More on interview about ex-Bush cybersecurity coordinator

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

[Alec is of course correct. My apologies. I was careless; the Subject:
line should have said "about" instead of "with" -- although I hope that
was clear in the actual transcript. While we're on it, here's another
transcript on the topic. Though as Alec notes, these transcripts only 
tell one side of the story. --Declan]


-------- Original Message --------
Subject: RE: [Politech] Transcript of interview with ex-Bush
cybersecurity    coordinator
Date: Mon, 22 Mar 2004 16:00:18 -0500
From: French, Alec <Alec.French () mail house gov>
To: 'Declan McCullagh' <declan () well com>

Declan,

You did not post the transcript of the interview with Clarke.  Instead, you
posted only the interview with Hadley, which constitutes the White House
response to Clarke's accusations.  Clearly, this is only one side of the
story.

-----Original Message-----




THE WHITE HOUSE

                          Office of the Vice President
_________________________________________________________________
For Immediate Release                              March 22, 2004

                   TELEPHONIC INTERVIEW OF THE VICE PRESIDENT
                                BY RUSH LIMBAUGH

                          The Vice President's Office

1:10 P.M. EST

     Q    We are always happy to be able to talk to Vice President Dick
Cheney
who joins us now on the phone.  Vice President Cheney, thank you for making
time.  It's great to have you with us once again.

     THE VICE PRESIDENT:  Well, thanks, Rush.  It's good to talk to you.

     Q    All right, let's get straight to what the news is all about now,
before we branch out to things.  Why did the administration keep Richard
Clarke
on the counterterrorism team when you all assumed office in January of 2001?

     THE VICE PRESIDENT:  Well, I wasn't directly involved in that
decision.  He
was moved out of the counterterrorism business over to the cyber
security side
of things, that is he was given a new assignment at some point here.  I
don't
recall the exact time frame.

     Q    Cyber security, meaning Internet security?

     THE VICE PRESIDENT:  Yes, worried about attacks on the computer
systems and
the sophisticated information technology systems we have these days that an
adversary would use or try to the system against us.

     Q    Well, now that explains a lot, that answer right there
explains --
(Laughter.)

     THE VICE PRESIDENT:  Well, he wasn't -- he wasn't in the loop,
frankly, on
a lot of this stuff.  And I saw part of his interview last night, and he
wasn't
--

     Q    He was demoted.

     THE VICE PRESIDENT:  It was as though he clearly missed a lot of
what was
going on.  For example, just three weeks after the -- after we got here,
there
was communication, for example, with the President of Pakistan, laying
out our
concerns about Afghanistan and al Qaeda, and the importance of going
after the
Taliban and getting them to end their support for the al Qaeda.  This
was, say,
within three weeks of our arrival here.

     So I guess, the other thing I would say about Dick Clarke is that
he was
here throughout those eight years, going back to 1993, and the first
attack on
the World Trade Center; and '98, when the embassies were hit in East
Africa; in
2000, when the USS Cole was hit.  And the question that ought to be
asked is,
what were they doing in those days when he was in charge of counterterrorism
efforts?

     Q    Well, the media finally has what it wants -- I'm talking
about the
partisan media has what it wants.  It's got an independent contractor, a man
whose worked for both administrations, now launching full barrels at the
President.  And one of the claims that Clarke is making is that -- and
you just
countered it -- he said the President didn't treat al Qaeda as a serious
threat
before September 11th.  He keeps harping on the fact that even before your
administration assumed office, you guys wanted to go in and level Iraq.

     THE VICE PRESIDENT:  Yes, that's -- again, that's just not the
case.  The
fact is, what the President did not want to do is to have an ineffective
response with respect to al Qaeda.  And we felt that up until that point
that
much of what had been done vis-a-vis al Qaeda had been totally ineffective:
some cruise missiles fired at some training camps in Afghanistan that
basically
didn't hit anything.  And it made the U.S. look weak and ineffective.
And he
wanted a far more effective policy for trying to deal with that.  And that
process was in motion throughout the spring.

     Q    Why do you think -- and he's not the first, Clarke is not the
first --
why do you think so many opponents of the President -- and what do they
hope to
achieve by continually attacking Condoleezza Rice?

