06 August 2002
Rumsfeld Derides Iraqi Weapons Inspection Offer as a Sham
(Outlines views at Pentagon briefing for black journalists) (5970)
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has dismissed Iraq's invitation
to members of the U.S. Congress to search for suspected weapons sites
in that country as a sham designed to stall action against the Saddam
Hussein regime.
"What they'll do is every time they get worried about whether or not
the international community is unhappy with them then they'll offer to
have inspectors come in, or they'll invite somebody to come in and do
something.
"And it will all be a sham," Rumsfeld told members of the National
Association of Black Journalists, at the Pentagon for a roundtable
briefing August 5.
Rumsfeld sought to deflect a number of questions dealing with the
prospects for U.S. military action against Iraq -- one of the options
that has been widely discussed in recent weeks as a means of achieving
President Bush's stated objective of toppling Saddam from power.
He told the journalists he would "really prefer not to spend the
entire time we have on Iraq" because such discussion "simply feeds the
frenzy that seems to be seizing the media today in the United States
and I don't think that's a particularly useful thing to do."
Asked how many troops would be needed to conduct such military action,
and for how long, Rumsfeld responded, "Oh, goodness, I'm not going to
get into that. No such decision has been made."
Rumsfeld expressed his anger once again at individuals who leaked a
draft of a war plan -- one that he indicated never reached the top
levels of the Pentagon or the administration -- to the New York Times.
"The unprofessionalism of people leaking things that are classified,
that are under federal law subject to criminal penalties, that without
question make it more difficult for the United States to achieve its
goal of trying to protect the American people from terrorist attacks,
and without question put American lives at risk I think is just
inexcusable," Rumsfeld said.
"I don't know what you heard me say about it but whatever it was, it
was modulated and calibrated far below what I really feel," he said.
Following is a transcript of the conclusion of Rumsfeld's opening
remarks to the black journalists, followed by the question-and-answer
portion of the briefing.
(begin transcript)
U.S. Department of Defense News Briefing
Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld
Monday, August 5, 2002
(Roundtable with the National Association of Black Journalists)
...{E}veryone who reads the papers today knows that one of the issues
that the world is really thinking about and talking about and
wondering about is this issue of preemption, the issue of preventive
action. I would use the phrase anticipatory self defense. Because if a
terrorist can attack at any time at any place using any technique, and
you know it's physically impossible to defend at every place at every
time against every conceivable technique, then you know the only way
you can have to defend yourself is to anticipate that attack and
preemptively do something about it.
For example, Afghanistan did not attack the World Trade Center or the
Pentagon. The Taliban in Afghanistan created an environment where the
al Qaeda could train terrorists. What we had to do was to give the
Taliban notice that that wasn't acceptable, and when they refused to
cooperate, go and replace the government. That was a pre-emptive act.
That was a preventive act. It was saying to the world that we've made
a conscious judgment that a terrorist organization like al Qaeda which
has trained thousands of people and sent them all across the globe,
and Afghanistan and Taliban creating a haven for them to train those
terrorists is unacceptable. The damage, the risk to us is too great
and the risk to other democracies is too great, and therefore, we feel
compelled to go do something about it, which we did.
That is a very different thing from waiting for a Pearl Harbor or from
waiting for another terrorist attack to do something to you. We
decided, and I'm personally persuaded that it was certainly the right
decision by President Bush, that the responsible thing to do today, is
to recognize that there are states that are terrorist states, there
are states that harbor terrorists, and that given the pervasiveness of
the technologies relating to chemical and biological and nuclear
weapons, one has to know that the relationship between terrorist
states that have those weapons and terrorist networks that are
acquiring those weapons and want those weapons is a dangerous thing
for the world. Therefore the United States has to, and that's what you
see being debated today.
If we lost 3,000 by having people take our aircraft and fly them into
buildings and if we're looking down the road at chemical or biological
or nuclear weapons in the hands of these people where you're talking
about losing not 3,000 but 300,000 or a million, then the issue as to
what you do about that is certainly something that people have to talk
about, think about, that's why the Senate's holding hearings, that's
why people in the Congress are considering it, that's why people are
writing about it in the press. It seems to me it's a useful discussion
point.
With that I'll stop and answer questions.
Q: If I can follow up on that particular point.
When the Soviet Union was around they had the capability of, a
destructive capability far greater than even what you're talking about
with these terrorist networks. You talk about 300,000 possibly being
killed. But when terrorists attack using chemical and nuclear,
biological weapons, the Soviet Union had the capability of killing
millions. And yet the strategy at that time was essentially
deterrence, that our nuclear capability was such that no one dared
attack us because of what we would do in retaliation.
