes his entire presidency to do it, so be it. By the same token, we understand the importance of communicating with people what it is we're about and why, and making sure we get our side of the story out there. And there has been -- I think it probably would be fair to say we have not been as effective at that as we would like to be, and we're trying hard to improve. It is important to continually remind people, especially our friends in the Muslim world and throughout the Middle East, the extent to which the idea that somehow Osama bin Laden speaks for Islam is just a flawed notion. This is a guy who has obviously perverted one of the world's great religions in order to try to use it to justify the slaughter of innocents; a guy who -- when you think about the hundreds of Muslims killed at the World Trade Center as a result of his actions, there's no question but what the effort needs to be made continually to succeed, if you will, in the struggle for public opinion, not only in the United States and Europe, but in the Middle East, as well, and we'll continue to do that. Q: Bearing that in mind, you would agree that that -- for the duration of the Bush presidency, this is clearly objective number one. Do you think that we'll see this resolved during the first term of the Bush presidency, though, or do you think it could go on longer than that? THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, I think we'll see that we achieve our immediate objectives during that time. Q: Which are? THE VICE PRESIDENT: In terms of taking down the al Qaeda network and Osama bin Laden, and the Taliban and Afghanistan. But in terms of the struggle against terrorism on a worldwide basis, that may well last longer. And we may find, from the standpoint of the United States, that a lot of the measures that we're adopting now to deal with a crisis that arose on September 11th will become permanent changes -- the way we live and the way we operate, a greater sensitivity and awareness, with respect to security all across our society. And we'll just have to adjust and adapt to that. That's a permanent fact of life. Q: But America's now a different country, isn't it? I mean, the President mentioned last night the end of innocence. And in many ways, the Trade Centers could only have been built in the U.S. They were a sort of defiant symbol of a successful nation. Do you think they should be rebuilt? THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, I haven't really arrived at sort of my own opinion in that regard. I think something very special needs to be done with that site. Exactly what that ought to be, I don't know. People of New York have begun the debate. I'm sure the local officials up there will have strong feelings about it. But there have been a lot views all across the country, I'm sure, and there probably will be a fairly steady debate, as people come forward with ideas and things that they'd like to see done with the site. But it's also important to remember it is privately owned, at this stage, and the owner obviously will have a great deal of say about what ultimately happens to it, as well as the state and local officials. Q: Okay. I just wanted to ask you one last question. Since the 11th, you've almost disappeared. I mean, you've spent very little time with the President face to face. And we're told that you're at the secure location, which is where I understand you are at the moment. Can you explain why this is, and say a little about where you are, as far as you can? THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, what we've done -- one of our prime responsibilities, one of my major responsibilities, obviously, is to worry about the continuity of government, to provide for the presidential succession. And the only reason I'm here, should something happen to the President, the Vice President is in charge of being ready to take over. And given that fact, and secondly, the fact that on September 11th it's pretty clear that the terrorists had designs on Washington, far grander than what they were able to achieve -- that is to say the passengers obviously took over United 93, or tried to take it back from the terrorists, and it crashed in Pennsylvania, never arrived in Washington, where it was headed. Some speculation that the plane that hit the Pentagon took it as a secondary target, that its primary target might have been the White House, and they were unable to execute on that. So you've got a situation in which you don't want to provide the terrorists with a target of being able to, in effect, decapitate, if you will, the U.S. government, by striking at both the President and the Vice President at the same time. So we now take more precautions than we used to. And as the threat level goes up, we take extra precautions, in terms of making certain the President and I are not in precisely the same location at the same time. We are in communication all the time. We spend a couple hours together every morning, secure video conference capability that I have with me wherever I go. So when we have our morning intelligence briefs, and sessions with the Director of the FBI and CIA, NSC meetings and so forth, or this morning for example, a detailed briefing from General Franks, the communication is very good. We talk to each other several times during the course of the day. So there's no loss of participation in the