     THE VICE PRESIDENT:  Well -- (laughter) -- it's short-sighted.
Condi, is
well able to defend herself.  She's done a superb job for us, and is
extremely
knowledgeable National Security Advisor.

     Q    Well, I guess what I'm getting at --
     THE VICE PRESIDENT:  I've worked with a lot of them over the years.  I
suppose he may have a grudge to bear there since he probably wanted a more
prominent position than she was prepared to give him.

     Q    Well, I guess what I'm getting at is that whenever it comes
to the
counterterrorism efforts, foreign policy in general, it seems that
elements of
the Democratic Party today and their allies attack Condoleezza Rice,
which is a
matter of real curiosity to me.  And, of course, she can defend herself
-- as
she did today in The Washington Post.  But it's just part of the -- what
to me
appears now to be an obvious attack machine at full throttle.  You have this
book coming out while John Kerry is on vacation so he doesn't have to
say this
stuff.  The author of this book is associated with Kerry's foreign policy
advisor, up at the Kennedy School.  You have a Bob Woodward book that's
coming
in a few weeks from the same publisher.  Despite all of these attacks,
and by
the way, I actually think, Mr. Vice President, if you'll permit me an
editorial
comment here, you have the Clinton administration -- if they had
defended the
country as eagerly and with as much fervor as they are attempting to defend
themselves in all this, we might have -- and I don't expect you comment,
I just
-- we might have escaped some of the attacks that we've had.

     But with this frontal assault, the President's poll numbers remain
up.  The
administration remains focused.  They haven't taken you off your game.  What
effect -- both in a governing sense and in a political sense -- is this full
frontal assault having on all of you in the White House?

     THE VICE PRESIDENT:  Well, we've got to get on with our business.
 There's
plenty of work to be done.  The terrorist threat is very real.  It
continues out
there every day.  The President and I and Condi Rice, Andy Card begin
our day
six days a week meeting with the Director of the CIA and the Director of
the FBI
and reviewing intelligence, and working these problems.  And you've got
to be
able to continue to do that, even if there is a campaign underway out there.

     And I think we've done that fairly well.  We can't let our guard down.
We've got to remain vigilant.  We've still got major issues, obviously,
in the
sense that terrorists have launched many attacks around the world since
9/11 in
places like Madrid, most recently -- but Casablanca, Riyadh, Bali, Jakarta,
Mombasa.  It's a worldwide global problem, and it's got to be dealt with, I
think, very aggressively -- just the way the President's dealt with it.

     Q    Do you believe that this policy of dealing with them
aggressively has
led to more terrorism?

     THE VICE PRESIDENT:  I don't.  The fact of the matter is, I think
we're
operating, obviously, with a very different policy.  Tending to treat these
matters primarily as law enforcement problems prior to 9/11, that in no way
slowed down the terrorists.  They still launched against us on 9/11 and
killed
some 3,000 of our people that morning.

     This has less to do with what we do than it does with what we
stand for.  I
think the extremists out there in al Qaeda are bound and determined to do
everything they can to try to change U.S. policy and to kill Americans,
including innocent civilians and women and children.  And the only way
to deal
with the threat -- because you can't negotiate with them, there's no
treaty at
the end of the day here.  You can't deter them.  There's nothing they
want to
defend.  The only way to deal with them is to destroy the terrorists
before they
can launch further attacks against the United States, and that's what we're
about.

     Q    Mr. Clarke, to get back to him for a moment, is saying that
actually
if we would just take some more time and talk to these people,
understand why
they hate us, we might be able to forge some kind of peace with them.

     THE VICE PRESIDENT:  I think that's totally unrealistic.  At least, I
fundamentally disagree with his assessment both of recent history, but
also in
terms of how to deal with the problem.  As I say, he was the head of
counterterrorism for several years there in the '90s, and I didn't
notice that
they had any great success dealing with the terrorist threat.  I think what
we've done since, going into Afghanistan, taking down the Taliban,
closing the
camps, killing al Qaeda, wrapping up a significant percentage of the total
leadership of al Qaeda, that's an effective policy.