Given that, what's wrong with deterrence now? What's different about
this particular threat than the old threat?
Rumsfeld: Well, it is an important question and I think the way to
think about it is to go back throughout the history since the advent
of nuclear weapons. We have had them now for 55, 57 years. They've not
been fired in anger since 1945. That's an impressive thing. When you
were dealing with the Soviet Union and the United States you did have
the concept of mutual assured destruction. Were they to use them we
could use them and the penalty that we could impose on them was so
great that it was not in their interest to think that they could
either use them or threaten to use them. And it created a relatively
stable world environment because the power of the United States was
posed against the power of the Soviet Union.
Notwithstanding that fact, we ended up with the Korean War, the
Vietnam War, we had terrorist attacks, there were a whole lot of
things that nuclear weapons never deterred throughout this entire
period. Lots of things, bad things have been going on in this world.
It didn't deter what was going on in Rwanda or Burundi. It didn't
deter any number of things that have taken place that have been
terribly tragic for lots of people.
So it was never a perfect deterrent. It was only a deterrent against
likes, for all practical purposes.
Well, people say today, my goodness, no country with any sense would
use a weapon of mass destruction against a country with nuclear power.
And they know that the result would just be immediate, instantaneous,
massive retaliation.
Well, think about it. It is not that clear in this sense.
Let's say that the al Qaeda had used a biological weapon and recently
Johns Hopkins had an exercise where they looked at smallpox, I think
it was called Dark Winter, it's unclassified. They looked at smallpox
in four or five places in the United States. Within a relatively short
period of weeks you were up to a million people dead.
Let's say the al Qaeda had done that and the al Qaeda are in
Afghanistan, and the Afghanistan people didn't do that. Can you
imagine going in and saying to the President, I think it would be a
terrific idea if we used a nuclear response to the fact in Afghanistan
because the al Qaeda used a biological weapon or a chemical weapon
against the United States. And you'd end up punishing people who in
many respects were victims, they were hostages of the al Qaeda. The al
Qaeda came in and because the Taliban took over Afghanistan and
cooperated with al Qaeda, you had a situation where foreigners, al
Qaeda were non-Afghans imposing their will on the Afghan people, and
the punishment would be against people who were really not the cause
of the biological attack -- the hypothetical biological attack. I'm
using this totally illustratively, so if anyone is writing anything or
reading anything or listening to your tapes make sure we don't
misunderstand anything I've said.
So it does not deter necessarily all -- nuclear weapons do not
necessarily deter all those things, and it seems to me when you say
what's changed, well really not much because in fact nuclear weapons
never deterred a whole host of things -- wars and conflicts and
unfortunate things that have taken place in the last 50 years.
Q: What about invading Iraq? Is that going to happen?
Rumsfeld: You know that you're in the Pentagon and not the White
House, don't you Clarence?
Q: Absolutely. But [inaudible] -- [Laughter]
Rumsfeld: What will happen there I am not in a position to know, nor
have decisions been made. But the reality is the Congress some years
ago decided that the world would be a better place if that regime were
changed, and this President agreed with that congressional action and
has said so. We're currently engaged in diplomatic activity, economic
sanctions, and military activity with Operation Northern and Southern
Watch. It has not -- none of those three seem to have done an awful
lot of good in terms of improving Iraq's behavior, but what may or may
not get decided on -- I have no idea what caused this recent frenzy of
discussion about Iraq in the last three or four or five days.
Q: Mr. Secretary, if Iraq is such a threat why is it that the
countries that are so close to it geographically speaking do not seem
to share the desire for an immediate, at least, regime change. And to
go beyond the notion of taking out the specific threat of whatever
weapons they might have, what kind of commitment do you think it would
take for American troops to actually see, to follow through with a
regime change?
Rumsfeld: I would really prefer not to spend the entire time we have
on Iraq. The reason I say that is it simply feeds the frenzy that
seems to be seizing the media today in the United States and I don't
think that's a particularly useful thing to do. I'll answer this
question on Iraq and then I'd much prefer to discuss a host of other
subjects, all of which are interesting.
