08 September 2002
Transcript: Secretary Rumsfeld Interview on Face the Nation
(Discusses threat of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction)
(4040)
Following is a transcript of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's
interview on CBS's Face the Nation, September 8, 2002.
The transcript opens with an taped interview with Lee Evey, the
official who oversaw the reconstruction of the side of the Pentagon
building struck by a hijacked plane on September 11, 2001.
(begin transcript)
United States Department of Defense
News Transcript
Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld
September 8, 2002
Secretary Rumsfeld's Interview On Face The Nation
(Television interview with Bob Schieffer, CBS "Face The Nation.")
Schieffer: And good morning again on this week that marks the first
anniversary of the attack. We welcome the secretary of defense, Donald
Rumsfeld.
And we begin this morning with one of the remarkable stories of these
past 12 months, the rebuilding of the Pentagon, where 125 people died
on 9/11 when one of the hijackers' planes slammed into one side of the
building. The secretary was in his office. He had just finished an
intelligence briefing. And when the plane hit, he rushed outside to
help in the rescue efforts. Well, Mr. Secretary, I went out to the
Pentagon Friday to see for myself what's been going on out there since
that day. I think we overuse the word "amazing" but that is the only
word that really describes the story I found out there.
BEGINNING OF TAPE VIDEO SEGMENT
Schieffer: The plane sliced into the five-story limestone building
like a giant cleaver, driving more than 300 feet deep into the
structure. Evey: It came back and flew across this area at about a
45-degree angle, and came essentially right -- right over the spot
where we're standing right now, Bob. And -
Schieffer: Where did it hit?
Evey: It hit the building approximately right in this area right here.
Schieffer: Lee Evey is the Pentagon official who was charged with
putting the building back together after a day he will never forget. A
hundred-and- twenty-five Pentagon employees died that day along with
all 59 passengers as the plane exploded -- flame belting from the
windows as if the building were bleeding fire. In the unimaginable
bedlam, even Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld helped carry
survivors to safety. But because this section of the Pentagon had
recently been renovated and reinforced with blast-proof walls and
windows, it did not collapse immediately, and most of the 2,600 people
in this section of the building escaped, including some in offices
directly above where the plane hit.
Evey: Well, the building remained standing for about 35 minutes after
the aircraft hit. And Bob, those were 35 absolutely critical minutes.
This building did a remarkable job of protecting its occupants.
Schieffer: Equally remarkable, in less than a year they have put it
all back together -- the sandstone exterior, the long hallways -- it
is all as it was, except for one stone left with the smoke stains of
that day to remind of just how awful it was. Evey says it was the
workers themselves who were determined to finish it in record time.
Lee, what an amazing thing that you were able to do this in a year.
Who in the world came up with the idea of getting it done by the
anniversary?
Evey: In a very short period of time after September 11th, the workers
started coming up to us and saying, "You know, if you told us to, we
could get this done in a year." So, when you're faced with a workforce
like that and they've already decided you have that goal, well, the
best thing you can do is get the hell out of their way and let them do
it and accept their goal.
Schieffer: Wow. Well, that's just remarkable. I think the whole
country is proud of {what's been done here}.
Evey: Well, thank you very much, Bob. You know, it's been our gift
back to the country.
END OF TAPE VIDEO SEGMENT.
Schieffer: And there you have it. Mr. Secretary, you must be very
proud of that group of people.
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld: They did a wonderful job. Lee is a -- is
really a superb leader, and the construction crews are so proud of
what they've done, and they ought to be.
Schieffer: What is your memory of that day?
Rumsfeld: Well, it was a situation, of course, that your awareness as
to what had actually happened grew with each passing minute. And,
needless to say, when the second plane hit the World Trade Center, it
became clear that it was more than an accident. And when the building
shook, it felt like a bomb. I had no idea it was an airplane, but it
was -- it shook, and we could feel it. And we knew we had a big task
ahead of us.
Schieffer: And you went immediately to the scene, and I'm told that
after helping in the rescue -- we saw you there -- that somebody said,
"Mr. Secretary, we need to get you down to the command center."
Rumsfeld: I guess that's right. And it became clear that there was --
there were finally people there to help, and it was better for me to
be where I had to be.
Schieffer: I'm sure you'll never forget it.
Rumsfeld: No.
Schieffer: Let's talk about now. How close are we to war with Iraq?
Rumsfeld: Well, the president has, I think, put it exactly right. He
has said that the one choice we don't have is to do nothing. He has
decided to go to the Congress and to the United Nations later this
week and make the case of what Iraq has done for 11 years. It has
invaded its neighbors. It's violated almost every single U.N.
resolution that relates to Iraq, and has, against the agreement they
had to disarm; they proceeded to develop weapons of mass destruction
-- chemical, biological, and nuclear. And they -- they create a
problem for the international community that's -- that's significant.