     Q    Now, what would you say to people, though, who may be casual
-- or a
bit more than casually interested in this because it does appear to the
average
observer watching the news that terrorist attacks are up around the
world, and
yet the administration keeps claiming success in the fight against al
Qaeda as
evidenced by more of them dead, more of their leaders imprisoned, al
Qaeda on
the run.  How are you defining this success against them?

     THE VICE PRESIDENT:  Well, we've been defining it in terms of --
specifically al Qaeda, in terms of our ability to wrap up major parts of the
organization, to prevent further attacks against the United States,
obviously.
I think all of that -- all of those are hallmarks of success.  But
you've also
go to measure it in terms of the fact that we're changing circumstances
on the
ground in key parts of the world, both in Afghanistan and Iraq.

     Afghanistan was basically a failed state.  Then with the Taliban
in charge
it provided a sanctuary, a home base, if you will, for al Qaeda to launch
attacks not only against us, but wherever they chose.  Afghanistan can
no longer
be used for that purpose because of what our forces did there.

     In Iraq, a similar proposition there.  We were concerned not only
about the
fact that Saddam had hosted terrorists in the past.  He'd stimulated and
encouraged them by providing financial rewards for suicide bombers that hit
Israel, as well as his past involvement with weapons of mass
destruction.  And
all of that put us in the position where we think now with the process begun
both in Afghanistan and Iraq, where we're standing up new governments.
We've
got constitutions written where we're going to have governments put in
place,
here, hopefully, in the not-to-distant future, where those areas will no
longer
be threats to the United States or anybody else.  In fact, they'll be
able to
serve, we hope, as models for responsible states in that part of the world.

     Q    Mr. Vice President, one quick one before we go to the break.
 Clinton
administration officials who are now on television, again, attempting to
defend
themselves in all of this hubbub, are trying to create the impression
that this
whole al Qaeda and modern era terrorist problem began on January 22nd of
2001.
What exactly was it you inherited?

     THE VICE PRESIDENT:  Well, I go back to the first attack on the
World Trade
Center in '93, when the man named Ramzi Yousef, together with others,
tried to
bomb the World Trade Center then.  Remember they took a truckload of
explosives
and set it off in the parking garage underneath the World Trade Center.  It
didn't do what they hoped it would do.  He eventually was captured.
He's now
doing 240 years in a federal pen.

     But what we now know, I think, looking back at that, nobody
realized it at
the time, but looking back at that, was that was perhaps the first al Qaeda
attack on the U.S. homeland.  Ramzi Yousef turned out to be Khalid Shaykh
Muhammad's nephew.  Khalid Shaykh Muhammad is the guy who came up with
the idea
of using airliners to strike the World Trade Center in about 1996, we
believe,
when he first suggested that, and who later supervised the attacks of 9/11.

     Q    You mean that idea didn't come in February of 2001?  The
terrorists
had that idea in 1996?

     THE VICE PRESIDENT:  No.  There's been some evidence that he, in fact,
first briefed Osama bin Laden on that in 1996, when he first suggested that.

     Q    Richard Clarke away of that by any chance?

     THE VICE PRESIDENT:  I have no idea.

     Q    We'll take a break and be back in just a second.


     (Pause.)

     Q    Welcome back.  Rush Limbaugh on the EIB Network.  And we
continue our
conversation with the Vice President, Dick Cheney.

     Mr. Cheney, let's go to the campaign.  Last week, after your
appearance in
Simi Valley at the Reagan Library, The New York Times and other media
outlets
the next day immediately posted stories decrying all of the new
negativity and
partisanship in the campaign.  After your appearance.  No mention of
what the
Democrats have assaulted this administration with for three years.  It
was your
appearance and things like it.

     Now, I realize that this is part of the game.  But how does this
affect you
and your strategy as you go forward toward the election?