The premise of your question is probably wrong. If the behavior of
Iraq is as characterized, why wouldn't other countries be concerned
about it. I think if you sat down with the leadership of any country
over there that you'd find they have a very low regard for that
fellow. You'd also find they're much smaller countries and they're
much weaker. When you have a neighbor that is that big and has that
big an army and has chemical weapons and has used them on its
neighbors, the Iranians; they have used them on [their] own people; an
active biological weapons program; an aggressive nuclear weapons
program, then it's like the little guy in the neighborhood's fairly
careful about what he says publicly.
But I think that if you think that regime would win a popularity
contest in the region, you're just wrong.
Q: No, I just wonder if they would support an attempt to overthrow
that regime.
Rumsfeld: Well, they did the last time, and we'll see if the
decision's made to do something at some point down the road or if the
sanctions issues come up again or if there's a major diplomatic effort
that's embarked on, why I think you'd find that countries would find a
way publicly or privately to be supportive.
I don't know of anyone I've talked to out in the region who would walk
across the street to shake Saddam Hussein's hand.
Q: The other part had to do with this business of a regime change.
Clearly it's a lot more far-reaching than taking out some weapons. Do
you have any idea what kind of commitment of troops over what period
of time that would take?
Rumsfeld: Oh, goodness, I'm not going to get into that. No such
decision has been made.
Q: If we can go back to counterterrorism for a minute, are you
satisfied with the pace of the pursuit of al Qaeda operatives? Would
you like to see it moved along or do you have a plan to move this
pursuit along?
Rumsfeld: That's an interesting question because in the last week or
so there have been several articles saying that I'm impatient or
unhappy with the pace of things, and the truth is the men and women in
the military are doing a terrific job. Our combatant commanders are
doing an excellent job. Our department was not organized, trained and
equipped to do manhunts. We were organized, trained and equipped to
deal with armies, navies and air forces. So what we're doing is we're
migrating our capabilities over to the kinds of things that will
better enable us to do the tasks at hand, and that is to help track
down terrorists and terrorist networks, disrupting those networks, and
dealing with countries that harbor terrorists.
On the other hand, I can understand why the stories come out because I
am, I suppose, genetically impatient. When I think of this building
being hit by an airplane and I think of the World Trade Center and the
thousands of people who died, and I transport myself mentally a year
out into another terrorist attack, whether it's chemical or biological
or conventional or nuclear, and I say to myself, what would I want to
have done in this year, starting today, between now and the time that
event occurs to help prevent that attack, to try to save those lives,
to try to delay it or reduce its effect or mitigate it once it occurs
because it's not possible to defend against everything. So I do come
out every morning with a good deal of sense of urgency, and I impart
that into this institution. I try to. And I suspect that's why some of
the articles appear that I'm impatient with things.
I am impatient. I probably will remain impatient. And if everything
were being done absolutely perfectly, I probably would still be
impatient. I am anxious to see that we can stop any conceivable
terrorist attack that it's possible to stop. I'm anxious to capture or
kill any terrorist we can find. I'm anxious to see that countries who
are harboring them stop doing that. I'd like to keep working to arrest
them and interrogate them and freeze their bank accounts and make it
hard to recruit and hard to retain people.
Q: If I can just follow up, is the sense of urgency that's employed
with this pursuit as it's underway now, in synch with your definition
of urgency?
Rumsfeld: Sure.
Q: Or are they out of synch?
Rumsfeld: Oh, no. I think people have got that sense of urgency. But
you have to -- I mean, that's what leadership is supposed to do is to
keep helping to set directions and helping to encourage people to do
better and do more, and to be wiser in how we do things and to improve
the effectiveness of what we're doing. That is a big job. Fortunately,
we've got a lot of wonderful people here in this department who are
dedicated and determined to do just that. They're patriotic and
they're courageous and they're intelligent.
Q: On the capture, an Osama bin Laden question. I watch your briefing
every day and usually the question of his whereabouts or his --
Rumsfeld: Sure.
Q: -- state of affairs comes up, and your answer has been you don't
know or you can't presuppose.
Rumsfeld: The benefit of being true.
Q: But if you did know, would you necessarily tell us?
Rumsfeld: Oh, I see. That's a fair question.
First of all let me answer it. I don't know. I have not seen any real
evidence that he's alive since last December. So I don't know if he's
alive or not. And if he is alive, if he's healthy or ill, or where.
Everyone about once every three or four days, someone speculates on
it. Someone from Pakistan or someone from here or some place else, or
you see a snippet of information that may be disinformation or it may
be accurate or someone may believe it's accurate but it's actually not
accurate.
The short answer to your other question is, if I knew and had
coordinates and had any reason to believe we knew where he was, you
can be sure I would not be sitting around talking to you, we would be
going and finding him. So I don't have to worry about answering that
question.