And the president has initiated a discussion, a dialogue, a debate,
which I think is a -- is a good thing. And there are a variety of ways
that the world might approach it, but not acting, I think, probably --
not recognizing the seriousness of the problem, as the president said,
is the one thing we can't do.
Schieffer: Well, let me ask you, then, tell me about the seriousness
of the problem. We read in the New York Times today a story that says
that Saddam Hussein is closer to acquiring nuclear weapons. Does he
have nuclear weapons? Is there a smoking gun here?
Rumsfeld: "Smoking gun" is an interesting phrase. It implies that what
we're doing here is law enforcement, that what we're looking for is a
case that we can take into a court of law and prove beyond a
reasonable doubt. The problem with that is the way one gains
absolutely certainty as to whether a dictator like Saddam Hussein has
a nuclear weapon is if he uses it -
Schieffer: Uh-huh.
Rumsfeld: -- and that's a little late. It's not late if you're
interested in protecting rights of the defendant in a court of law,
but it's a quite different thing, if one thinks about it.
I was musing over the fact that there are so many books that have been
written -- "Why England Slept," Pearl Harbor, what happened, why
didn't we know? Right now on Capitol Hill, the members of the House
and the Senate are trying to -- are looking, having investigations on
September 11th of last year, and trying to connect the dots, as they
say, trying to piece together what might have been known, and why
didn't we know it, and why weren't we able to connect the dots? What
the president is saying very simply to the world is let's look at the
dots today. Our task is not to connect -- connect the dots as to why
England slept, or what happened with Pearl Harbor, or what happened on
September 11th only. Our task is to connect the dots before the fact,
and -- and see if we can't behave in a way that there won't be books
written about why we slept, or what happened.
Schieffer: Well, is there information, sensitive information that the
administration has that it has not yet shared with the public that
makes you take this more seriously than say some people on the outside
take it at this point?
Rumsfeld: Well, I have found over the years being in and out of
government that I think the way our system is such an open system that
probably, you know, 80 some odd percent of what is knowable inside the
government -- what is known inside the government is probably known
outside the government in one way or another, if not with hard facts.
The problem we have, of course, is a real one. Intelligence -- we
spend billions of dollars gathering intelligence, and to do it you
have to have methods of doing (it) and sources from whom you get this
information. And to the extent you take that intelligence and spread
it out in the public record, what you do is you put people's lives at
risk, the sources of that information, because people can connect the
dots there and say "Well, who knew that?" And then they go out and
they stop people from helping us learn that type of information. Or,
if it's a source, a satellite or some other thing, to the extent that
we reveal the information and show our capability, we then lose that
capability because they find ways to deceive and deny us from gaining
access to it. So, there's a very good reason for not taking all the
information. And the short answer is of course there's information
inside the government that's not been spread before the public, and
there has to be, and there should be.
Schieffer: Will some of that information become known in the weeks to
come?
Rumsfeld: I'm sure some of it will; I'm sure some of it won't.
Now, there's a second thing about this. We know of certain knowledge
that we know these things -- we know them. We also know there's a
category of things we don't know. And, then we don't even know a
category of things that we don't know.
Schieffer: Uh-huh.
Rumsfeld: Now, what happens is that if you go back and take a piece of
intelligence when you have it, and then I assert to you "this is a
fact." Then you ask the intel people, "Well, when did we learn it?"
And they say, "Well, we learned it this year." Then we say, "Well,
when did it happen?" It may have happened two, six, eight years
before, and we didn't know it. After the Iran -Iraq war, Desert Storm,
after they invaded Kuwait and did what they did, all the damage, we
went in and were able to find out that they were within six months to
a year of having a nuclear weapon. The best intelligence estimates at
that time, from any country in the world, estimated somewhere between
two or three to six years before they would have a weapon.
Now, until you're down on the ground, you can't know precisely, so the
intelligence we have is clearly sufficient for the president to say
that he believes the world has to recognize that the Iraqis have
violated these
-- repeatedly violated these U.N. resolutions. They've told the
international community they have no respect for the U.N., no respect
for their resolutions, and no respect for the agreements they signed,
and -- and that they are proceeding to do things that they agreed not
to do.
Schieffer: Well, do we have any alternative now -- I mean, does the
administration consider this threat so serious at this point that
there is no alternative to removing Saddam Hussein?