     THE VICE PRESIDENT:  Well, we've got, obviously, a very important
election
here, Rush.  This may be the most important presidential election in
many years
because of the issues that are going to be decided here, especially with
respect
to how we defend the country in this war on terror.  And it's very
important we
get our side of the story out.  People talk about negative campaigns
starting
early.  The fact of the matter is, we just recently got started.  The
Democrats
have been out there since last September, roughly -- launching attacks
against
the President and me.  And it's been a good part of what they've spent
the money
on, on their side, has in fact been primarily negative as opposed to
what we've
been trying to do.  We haven't been engaged --

     Q    Well, you ran -- your first series of ads were patriotically
themed
with the 9/11 images, which were designed to cast the election about
America's
future.  And those ads were even said to be attack ads.  When you criticize
Senator Kerry's record, it is said that you're attacking him and going
negative
and this sort of thing.  I see it's not deterring you, and so forth.
But how do
you plan a campaign against an opponent who will claim to have said or
not said
anything he's accused of having said or not said?

     THE VICE PRESIDENT:  Well, you've got him on tape saying things
like, "I
actually voted for it before I voted against it," talking about the
supplemental
for the war in Iraq.  That's not anything we dreamed up.  That's John Kerry
himself, captured on film.  So in effect, basically, what we've been talking
about here is his own record.  He's had 19 years of votes in the Senate.
 All of
us will be judged on our performance in office, certainly the President
will be
with respect to his four years.  And John Kerry should expect to be
evaluated,
as well, by the voters based on how he's performed as a senator and what
that
tells us about his capacity for the leadership position he aspires to.

     Q    Does it frustrate you when you see Senators Hagel and McCain,
Republicans, sort of attack the administration's attack on Kerry's
voting record
and defend it, saying, hey, he's been here 19 years, we're all going to
have a
lot of votes that we couldn't explain because they're cast in strange ways?
Does it bother you to see what some people regard as Republican defections?

     THE VICE PRESIDENT:  Oh, I guess, I wouldn't go that far in terms
of how
you characterize it.  John McCain has been a good guy to work with these
last
several years.  I've known John since we served together in the House of
Representatives.  He's co-chairman of our Arizona effort.  I called him
a couple
of months ago and asked him to make a run to New Hampshire for us, which
he did
a very good job on.  So I don't have any criticism to offer at this stage.
We've got personal relationships involved there, as well, too.  And I don't
think we'd be critical of that.  John has been a good supporter of ours.

     Q    No, I understand -- I understand.  I just -- we see things in the
paper, and it irritates supporters of the President who may not
understand in a
time like this where the administration is involved in a struggle for
the future
of the country to see some Republicans not totally on board that struggle
puzzles people.  They don't understand it.  It just befuddles them, and they
don't quite understand why people would do things that might appear on the
surface to undercut the President's efforts, such as Senator McCain toying
publicly with being Senator Kerry's Vice President.

     THE VICE PRESIDENT:  Well, I saw that interview and I didn't take
it that
way.  I think John McCain was asked if he would entertain such a notion,
and he
said, well, he'd entertain it, but he didn't think it was likely and went
through all the reasons why.  He's made it very clear he doesn't want to
be Vice
President, and that he's not about to leave the Republican Party.  So
it's early
in the campaign, and again, as I say, I think it's a big party.  There's
room in
it for everybody, and we don't have any complaints at this stage about
Senator
McCain's actions.  He's been very supportive of the President.  On occasion,
they disagree and he expresses those disagreements.

     Q    What about your health, sir?  How are you doing?

     THE VICE PRESIDENT:  Well, I'm doing well.  I'm getting older year
by year,
I guess.  But I don't have any complaints, Rush.  They've been taking
good care
of me.

     Q    And we have about 45 seconds.  Are you planning to stay on
the ticket
in this election?

     THE VICE PRESIDENT:  As long as the President wants me, that's
where I'll
be.  And he's indicated he wants me to run again, so that's what I plan
to do.

     Q    All right, Mr. Vice President, I know that you're extremely busy.
You've got many things going on.  We always appreciate your time here.  It's
always an honor to speak with you.  It's inspirational for a lot of
people.  And
I always say this to you at the close of every conversation we have, just to
affirm it because I know you know it, but you really need to be reminded how
much love there is and appreciation for you and the President, the whole
administration for what you're trying to do against these long odds.  And I
speak for all these people out there who love you and appreciate it and
wish you
continued success.

     THE VICE PRESIDENT:  Well, thank you very much, Rush.  That means
a lot.


                          END               1:31 P.M. EST

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