Q: But if indeed you discovered he was dead or if he was captured --
Rumsfeld: Oh, in that period. After it was nailed down? Oh no,
certainly we'd tell the truth. If he'd been captured we'd say so, if
he'd been injured we'd say so, if he were dead, we'd say so.
Q: Is there any concern that if there isn't a bin Laden outcome that
public support for the war on terrorism might, that Americans might
figure well, he's captured or he's dead, this is done? And that you
might lose some --
Rumsfeld: Oh, I see what you're getting at.
First of all, no, I don't believe so. But even if it were true, we'd
still tell the truth. We'd tell whatever we knew. But no, the American
people have got a good center of gravity. They know that he's just one
person. There are six, eight, 10, 12 people who could pick up that
apparatus today, may even have done so today already. They know where
the bank accounts are, they know who they trained, they know what the
training manual says and what these guys are capable of doing. They
know where their sources of information are and how to communicate.
No. The effect of losing a leader can be bad if he's a particularly
charismatic person. It also can be good. Somebody better can come
along. Worse from our standpoint.
So I don't think it's self-evident whether it would be good or bad if
he were dead. Except symbolically. In other words, because that's what
we're trying to do is to find him.
Q: How long do you think U.S. troops will be in Afghanistan? Are you
concerned at all about mission creep? And what kind of force do you
think will replace U.S. troops once they leave?
Rumsfeld: There are probably as many non-U.S. forces as there are U.S.
forces today. If you combine the coalition forces with the
International Security Assistance Force it's probably more non-U.S.
than U.S.
How long will they be there? It's just not knowable. It would be
foolish to have gone in there and done all we've done and kick out the
Taliban and the al Qaeda and put them on the run and then to pull out
precipitously and have the interim Afghan, transitional Afghan
government fall and Taliban come back in and take over and turn it
back into a terrorist training camp. So we have an obligation to see
that that doesn't happen.
How long it will take the new government to find its sea legs and get
institutions -- I mean the country was just so badly abused with the
war with the Soviet Union and the civil wars among the war lords and
the Taliban, the harshness of that regime was so repressive. Drought
for several years. They've had a tough go, so it's not going to flip
around fast. The narcotics trade was -- one of the biggest narcotics
traffickers in the world under the Taliban.
Q: There was an article in Saturday's Post talking about the
implementation of more aggressive acts in Afghanistan. My question is
--
Rumsfeld: More aggressive acts. What's that mean? By who?
Q: By the United States.
Rumsfeld: By the United States government?
Q: Well, by the troops on the ground.
Rumsfeld: Yeah. OK.
Q: My question is how more aggressive can the troops be in the future
than they are now?
Rumsfeld: First of all your premise presupposes that the article was
correct, which it wasn't. I don't know what more aggressive would
mean. Certainly the people on the ground are doing sweeps. We had, I
can't remember if it was 70 or 170 local tips by Afghans that there's
a cache of weapons over here and you ought to go get it, in the last
60 days. In other words there's more than one a day we're getting
which tells you something about how friendly the locals are.
Second, I looked at one number, something like 327,000 rounds of
machine gun ammunition, mortars, you name it. It's just stacks and
stacks and stacks of weapons that local people are coming and giving
us a tip saying you ought to go look over here. We'd like to show you
where something is. So there's a friendly there.
The other thing that's good is that refugees are returning, which
tells you they're voting with their feet; it's better in Afghanistan
than not.
Then you say what more aggressive can you do? Well in Afghanistan the
answer is not much. Most of those folks are in hiding -- the Taliban
-- or gone or dead; the al Qaeda are for the most part out of the
country. There are still some in there but they're across the borders
in Iran and in Pakistan and in other neighboring countries. They can
come right back in the minute you turn your head. So you have to be
aggressive in seeing that they don't feel that there's an opportunity
for them to reestablish themselves.
We can probably try to find better ways of finding the al Qaeda who
have left Afghanistan and we're getting good cooperation in Pakistan,
from their army to more aggressively go after pockets of al Qaeda.
We're getting no cooperation from Iran with respect to the al Qaeda
there. There are al Qaeda in Iraq, and you can be certain we're not
getting a lot of cooperation there. There are al Qaeda in Yemen. We
are getting cooperation there, we're working with their government. I
regret to say I'm afraid that al Qaeda are going to end up in
Indonesia which is a worrisome place. So I don't know if the word
aggressive is the right word, but certainly -- we're doing maritime
interceptions now where we're stopping ships that we have reason to
believe have passengers who ought not to be getting away or contraband
that ought not to be moving into places where it can kill people.