Rumsfeld: I think that what we'll find is that the president will --
will go before the United Nations and lay out a speech and make what
he believes to be is a recommendation to the international community
and to the world, and he'll do that later this week, and I think that
will answer your question.
Schieffer: Would the United States go it alone if the others choose
not to go with us?
Rumsfeld: Well, that's a tough question. Obviously, your first choice
in life is to have everyone agree with you. The reality is that that's
seldom the case. And, of course, that's what leadership is about -- is
deciding what's right, what's important, what's the best course of
action, and then providing leadership, going out and telling the
Congress, as the president has decided to do, going out and telling
the international community what he believes.
The fact that there is not unanimity today should be no surprise. He's
not made the case. The case is now -- he said this week, this is the
first step, the meeting with the congressional leadership. And it is
-- it was the first step. And -- and the case will be made by
administration officials testifying before the Congress in the weeks
ahead. The case will be made before the United Nations. He met with
Prime Minister Blair this week.
The coalition we have today on the global war on terrorism involves
more than half the nations of the globe, 90-plus nations. Imagine, it
is -- it is the biggest coalition that I can ever -- have ever
imagined in my lifetime. That coalition wasn't there on September 11th
of last year. That had to be built. It was built one country at a time
over a long period of time. And why? Because if you're right, if you
provide leadership, and you -- you stake out a direction, people, over
time, find a way to support that -- that leadership.
Schieffer: But let me ask you this. I am told -- the Washington Post
says, reports that you had prepared a long article for today's op ed
page in the Washington Post in which you lay out the argument for
unilateral preemptive action should that become necessary. We're now
told that that article was withdrawn. Have they muzzled Don Rumsfeld?
What's happened here?
Rumsfeld: No. Come on, Bob. You know better than that. I'm not
muzzle-able, if there is such a word. I wrote an article and -- and
they were discussing it, my staff were discussing it with the
Washington Post, and it's a good article. My guess is we'll use it in
some period ahead, but I have not finished editing it. And after
thinking about it and -- and considering it, I decided that the
president was meeting with Prime Minister Blair -- it seemed to me
that that was the message that the world ought to be seeing, not some
op ed piece by me, and that the president was going to be speaking on
Tuesday, and I suspect I'll probably publish that later this week or
next week if it still seems to be appropriate and relevant. It's a
good article.
Schieffer: If the United States, with or without allies, goes into
Iraq, takes out Saddam Hussein, there is a regime change, what happens
after that? Are we prepared to stay for a while? Would we have to stay
for a while?
Rumsfeld: Well, you know, for me to talk about that presumes that the
president will decide to do that and he hasn't. So, I think that it
would be kind of like the op ed piece that I hadn't decided to
publish. And so then the question will be "Well, why didn't it
happen?"
Schieffer: Uh-huh.
Rumsfeld: And I think that if you want to depersonalize it and not
talk about Iraq, I think that -- go to Afghanistan. You bet -- I mean,
there's no question but that if you -- if you take it upon yourself
and with your allies, coalition partners, to go into Afghanistan and
-- and take the Taliban out, and run the al Qaeda out, and stop it
from being a terrorist training camp, and liberate the Afghanistan
people, you can't then just walk away. You -- you have to, with the
world community, work in that country to see that -- that something
better replaces it. I mean, here you -- in -- you had a repressive
regime in that country, and we're working with a government that was
elected, the Karzai government, through the loya jirga process, and
attempting to see that those people are able to go to school, and
humanitarian workers are able to be there, and it's been a wonderful
thing that's happened in Afghanistan.
Schieffer: Let's take a break right here, and when we come back we'll
talk about all this some more. We'll continue in just a minute.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK.)
Schieffer: Back now with the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld.
Mr. Secretary, let me ask you this question. What would Saddam have --
Hussein have to do to satisfy you?
Rumsfeld: Well, of course, what's important is not satisfying me, it's
-
Schieffer: Yes, I understand that, but let's say the United States.
Rumsfeld: -- it's -- it's -- or the world.
Schieffer: Yes.
Rumsfeld: I mean, the -- the reality is that he agreed at the end of
the Gulf War to -- to turn over all of his weapons of mass destruction
and discontinue developing them. He didn't do the turnover, and he has
continued aggressively to develop them, as you pointed out, from one
of the articles today. There were a series -- I think 27, 28, 29
resolutions and stipulations that he would adhere to. He's violated
all but two or three, consistently.
Now, what does that mean? It means that the United Nations, the world
community, involved itself in this matter, came to some conclusions,
and a single dictator in that country decided that he would toy with
them -- agree one day, violate the next day, lie, cheat, put things
underground -- consistently for 11 years.