overall process and the policymaking efforts of the administration. But we've built in some extra security by my staying away from the White House when he's in the White House. Then when he travels, I return to my more normal haunts. Q: Right. It was your decision, though, your advice, I think, which resulted in Air Force One turning west on the 11th, and the President heading away from Washington. THE VICE PRESIDENT: Yes. Q: He took some criticism for that, both at home and here. What do you think about that? THE VICE PRESIDENT: I think it was exactly the right decision. The criticism was unfair. It would have been foolish in the extreme, given what we knew that morning, to have him come rushing back to the White House. What had happened was we'd had the second plane hit the World Trade Center in New York. I was in the West Wing. And as we watched that unfold, within a matter of minutes after -- less than 30 minutes after the second plane hit, we got an alarm that the FAA controller out of Dulles Airport called the Secret Service -- they've got a hotline to the White House -- and said there was a third plane headed directly for the White House, at 500 miles per hour. That's when they evacuated me out of the West Wing, to bunker underneath, and sent everybody else out of the White House. At that moment, once I got down into the more secure location, I got back on the phone. I'd already been on the phone with the President once that morning. I got back on the phone again, and urged him not to return to Washington, and it looked like the White House was a target. We did not know what was out there. The first reports we had were that there were six aircraft hijacked. And at that point, we could only account for three, two that had to the World Trade Center, and one went into the Pentagon. For the two of us to bunch up in Washington, not knowing what was planned by way of our adversaries at that moment would have been a really stupid mistake. And so I advised him to delay his return to Washington until the situation was clarified. He did that, went to Offutt Air Force Base, our strategic command headquarters, where we have great communications. And he convened a meeting of the National Security Council from there and, of course, was back in Washington that evening. So he delayed his return for a few hours. But I think I gave him good advice, and it was the right thing to do. Q: Was there a specific threat to Air Force One itself? Because you said that on Meet the Press the week -- THE VICE PRESIDENT: There was. Q: Can you say a little bit more about that, because -- THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, from my perspective there was. I was in frequent contact with the President on Air Force One. I also had communications with Don Rumsfeld over at the Pentagon, with -- I had Norm Mineta, our Secretary of Transportation, Condi Rice, National Security Advisor and so forth, in the bunker with me. We received a report that came -- was brought into the room by one of the staff people that there had been a threat come in that Air Force One was targeted. And we cranked that into the equations, just as everything else. We provided the fighter cover for Air Force One at that point. It was about the time that we were getting the CAPs up, the Combat Air Patrols, over the city of Washington and New York and so forth -- at the same time. So what happens in a crisis like that, you get a lot of information. Some of it's accurate, some of it isn't. But you're not able to tell that at the outset -- I've already seen two planes crash into the World Trade Center, one plane crash into the Pentagon. I'm told there are there other commercial airliners that may have been hijacked that we can't account for. Another report comes in and says Air Force One is a target. Now, what am I going to say, sort that out and say, no that's not for real? We didn't have any way to evaluate at the time. We had to act on it, and we did act on it, and cranked it into our thinking, and as I say, made sure we had fighter cover up for Air Force One, and that we took precautions to make certain the President was at a secure location. MS. MATALIN: David, last question please. Q: One last question. America is a very uneasy place at the moment, obviously. You talked about the possibility of a threat in the U.K. The anthrax attacks, which have happened since September 11th, CBS is reporting that they -- that these may be an American -- what you might call an American loony, and not a Muslim terrorist. Do you think -- are those reports correct, do you think? Do you have anything you could share with us? THE VICE PRESIDENT: We just don't know. We're working hard trying to find out exactly what the source of the anthrax attacks are. But at this stage, we don't know whether that's something that's generated here at home, or whether it's part of the Osama bin Laden-al Qaeda attack on the U.S. It's clearly a terrorist attack; whether it's domestic or foreign, we don't know. Q: Absolutely. But you have no proof that it's al Qaeda or bin Laden? THE VICE PRESIDENT: At this stage, I can't say. We just don't know. Q: Great, I appreciate your time. Thank you very much indeed. THE VICE PRESIDENT: All right. Thanks for your interest. (end transcript) (Distributed by the Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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