Q: Can I follow up on that? Because one of the things that was
mentioned in that Post article was maritime interceptions, and said
that they would be, there was consideration of expanding the
interceptions from an area close to Pakistan to making it worldwide.
Is that being considered?
Rumsfeld: No. We're currently doing them in a large area even away
from Pakistan. We're doing it all the way through the Gulf, down
around the Horn of Africa and in large areas. We're also doing some in
the Mediterranean. But at the moment we don't have any plans --
worldwide. Do we expect to go to the Arctic Ocean? I don't know. But
we are trying to find information. If we had information that there
was someone moving from the Philippines, for example, to Indonesia we
might very well try to intervene, but it's a big bunch of oceans out
there.
Q: Is there any plan for expanding, whether or not it's worldwide, but
expanding the current level of maritime interceptions beyond what it
is now?
Rumsfeld: Geographically?
Q: Yeah.
Rumsfeld: Not that I know of. The number of ships varies between 50
and 100 in the Persian Gulf, for example. That's a lot of ships doing
interception activities. But no, we would have a maritime interception
effort anywhere we believed that the cost-benefit ratio made sense.
Q: You were talking about your vision for transforming DoD September
10th. After September 11th how have your calculations and your broader
view of what needs to be done here changed?
Rumsfeld: For one thing the sense of urgency. That clearly has
changed. You don't take an attack like this country did and not have
it focus your attention.
Second, interestingly, we have put it as one of our very top
priorities in the Quadrennial Defense Review and the Defense Planning
Guidance which preceded September 11th and were reflected in my
transformation remarks on September 10th. We had included homeland
security and elevated the whole question of this so-called
asymmetrical attacks that can affect you -- terrorism, cruise
missiles, ballistic missiles, cyber attacks, those things that are
distinctively different from armies, navies, and air forces, which is
what has been our traditional business.
Q: There are reports that you're consolidating intelligence. I believe
one headline in Steve's paper was something to the effect of Rumsfeld
would strengthen his hand over intelligence. Is that in your agenda?
Rumsfeld: I'm always amused by the "strengthen your hand."
Q: It might be your other hand. I don't know. [Laughter]
Rumsfeld: It has nothing to do with strengthening my hand with that.
I was asked in my confirmation hearing what I worried about when I
went to bed at night for our country and my answer was intelligence.
That with the end of the Cold War and the step-up in openness of all
of the societies of the world except for the dictatorships, I wouldn't
say that North Korea or Iraq or Iran or Libya have opened up, but for
the most part everyone is trading with everybody and traveling and
communicating and internetting and doing what they do. That has
resulted in the fact that the world is such a big place and there's so
much dual-use technology moving around that today all of those
countries do a great deal of what they do underground so it's very
hard to know what they're doing.
Second, when the Soviet Union ended, a lot of the knowledge they had
about how we do things was communicated to a bunch of other countries
and therefore a lot of the techniques we use have become less useful.
In this business denial and deception is engaged in and the ability of
other countries to engage in denial and deception has been improved
because of the proliferation of knowledge about how we do our
business, and that's been unhelpful.
So it is a big world, there's a lot we don't know, there's a lot we
can't know, and that means there's a lot of potential dangers that we
have to face. What I've done is I've had some folks, put some folks to
work on the task at seeing how we can improve the intelligence
elements of the Department of Defense and work more effectively with
George Tenet and the CIA to try to improve the security of the
American people. That's what's underway.
Q: Another strengthening your hand question, would you like to see the
military have greater authority when it comes to domestic law
enforcement in the fight against terrorism?
Rumsfeld: No. The President has asked that those laws be reviewed. The
reviews haven't started. Apparently there was some reference to that
in the Homeland Security report. But I suppose, who knows what the
President would decide, but I had been asked that question before the
Homeland Security book came out and I don't know of any reason why the
so-called posse comitatus law would need to be changed.
What happens is for a great many decades now the United States has
preferred to not have the uniformed military personnel function in the
United States as a first responder. That is to say a police force or a
law enforcement mechanism. There are times as we all know when the
governors will call up the National Guard and use it to restore order
if there's a riot or something. There are times like the Olympics
where we had probably more people than we had in Afghanistan out there
in the State of Utah. But they were always functioning, not in charge
of security but as a supporting role to the law enforcement agencies.