Now, does that matter? Well, I think it's probably not a good thing
for the United Nations to be laughed at, and sneered at, and
disobeyed, and -- and made to be -- to not be significant enough that
a country like Iraq would be willing to -- to adhere to it. And for
the United Nations to acquiesce in that, it seems to me, is an
unfortunate thing.
Schieffer: So he needs to give up the weapons he has?
Rumsfeld: Well, the purpose is disarmament. I mean, clearly, here's a
terrorist state, on the terrorist list, who threatens his neighbors,
who is continuing to develop weapons of mass destruction, has not
disarmed as they agreed to, represses his own people viciously. And so
one says, "Well, what would one have to do?" I suppose it depends on
who you're talking to. The Congress decided that regime change was the
appropriate thing and passed legislation, and it became the policy of
the United States government. President Clinton signed the
legislation, and that's been our policy of this country for a number
of years now.
Schieffer: Let me -- let me ask you about the whole idea of
inspections. I hear some people in the administration say we need to
make one more try to get the inspectors in there. I have heard others
who have said "I'm not sure inspections make much difference any
more." What's the situation on inspections? Do -
Rumsfeld: Well you probably hear the same people say both of those
things.
Schieffer: Perhaps.
Rumsfeld: I mean, the president's going to make a judgment about that,
obviously, and I'm sure there'll be a -
Schieffer: Do you think they're worth anything any more? Can we really
learn anything from inspections at this point?
Rumsfeld: Well, inspections would have to be in -- sufficiently
intrusive that one could come away and have confidence that you could
say yes -- you see, the purpose is not inspections, the purpose is
disarmament. So, the question is would -- would -- is there such a
thing as an inspection regime that would be sufficiently intrusive,
and how -- what would it look like -- that you could at the end of
that period say to yourself, "Well, fair enough, he's disarmed. All of
these things have been regurgitated and there they are, they've been
destroyed. And isn't -- isn't that a good thing."
Now, is that possible? Anyone's guess is as good as anyone else. But
he has resisted the -- the much less intrusive inspection regimes
repeatedly, and indeed, finally threw the inspectors out completely.
So, I don't know the answer to the question. And I think what the
president very likely will do is he'll go before the United Nations
and give his best judgment on that question.
Schieffer: What is it that we fear most from Saddam Hussein? Is it
that he poses a direct threat himself, or that he becomes sort of the
wholesaler and has an entire government to develop these weapons which
he can then sell or give to the retailers, the people -- the little
mom and pop terrorists around the country -- to distribute? What is it
that -- that bothers us most about him?
Rumsfeld: It's the aggregation of all of those things. It is the fact
that Iraq is a terrorist state, on the terrorist list. It is a state
that is developing and has developed, and possessed, and in fact used
weapons of mass destruction already. It's one of the few countries in
the world that
-- where the leadership still is in power that have used weapons of
mass destruction against their neighbors.
Schieffer: You know, that's an interesting thing, though -- he's never
used them against us.
Rumsfeld: No, he has not. And he has used them against his own people.
He's used them against his neighbors. And we would prefer he not use
them against us.
Schieffer: Let me just -
Rumsfeld: Is -- is -- that comment, of course, suggests ought we to
wait until he -
Schieffer: Until he does -
Rumsfeld: -- uses them against us. Is that -- is that the implication
of that question? If you go back to September 11th, we lost three
thousand innocent men, women and children. Well, if -- if you think
that's a problem, imagine -- imagine a September 11th with weapons of
mass destruction.
Schieffer: Let me just -
Rumsfeld: It's not three thousand, it's tens of thousands of innocent
men, women and children.
Schieffer: Sure. Let me, just for the sake of argument, give you the
argument that some people have made to me. I was on vacation last week
and out in Australia, and one of the things that concerns people there
is they say they recognize there's the threat, but they say let's
suppose the United States decides to take preemptive action against
Iraq and we're tied up with Iraq and China then decides "Well, perhaps
we've got a little threat down here from Taiwan, maybe we ought to go
ahead and take care of that right now." What would you say to them in
response to that? Is that a possibility?
Rumsfeld: I would say to them what we've said to the world, that the
United States has fashioned a defense strategy, last year, which has
asserted that we will have, and do have a capability in the United
States to provide for homeland defense, to undertake a major regional
conflict and win decisively, including occupying a country and
changing the regime if necessary, and simultaneously swiftly defeat
another aggressor in another theater, and in addition have the
capability of conducting a number of lesser contingencies such as
Bosnia or Kosovo.
Schieffer: And we have to end it there. Mr. Secretary, thank you so
much for being with us this morning.
(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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