So we can do pretty much what the society needs without changing those
laws or without altering the role of the uniformed military, insofar
as I know. I find I'm learning new things every day, so it's entirely
possible that six or eight months from now someone will show me
something that needs to be changed, but I haven't seen anything that
needs to be changed.
Q: Mr. Secretary, what did you think of this offer today by Iraq to
let the United States and members of the U.S. Congress come over and
inspect possible weapon sites, or they think are suspected weapon
sites. Are they serious do you think, or are they just jerking
America's chain?
Rumsfeld: The latter. [Laughter] The regime in Iraq has been very
skillful at manipulating the press and putting out disinformation and
making themselves look good at the expense of the United States.
Anything they say or do is printed as though it's true and carried
repeatedly throughout the world as though it were true until someone
knocks it down. Of course you try to knock it down but you're not on
the ground, you can't. We still have Operation Northern Watch and
Southern Watch and every once in awhile they'll shoot at our airplanes
and we'll fire back and hit a radar or a fiber optic relay station or
something on the ground. And of course the first thing they do is put
out a press release saying we killed 16 civilians, men, women and
children, it was a hospital or it was a mosque, or something like
this. Just flat lies. And how in the world do you run around and undo
all of that?
So what have they done historically?
First of all we had inspectors crawling all over that country, the
U.N. did, and they couldn't find much of anything until there was a
defector, Saddam Hussein's son-in-law, who had been involved with some
of these programs and cued the UN inspectors and said here's where you
have to go look and they go look and they got in and they found
things. They have lied about, under the rules they were supposed to
end their weapons of mass destruction programs, they didn't. They
continued with them, and they still have chemical and biological
weapons and they're still working on nuclear weapons. Even though the
U.N. Resolutions said that they would do that, and they agreed to do
it in 1991, and they haven't done it.
So they allow inspectors in at times of their convenience and their
choosing and have hidden things. They have things that are mobile,
they have things that are underground. It is next to impossible with a
group of people like that who have spent years digging underground for
a handful of -- I can't think of anything funnier than a handful of
congressmen wandering around thinking -- you've seen the size of the
country? They'd have to be there for the next 50 years trying to find
something. [Laughter] I mean, it's a joke.
What they'll do is every time they get worried about whether or not
the international community is unhappy with them then they'll offer to
have inspectors come in, or they'll invite somebody to come in and do
something. And it will all be a sham.
Q: A quick one about leaks. You expressed a great deal of concern
about leaks. There's now controversy on Capitol Hill about polygraph
tests for members of Congress. Do you approve of polygraph tests for
Pentagon officials in order to track down leaks?
Rumsfeld: I don't know what the FBI will do. I've asked the FBI to
come in and track down a leak on a leaked war plan, and whether
they'll do that or not --
Q: Are you referring to the New York Times story, that war plan --
Rumsfeld: Yes. I've never chased a leak in my life until this one. But
the unprofessionalism of people leaking things that are classified,
that are under federal law subject to criminal penalties, that without
question make it more difficult for the United States to achieve its
goal of trying to protect the American people from terrorist attacks,
and without question put American lives at risk I think is just
inexcusable. I don't know what you heard me say about it but whatever
it was, it was modulated and calibrated far below what I really feel.
Q: Do you think the New York Times story put American lives at risk?
Rumsfeld: There is no question but that when a person cleared for
classified information releases a war plan or a draft of a war plan or
papers -- I haven't seen it. It had never been briefed to me, never
been briefed to the President, never been briefed to General Franks.
It was obviously some papers that somebody down below had been
involved with, so I don't even know the document. But there's no
question but that when someone releases papers that relate to war
plans it's a violation of federal criminal law, they ought to be in
jail, and I'm told that I shouldn't say that because they ought to be
addressed by the criminal justice system, let me put it that way,
rather than predicting an outcome. [Laughter]
Q: Would you mind individuals in this building being subjected to a
polygraph --
Rumsfeld: I want the FBI to do that which it decides it should do.
That's not my business. I want a thorough investigation and I hope
those people are caught and I hope that anyone who's got any ounce of
civic duty and knows anything about who did it will tell us.
Q: Have you also called in the Air Force's security office,
investigative --
Rumsfeld: That's the way one does it. There's an executive agent for
certain things and if you want an investigation I'm told you ask that
executive agent -- it happened to be the Air Force -- and they then
prepare information that can then be given to the FBI so that the FBI
can make a judgment as to what it will or will not think is
appropriate by way of an investigation.
Thank you for coming in. Nice to see you all.
(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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